Monday, April 26, 2010

Artist accepts his unknown destiny?

My one-room house neighbor, the Laguna Beach artist and Vietnam vet who is being evicted, seems to have accepted his fate. This worries me but also comforts, I suppose. The damn guy may smoke and drink too much, too soon in the day, but he's a really decent guy. He came over to help me with a busted electrical breaker yesterday when he had other things to do, like a lovely lady visitor and a bottle of wine. But up he pops of his own accord, and chased down breaker panels all over this oddly wired and vast old Tudor house in his bare feet, so I could take care of the dripping load of laundry stalled helplessly in the dead dryer.
He's got 35 days, he says. "Tryin' to get some money together, so if you wanna buy a painting, now's the time, it's a good deal." And it is. He has a painting I love of a huge blue-gray sky with laundry whipping on an outdoor line, no people in sight (why is it I love paintings without people?). It won't go anyplace we can hang art in this heavy-beamed house. But we spotted a small painting of a tomato twisted amidst it's green vines, and I might get that for someone. That will be our donation to the fund, a fare-the-well fund for a fifty-something man who listens to Moody Blues like the teen he once was, has a talent he's fiercely proud of, and a future he hasn't yet figured out.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Sundays and beer go together in downtown Laguna

Sunday afternoon and The Marine Room on Ocean Avenue smelled strongly of beer from a block away. Lots of middle-aged men and women eyeballed one another, either contemplating a roll on the mattress in some nearby apartment, or walking away to sober up for Monday's work, the sensible choice but so monotonous perhaps. Inside, it was noisy and the beer was flowing---the band was on a break but not the people. So nice for me to not be inside, but to be strolling past with my son, happily married at long last. The tipsy Sunday crowd with their sexy tops and flashy shirts reminded me that I hung out on Sunday afternoons too in bars, not often, but enough. It was in Manhattan Beach and I was much younger than these hardened but hopeful LB players. Yeah, it was fun, but the music, drinks and sexy banter wore off with a sickly taste at sunset, like cotton candy when you're hungry, sweet fun with an aftertaste of emptiness.
I don't judge single people as hard as many married people do, because being single is damn hard sometimes and we are not meant to be alone all the time. As much as I enjoyed living alone and my solitude, which I truly did because I am just made that way, there were times when loneliness would gather like an unseen mist, filling the air in my apartment and although I was mostly a sensible girl with strong willpower, which saved me from a lot of mistakes, now I understand how people might do things to push that alone feeling back for just a short while, 'til they can go to work Monday morning and forget it again.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

party's over for laguna beach artist

Some man is roaring outside the house this Saturday night. It sounds like he's losing it. It is probably some random drunk, but it's getting seriously psycho. Uh, oh, I know who it is and it's damn dumb of him! (No one I know personally, thank Whomever in Wherever.)
So on to the real story...my new artist acquaintance,who lives behind us in the one-room art shack, got an eviction notice. Eight years here, and thirty in Laguna total. "It's the only place where I feel good," he said wanly, barefoot at his doorstep when he told us the bad news. His times have been hard indeed lately, and getting kicked out is another blow. "Greedy," he said, indicting the landlord for buying an investment property at the height of the market and trying to pay his rent by insisting that his tenants do so too. "I've taken good care of this place for him," he added, his eyes red and face puffy from a hard night of drinking and worry. But I didn't blame him for being hurt and wounded. You can't help feelings in the face of loss.
"What can I do? I got no place to go." His face creased slightly. "I'm thinking about getting some camping equipment. Me and the guy down the end--" and he hitched his thumb north a bit--"he's out of work too, and we're thinking about getting it, so we can camp."
He's a Vietnam vet and his daily investment of time on the phone with the VA has not yet paid off in a solid disability income stream, despite serious health problems. I've grown fond of this man in a few short weeks, and I wish I could take him in, can't bear the thought of him being homeless. But where could I put him? I have four people to shelter and feed already total, and I'm not sure that a grown man older than me would make a reasonable roommate for anyone. At his age, people like their solitude if accustomed to it, although they hate it if they're not. Anyway, I was just getting used to being his neighbor myself, and now I might not be able to anymore. I didn't see this one coming. Sometimes you think you have all of the time in the world, or if not in the world, at least in your own backyard. And maybe you do. Or damn it, maybe not.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Making a video with a cool young Czech film maker

Sitting at my kitchen table, but it's just like being back in the video edit bays and recording studios I've been in before in my career as a video producer and paid hack...from Northrop Grumman in lavish Century City CA, to a big rich insurance company in Madison,Wisconsin ("Wisco" to tha cool natives), to NPR recording studios in LA, etc... when you're recording and cutting, it's the same thing still, only now the technology is seriously portable. My Czech film maker friend Joachim Vesely and I made a short little video recently that got him into film school in Scotland, one of only 13 choice spots in the whole college of art in Scotland's historic hard-drinking Edinburgh. He doesn't see dead people, he sees drunk people...nightly, stumbling, and "old" (in their late thirties! he says). So happy that our little video road trip to some of Orange County's stores and the evil Trinity Broadcasting Network ended up getting him a place in Euro film history! Right now we're editing and putting the final touches on our video, and I'll link to it when it goes live...very soon, can't wait. You know what they say---"The devil finds work for idle hands."