Working on Diego’s stupid idea

Okay, Diego, I hope you’re happy. Stick THAT in your mp3 player.

Stupid Diego and his stupid question

I went out with Diego and some friends yesterday, Labor Day, to Leo’s blueberry farm. No one there had ever heard of Fats Domino or finding your thrill on blueberry hill, and so the joke wasn’t that funny when I told Nicole to go lose herself on the hill and for Leo to go find her.

The day away got worse when Diego asked me a stupid question:

-Have you ever thought about making a CD?

Every now and then somebody asks you something that unmasks all your sharp looking ego defenses and leaves you exposed before the sights of all. I think a couple other people stopped to hear what I would say, and Toni gave me that look. That look that says, “See, I don’t like your creative work just because I’m your wife and you’re so darned needy. I like it because it’s reasonably good.”

I said, “The only thing worse than not making a CD is making one and no one buying what it.” Someone said they were sure it would sell.

So, I say to Diego that only five people would buy it, and they would only do that because they felt sorry for me.

He said he was sure I could get ten people to buy it. Five would be the people in the room, who didn’t feel sorry for me, but who thought I was a creative talent in my own right. The five other people might just do it because they felt sorry for me.

But the point of all of it is that creative gifts are not about the small ego issues of the people who have them, and woe unto me if I withold because of my ‘issues.’

Wouldn’t it be awful to get to heaven and see all the creative stuff we could have done andn gifted to humanity had we just got out of the way. Like, and not just in theory, either, but it all actuality. Like, if I was in heaven at an internet cafe and I was looking in ITunes store and I saw my CD’s up there. I click on it and listen to 30 free seconds, and then decide to buy it, and then I get a message:

“Unfortunately, ITunes Store is unable to offer the following products, due to the miniscule ego crises of the one who refused to to serve the gift. Below is a list of all the unrealized potentialities that would have worked their way through the world had the artist not obsessed about being perfect. Would you like to see similar musical offerings instead?”

Later, after a failed attempt at fishing (Leo said they never stocked the pond but that it had fish anyway because of the fish eggs that stick to ducks’ feet when they fly from the creek to the pond–I think he’s full of it), Diego and I settled into talk more about a book we’re reading… about life’s great challenges, about male initiation (the kind that DOESN’T involve circumcise ye one another), and about killing the Lion. I realized that publishing and writing and composing and offering these meager gifts to the world IS the Lion. I have to go no further than my own garage studio to find the Lion, lock the door, and let emerge whoever emerges in the end.

And I realized it all because of Diego’s stupid question.