A Fortuitous Development

For once, I was in the right place at the right time.

The second day of the workshop, one of the models was fired for being a no-show. You can’t just blow off a score of people who are depending on you. I knew there was a slim, slim chance that this might happen, but for once I was lucky and it did happen: they needed an understudy. I swooped in and saved the day. I was at a coffee shop two blocks away when my girlfriend called and told me I should show up and model instead. I was so good at it that I got hired for the rest of the workshop. Nothing nude, mind you—just sitting for portraiture, sculpting, portraiture, and more portraiture.

But just remaining perfectly still and focused is an excellent experience for any budoka. It sounds easy to just sit still and think about Star Wars for six hours, but it can actually be pretty physically painful by the end. Maintaining the exact pose, not just sitting still and staring at a dot on the wall. That is basically what it is, granted, but I can’t even move my chin a quarter inch without getting corrected… and so I don’t. I don’t move, so I don’t get corrected. The artists like that a lot. They say I’m a really good model, and I think that’s because of karate. In fact, I’m going to write my sensei about this and recommend he try it.

You wouldn’t think it would be challenging, but it is a worthy challenge. Good for control, patience, focus, and endurance.

I’m not tooting my own horn here. I don’t even consider myself that good at it. That’s not the point. The point is that it’s good experience, that’s all. The point is that my neck hurts like a sonofabitch but I have a check in my laptop case that needs depositing. The point is that I found something I’m supposedly good at and will therefore probably further pursue once I return to Austin. It’s not great money, but it does pay for the Scotch I intend to drink in Kansas City at the end of July!

It was also nice having an inside view of my girlfriend’s experience and education from one of the top portrait artists in the nation. It was nice being included in the workshop if only just to hear everything.

We went to a barbecue at the instructor’s house with a bunch of other artists. It was like a mirror universe: everything they talked about I could relate to in the world of academic music. Everything from their technique exercises to the pretentious elitism they’ve encountered (these parallels could constitute a whole slew of blog posts in and of themselves!). Everything had a parallel in my world, though in the case of this party I was just a tag-along. I might add that it was a somewhat surreal privilege to be invited to go mountain hiking tomorrow with a celebrity in the art world. What a strange turn of events. My Wisconsin adventure is taking shape on its own…

And so, the Bohemian Odyssey continues… scraping by in unlikely and surprising ways, still worried about how to make it all work out. It’s an interesting adventure, if discouraging and daunting most of the time.

Actually, this lifestyle sucks a lot. It just sounds enviable to those with tediously monotonous lives. If you could take away the daily threat of starvation, it would seem pretty fun. I’ll give you that.