Persistence

Walter Gabrielson Painter

Chapter 8

Seventh Life: thirteen years 1980 to (1993)

In the waning days of 1979, I returned from Hawaii with my optimism restored and a good roll of paintings. What a contrast LA presented from the lush color and freshness of the islands, it all looked like gray, pressed cardboard and concrete. I had made the transition from charcoal back to painting. The charcoals looked spectacular and were a good experience for me but they had their limitations. For a painter charcoals beg the question of why remain one-dimensional in a specialty medium longer than you have to? Painting offers the infinite plastic spatialness of paint combined with the emotional content of color, the greater size of an image obtainable with canvas, and the entire tradition and intricate history of paint.

The spring show with Lucy Adelman at Artspace was financially successful and well received. I was surprised but then again I wasn't surprised. I felt I had hit a plane of competence with this new work that had been introduced by the charcoal drawings and the move to color took me one step further. I didn't bring in much color intensity because I wanted to move slowly out from the starkness of black and experience each nuance of what color would bring. Half the show was painted in Hawaii in a very dark room so I could fend off the color intensity surrounding me; the other half I did in Pasadena and I matched the color balance with the paintings I had already completed. The pictures were about various human situations and I felt I had begun to touch what I was really after in an image. I was extremely confident going into the show, and fortunately there was a powerful response to the work. One collector read a review and rushed over the next day and bought three paintings. The collector Michael Blankfort purchased "Imperious Lady", a portrait of Noni Chernoff Being huffy, and it now resides in LACMA. Most of the works did sell and I felt vindicated and successful which was a new experience. After all the lonely years, it was difficult to know where to put acceptance. I was more comfortable with rejection; perhaps I could get used to this new program, though I still didn't trust it. I know it wasn't me that was previously rejected, it was the work. But I will admit much of the work previously didn't warrant acceptance. I had been irresponsibly worried about something for years which I was truly responsible for in the first place, the power of the work. It does get complicated. It is hard to disassociate yourself from the progression that because you work at something you deserve rewards commensurate with the time you devoted to it. In art it seldom works that way. You achieve a resonance with others when you make a breakthrough in art itself or you personally push your image to its best potential and power and you find an opportunity to display that to others in a meaningful way. While the show was still up I asked Lucy if she wanted to represent me full time. (Up to then, the gallery gave you a show and then you sadly trundled the remnants back home until you could get another exhibition with her.) She declined and it looked like I was out in the cold again.

I called some dealers to come over to see the show; one strange character who had just opened a gallery (sometimes the best occasion to get into a gallery) showed up and he appeared to have potential. He said his name was Karl Bornstein. I knew Lucinda Barnes was working for Karl, she brought him over and he immediately responded to my work. I went over to his new space to talk with him and we hit it off right away, (even though he was taping our conversation). Karl was enthusiastic about West Coast art and had boundless energy and an aura of business competence about him. His experience came from managing and promoting rock and roll bands and concerts, and producing records. I figured if he could put up with that business, he would be a smash in art. His entré into the art world started with buying and selling old master prints and then opening his own publishing business to produce and publish original prints and posters. One of his early artists was Patrick Nagel, a teacher at Art Center interested in becoming a popular commercial artist. Karl saw Nagel had the foundation of an image he thought would become popular; pouty beautiful women with white faces drawn within black lines like Japanese woodblock prints and colored with demure grays and reds. The works were an immediate, soaring success; Mirage Editions Ltd. became a mega-dollar business in short time. But Karl's ambition was larger than publishing. He wanted to open a fine art gallery and discover the best new Southern California emerging artists (I wasn't emerging at the point, more like converging), promote their careers and translate them to New York, Japan, and perhaps Europe. Was this an acceptable dream for your new dealer to have or what?

For a time the two businesses complemented each other. Most fine arts people never knew about the publishing business going on the other side of the door. Karl was hailed as a comer, a visionary; his name was continually in the paper and people talked of his audacity and flair that affected everything he seemed to touch. One magazine even included him in a most eligible bachelor list. Wisecracking, worldly and stylish, Karl took people by storm. He operated with a phone glued to his head, one time I suggested he have it implanted. He knew the basic secret of being an art dealer, phone out, phone out, schmooze, phone out, schmooze. Do not let yourself become a storekeeper waiting for customers to wander in and pick something out, make it happen. If you went to his gallery and evinced an interest in a work you literally had to fight yourself out the door or reach for your checkbook. His genius was closing, and working out how somebody could (should) get what they wanted. On a good day Karl would damn near sell anything to anybody, he was that good at it. People would ask me, "Who is that little guy running around all over the place? I went over to the gallery and he came charging out of the office and wouldn't get out of my face the whole time! What a mensch." If you have ever seen anybody gleefully embrace the gallery business, it was Karl. Sometimes he went overboard. He bought a stretch limo equipped with a bar and a slide viewer to go out and pick up clients and bring them back to the gallery; but it came off as ostentatious and he eventually got rid of it.

If you were an artist in the gallery Karl didn't waste much time with you after you were in. He wanted action on his fantasies about you and he'd call up and say, "I don't want much, just two of your best paintings you have ever done by the end of the month." (Click.) It could be intimidating. How do you respond to something like that? Life is too much or too little. Karl went through a lot of artists; because he worked hard for them, he felt they ought to produce for him too, and eventually they had to sell. One day while in the office I heard him talking on the phone with an artist who was complaining that she was getting old and afraid, he commiserated a little but he then said, "Do you really want to be having this conversation with me? How am I supposed to be selling your work if I'm talking to you about this? Get a therapist." (Click.) Another artist began sellingwell but he was spending more and more time fixing up his house and less time on a large commission Karl had arranged. When the client complained about the work Karl had to catch the flak. Although he liked him and his work, he let the artist go; he couldn't trust him anymore. Cold, cruel? Artists have large expectations of dealers. About thirty seconds after they get into a gallery they want the dealer to become their mother, and a week after that, the rich Uncle who gives them things. Artists crave legitimacy and want to be treated like stars. I have watched many artists just talk themselves out of this and other galleries simply because they don't understand the nature of therelationship and they expect too much. For dealers there is only so much time to contact people, to bring clients over to the gallery, to make deals and all the rest. There are a thousand details to address each day; employees are out sick, the rent has to be paid, payroll has to go out, the IRS wants an audit, somebody is stealing your checks, the receptionist just quit, an important payment hasn't yet been received, and an artist calls up and says he doesn't like his new work for the show which opens next week and all the announcements are already in the mail for the reception. Have a nice day. Karl was good at juggling the logistics, the clients and the people problems. He saw them all as challenges to his will and intelligence. Most of all he loved to choreograph all the elements into a deal of some sort. If the art business was slow, he would get on the phone and cook up deals on practically anything just for the fun of it. Like all good art dealers he knew how to flatter people and when to shut up. He created a style or ambience with his gallery that was an extension of his personality, a tool of his will. Some people hung out just to watch him perform; one person who said he wanted to open a gallery one day, came every week for a year because this was the place to learn. Karl led, he didn't follow. He was intolerant of incompetence and hard on his employees at times. But then he would turn around and treat them to a lavish surprise party for their birthday or just for the hell of it.

With Karl I saw how an artist-dealer relationship can cook off, not only with myself but with others. It is about complementing each other, about business, and about trust. But this marriage of convenience has its weakness for it can breed resentments and tear itself apart. In American art the dealer serves as an interface, promoter and explainer of an artist to the outside world. Few artists have the capacity to do it by themselves. People like Turrell, Irwin, Kienholz, Ruscha primarily deal their own work but at times have outside dealers too. Most artists don't want to get into the trenches and the mud of details, interactions, interruptions, gladhanding, stroking and dealmaking that selling art demands. Artists want it both ways, to have the result of all the hard work the dealer puts in and never to acknowledge the dealer or pay him for his efforts. When you think about it, 50% commission is not too bad a deal with something as amorphous, as indefinable and as competitive as art. The commission also defines the significance and character of the artist-dealer relationship, the duality of it and the dependence of one to another. Money as the great definer.

When you find someone like Karl your power can truly expand, you jump on to athundering juggernaut and you never know where it will take you. I did all right in Karl's gallery, I was able to see that I could finally make a living out of the studio and leave teaching, also I brought an aesthetic credibility with me to the gallery. I was able to stay within my own definitions of my work and move it at my own pace. What I wasn't ready for was the phenomenon of total strangers becoming part of what I had so long been privately working at. You feel a rapid response and feedback to your work, and subsequently, its marketing and support. It is so strange. You get commissions, you have sales, you meet the buyers, you discuss support and financial strategies, you get written about, you have other artists pressuring to help them get into the gallery, you have people coming over and invading your studio, you have students who want to emulate you, you receive mountains of flattery, you have buyers for just completed works that you have not had time to enjoy or contemplate on, you have promises and speculation of this and that, and best of all you have the freedom that a little money provides, the power to face life on your terms more than you ever had before. It can be heady stuff. If I were younger I probably would have been distorted beyond repair, as it was I only got mildly bent out of shape. On the one hand it is a good thing to resonate with people; they like what you do and desire it and can afford to exchange the value of their time on this earth, what they have sweated for, for yours. Just a beautiful exchange. You also have an audience for your perceptions, your distortions or whatever, and you can speak out, your work goes out and affects people. Of course, you have to have something to talk about too. The down side is that you can easily believe the flattery and the acceptance and the reviews; you can violate the essence of what got you power and resonance in your work in the first place and effect a conversion to other values. And there are the terrible little comments: "You know, your work should be selling for much, much more," or "You work looks just like so-and-so," or "I hear your dealer got some new hotshot to replace you," or "Oh, in New York, they do your kind of thing all the time," or "Your last show was much better," and on and on. When you get your head a little above the crowd you might as well paint a target on it. You just get an entirely new set of problems with success and you have to learn to deal with these as you did when you learned to deal with failure.

I stayed away from the next level of complicity with Karl that some artists went for; the dealer becoming your art director. One of Karl's desires was to point you towards being a commercial artist of your own work. (This is not to say that a dealer's comments cannot be instructive.) This area can be very sticky, for in the desire to help you, the dealer can also destroy you. An artist goes on doing this and doing that and finally comes upon an image and gets good at it, the sales get hot, demand shoots up and the dealer yells, "HALLELUJAH BROTHERS WE ARE SAVED, FOR I HAVE A WINNER AND NOW GO FORTH AND MAKE HUNDREDS OF THEM!" Karl was good and could have been an art director in the advertising business. He could pinpoint the specific elements that people went for in your work, suggest you focus on them, "this is what people likeabout you," etc., etc.

A few of the artists in the gallery were directed in this way and went on to capitalize on themselves and achieve outstanding sales. But eventually it is over with; everybody, who wants one, has one. The aesthetic possibilities are all used up, and following your success replaces following your aesthetic instincts and you fall out of the end game very flat.

Back in academe becoming a prisoner of your own work is held as one of the shocking reasons to stay home and teach and remain pure. Better to be a professional victim on a faculty than to sell your body to the art business. But you always have a choice; you are not required to sell out. Being in a gallery and having shows and sales doesn't automatically pervert you. It is more an opportunity for you to say this is who I want to become not who I have to be. It absolutely drives faculty people crazy when you have a teaching job and sell your art too. They see even a little selling as selling out. "Real artists" don't do that, they suffer and at the end of their lives they have fourteen garages crammed with paintings that will never see the light of day. I have had strange confrontations about shows and sales with my academic colleagues who wanted to know why I wasted my time doing it. Wasting my time? One professor said, "Don't you think (I hate form that form of lead-in, you know it is going to be followed by all the most insecurity-ridden, festering fears to come out of a living crypt), Walter don't you think that being successful can create its own problems?" As if failure doesn't kick up a few. Take your choice, it is definitely not a perfect world. Karl's world wasn't perfect either but your choice was to go somewhere else if you didn't choose to put up with his act. The way I handled Karl was to mumble a bit and look wise and get back to work and do what I was going to do anyway because by the time he got around to me again he had been in a thousand deals, calls and meetings and his brain was fried. Trouble was, the man also had an excellent memory, he could recall titles of my paintings years ago, titles I had long forgotten. With such a sharp operator you were challenged to be just as sharp.

Artists have a tough time with success. Just what is "success" anyway? Many artists like to define success as failure just to keep themselves honest. Popularity means that you have screwed up and they are on to you and they like you! Garabedian once said (by the way, he is not the only philosopher of art in the Western Hemisphere but he does have a reasonable supply of good lines) that artists ought to "cover their tracks." Meaning: don't let the folks in on what you are up to or when the magician reveals his secrets the game is up because there is no longer any magic, no reason to follow the premise and the illusion of the act. Not bad. Keep the real success hidden away. I think all artists have problems with success (mostly not having any at all). If you get it, you don't trust it and if somebody else gets it, you feel badly. When you get some, maybe you want more. If you get too much, maybe it will alter your values, allow you to leave your fundamentals, to go out there and crash. Success strongly implies that external rewards are more important than internal ones and we distrust that. Luckily, for the most part artist success is elusive enough that you are spared its addiction.

"Success" is very much in the eye of the beholder. In the Sixties Peter and I became interested in our fellow "failing" artists. One such person buttonholed me at Barney's Beanery one evening and challenged us to go around and see it like it was, his premise was that those who had shows were selling out and the real artists like himself were down in the trenches doing the best art because they weren't corrupted. It sounded like one of those bar arguments: who is in better shape, a football player or a baseball player? But we decided to take him up on it, got names, cleared the decks, and spent some weeks running around looking at the official starving artist crowd. (This is just before they got into the furniture moving business.) We were going to write a collective piece if it worked out. So we trekked around to all of these dreadful places we had just come out of ourselves; you know, the wife stirring baby food over a can of sterno with her alcoholic, wife-beater, artist mate keeping at the dream once in a while, he offers a beer and there being no space on the cable-spool table he grandly sweeps their dinner and other family items to the floor to make us a place. "You wanna glass with that?" "Uh, no, that's all right." On and on. We concluded that most of these people were stuck in old art school grooves or still reliving graduate school into their thirties and forties, living their impression of what bohemian life should look like or using the lifestyle to attract women, etc. Their success was maintaining an out-of-date fantasy and not concentrating on developing their work, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of "I don't want or need anybody to want me."

What the answer for the success game is I don't know anymore. I have tasted a little of all of it and it is over so fast that it is meaningless to chase after. It makes you feel badly when you don't have it, when you do have it you are afraid somebody is going to take it away from you and you spend all your time working at preserving it. You become much better off when it all goes away and you become re-internalized with your values and achievements.

Karl equated "good" and "success" with sales. Of course he was more profound and substantial than that, but he like all dealers really got jazzed by something big happening with one of his artists, and after a while I think he got addicted to the high. It is hard to ignore. He also considered the art business a game, which bothered me. As an artist I might be in a game but I was not of the game nor did I live or wish to be defined by it. Different constituencies have different values. Artists are about art, dealers are about the game of art. You use each other. If you slip into their territory too much, you become something other than an artist, something you might not like about yourself after a while.

Karl was interested in opening a New York venue and as a tryout he borrowed a space on Prince Street for a month and put up a show of his LA gallery artists. The day before it opened things didn't appear to be going anywhere. Karl was working the phones like a dervish; somewhere in all this activity I launched into a righteous polemic about how disjointed the show looked because there was no aesthetic consistency or similarity among the artists. Karl responded that by that time he didn't give a damn, that kind of thinking was now over with. Now was the time to make whatever he had there work, and I should stop interrupting him with nebulous (favorite word) talk. He was right. It was time for him to put on the cape, grab the sword and get into the ring and the hell with anything that couldn't adequately be changed then. He wound up selling out most of the show, including my two pieces.

I learned a hundred little lessons from Karl, for instance pricing. Pricing works something like this, the numbers can be changed to humble the arrogant. Basically, art isn't worth money, irregardless what the price is, until somebody spends some on it. You can price something at $1,000 but if you take $500 for it, that is what it is worth in money. Prices start out as hopes and become stable as more people want your work. You should price the work low enough to enable people who want them to afford them, and only when that group of people is ripping them off the walls is it time to raise the prices a little. Not too much, because you can easily price yourself past the people who still want your work and can pay for it. To take a very businesslike approach to pricing, you start from what you need in a year to do your work, pay the bills, stay out of jail. Say it is thirty grand, actually, not much these days. If you sell primarily through galleries this translates to retailing sixty grand worth of art. Obviously, the number of pieces you need to sell depends on the range of prices, and this in turn affects your market. At ten grand you start competing with the top of the line, at twenty you are really in rarefied air, so you price accordingly. Most younger artists make the mistake of pricing their works relative to the big guys they admire, a form of being equal to them by asking their kind of prices. But is anybody going to give a two-year post-graduate ten grand for a painting? Happens, but rarely. Your ego can price you out of the game. Lower priced works are affordable to more people. As prices increase, the potential market for these works shrinks. I hope my prices are reasonable allowing those who truly desire something of mine to be able to afford it. Prints are another way to get the price down low enough for almost anybody to afford one but for the artist a print edition must be financed, and so far that has been a problem for me. Karl was a genius in perceiving what an artist could get in the market for a particular kind of work. He believed in starting low, building a collector base and increasing prices as demand was slowly generated. Therein is the secret of most art pricing: it really is driven by demand, not supply. Art supply is practically infinite. There are always too many artists with too much product. If you follow demand in pricing you can't go too far wrong.

Karl had created two (countem two) successful monsters, the gallery and the publishing business. They were both busy eating him up, but for a long time he was up to it. The gallery was doing well and the publishing business was doing fantastic. Nagel was in all the big poster shows, in Playboy, and doing commissions. Karl got in on the big explosion of the poster market, art for everyone but very hip stuff out of Mirage. It all went along like gangbusters until the great dark day in the mid Eighties. The American Heart Association was producing a TV special about fitness with celebritiesdoing workouts. Nagel, one of your great smokers, burger busters, etc., was invited to participate. After the show he went out to his car and died of a heart attack himself. Life does get ironic. Although he had enjoyed great success, Nagel wasn't turned by it, he had left most of that stuff in Vietnam. He liked his work, he was good at it, he had respect in his field, and he had sales that fine artists would kill for.

Karl felt that his publishing business was in jeopardy from this tragedy so he wholeheartedly threw himself into survival. We in the gallery side didn't know it then, but it was the beginning of the end. Karl became harder to get in touch with, he spent less time with the gallery and more with the publishing business. A series of gallery directors came and went but they were never as effective as Karl. People want to deal with the boss anyway so none of them had much of a chance. Morale was slipping. Artists left, others came on but the large excitement of the gallery was disappearing.

I had my last show at Bornstein 1987 with wall sculptures which again did very well. For several years I had been thinking of moving my images into three dimensions. I would have liked to try bronze but the cost was prohibitive so I went with what I knew and could afford, wood. Now all the cabinetmaker lessons I had learned from my father kicked in; he had given me tools along the way and there I was making sculptures without ever having taken a class in it. My idea was to give the characters a context by making a "set" they would interact with. I have always been fascinated with buildings and structures, particularly those which express some form of vernacular character to them. I used buildings like a bus station, a general store, a San Francisco "painted lady", a city street, inside a courtroom, a Zen temple (from Hawaii), a diner, a restaurant, an old gas station out in the desert, a hot dog stand in the shape of a hot dog. One sculpture "First Date" portrayed a scene of two people in a restaurant on their first date. Months before Nancy and I had been to dinner and were seated next to such a couple. It painfully reminded me of the hundred or so first dates I had experienced after returning from Hawaii; I had signed up with a dating service and met all these lonely women who of course were also meeting all us lonely men. On the first date we are trying to do too much: find out whether we want thesecond date or not, make ourselves look good, not make any mistakes. It's an audition from hell. In "First Date" I chose as my characters two kachina dolls which I made up for the occasion, they are seated at a table going through this little drama, the lady smoking too much, the guy looking as if he knew everything in the universe. I noticed that the three-dimensional work had an amazing presence with people. It is as if the painting comes to meet you, creating another reality for the viewer. Strictly flat painting is more removed and appears to be more "intellectual" by just sitting there and daring you to pull off the illusion. The best comment I received about the sculptures was that they didn't appear to be that different from my previous works; that is, they continued the explorations of the paintings but in a different manner. I didn't consciously work for that but that it happened and that was most satisfying.

I left the gallery in 1989. Karl had moved the gallery and poster business to a large space on 10th street. The front desk looked like something out of the Starship Enterprise and everything in the place reflected Karl's increasing move toward the extremely formal cement, stainless and glass. My colorful paintings and sculptures were incongruous with the kind of work being shown, mostly a form of German process art. In the end not much of it sold and Karl closed down the space. He then went into partnership with another gallery in Santa Monica, but he subsequently left it and is presently out of the fine arts business. When I left the gallery I wrote him a note, took my pieces home and that was it. Nine months later when I him at the Artfair he came up and hugged me and thanked me for the way I left his gallery. I guess other partings were not so amicable.

I was so fortunate to be a participant and witness to such a phenomenon as Karl; personally and professionally he gave me a lot. I am sorry his dream went bust. Perhaps he took on too much. I always believed he had the real potential to be a West Coast power in fine art. His dilemma was on which venue to concentrate his remarkable energies; the publishing business won out. The big bucks are a siren song that is hard to beat. I always wonder what motivates someone to become a dealer. It is such a hard job, so risky, so much gladhandling, so much to put up with from artists. How do you maintain your soul and where do you get renewed in such an endeavor that involves talking up other people and ideas? On the other hand, a dealer can have immense power. There is the high of a new discovery around the bend at any time. Good dealers love the hunt, they become the protagonist of their search for more and more excitement. "Come Watson, the game is afoot!"

Along with getting out of teaching and getting into the Bornstein gallery I also decided that I had to give up flying. I didn't want the expense of an airplane affecting my fledgling new life as a self-employed person (put that on the paperwork of a bank or credit card application or anywhere and you get the look: you don't have a JOB?). I knew it wouldn't work. Flying had enhanced my life and provided me some stress release in the Seventies. It was a new game nowwith new rules and I had to learn fast. At the time, I owned a Cessna 170B with Mark Gassaway which we subsequently painted and sold to a friend in Colorado. I flew the plane out and on the way by Flagstaff I decided to drop in and see Jim. He wasn't in the hemisphere at the moment but Nancy Goldberg was. The rest as they say, is history. I had seen her many times before on trips to see Turrell and was very impressed. Nancy is an environmental scientist and worked at the Northern Arizona Museum doing research. We started a long distance romance that burnt up the phone lines, roads and rails for two years. I would drive out, and she would take the night train and get off at Pasadena just like the stars used to. It was great fun.

It eventually became time to leave Pasadena too. My place was about to be renovated, and all the talk about keeping spaces available for artists as part of the culture was hogwash. Rents went to a buck a foot and almost all the artists moved out. I looked all over LA, San Pedro, Inglewood, the Valley and the only place that looked halfway good was in downtown LA. During my cab years I had played downtown and not seen it as very threatening, more dissolute than anything. I assumed that it was still the same. I still had a desire to be around the poorer level of existence, to be next to the humanity and honesty that exists with poor people, even drunks at times. What I didn't know was that the location of Eighth and Spring was a crossroads from the bus station to areas farther south and west where violent drifters passed. The current tenant, Bob Schiffmacher wanted to sell the keys to his place and although I checked it out thoroughly I didn't see any substantial reason not to go for it. I thought I would do a few years down there and then find a better place. I almost did: heaven. Turns out, people I talked with were into serious denial about downtown. It was alluring, fascinating and vital with teeming crowds. Character and energy flowed up and down the streets. It was where the artists were moving because the studio space was there, and the open spaces easily converted to lofts in which to live and work together if that was all you could afford. I checked out the space and it was grand. 3,000 feet of slightly divided space on the third floor. I took it, found an old garage building for the van and moved a hundred loads of history up the elevator. Got the place fixed up and painted and ready to go when Ron Linden called and invited me over to a party at his studio, about five blocks away.

Continuing Glossary of Contemporary Art Terms

Procrastinate: Normal studio attitude guaranteed to get you past the morning before guilt and fear take over.

Professor: (Academe) God for 50 minutes.

Put Down: Compliments artists give to each other.

Realism: Balancing your checkbook every month instead of just letting it go.

Render: Process going on out in Cuhady where old worn-out art magazines are shredded up and made into luncheon meat.

Resonance: Where passion meets cash.

Rhoplex: Kind of a sperm-like stuff that smells as it goes bad, stays sticky and forms the basis of paint you put on big paintings that are hard to get out the door.

I walked out of my door on a Saturday evening and into an entire new life. I was about two blocks away from my place when I noticed what appeared to be a young black couple walking towards me on the deserted street. As they got closer, I saw what I had perceived as a dress was a long white T-shirt. The two men separated as I walked between them. One launched a punch from the street into my face, and the other started beating on me. Time slowed down dramatically. We were doing the dance of violence and I was the star. It was all so beautiful, all this energy focused on me. They pulled out long, steel-tine hair combs and began slashing at me with them as I was pinned up against the side of a parked car. I don't think there was much noise. I was defending, they were attacking. I couldn't run away and I couldn't adequately fight both of them so I slid down the car to its rear onto the pavement and then pulled myself under the car and began kicking at them and yelling for help. A man across the street just watched, better than TV. I got one of the combs and slashed back. I had feet going and moved around from one side to the other as they attacked from either side. It was becoming a stalemate. I felt like a turtle in my shell under the car. Then I heard the most dreadful thing you can hear from a total stranger who just wants to steal your money but you don't have time to get the transaction going, or to tell him how liberal you are and that you are sympathetic with his problems and have always supported the black people, even lived in their neighborhood for five years, and think Jesse and Martin are terrific....One kid yelled to the other: SHOOT HIM.

I definitely did not want to hear this kind of thing. How was I going to deal with this? My mind was racing at the speed of light but I couldn't speak. Nobody had said much of anything up until this point. It was not like the Jack Benny gag "your money or your life", just a minute, I'm thinking. You are in their movie with no reasonable script for yourself. You don't even have time to say "take the goddamn money" or anything. You are on the receiving end of a frightened, vicious assault and that is all there is to it. I truly thought this was the end for me. And so fast too. How transitory it all is. All those billions of neurons and experiences and training and giving and loving, and everything can be over just like that, just because a couple of assholes want your pocket cash. The intricate construction and container of your life is to be lost for....nothing. You've heard about it, now it's you. Suddenly you're on a stage not of your choosing. You're the star in your aggravated demise. How very sad. I wished I had the opportunity to even give the money to them but there was no time, no seam to open up an opportunity. The idea was to kill, maim, destroy you, then take your money. That was the plan and that was how it worked. Ever since then I have hated the word "mugging", it is such an inadequate, cute word, it reminds me of kids making facesor something. This is about killing, shredding, disemboweling, making you garbage on the street, a piece of red road kill amongst the oil drips of a lousy downtown street. But I digress.

After the big announcement from Mr. Kill The Victim I guess I was ready for anything. I expected to be shot and die in front of a discount clothing store that would probably have a big sale tomorrow after they took down the tape. I would die and everybody would be sorry and I would watch them from the next world and yell "But I wasn't ready." Jesus. Couldn't even pick out the music for the service, write some good jokes. But life works in curious ways. They thought they saw a police car. One yelled at the other, they disengaged and ran off. It wasover. But was it? Would they come back? I warily crawled out from under the car, the street was entirely deserted. Guess the lone guy had better things to do. Hum of traffic from somewhere else, nothing moving. I got up, blood running down my face, and staggered back to the studio. Bum in a corner beating off. Got back upstairs, took stock. Face cut, blood, puffy eye (they almost took it out), exhausted and a pain throughout mybody that wouldn't go away. I called Linden and said I thought I wasn't going to make it to his party. "Sure you can't?" he sez (host worrying about not enough people showing up). I told him what happened; Ron said he never walked around at night around here. Nice to know now. He still wanted to know if I was coming. Add a little color I guess. Maybe later. Called up Turrell and talked with him for a while, he commiserated but couldn't do much from Arizona. A few months later he did come by. He said, "He was packing." I though of calling the police but why? I could give no accurate description of them, it was too fast. Two skinny 15-to-20-year-old black kids, one with a long, white t-shirt and both with the urge to kill. I also didn't want to get involved right then in another movie, the victim movie. I felt terrible but not enough to go to a hospital, I had a pain in my upper body that wouldn't go away but I thought that was from the beating. My only apparent losswas that they had ripped open a back pocket and gotten my address book. I looked for it the next day in the street but it was gone. Their only prize was a bunch of phone numbers of people, who if called up had boring stories on how their art careers weren't going any place.

The next day I went to see Bornstein and back to Pasadena to get groceries and came upon an event which almost drove me homicidal. It seems funny now. An older couple were tarrying by the jam and peanut butter department trying to make up their minds what to get. "Now you know you like mint," she says. "Yes, but I might try some boysenberry this time," he says. "Well the peach is nice," she says. "Yes, but it always gives me gas," he says. "Maybe we should get strawberry, we NEVER get strawberry," she says, and on and on. I almost lost it. I was wearing black glasses so my disfigurement wouldn't show, I was hurting so bad I could hardly stand up, I was living in a place that had turned into a nightmare and I had to go back there and stick it out now because I couldn't afford anything else. And here, these two people were whiling away the afternoon worrying about their goddam jam problem. I almost screamed at them and raked the jelly off the shelves to their feet. For the first time I felt totally the unfairness of it all, the difference there can be between myself and those who are secure enough to have the time and wealth to waste themselves with trivia and are protected from whatever horrors were ahead of me. It was all so unfair. They should pay too, I thought. Of course, it was irrational. But today millions today must feel the same thing every day. It is all so unfair. Life is unfair. Tough shit.

The day after Nancy came in on the train after spending two weeks doing field work in the desert. I couldn't walk very well so we went up to see my internist, but he couldn't find anything. Later I discovered that he should have given me an enzyme test (indicative of a heart attack) but he didn't. He blew it. I could have sued, I never did. He is a competent and honest man and just made a mistake, one that almost cost me my life. But if you sue all the doctors they aren't going to be around so what do you do? I have been in a number of situations where you get on an unlucky trail and for the life of you, you can't get off it, bad luck seems to breed more bad luck. Misfortune loves a friend? Nancy and I were planning to go back to Arizona, so we did. I thought I would like to get out of LA for a while and think things over, get some courage back to go back down there and tough it out. I thought about it a lot during the long drive through the desert to Flagstaff.

I tried to think about my assailants and what they represented to the life I was about to enter. Were they everywhere downtown? (Later on: yes.) How do you deal with it? (Learn the new laws of your jungle, don't go out at night, keep your head on a swivel, don't let people get close to you.) Should I feel sorry for them? (Hell no!) Ten years after the event I still feel about the same. Specifically, you can't do much about everybody who is disadvantaged until you have an opportunity and then you do. Generally, you can vote for and support whatever has to be done to even out the power and wealth of the country. Philosophically, I don't see where allowing violent people, those who have chosen the violent way in life, for whatever reason or history, to get away with substantial crime. They should have to face justice and pay their dues. Violence isn't general; it is personal. If they aren't taken off the streets because of a crime against me, they could well likely get YOU the next time. I just don't believe much temperance can be given to those who choose to hurt their fellow man, to maim and almost kill them. Later, I read that the average street "mugger" commits about 70 before getting caught. As a first-time offender he is placed back out on the streets and can do hundreds more before he does serious jail time. On the other hand, he also lives a dangerous life. When you pick the life of violence, one day it will turn on you and you will be the victim. I expect that my guys are dead now, victims of crime, drugs, etc. So be it. They violated a fundamental human contract, not only with me, but probably with many, many others. You eventually reap what you sow. I decided that the best solution was to disengage from these people. They were too violent to deal with. To survive I must now work like hell to leave something that I just had started and that would not be easy. I was almost broke again.

We arrived in Flagstaff and, a few days later Nancy had to go down to Phoenix to look for a place to stay while she went back to school for an advanced engineering degree to supplement her Ph.D in Ecology. She would be down there for a year. About midday after she left I was sleeping and found myself in a dark, turbulent dream; I was less than a body flying close to a dark sea into black clouds on the horizon. I awoke entirely soaked with perspiration and still in the pain I had brought from LA. I took a shower, dressed, and called Turrell and asked if he could drive me over to the hospital. He came over, I walked got in his car, and at the hospital I was admitted, examined and given a room. This time they did the enzyme test and six hours after admittance I was moved to Intensive Care and finally with a lot of tubes and morphine I was feeling better. Let's hear it for drugs! Mr. Gabrielson, you are the proud owner of a brand new M/I. Medium-sized. About 40% of your strength is gone forever. You will never get any better. The good news was that I was out of LA for awhile. And this time I almost died too but I had people looking out for me. It was all pretty absurd. In a space of about five days, I had almost died twice. About 40 percent of people with heart attacks don't make it. There is something about such an intense series of blows at your very being that changes you forever. It should.

I think we evolve our premises and ways of being and it gets us so far; then we top out in about every dimension. My career had followed that route and now my very fundamental self was called into question. If I was so much in charge of my life, just how did I get myself into two (countem two) polkas with death in such a short time? Or maybe I just got lucky all of a sudden. What did this mean? Or did it mean anything at all? Maybe I was just a born loser. Maybe my whole dream was just a big lie, a big escape from righteously pursuing a middle-class lifein a safe environment and going on, not making any waves, surviving by pleasure and tolerance of the status quo. Sometimes a big event calls you to reassess too much. It can be the slide towards major depression and disintegration of your soul. I lay in the hospital for two weeks and there wasn't a moment that I didn't think about it. Talk about getting in touch with your character. It was the lowest that I have ever been and I needed the most energetic, optimistic, outlook I could generate to survive. The doctors just do body and fender work on you. The primary will to fight and live and get up and go out and do it was all right there within my tortured, beaten up little body and mind. I perceived it as a fundamental choice, to live or die by my reaction to these events. And in making up my mind, I had some curious help.

I was in a room with an old black man dying of prostate cancer, considering his chances, a cheery fellow. Every day he was visited by a mob of huge black ladies all dressed up in their Sunday best (choich ladies, he called them), their mission being to come over and comfort the man. These were large, somewhat overweight, gentle women, mommas, homemakers, an older and lesser angry, compassionate, experienced generation. There were more of them than could fit around his bed so the overflow tended to move over to my side. They would talk and commiserate and read the good book and sing songs for Jesus and generally help out with the Lord's work. I would sit up in bed wondering what this was all about. Their kids came along too, shy black and butterscotch and brown kids lolling around in the hallways (Ma, when we gonna go home?), peering into the room, checking it out. Their compassion covered me like a blanket, they eased out the vitriol, they were just there, an alternative. Just what kind of cosmic joke was I up against anyway? Two black kids tried to kill me and now a whole bevy of their mommas showed up and tried to make it better? Or was it that nothing connected at all? Thugs beat me up, and these nice people came along and showed some basic human concern.

Because I couldn't find a place to put my anger, it began to dissipate. Personally, I was ready to let it go but these women provided a timely interlude and a reason. Or maybe they were all a dream. I never heard of black people living in Flagstaff. There are Indians and Mexican people but blacks? Anyway, it happened. They were wonderful and every day I healed as they came in and sat around smiling, clucking, understanding. It was the right thing to happen and I took it as an omen for something, I didn't know what. But I knew I would not slip into racism with the event anymore. It was time to get healthy and get the hell out of there. If you stick around hospitals too long, your will is bled out from all the good care and is given away by you to the docs and the nurses with the assumption in their rules and procedures (They do protocols, I love it!) they can do more than they can. Ina hospital your will and mental health is more important that whatever they are doing to you. Anyway, I had to get out of Flagstaff.

Nancy was in Phoenix, Jim was off somewhere, everybody else I knew was busy, my van was filled with Nancy's furniture. It was time to hit the road. Nurse asked if somebody was picking me up. "Yes," I steadily lied, "just put the wheelchair out by the door next to the parking lot and I'll wait for them." "Well, I don't know if I should do that," she said. "It will just be a couple minutes," I sez. When she was gone, I carefully got up, walked out the door, unlocked the van, and drove it from Flagstaff to Phoenix. How many people you know would do such a dumb thing? But I had it figured out:

*

Every day I had practiced walking to build up my energy.

*

I would descend in altitude from 6,000 feet all the time during the trip so I would have more oxygen.

*

I was very much in touch with my body and its demands.

*

I had power steering and brakes and it was all downhill with little traffic through the red lands occupied by the Indians for 1,200 years.

It was a lovely day, clear and with puffy clouds, nice enough to drive or die if it came to that. Sometimes you just have to do it. Take over your life. The only discomfort I experienced was from restricting my blood flow when for any reason I tensed up, so I practiced keeping loose and fluid (from Ed Wortz's biofeedback lessons) and denying any incursion of tension that came along. I stopped occasionally for a rest and at the outskirts of Phoenix I called Nancy. She and her friend Kathy came and got me. (Kathy drove the beast back to their new place.) I rested up there for two more weeks and then Karl flew out and drove me back to LA.

This is the kind of person Karl really is, he cares deeply for his friends. It was an immense favor. He was my dealer and he didn't have to do it. He just offered. Whatever business problems I had with him, they never affected the feelings I have for his personal generosity. Your time is your most precious asset and your vote. We drove back over the desert to LA and up to the Palisades where he lived. He offered to let me stay there for as long as I wished, which for a card-carrying hypochondriac was really a favor. That's what you need around the house, a heart patient to remind you of your vulnerability! I took him up on his offer and stayed there for three healing months. I would drive to downtown LA during the morning rush, work all day, and leave the dread behind as I came back out for the freedom and air of the sea. What a gift. What an incredible gift. Thieves eventually ravaged the van but at least it ran and every day I had an out from the terror around me. Eventually I had to go back.

I moved back into the loft...

[continue with the second half of Chapter 8...]

© Walter Gabrielson 1993
All Rights Reserved
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