Out of the Mainstream

We have a burgeoning arts scene all over the Peninsula -- but I'm not part of it.

And last night I finally got relaxed with that.

At the Three Sisters of Clallam Gallery (I set up their blog for them, by the way, and Sue has learned to use it), they had a fun party.

But I finally got it through my pin head that this, like so many other venues, is just about genres. Paintings are for tourism. Images will be of landscapes -- preferably painted in genre styles. Sue pretty much does her own watercolor style, but the images are eagles and native costumes. Jane is learning to do horses.

I don't HAVE to join in any art scene, because it's never my demographic. You know who you are -- a little more education, an ability to see a little further, than your peers. The class weirdo. The one person at Norwescon who gets it, while everybody else is writing to the genres, and strictly to the genres. The ones who know there's no such thing as good and evil -- because all the rabbits have a little tiger in them. Even at this party I found a handful of people whose eyes burned when they discovered somebody who wanted to go deeper.

When Sue asks me for pictures of horses, I can slap off pretty little horsie pictures -- preferably with little baby horsies -- and make some bucks at the gallery. I can take the praise and the admiration and say "thank you" without wondering what's wrong with the American education system. I can sit over in a rocker by the ornate coal stove they use to burn wood, and try to figure out how to play a harmonica (I am not musical; this is harder than it sounds). Cleo, the mad gallery cat, won't let me play the higher notes, so I can stick to very simple note combinations, more or less in the blues range, played very softly. When I get tired of the mouthharp, I can always pull out my Jew's harp and boing on that for a while; Cleo gives me fewer dirty looks.

Maybe I was sent up here not so much to dumb down as to cool off my brain and get on a more direct track?