My life as an amateur. Part 15.

 My life started as an accident. So the parents of my parents went to talk with each other and decided that their children needed to marry a day before Christmas. My mother thought it was a big joke, she just had lost her teeth and went to the dance without. Stop. Chain Smoking. Stop.

To paint is to talk with the painting, that is what it is, all about the material, the colors, the smell and the movement.  Sorry for the rest of it all, like repairing bicycles. I am good at it, but that doesn’t mean I need to do it. It is just accidental and I do not like it. My father was an amazing imitator of the biggest of Laurel and Hardy. I always forget who is who, he said ‘ good byeeee. Good byeeeeee’, when the car’s motor finally ran by the hand of the smallest. 

I am a prof at anything you can think of. Lucky me my time and motivation is very limited. 

And again I heard about a bonsai fanatic. A bonsai is like a child, it needs accurate care, it, he or she needs to be talked to. Every hour and every day. In short sentences. You cannot possibly be an amateur with bonsaï, because in that case they die. You can call that a disaster. That is even worse than an accident.

The 24th december 1964 was the day.

My life as an amateur. Part 14.

 I like to read. When I start reading a book I find it difficult to put it aside, when I do not like it. Today I smiled while driving my bike through traffic. I am a careful and elegant cyclist, I give way to others. Three cyclists smiled back. One of the several immediate thoughts was: how can I make a work of or about smiling to one another. In a sincere way needless to say. The smile, or the work of art, I am not sure. In my teenage years, I happen to notice that members of my family also smiled to one another because they were judging the third family-member in a negative way. Not such a nice smile, I didn’t like my family but I was the only one.

The temperature is escalating and the flies in my studio are drinking my tea. I pour the tea in the pot of the tomato plant. An instant funeral. The fly has disappeared.

I found the word fodder ( futter ) and I like it extremely. Today, and yesterday and all my days, I made an abstract painting. On this tiny one I added a tiny green square. I should not have done that. But I did. And I left it right there.

In our little street library someone left a giant book: Sanctuary, Britain’s Artists and their Studios, Thames & Hudson. Its weight is more than five kilo’s. Leaving through the pages and studio’s I met my long time ago hero Sean Scully again. ( I first saw his work in London, when I was a student ). He still is, one of my heroes, even when he appeared to be quite arrogant, answering reluctantly during an interview. Maybe he is too famous. Or maybe he should read a book instead.

My life as an amateur. Part 13.

They had rabbits. Of course they had rabbits. That’s why.

That’s how I got a rabbit’s leg with real soft fur from my granddad, too skinny for eating. I am sorry, I do not recall feeling sorry for the rabbit, it wasn’t even christmastime. I do not like the taste of rabbit. Now I am a vegetarian

and I feel sorry for the rabbits and all the animals, like the elephants.

It was a long time ago, more than thirty years, so I might give a troubled sight of information. In those times I wished every night before I fell asleep that I would wake up as a boy, I mean, in a boy's body. And that I could switch whenever I want. It would be more convenient, that is how I feel about it now. But you never know.

At the end of the day my primary thought  is that I must have something forgotten, something that should have been done. As an amateur, this thought comes to mind several times a day.

Thinking about the mosquito, for example, the life of it, the simpleness. But how can I possibly know? What makes me think I can know something for sure about another creature, as if I can read its mind. If it's there.

Of course I know there are people that have studied the life of the mosquito, among other creatures, and they know better. They are professionals.

 I need to go make very selfish objects straight when I get home, with dirty materials. 

My life as an amateur. Part 12.

I am not an airfryer expert. My sister-in-law is. She likes new devices and she is a professional in handling them. I am not. I do things by hand and most things take a long long time.

When I was young, I don’t know exactly how young, the skateboard was introduced in my life. I really liked it, but my parents were not going to buy it. There was a chronic lack of money ( better not tell why ). My grandfather had a shed in the garden where he fixed all kind of things. What I don’t remember. It is more than forty years ago. That is a long time. When I was a student I sometimes visited my grandfather

( my grandmother died at the age of sixty five of imploding guts ), there was never much to talk about, our lives did differ too much,  except for the interest in boxing of course. After half an hour as I announced that I needed to go to catch my train, he gave me a packet of Van Nelle halfzware. That was great.

But back to the skateboard, my grandfather managed to make me one. He took a little shelf and a old roller skate ( the one without the shoe ), tore it apart and fixed the wheels under the shelf. When I went down the slope near the station I always went to the left, never straight forward, even if I tried. The wheels were fixed and crooked. My grandfather had a crooked eye.

I suppose I am like my grandfather. Except the fact that I did quit smoking before I die. I am not an expert in living. My sister-in-law is. 

My life as an amateur. Part 11.

We are walking every day. Yesterday we saw two blue-winged grasshoppers next to a field with flowers. I made a mental note that I should make a film of them. I passed the spot on the way up the mountain in the morning, no bvs. On the way back, after 14 kilometer, I saw lots but they were so quick, they just sit unnoticed ( by me) and then they jump and spread their beautiful blue wings to travel a bit further. I was captured by wonder and decided that they are far too wonderous to act in my film. I mean, in any film.

I used to bend a twig and capture the webs of the spiders. I was told that you could make a mirror that way. Not so nice for the spiders, but very nice for some mosquito ‘s. That was fifty years ago, I can not remember precisely if I succeeded. It was in my grandparents backyard, I could tell a lot about my grandparents. I will start tomorrow, it is far too late by now.

I must not forget to mention the surface of the road. It is incredibly inspiring. And I must not forget to talk about the laundry. I like clothes, and the fabrics they are made of. I like towels and bedlinen. I like socks and scarfs. I like to wash them, with ecological lavendel detergent and hang it all on a line. Unfortunately we don’t have a washing line because we have not a balcony or a tiny garden, so we have to put in the dryer or, in case of the woolen and fine clothing, hang it on a rack. The smell is the best from hanging. 

My life as an amateur. Part 10.

 Today I saw a deer in the meadows and a daddy with his Canadian Goose down super coat in mediterrenean hot summer. That is okay, I only wondered: are you so cold, or is this your way of living? Of course I kept it to myself.

Yesterday I was reading a story by Haruki Murakami in his last volume of short stories called ‘First person singular’. Its personage is studying literature and claims not wanting to become a novelist. All his fellow students want to. 

There are lots of flies and an ant, biting my ankle. In the prescription of our house, inside and outside, it is said that flies are very fond of the draft.

My very very very very best friend has started a jigsaw puzzle out of a series ‘Alte holländische Meister’: Gezicht op de Stille Rijn, Leiden by Hendrik van der Burgh. Ca. 1660. It has only 480 pieces, but I like to help now and then. To solve a puzzle or a riddle is like running. The action is full of richness of the moment, and this is all there is. Nothing more or less. Its difficult and at the same time the easiest thing in the world. Like making a piece of art.

My life as an amateur. Part 9.

 There are flies. There are flies everywhere. I am trying to do nothing. And not being bored. I wonder why they are here, and inhabite my legs, my arms, my ears. My yoghurt. They could take an example from the birds, minding their own business, not wanting to be near you. Dancing from tree to hedge, from the inside to the top of the hedge, at the far side of the garden. Of course.

This is about dancing. A choreography…..and I am waiting for the birds to come back. The sparrows they are making their nest just under the roof, they were watching us, eating our simple evening meal, hoping that we were not going to climb to their higher house. I picked up my film camera to capture their nice accompaniment and noticed they left.

This is not the dance I ment before, my children moving rapidly from and to each other on the sound of ‘Different trains’ from Steve Reich. I never wrote it down, it is still in my head, my children are grown. I am trying not to do useful things, I am trying to play instead of work, I am trying not to think, about making important works. It’s difficult. It is difficult to tell yourself that it is alright to be an amateur. So I will wait until tomorrow, when the sun will be shining again.

I miss my mosquito.

I am trying not to miss him. This is art, and it is about art itself, during the proces of the making, without a goal. Otherwise it would be work, not falling together with itself.

I run.

My life as an amateur. Part 8.

 I used to think that stewardesses were the most admirable persons in the world, with the most important jobs in the world, next to that of the pilots, of course. When I flew for the first time, with my parents to Benidorm ( my father brought several cans of brown beans in case there would be nothing to eat in such a poor country he thought Spain was), I was in total admiration for them, they were so decent, pretty and nice. The stewards were another category, I wanted to be like them.

My parents were giving them orders, as if they were the mighty and wealthy, and the stewardesses and stewards the servants. In life, like the plane was Spain, already.

During my thirties, a long time ago, a thought that a plane was like a bus, with drivers and controllers with good eyes and high heels. Nowadays I can’t wait to clear the sky, spread my wings and act like a plane. But I won’t because of my vertigo.

And now enough of flying. There is a bird in our communal garden singing pfiet pfiet pfiet pfiet etcetera and continue. Too much wind for mosquitoes.

The end: this morning while I was running with my dog, I confronted a stewardess dressed in KLM blue on the zebra path, hauling two mamut suitcases on wheels. She smiled broadly at me and said lightheartedly : good morning! She made my day and it was still that early and I ran for more than an hour, I flew like an amateur, like Mega Mindy.

My life as an amateur. Part 7.

 Here comes the boxing story. It is about my grandfather, my father’s father, who was a farmer help, eating pig grease on bread while he was listening to the rain falling on the roof. He slept on the attic of the farm on which he was working between the two world wars. He met my grandmother, he was lucky, because she treated the food coupons in such a way that they could be used more than once. So, directly after the Second World War my grandfather was strong enough to go boxing and becoming a champion. He really was, and my father was born nine months after it, not a sporty type at all. At twentyseven he thought he was too old to play a game of soccer. Maybe he was, he died at the age of fiftyseven. A sniper and a harbour laborer, searching the meaning of life in pubs near that very same harbour. I was searching too, he gave me little drops of gin, to be sure I would not become an amateur in life.

At twentythree I weekly attended a ladies boxing class. The class consisted of a group of women between fifty and sixty. It was thirtythree years ago, I thought they were really old and though boxing away on the bags and each other, dancing on their feet and shaking their botox. They assured me that they were straight men lovers, one said to me: if I was a man I would go get tons of ladies flat. She did sound very fanatic as if something was bothering her.

I frantically concentrated on my upper cut. The trainer, a former professional, said it was a pity that I hadn’t started younger. I would have been a champion.

My life as an amateur. Part 6.

 I was born in Vlaardingen, a city next to Schiedam, a city next to Rotterdam. Between Vlaardingen en Maassluis are ditches and meadows and a one way road. It was always windy and on summer days little flies flew into your open mouth. At least, that was the situation thirty years ago, there might be a villa district at the moment. I drove my bicycle a lot over that road, as I went visiting the scouts in Maassluis. They were nice boys. But that was later in my childhood. What I want to talk about is what happened when I was eight years old, in the third grade. 

We have been told stories, stories about earlier times, like the Middle Ages. We were told that people had a different life then, drank beer instead of water in order to stay healthy, and were advised to smoke to keep the black Plague at a distance. There were farmers, fishermen and hunters, and they made their weapons themselves. The blacksmith was a busy man, because of all the animals and the enemies that had to be slaughtered.

We were asked to make drawings in our history cahiers', I drew a knight with a crossbow in such a perfect way that the teacher didn’t believe I made it myself. I thought it was obvious because his arm was too short, even for a knight from the Middle Ages.

My work is on the side, so I can go to the middle. Like my great great hero the mosquito. When I am in the middle, he is in the middle. It is nothing special, it is nature. A visitor walking through the exhibition thought my name belonged to a man, why I don’t know, she didn’t know herself, maybe I would have thought the same, maybe she also likes some buzzing next to her ear.

I told her it was alright.

My life as an amateur. Part 5.

 A couple of years later, I was in my second year of university, I lived in a huge building, the formerly Rijks clothing stockrooms. My room measured 8 by 25 meters and it had no water, electricity or heating. On cold winter days, the other tenants used to build huge bonfires in their spaces. And we were waiting in line in front of the one and only tab bare naked to thoroughly wash ourselves. All went well. All went in their own way. 

I use lots of paint but my ‘technic’ is from outer space, my white oilpaint colors from beige to yellow. Or my colored oilpaint shrivels during time because it was too much on top of each other. The good news however is that this is a technic on its own. This I heard only a few days ago from a fellow artist with a lot of oilpaint experience and a master of technic. Sometimes I feel lucky.

Every day I ate the cheapest PCD peanut butter sandwiches dripping of oil and only thinking about the Gesammtkunstwerk I needed to make with my closest friend and the ant that walked discreetly past my plate with the peanut butter sandwich. My friend walked out of the film into my megalomaniac room wearing a linen kaftan and a turban, painted his Berber tent and went to sleep under it. It was very hot. The audience stayed away.

My life as an amateur. Part 4.

 During secondary school every pupil needed to follow art lessons. I made a drawing of a ship. I don’t know why, it was forty years ago. The ship was far too big for the sea. The teacher told me so but I wanted to fill the paper properly.

I am sitting, as we speak, as a suppoost of my own exhibition, a very quiet Saturday afternoon. It's warm but not the kind of warmth that makes you longing for the beach, like a Mallorca beach, all sweaty with sand and little insects everywhere on your body where you do not want them. A lady in doubt walked in, as if she was not sure she wanted to visit this exhibition. I told her politely that in case of any questions I was there for her. She asked me if I was Lorenzo, a person she knew forty years ago. I didn’t know of course, forty years is such a long time for remembering. So I said no. She walked around anyway, watching the wrong paintings.

I must admit that it is very nice to be an amateur because no one expects you to make really good, really professional things, let ‘s say art. That is one thing. There are more things. I need to think about it. Concentrate on a place to be, concentrate on a, maybe, far too large ship ( de Vliegende Hollander!), with a frantic mosquito living on it.

My life as an amateur. Part 3.

Of course we thought that this secretary was a fraud, an amateur in appreciating art.

My mother was a fraud too, and my father, although they didn’t thought so. When they saw my work sometimes, when they were still alive, they immediately and badly needed a drink, let’s say alcohol. That was ok, I mean the first part, they loved me nevertheless, in their own special way. As long as I took a drink too.

The mosquito didn’t come back, probably flew to some Iberic Island for more fun.

My grandfather was a carpenter, working in the harbour of Rotterdam, smoking since his seventh year, making seven children with his wife. All the children barely finished grammar school. That’s all right, they knew everything, they knew how to live and tell their children how to behave, which is a difficult thing.

When my grandfather turned seventy, I made him a painting of a landscape. It was a naïve painting, the whole family went quiet. Finally, my grandfather said: well, Picasso started misunderstood. The whole family, sitting in a circle, didn’t said word, as if the pastor walked by. They poured themselves more of their homebrewed gin.

My nephew was a fraud, because he came too close when I was little, and because he sold stolen bottles of expensive perfume. So he went to prison (I wished I had visited him, I have an obsession with prisons, the rooms are so tiny and simple furnished. and you can only do just a few things, which I like, and you do not need to go anywhere, which for a while might be nice).

I could have told him that he was such a lucky guy.

My life as an amateur. Part 2.

 All the people on my side of the platform were reading. Newspapers, leaflets from supermarkets, free newspapers handed out especially on train stations, they were called the ‘Echo’, from what I always thought, like I had so many repetitive thoughts with a great amount of details, paperbacks, from which I tried to decipher the title to construct my opinion about the person, study books and recipes.

I was heading for Den Haag, to meet my former gallerist. We were going to visit a collector’s office. The man had bought several works of my hand, mostly clumsely painted portraits with which even the models were not happy. But this collector Pieter was determined to invest in my artisthood. I don’t know why. Trying to push those thoughts aside I concentrated on my book running a 100 miles race in the United States. The name I forgot, I lit a cigarette, it was thirty years ago ( or what did I say in Part 1 ), I thought about Charlotte Rampling a lot, her staring fatalistically in the direction of the other side of the ocean.

When you would ask me what I was reading myself, I must fail you the answer, but probably it must have been something romantic, like the Julia from Rhijnvis Feith. I liked it. My train arrived and I had to get in. 

The office of the collector was huge and looked over the highway that goes straight into Den Haag, like you are in a hurry to get into that city. The secretary, who was talking a lot, showed us all the separate working spaces, and all the excellent art hanging on their walls. At the end of the guided tour the talkative secretary stopped us before entering the last room: what you are going to see here I think it's a disaster, all the canvasses hammered on old pieces of wood and the faces have blue lips and purple hair, I just think it as a waist of money and so on and so on..

And so my former gallerist ( she was retired) and I went quietly side by side to the elevator, ignoring the lady. The works were mine.

My life as an amateur. Part 1.

 I am going to tell you a story. It won’t take long. I will write it in English, to shorten my sentences. And yours. Of course, my story doesn’t have to be a true one, even the main character doesn’t have to be me, or maybe it is, the amateur in me. I have never written a story before, so do not expect too much. And if you want to go do something else in the meantime, please feel free. Do not worry.

When I was younger, like more than twenty years ago, I found a hole. It was in my very first apartment solely for myself. It was not a hole as a hole in a sock, or a hole in the hedge, it was as if there existed a vacuum space of time in the middle of my room. I didn’t see, if ‘see’ is a word I can use here, something vague, but actually I would rather describe it as vast, concrete. An antipode of the hoovering rock made by a design collective.

My apartment was tiny, it had just one room with a kitchen unit in the corner next to a big window that looked over the backyards of the lucky neighbours. Besides my modest sized bed there was only room for a small table and chair. The table faced the wall where three bookshelves were attached. I tried to keep a small amount of books, each time I purchased one I put one in one of the free libraries in the street.

But, who cares about my living space? I wouldn't care about yours, therefore I do not blame you for not caring about mine. And that hole made it even smaller, so let’s skip this whole hole in a tiny apartment thing.

Yesterday I heard the first mosquito of this season buzzing close to my right ear.