Archive Highlight; "Portrait of the Artist as a Broke Man"

Note: Long-time readers have may suspicions that this pun is a barely-altered version of a joke I’ve used more than one time. They would be correct, and I intend to sin again.  For now, I’ve dug out an old piece of travel writing I did in 2012, which comes to you after this introduction of roughly equal length.

Earlier this month I attended The Sincerity Project, an ongoing 24-year performance experiment from Team Sunshine in Philadelphia, where the same performers gather every 2-3 years to devise a show observing changes in the lives of the team and the larger world. It was a lovely show, and afterwards I managed to chat with one of the performers who I knew from other projects, and we got to talking about the impressive breadth of her work. I had first seen her as a Burlesque performer in a feature-length piece she had devised, and she mentioned that she was surprised after completing that piece to find that, after performing entirely on her terms and making a piece she was really proud of, she no longer felt much inspiration to do Burlesque. “I feel like, whatever I was getting from that, I’m getting elsewhere now.”

As someone whose performing life has also shifted several times, I identified a lot with that; there are many gigs and kinds of role that used to be staples for me that I no longer feel much drive to pursue. But as I reread “The Art of Frugal Hedonism” this month and spent time considering the money-saving habits I’ve retained and abandoned over the last decade or so, I realized how much economic forces have also shaped the creative habits I’ve gained and lost over the years. 

From the ages of around 18-25, I was a devoted practitioner of the traditional hobby of moody adolescents and wrote a steady stream of poetry. As I worked my way through University and did a considerable amount of budget travel, I found a lot of that writing shifting to (poorly) resemble some of my favorite things to read, particularly literary journalists and creative non-fiction writers like Ryszard Kapuściński, Joseph Mitchell, David Sedaris and Konstantin Paustovsky. Looking back, my output was surprising; I keep my old writing in folders organized by year, and when looking at 2013, I find the folder of some of my final semesters of college contains 110 pieces (in various states of completion - I loved starting works, editing less, and finishing least of all). But checking the folder for 2016, I find only 8 attempted writing projects. So what happened?

In the past, I always attributed this to a shift in the way I spent my time, and with whom. In college, and the year after, I had a lot of occasion to travel, either on planes and busses between cities or just on long commutes, and did so most often alone; I always kept notebooks or scrap papers in my coats, and wouldn’t have a smart phone until 2017 or so, and so I ended up with many spare hours and a proclivity to write.  Then, time passed, I moved in with a partner, and became increasingly involved in a steady number of gigs (by 2019 I had 23 employers to report for my taxes).

But rereading Raser-Rowland with Grubb’s treatise on enjoying more by spending less invites me to consider another possible cause: it may be I wrote so much because I was so broke. Travel in particular for me often looked like having just enough money for the tickets to and from a place, a cheap place to sleep, a bag of bread to eat for a few days and a few ice creams along the way. I’d spend the rest of a day just wandering around, getting to know how to get around a city, looking for free things to do, and often enough finding one already in my pocket in the form of a pen and some scratch paper. Writing about my experiences gave me a way to turn a string of odd occurrences or impressions into something that felt solid and substantial, and let me replay and relive each individual experience long enough to cover a few day’s time. These pieces would then serve double-duty as souvenirs - often the only things I brought back from these trips. 

And all this is circumstance - am I erasing my choices from the equation? Certainly having less time to spend writing and enough money to purchase entry to a museum diminished my opportunities to write, but if I had the will, I’d like to think I could create a different writing habit, right? Well, on some level, I’d say I have. This is where that dancer’s statement holds: “whatever I was getting from that, I’m getting elsewhere now.” Specifically, I’d tell you that if you love free-flow writing but aren’t a huge fan of the labor of editing, I’d like to recommend to you the world of responsive, conversational interactive theater. Responding as The Telelibrary can feel like writing poetry in some hyper-structured format, and Undersigned often feels like a string of creative writing prompts for micro-fiction. I don't miss the time spent crafting language by hand because I do so much crafting language on the fly - which helps cover some of my cravings for adrenaline at the same time. 

My advice for creatives often boils down to - “figure out what you want to be good at, and then try to find chances to practice.” And while I’ve certainly done plenty of agonizing about shifts in my creative practice across my life, zooming out this way helps me find a through-line in what kinds of activities scratch my creative itches, and invites me to question how much of that activity makes its way into my life at present. And while it can feel intimidating to enter into a new skillset, focusing on your interest instead of your medium allows you to be practicing no matter what opportunities are available at a given time - even if it’s just the scratch paper in your pockets.

And so, without further extended ado, here's the former contents of one such scrap paper.

~

With Apologies to a Man from Yerevan

“Vets” I said, because I did not yet know how to combine the concepts of “vets” and “hayur” to form 600, and I hoped he would assume I was not so stupid as to ask for a 6 dram cab ride when a sandwich cost 700 dram. This hope would diminish as he grew angrier.

“Hazar” he said firmly, with 1 finger lifted in the utmost of ancient-Armenian-Male insistence.

—“No, 1000 is too much.” My brilliant bargaining maneuver of leaving the door open and one foot still on the street had been excellently parried by his ‘begin-driving-away-anyway’ technique, but despite my rapidly decreasing authority I felt determined not to be cheated by this approximately $1 surcharge against my ineptitude. 

“Hazar”

Vets-it’s not even that far!” Arguing with a cab driver is futile enough in any circumstance, but doing so in a language they clearly do not understand is an activity that should be left to those who enjoy staring contests with plants. If I wanted to save my rightful dollar, I would have to do so in Armenian. I took a breath, gathered inner strength, and then launched a layered and graceful rhetorical assault that would stretch the very limits of my blossoming skill in the language:

“Vets”

“Hazar”

“Vets”

“Hazar”

“Vets”

“Hazar”

“Vets”

“Hazar”

“Vets”

“Hazar,” he growled. I felt my resolve weaken. Explaining that I needed to go to the train station had already been a grueling struggle involving vigorous pointing at a map, a stirring discourse on the nature of train stations, and the miming of a train car while I feebly chanted ‘choo-choo. . .’ In the end I could give him only a street name and hope for the best. This past experience, coupled with the fact that I was certain that he had eaten things more intimidating and assertive than myself, filled me with despair.

“Yoat?”  I said feebly, hoping he would recognize a ‘7’ as a sign that he should humbly accept 800.

“Hazar” he said, embarrassed by my flailing and now not even bothering to look at me anymore. I murmured acceptance in no particular language, and he continued to drive in silence. I came to appreciate how much small talk does to alleviate the awkwardness of being driven. He came to appreciate how much less annoying I was when I didn’t speak. My mind turned to the time, and I realized that I was now approaching late for my train. So proud, so arrogant, I had decided that my vast verdant valleys of free time were sufficient for me to eat at the café down the street, and to punish me for this ego the café burned and salted my arable time by making history’s slowest Khachipuri. Also, I followed it with an ice cream, so there was blame to go around. Either way, I needed to be at the train station fast, or else I would need to alter my comfy, privileged traveler-plans: the stakes could not have been higher.  We drove.

The cab hacked and shuddered and as if it were one of his lungs the driver coughed damply into his second cigarette. “Oh god” I thought. “I wonder if we’ll even make it.” Right on cue, the car stalled halfway up a hill. I stared—the driver, too, seemed surprised, and responded by proceeding to repeat the same bewildered phrase in Armenian over and over while alternating between grinding the ignition and poking fiercely at the dashboard. He made little progress on the engine, though the dashboard did quickly cave under his accusations and promptly fell off. The driver placed it back in its slot and resumed his ritual of muttering and poking. I looked at my watch: late. My head raced. Would the car ever start? Would I catch the train? Could this be my chance to bargain back my dollar? All signs pointed to no, and I resented the old man—but with one look, I instantly regretted my anger. The old man, bent, wrinkled, with a noble white cascade of moustache and wispy cloud strands on his head, was stubbornly trying to will his cab back to life, ignoring the bright glowing ‘dead battery’ signal above his steering wheel. I glanced at my watch and felt sick—I had to leave him like this, trapped on an incline tapping at a deaf dashboard. I decided I would count to ten: if he couldn’t restart the car by the count of ten, I would get out and find another cab. 

I counted to ten about 9 times. I stopped counting. A group of young teens on the sidewalk began to point and laugh. I felt horrible. I help up my watch, pointed to it, and pleaded:

“I’m so sorry, I must go. I will be late.” He waved me away with one finger, as if to say,

“No, no the NEXT turn will start it.” It didn’t. I counted to 10. 

“Should I get out and push?” I asked, gesturing with my hands. He was unresponsive. I opened the door and stepped out. He did not stop me. I looked to the traffic jam of honking cars behind our cab, and stepped into the free cab that was just behind us. I tried to forget the old man and focus on catching my train, but my new cab driver pulled up to the sputtering cab in front of us and lowered the window. “Baba?” He shouted, and seemed to be asking what was wrong.  The knot in my stomach tightened—I shouldn’t have abandoned him. The old man waved us away—“no, no the next time it will work.” I tried to explain where I needed to go, but came again to understand that a map in English was almost as useless and confusing to drivers here as me. The new driver decided to end our struggle by driving back to the old man again and asking him where I was going.

“Sasuntsi Davit.” The old man gave the street name freely, hardly distracted from his meditative prodding of the dashboard. I meekly ‘choo-choo’ed and we were off. After a silent moment, I asked in terrible Armenian:

“Inch arje sa?” How much?

“Hazar.” 1000.

“Ayo.” Yes, I said. A thousand is good.