PINEDALE PARTY POOPER

A person can learn a lot of bad habits, but there's nothing worse than breaking your own toys.

I mean, creative people need to play, you know? There isn't any substitute for it, that "inner child" business. For better or worse, when I was growing up it was considered proper to beat that quality out of kids and make 'em "grow up," as it were. I can give you far too many examples.

Once on one of our marathon 30-day family camping vacations, I lost my fishing rod. This was a terrible blow, because my entire pre-adolescent persona on these trips depended on finding a spot to go fishing. ("Oh, let's camp there! They have a lake!") I remember that my father drove me into Pinedale, Wyoming one morning so that I could buy some swivels or something.* When we returned to our campsite, my fishing rod and tackle box were nowhere to be found. A panicked reconstruction of events made clear that I had laid my gear on top of the old Ford station wagon after an early morning's visit to the lake, and it must have fallen off during our drive to town! My father and I jumped back in the Ford and retraced our route along the dusty gravel road, but all we could find were a few bits and pieces from my tackle box. I was devastated, and I knew there was no chance of obtaining a replacement. Rewards in my family were doled out for specific educational purposes, never for the sake of bringing mere joy. . .

Nowadays my contemporaries raise their kids differently, but back then it was considered proper to let this loss be a "lesson" to me (to teach me to be more careful where I put things, I suppose, or more likely to emphasize "the value of a dollar"). The fact that my 12-year-old pysche was flayed beyond recognition meant nothing in those tough old days. One wonders what would have been the consequence of my losing my glasses! No doubt I would have been condemned to bump into doors, thereby toughening my cranium if not my sight. Needless to say I never once even broke a lens, much less mislaid my specs, and I have worn glasses since the second grade.

I could go on like this till the cows come home, but rather than do so and reduce you all to blind staggering disbelief, I will only mention in passing a certain sorry Christmas Day in Abilene, Texas. On this awful morning I tried out and crashed the only gasoline-powered model airplane I was ever able to convince my Air Force pilot father to buy me. He walked away from the sad scene without even a hug or condolences of any kind, probably because he had wanted to try it out first and I had ruined his fun. I salvaged the .049 glow-plug motor and ran it on a test stand I built out of wood scraps, but I could never interest the old man in this mechanical achievement or purchasing another plane to mount it on.

The lesson?

Sooner or later the this sort of thing has a way of teaching a person that it's dangerous to be happy. One learns to deprive oneself, in other words, and I am here to tell you that this is death to creative souls. I'm still in the game because my own inner child is one tough, persistent S.O.B. and has seen to it that I've quit every "safe" non-creative job I've ever had. (You should also note that I have yet to conquer the world with any of my creative manias of the moment, partly because what muse wants to play with a "tough S.O.B."??) I once wrote a song with the line, "the life of an artist is something a sane man should fear," but what would-be artists should really fear is cutting themselves off from things that make them happy, making decisions that suppress playful impulses, or congratulating themselves for acting "sensibly." These traits are a sure-fire guarantee of professional failure!

It's axiomatic among real artists that they mustn't skimp on materials or tools. Real sable brushes cost a lot more than synthetic ones, for example, but if you try both kinds and can tell the difference, then you'd better go with the good stuff! To hell with the expense. . . otherwise, you'll poop on your own party and teach yourself a really stupid lesson. That's why most of you reading this are using Macintosh computers, I hope. It's why I bit the bullet three years ago and bought the best Power Macintosh available. With the addition of a high-speed hard drive, a 450MHz G3 upgrade, a USB card, and tons of RAM, my 8600 is still capable of more than I've ever demanded of it. It's only been in the shop once, and that was because of a SCSI startup hang due to my not turning the scanner on first. This is one high-quality, durable, bulletproof hunk of technology. Get the good stuff. If it makes you happy, you're on the right track.

Right now, though,it's the psychology that's more important, because you can have the finest damn tools in the world and be afraid to use them. I can't tell you how many outrageously fabulous things I've thought up to do with these machines and never tried. Oh well, I didn't have the time. I was too busy writing news stories, mowing the grass, or griping about my old man. I've long ago forgiven the guy, by the way, something that was frankly easier to do after he died. But I still hold myself back! I'm still afraid of losing that fishing rod or breaking that model plane. If any of this rings true with you, have a drink on me, because you're going to need it. Come to think of it, better make that a double. Do whatever it takes to shake yourself up, loosen up, and learn to have fun before it's too late: if not now, when?

Those have got to be four of the most important words in the English language when strung together like that: "If not now, when?" Two years ago they moved a friend of mine on the Eastern Shore to buy himself a red sports coupe. A small and commonplace event in the overall scheme of things, but it really made my man Rick a happy boy. [Clue Alert! Clue Alert!] Something similar happened to me a couple of weeks ago when my Nikon CoolPix 950 finally arrived: Shazam, I'm a photographer! Unbounded joy!! I'm an excited kid again. DO YOU KNOW HOW THAT FEELS??

When I was, oh, maybe 10 years old, my father gave me his old Kodak. I don't know what model it was, but it was one of those folding black bellows affairs and quite the toy all by itself. Once while the old man was away on one of his innumerable temporary tours of duty, I built a miniature crash scene in a big sandbox using pieces of old plastic model airplanes that I actually set on fire. I propped up the old Kodak, took several fuzzy black-and-white photos that I thought looked amazingly realistic and unspeakably cool, and showed them to him when he came home. (Ooops!) Ten-year-old Johnny was of course totally unprepared for the negative, sarcastic reaction of a weary professional pilot to faked shots of burning airplanes and never took any more such pictures again.

(Hmmmm.)

Well sir, last week I was sitting outside on the porch lacing up my hiking boots in preparation for a little jaunt. The camera was in its case next to me on the bench. A real estate agent was coming by to show the property,** and I figured that was a good excuse to leave my desk and play with the Nikon. As the agent drove up and emerged with the buyers from a big silver SUV, I reached down quickly to finish tying the knot on my right shoe: the stiff cuff of my leather jacket caught the strap of the camera case and pulled it onto the floor with a sickening smack!

It seemed to work at first, but then I noticed that the red geraniums were orange and their leaves were blue. . . I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach repeatedly by a large, angry hippopotamus. Blackness and despair were the stuff of my consciousness as I staggered towards death. The cat ran away and hid. The Nikon is now sitting on a shelf somewhere in New York with hundreds of its cousins awaiting repair, and who knows whether it will ever be the same?

My wife listened to me rail for hours against the "stinking real estate people" who caused this horrendous misfortune and then said, in that simple direct way only fools are blessed enough to receive, "The real estate people didn't make you break your camera. . ."

I stopped moaning and sniveling long enough to let this sink in. The sickness precipitated to the pit of my stomach and the clarity moved my tongue:

"I broke my camera. I broke my own camera. I broke my own goddamned camera because I liked it so much!"

At my wife's urging and for the sake of my ten-year-old self and my immortal soul, I've ordered a stand-in, a cute little Canon A-50.

Enough is enough!

John H. Farr edits the Apple Computer News for Applelinks.com and invites your comments. The Farr Site Archives will take you to the past two years' worth of columns. John also writes his WebFaust column for MacAddict.com and a monthly op-ed page column called "El Emigrante" for Horse Fly in Taos, NM. His Zoo Zone site is guaranteed to shiver your timbers and make you cross to the other side of the street.

* Upon reflection, it is much more likely that Dad was on a mission to buy cigarettes and booze and let me ride along. . .

** Contact Lou Morgan and ask about La Lucita. I don't know if this URL has the current price or not, but the joint is definitely worth it. Our landlady is a gem and deserves every penny, too!

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January 08, 2009