Slacker

They say by the time you are seven, you are what you will be when you are 87. That was the subject of the series of films "7Up". They took a bunch of kids at age 7, and then filmed them, 7x2, 7x3...7x7. Don't think they've done 7x8.

When I was 7, I was living in South Austin. I spent a lot of time alone playing "in the creek".

After last night running around town, listening to open mike music/poetry, hopping busses, listening to a public art guru talk, missing routes, making up for it by catching some music, missing another bus, then talking to passerbys and a guy waiting for the 484... it hit me - I'm a slacker.

Not a slacker, like a guy that doesn't do anything, but a slacker like in the movie "Slacker".

And then I realize that maybe by the time I was 7, somehow that creek, and goofing around with neighbor friends, getting zapped by a sparkplug on a minibike, watching the kid who'd light his hand on fire on the way back from St. Elmo, wearing tube socks with fun colors, riding in the back of a VW bug, going to Pedernales, McKinney Falls, being in the charasmatic Jesus movement, listening to KLBJ, having friends of all different colors, blue collar, diggin for bugs, country music, rock... All that, somehow, I was molded into a "slacker".

Last night, I experienced the movie, only better, I think. Here is part of the cast: Greens (black guy that might have been in "The Green Mile" we talked for an hour or so waitin on the 484), Fred (crazy old man with meat market apron that got kicked off bus yelling KKK, suck my explitive), Glasses (girl that waited on bus with huge glasses and cute short hair), Eric (guy who shows green drawing of kid when subject of kids comes up), Jo (tall afro-ed black guy who badgered me for money telling me he'd tell me a joke for a couple bucks, 5, no 10, why you give that girl a 20 and not me?), Mike (black guy who said Fred lucky he didn't get his explitive whooped), Sharon (when I said waiting on the 484 was "adventurous", she said, "Freezin' yo effin a$$ off ain't no adventure"), Amarillo (tourist who corrected her boyfriend when he said they saw some "rock", you call that rock?!?), Mickey (guy who told me about his art and played harmonica at open mike), Smokey (actual name of former soap stone carver who made over a thousand pipes, works with quadraplegics and thinks marijuana is legal in Texas), Circles (girl I gave the 20 who caught a midnight owl and saw two hours later getting back off another midnight owl at the same bus stop), Lank (young kid who played good guitar, hollering for a girl to be with, and must have been the younger brother of somebody famous, because he kept being ribbed about "playing his brother's music"), Tune (old man that played at Elephant Room that was having trouble tuning his guitar, and asked me if it sounded better, like I'd know. He said, yeah my sxsw days are over, i'm done with that), Rebecca (Connie's friend at Elephant Room), Fish (girl with tattoos wrapped up her arm at Sun Harvest), Stan (bus driver that "played it cool" with Fred)... and on and on...

From the public art talk, if anything, I got the impression from the speaker that Austin didn't get it. Houston did, in fact. He made fun of the plans for the cancer survivor memorial park thing... not the idea of the park, but the design of the park didn't, in his opinion, reflect anything about surviving cancer. He gave lots of examples of meaningful art in cities all over the world. They were good, I thought. He spoke about meaningful art being a conversation, an engagement, with it's audience, not a passerby experience "like something stuck on a wall that looks nice". After being questioned from a black woman about minority art, he responded that if anything, pointing at himself, that white-male art is dead.

In my bag was a drawing of Tune playing at The Elephant Room.

I thought, "Are we that superficial here?" After the talk a woman spoke to me and I showed her the drawing. Then I told her that Tune was playing over there etc. She said she thought it must be a private party that she thought there was no way it'd be open at that time. I explained that it was and that Tune was playing and how good he was.

To make a long story short, my arms are starting to burn, I think, oh how do I say this without making it sound really hokey??? I used the drawing as piece for a dialogue, engagement to connect that woman with the city... and without her knowing it, and me at the time, was committing public art - the dialogue in Austin is so present with the characters and transactions that we don't even realize it.

And that is why they can make a cancer memorial which looks really pretty, just pretty without the scars, well just maybe - the people tell the stories and pass them to one another here. Austin doesn't need public art. It's all good, just around the corner, man.