Sunset, Thursday, 2 July 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

They Told Me Not To Do This

Ronald Reagan, through all his burgeoning MBA programs, told me not to do it. (I know – I taught in one.)

The future Fed chairman, showing me pictures on his New York office wall from his first position of power in Washington, in so many words very kindly told me not to do it.

My dear friend in the new Volvo said, as we were going over the Baldwin Hills, “What makes you think the world needs another ______ ?” I’ve forgotten the end of the sentence – it had to do with publishing The Wall Paper, about which he advised: Don’t.

My colleague going back to grad school after a few years of struggling in the workplace said, “Why waste your time?”

Howard was – is – emphatic.

Former girlfriends confided that their mothers had predicted better things for me. Or expected better things of me, I’m not sure which.

Suze Orman says – well, you can just imagine.

[Made that one up, of course.]

Advisors have sent me resumes of professional artists, to suggest the career path.

American Express commercials told me not to do it. They’re still telling me not to do it.

I must admit, even I have told myself, more than once, not to do it. In the very notebook in which I’m writing this, as I sit in the back yard five minutes before sunset, there is an entry that reads:

“Great Barrington, Mass., August 5, 2007. Sometimes painting the sunset every day seems completely idiotic. I mean, how could it not?”

In the end, the only thing telling me to do it, is it.