WEBVTT

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Thank you, Alison.

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And thanks to all
of you for coming.

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I'm going to read two
stories this evening.

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The first one is called
"The Creative Fellow".

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"I'm Bud Bach, a top
historical regionalist.

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In my bio, I call myself
a Phoenix-based artist,

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but based is putting it mildly.

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I haven't left
the city in years.

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I've come to dread travel.

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And now, humming
down Interstate 10,

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I feel folded up
in fear, wrapped

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like a leftover hotdog, an
expression I can't get out

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of my head.

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It's what Quentin Richter,
the very young art

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critic of the Arizona
Republic called me last year.

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Tucson is only 100 miles,
and I'm trying to stay calm.

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Even in my cool Buick, the
passing desert dries my throat.

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I have to get down there to
identify my brother's body,

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and I need to find out
exactly how Billy died.

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I squeeze above Harper's
knee, and his muscles

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jump, filling my hand.

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He won't be going with
me to the morgue--

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I'm too ashamed of Billy.

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Just having Harper here,
curled in the passenger seat,

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is a comfort.

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More than I deserve, because I'm
going to ask him to move out,

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and he doesn't know it yet.

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He's brought me to a point at
which I don't have any choice.

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His expenses are sucking
my mutual funds dry,

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and I just had to
refinance my house.

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Suppose I couldn't pay
the mortgage anymore.

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But when I think
about evicting Harper,

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I think of how I
treated my brother.

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I've been remembering a
night when I was young

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and we shared a bed.

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I lay awake, while Billy,
huge and warm, squirming

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with puberty, emanating a
perfume of perspiration,

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slept beside me.

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The memory's ragged with
turpentine, rubbed to a puddle,

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but I can remember
looking at him

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and figuring out
the life he'd have

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and knowing I wouldn't save him.

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I wasn't even going to try.

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He used to have a groundskeeping
business, but it went belly up.

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At least it's long gone
from the Tucson phone book.

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And since, I never asked him.

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Hoeing and pruning
for someone else?

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It's hard to imagine Billy
holding any job at all.

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He had a sour streak,
a solitary one too.

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Still, I always like to
daydream of his finding

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some home in the world.

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Working as a fire lookout,
that was easiest to picture.

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Billy, alone atop a mountain.

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Billy, snug in a
moon-drenched cabin.

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Billy, peering
through binoculars

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at miles of restful green.

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I knew the contrast would
be painful, maybe fatal,

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so I never discussed
my own career with him.

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I imagined him
turning purple if I

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were to mention how the
Kuwaiti royal family used

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to love my desert scenes
or which consultant once

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chose my work to hang
on the walls of how

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many branches of what bank.

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Twit critics will write
whatever cruel things they want.

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Quentin Richter called me
the Botticelli of buffalo.

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But I'm proud to my
backbone of being

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a top historical regionalist,
and the market for my work

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will still be there.

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Galleries in Sedona
and Scottsdale,

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in Santa Fe and Salt
Lake, used to line up

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begging for my pieces.

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Believe me, I know
I'm not Picasso.

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But if somebody wants a 4x6 of a
buffalo brought down by wolves,

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or needs a chief in
a war bonnet to go

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at the top of a
staircase, nobody else

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can do work like mine.

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And thousands of people try.

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And yes, it does torment me.

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I'm old enough to admit
it, that no one, critics,

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or dealers, or public, ever
knew how good I truly was.

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I'm not painting
as much anymore--

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ideas don't come the
way they used to--

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but I'm still in another
class from the hacks

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you see in galleries today.

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Vision?

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Forget it.

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Draftsmanship?

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Some never even
touch a brush, just

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knife it on like peanut butter,
in thick, aggressive smears.

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Step back and view this, the
dealers are always saying.

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But you don't step
back from a Bud Bach.

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You only want to come
closer, all the way in,

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until you can hear
the campfire's snap

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and smell the freshly
flayed hides."

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