May 10, 2009

Jocasta being gone means that I no longer have to include among my morning rituals looking for the cat vomit. But that’s the end of the good. She was the gentlest and most mysterious of all my little brood.

J and DJ and I went to see A’s dance concert last. Billy the Kid was pretty much a mess, but Ann’s original works, one to Matt Richmond’s music and one to Vivaldi, were wonderful. A is the most accomplished artist in Asheville, at least one of a very select number, but she does keep making the same mistakes, year after year, the kind of mistakes anyone can see but the one who makes them. What keep her from ultimate greatness. . . what keeps her in Asheville when I think her name was written on the stars . . is that she would never solicit, nor ever accept, the kind of response that would polish away these few habitual flaws. I wonder whom she has ever trusted? She is the best in the town, but she could have been among the best in the world. The inventive genius is there; the corrective genius is not.

Bob Brunk tells the story of, just this afternoon, selling a 18th century Chinese vase for $1,230,000.00. He’d listed it as a fine reproduction, when some expert from Hong Kong knew that it was quite real. The kicker is that the owner of the piece was essentially homeless, living in her car, raiding an old closet of her parents’ things when she needed a buck. There’s someone whose life has changed.