Tony

Saturday, July 2 (Before Chapter 1 of Triptych)

aroslav: Hey, Tony, thanks for taking time to talk to me while you are traveling.

TONY: Sure. It's not like we don't talk every day.

aroslav: Yeah. I really appreciate that.

TONY: What's up?

aroslav: Where are you now?

TONY: Camped at Indiana Dunes State Park. We'll get to Nebraska tomorrow.

aroslav: Well, I've got this new idea and I wanted to run it by you.

TONY: Who is she?

aroslav: Hey, I'm not just in the business of throwing women your way. This is serious.

TONY: So?

aroslav: So we tell the story from your perspective, right? But there are some pretty cool people involved. We don't really get to hear from them much. So I was thinking that I'd like to interview your friends.

TONY: You're not going to stalk them are you?

aroslav: Not unless I have to. I thought you could arrange introductions for me and give me a list of who to talk to. Well, let's be honest, I've got a list. Your fans are pretty much writing that script.

TONY: Okay. So who's first?

aroslav: You are.

TONY: Shit. Don't we like lay all my dirty laundry out for everybody to see in every chapter? Who wants to know more about me?

aroslav: Well, here's the thing. There's lots of stuff we don't know about you that will never be in the story.

TONY: So put it in.

aroslav: It's your life, but not all of it is relevant. Sorry to break that to you.

TONY: Don't go easy on me. I can still wipe up a racquetball court with your ass.

aroslav: How well I know. So first off, we found out in Model Student that you started drawing when you were about ten years old. Hadn't you done any drawing before that? Did this just come out of nowhere? What were the clues?

TONY: Which question do you want an answer to? Never mind. I'll play along.

So to start, it wasn't that I never drew until then. The refrigerator in our kitchen had as many drawings on it as anybody else's and I always got good compliments on my drawing. The significance of that day wasn't in starting to draw, it was in becoming lost in the drawing. I guess that it was when I discovered I was a little CDO.

aroslav:???

TONY: That's the same as OCD but the letters are in alphabetical order, like they should be.

aroslav: Cute.

TONY: No, really. You have to be a little OCD to be an artist IMHO.

aroslav: Are we texting this interview?

TONY: To the point. I'd sit down with my classmates, or with crayons at the kitchen table and draw pictures that were really pretty good. I drew a duck on a pond in kindergarten. It was complete with ripples on the pond and the reflection of the duck in the water. Technically, I guess that's the inborn talent thing. I can draw.

What changed that day when I was 10 was the relationship with the paper and pencil. That day, they filled my head. There was nothing else in the world. I saw them and I had to draw. I think I may have had impulses like that before, but this one hit when there were no other obstacles. I picked up the paper and pencils, walked out of the house, got on my bike, and went to the creek. I had an image in my mind of a rock and tree that I had to draw. I saw it and drew it about a dozen times. Then there was this chipmunk sitting on a stump watching me. I scarcely turned my head to look at him. He was busy with some nut he'd found that he was chowing down on and just sat there while I drew him. He was bigger than life in my eye. It's like I couldn't see anything else. And I looked at my other drawings and I could see that he'd been there all the time. I'd hidden him near the rock, next to the tree, in the grass. I'd draw one thing and the chipmunk would be hidden in the scene.

aroslav: Slow down, Tony. You're panting.

TONY: Yeah. You know how I get. Just talking about this stuff makes my fingers itch.

aroslav: So you felt the—what's Doc call it?—connection?

TONY: I made the connection. You know, feeling it is something that came later. I think feeling implies something conscious. Making the connection is subconscious.

aroslav: Have you noticed that sometimes you talk like someone much older?

TONY: Oh. You mean I'm pretentious?

aroslav: That's not what I meant...

TONY: I suppose I am. It was almost a game when Dumpling and I started talking with a real vocabulary instead of grunts. It's her fault. She's got a vocabulary like you wouldn't believe. She made me use mine. We'd sit in the loft and I'd say, "Shit!" and she'd say, "What does that mean, Tony?" Of course, it wasn't enough to give a definition and say "excrement." She wanted to know what I meant when I said it. It didn't stop me from using common swear words, but when I was talking to her, she made me explain what I was thinking when I said them.

aroslav: Was it hard growing up in Nebraska for an artist?

TONY: Nebraska has a lot of fine artists.

aroslav: Like?

TONY: Joyce Ballantyne.

aroslav:???

TONY: Okay. I can tell you don't know who the hell I'm talking about, but every truck driver in America in the 1950s had a pin-up calendar with pictures she painted. Then she created one of the best-known advertising images there's ever been—the Coppertone girl with her swimming bottoms being pulled down by a little dog. Of course, she also did a huge number of portraits of celebrities, too.

aroslav: Any artists I might actually know?

TONY: Gutzon Borglum.

aroslav: You're making names up. What did he paint?

TONY: Sculptor. Mount Rushmore.

aroslav: Okay, we've gotten off-track. The question was about growing up in Nebraska.

TONY: Hey, don't blame me. One of Bychkova's final papers was on an influential American artist. I aced that one by using Borglum as my subject.

aroslav: Did you always think you'd grow up to be one of the famous Nebraska artists?