A Patron of the Arts

All the way back in December, when I first moved into my old house in Rossland, I wrote this post about my desire to create a tasteful (but awkward) nude portrait to hang on the walls of my new home. As I explain in the post, I couldn't think of a good way of explaining to my housemates what I was trying to acheive, and in the end I didn't have the courage to suggest this idea to them. The balance between creating a hilarious joke and appearing to be conceited and homoerotic is a difficult one to acheive, and I was not sure that I could explain my idea to my housemates without appearing weird. When I eventually left Rossland in April I assumed that my dream of decorating my house and creating a lasting monument to making other people feel uncomfortable was over.

I did, however, mention my dream of a tasteful nude portrait to one of the other seasonal occupants of Rossland, a diminuitive, unhappy German lass named Anna. At the time, Anna was working five days a week doing unpleasant housekeeping at the accommodation near the ski hill, and in her time off worked as a part-time nanny for a family in exchange for very cheap rent. I pointed out to her that she was not only working a whole lot during a winter holiday in which her main focus should probably have been snowboarding, but that she didn't even need to work that hard because she was paying minimal rent and saving money on other living expenses. I reasoned that she must be saving significant quantities of cash, and suggested that she might be interested in paying to commission the nude portrait I wanted to put in the house, painted by our mutual friend Brad who I worked with during my time at the Rossland hostel.

Of course, when one suggests to a friend that they should spend their hard earned money on a joke that they will be only peripherally able to enjoy, one typically assumes that the friend will not be interested and that the issue will pass away. It was, then, a considerable surprise when I received the following text messages while lounging around in the back of my van a few days ago:

Anna (1/2): "I do not know if you still have this number Sir but I just calculated my budget which I wish I had done earlier because now 400 $"
Anna (2/2): "seems to be totally reasonable for a hilarious nude painting of you :-)"

I should point out that the nude wasn't necessarily supposed to be of me, but if it was going to be a painting I guess I'd need a model and I'm the only one who's realistically going to step up to take that role. So although it was slightly alarming to think that someone wanted to make a nude portrait of me, rather than just in general, I was willing to do what it took to complete the mission. A long and torturous text message conversation followed, in which I ascertained that Anna was serious, and that she didn't actually want to copy of the painting, leaving my free to display it in Rossland. We considered sending it to Maud's Hot Sister, which would have brought two terrible jokes together into a kind of terrible joke supertornado, but the idea was abandoned because then neither of us would see the painting again.

At this moment, I'd like to point out both how unlikely it was that this would ever occur, and how highly this endeavour speaks of Anna's character. This is someone who is willing to commit hundreds of dollars to a joke that she might never even get to see. There is no greater committment to the LOLz than to invest in something you might never benefit from purely because "it'd be a never ending hilarious joke". My efforts to woo Maud's Hot Sister pale in comparison. Thanks Anna, you're quite strange, but you're a star.

With a financial backer, suddenly my opportunity to contribute to the art world was alive again. I tried to contact Brad, but he helpfully doesn't have a phone, and he also didn't feel like answering the phone at the hostel where he's still working. In the end, I took matters into my own hands and drove to Rossland to talk with him in person.

He is not completely thrilled by the idea of painting a nude portrait of me. In fact, he is insistent that I am not allowed to appear in front of him in any state of undress. I can't even "accidentally" waltz past him with a towel wrapped around my waist on the way to the shower. But he does seem willing to paint the picture. Negotiations are under way, and we have a few days to secure an agreement before Anna manages to transfer the necessary funds across to make this a reality. If all else fails, I am willing to approach another local artist who was also not my year six teacher, Jenny Baillie. We share a unique bond because we almost knew each other fifteen years ago, and maybe she'll be willing to help me out if the mercurial Brad changes his mind, or makes it up, or whatever.

So now I am back in Rossland, waiting for money to magically appear from my financial benefactor, and hanging out at the Mountain Shadow Hostel. This gives me a convenient opportunity to get my climbing shoes repaired and give a finger injury some time to heal. Plus I can shop at the most excellent supermarket here.

Those who wish to stay abreast of the developments in this story might want to check out twitter.com/dirt_bags_horan for updates as they happen. Wish me luck.

Resolved: The Jenny Baillie Coincidence

On Monday I finally met Jenny Baillie, resident of Rossland, artist, and (in 1996) primary school teacher.

But she's not the Jenny Baillie I knew. She taught somewhere in New Zealand in 96, rather than Canberra.

I must admit that I'm not exactly disappointed that this wasn't the same Jenny Baillie. Ever since I heard she might be in town I've been trying to think of ways that the Jenny Baillie I knew might end up as an artist in Rossland. Admittedly, I was a 12 year old when I was in her class, so I doubt I had a very accurate picture of her as a person, but she just didn't seem like the kind of person who would end up as an artist in a town of 3,000 people in a reasonably obscure part of Canada. For a start, she didn't ski or mountain bike, and there aren't really that many other reasons to live here. I was a bit worried that there might have been some kind of family tragedy that might have driven Jenny Baillie of Canberra to the Kootenay mountains, and finding out that this wasn't the case is something of a relief.

On the other hand, Jenny Baillie of Rossland had apparently heard from a few people that there was a possible former student in town, and she was a bit disappointed to discover that I wasn't one of her charges from her prior career. It occurred to me that this might be another reason for me to be relieved that this wasn't my former teacher. Jenny Baillie of Canberra might be a bit suprised to find that the model student of her year 6 class is now a skiing vagrant rather than something slightly more worthwhile.

As an indication of just how much my trajectory in life has changed, in year 6 (the final year of my primary school education) I was voted:

• Most likely to become rich. Well, I'm sure my classmates meant well. I'm not sure what went wrong here. At some point in life I discovered that being dirty and having fun was more interesting than whatever it is people do to become rich. Of all the predictions made, this is the least likely to come true in the remainder of my lifetime.
  
• Most likely to become famous. This is certainly not the case right now, and given the current course of my life it doesn't look at all probable. However, I can't completely rule out this possibility. After all, my classmates never said what I'd be famous for. Perhaps they thought I'd go on to commit a number of grisly and well publicised murders, or become a wildly successful internet blogger. Unfortunately, their reasons were never clearly stated.
• Smartest. This is a little bit complicated. Clearly, given the first two predictions were well off the mark, the veracity of my classmates is not to be trusted. However, it is possible that they made the previous mistakes because they were a bunch of muppets. If that was the case, then maybe I was the smartest class member amongst a grade of dullards. Unfortunately, I can't remember whether I also voted for myself in those categories, which would neatly counter this argument. It would be nice to believe that I didn't vote for myself in any of the categories, but unfortunately that's not a guarantee that I can make about myself in grade 6.
  

Don't get the wrong idea about my classmates. We did manage to successfully identify the tallest members of our grade by popular vote. Democracy works.

So perhaps not meeting Jenny Baillie here is for the best. It's nice to think there are a few people around who still think I'm a productive and contributing member of society.

Primary School Redux

Ever since I arrived in Rossland, something has been bugging me. There's a poster at the hostel that features a painting of Rossland by an artist named Jenny Baillie. When I saw it I thought "Baillie, that's quite a distinctive spelling."

Then I thought:

"I used to have a year 6 teacher named Jenny Baillie, with that same distinctive spelling."

Then I thought:

"As I recall, she was really into art."

Then I thought:

"You know, the way the artist has signed this painting kindof looks like her handwriting."

But of course, it has been a long time since year 6, so maybe I was wrong about the handwriting, or even the spelling. I mentioned this to Brad, my coworker at the hostel, who also happens to be an artist living and working in Rossland. I get along very well with Brad, he's one of the few people I've met in Canada who are comfortable with the jokes I make, and better yet, can give as good as they get. However, I must admit that at times communicating with Brad can be a little difficult. For example, he once in conversation said I was a bus station. I'm not really taking that out of context. We were just talking about something and then he said I was a bus station. It was all a little unclear.

Anyway, Brad said that Jenny Baillie was from Australia, or maybe New Zealand, or maybe even England, that she might have been a teacher, and that she'd come to Rossland maybe 40 years ago, or 30, or 15. Or something.

It appears that Ms Baillie recently bumped into Brad, and it sounds like he may have narrowed down this range to "Down Under", that she used to be a teacher, and that she arrived more like 15 years ago than 40. This is all looking promising.

So, the latest entry on my list of things to do is to meet the Jenny Baillie of Rossland and see if she's also the Jenny Baillie of Hughes Primary School. If so, it would be a crazy coincidence indeed.

And in other primary school related news, it turns out my best friend from Hughes Primary, Parri, is a few hours drive away at Fernie. It's like I'm prepubescent all over again.