thinktankgallery: LA = HUSTLIN’ - WBR Whole Beast Rag, whose two founders are resident artists at th
thinktankgallery: LA = HUSTLIN’ - WBR Whole Beast Rag, whose two founders are resident artists at the Think Tank, host Mondays on the Think Tank blog. Their audience flirts with fringe, and you can find a link to their editorial at the bottom. We were all a bit cold, and none of us had a car. Somebody brought up freelancing, public transit and finding jobs in LA. “You have several veils up, all the time,” Kat said to T. and me as we were standing, waiting for the bus, pizza box on my hip.The topic, as is becoming more and more common, was hustling to get by in Los Angeles. T. was intimately familiar with the lifestyle; if this was for better or worse was unclear. He’d approached us rather coolly, asking where we’d gotten the pizza, scoping us out but also asking us questions, seeing if we were right to talk to (even though he’d been slinking around mumbling to himself minutes earlier). T. decided, at some point, that we weren’t weirdos in the wrong way, and sat by us when we hopped the 2 toward downtown. Turned out he was headed to a few galleries himself, nearer to the river, so we chatted for a while.He was an introvert, and talked very quietly and esoterically (not too airily/stupidly, though). From the 10 or 15 minutes we were talking with each other, I gathered that he’d been couchsurfing for the whole or a large chunk of the past 5 years, worked odd entertainment jobs (not surprising here) and that he’d declared bankruptcy after school. T. said he was an artist, but that he also did production construction background/set design anything else you can imagine.He was attractive and dressed well, but you could tell he probably didn’t eat regular meals. I thought briefly about the nearby TB (yes, tuberculosis) outbreak that our landlord had sent us an email about. A bit before he had to get off the bus, he said, “We should be friends,” with a smile and asked that we put our names, email addresses and numbers in the notepad app on his iPod. I did so somewhat hesitantly, feeling like a dick for expecting him to exploit the information. He hasn’t yet.I looked him up on Facebook later that evening. His only pictures that were public were those of his CV; in the photo description he nearly begged his friends to both get his resume out to people, and to let him stay on their couches. What was ultimately more surprising to me was that his CV was impeccable. Several freelance gigs in various capacities in various industries, a solid education, etc. Something about this reminded me of what he’d said earlier:“Everybody assumes you’re talented in LA, that’s a given. You have to sell yourself in some other way.”T. hasn’t figured that way out for himself yet, which is somewhat discouraging. However, Kat and I were talking about a recent compliment (I assume?) we received that made us both more hopeful: “The magazine, everything you’re doing, seemed so ambitious. I was hesitant about all of it at first. But you’re doing it, and I couldn’t stay away from it.”At least there’s that. -Grace More here:http://wholebeastrag.org & Think Tank’s WBR Mondays -- source link