The Viking of The Verbal Tradition

     Well, I successfully made it to the art store yesterday, and I bought my two canvasses.  One of my clients wants a bigger sized canvas, so I have to go back, and buy a larger one.  He wants a portrait of him and his wife for his restaurant.
     Well, I have no chance of making my living freelancing and doing odd work here and there.  It isn't enough, and I'm not a shrewd enough business man.  Also, I don't like to work on consignment much.  The pressure of successfully completing an assignment is almost too much for me to handle.
     After going to the cafe where I had some beers and a delicious turkey sandwich on 6-grain bread, I went over to The Local Bar.
     Well, my friend showed up.  Anybody who knows me would know who he is based on a simple description, and he likes to remain anonymous.  Even just based on that, some people might know how it is.  Anyhow, my point is that he is a Viking of The Verbal Tradition.  This presents some immediate problems.  He is good at seeing visuals in his head and telling stories, but he doesn't draw or type.  He is the kind of person where he needs a person around to document his stories, and write down all his words.  Working with him is kind of like pulling teeth.  I was there with my sketchpad, trying to put together the narrative sequence of his story.  Well, he is like Alan Moore in that he has great verbal skills.  He needs somebody to do the manual work.  Then, he would only want to have the first completed story available for free, and the other stories would be on a paid website, where customers pay to hear the rest.  Well, that is a lot of work.  So, already, we were in the negotiation stages.  I told him that I can't build those kind of paid websites.  Then, his content would have to be superb in order to justify charging for it.  Basically I told him to show up at the cafe during the day, and it might go well to work that way.  He has a lot of talent, but maybe nighttime at the bar isn't the right time to make stories, or perhaps, it is the best time.  Anyhow, I attempted to write down the notes, and draw a couple of thumbnails.  It is all over the place.  What would end up happening, is I would have to do all of the grunt work even to type up what he says.  One way is just to record him, but he doesn't wish to be video-taped.  Well, we could audio tape him, and that would work.  He doesn't do computer stuff much, so, it would really take a lot to get him to tell his stories, or to show off his verbal skills.  All this is a lot of work.  Well, he needs a whole team of people apparently to make all of his stories a reality.  Some people have a verbal way of telling a story, I am not one of those people.  He is, but he can't write them down.  So, it is a quandary between the written and the verbal tradition.  Funny, but I just saw a documentary about Vikings, and they had a strong verbal tradition, but very little actual writings came from them.  My friend is like a Viking, I have come to realize.  It's going to be really difficult to get 'his work' into written form.  He seems to think best on his feet.  I'm going to have to figure it out, because he won't do it.  Even if I just got his permission to audio record him anytime I wanted, that would be a help.  1-3 minutes of audio a week is enough to get it all started.  I can put those videos on youtube, and get it all started.  Then, there are business considerations with him, and it all gets very complicated.  Will it be worth it?  I don't know.  I can write my own stories.  This whole thing will not be easy.

     So I had a good time at the bar, we drank Rainer's and I asked the bartender about 'Pepper Southern Comfort'.  I actually liked it.  A friend called it 'cheap booze'.  Well, I was drinking that, and drinking the high-alcoholic content of Rainier, so it was a good time.
     I finally managed to pull myself away from the bar, and I bicycled home.
     Then I got some chicken, rice, and beans from the Guatamalan stand, and it was ever so good.  I said something about the piece of chicken they were giving me was pretty small, so they cooked up some extra chicken for me, and made my plate really nice, only charging me $3.  It was good eating.

     There is the German couple sitting next to me.  Funny, but I saw a German porn video last night, and the guy talked a lot as if it was all very technical and precise, and the woman was saying 'YAH oh Yah!' so I was pretty entertained.  Before the sex, the woman spent five minutes putting shaving cream around her crotch area, and she shaved.  Before that, she peed outside on the road.  Okay, classy stuff.  The German guy kind of had a small dick.  It was just fascinating to see German people do it.

     So, I made some drunken Clone Wars video game videos, and I crashed, only to wake up to more video games.
     Oh yeah, I played some Lord of The Rings Online, too, before falling asleep.

     Ok, it is going to be another adventurous day.

     I don't know what to do about my Viking friend.