If you’re on this page, you probably got here from one of my newsletters. If not, you might be scratching your head. In any case, I title my newsletter Avoiding Hookers and Blow : (Month/Year) Edition.
Here’s the story behind the subject line, straight from my very first newsletter:
Y’all, here’s what I’ve been doing with my art lately. First, let me explain the subject line: I used to fly fish. A lot. Like, every day, or at least every other day, even if only for an hour or two, but definitely all day on the weekends. And it’s not that I’ve entirely stopped, I just don’t do it much as much now, because I’m always busy with other things. There’s more to that story but this email isn’t about fly fishing. Anyway, people used to ask me, “why do you fish so much?” My standard answer was “why? To pick up chicks, of course.”
The only chick I ever picked up after I started fly fishing was my wife, and she didn’t even know I fished until one day she tried to call me, back before we had cell phones, and I didn’t answer. At the end of the day I found out she’d been trying to reach me all day, and really, she was just confused as to why I wasn’t at home. I was fishing, and she didn’t know I fished. That was real early in our relationship!
So when I’m talking to people about my art now, and they come to realize how long it takes me to make each sculpture, I say “yeah, but it keeps me out of the hookers and blow, saves me a lot of money by keeping busy.” I guess if I wasn’t working on art, I’d probably actually be fishing, or playing in a rock & roll band, but people laugh when I say it and that’s the whole point of life, isn’t it?