It's needless to go on into my observations of the practiced swooning of the ballet dancers, the heart-rending grunts of professional wrestlers, head-clutching photographs of the philosophers, scientists, writers, et at., that stare back at us from newspapers and periodicals when they are awarded the Nobel Prize or merely a Pulitzer or just pictured there to help peddle their latest book—to go on with this thesis, since that's what it seems to have become. Nor shall I indicate the stalls used by my colleagues in the plastic arts, lest I be accused of betraying my trust and be dubbed the Benedict Arnold of the clay bins.
From all this careful observation I've concluded that all work of any consequence is fifty per cent good sweaty honest toil and fifty per cent a frothy appearance—an air or look about you that you're working very hard. One is useless without the other and in practical performance requires as absolute a balance as the alkaline secretions of your liver.
The dangers of a predominance of either is obvious. How many plodding tireless technicians have we all known who were fired from their jobs just six months before they completed the thirty or forty years of service which would have pensioned them off, for nothing more than the fact they did their work so easily and completely it seemed effortless, therefore useless?
While on the other hand I remember a gifted staller—a studio hack in an architectural sculptor's studio—who had trained himself so well he was able to sleep sitting upright on a high stool every afternoon after a heavy lunch. His case is worth a little more attention. His method briefly was this and I don't advise it for beginners. He spread a large blueprint on a drawing table, rested his elbow on the drawing table, and leaned his chin on the fist of his leaning arm while his other arm and hand rested on the table holding a long pencil. Anyone approaching from any direction on that creaky floor would set the hand with the pencil slowly in motion from point to point on the blueprint as if the aroused sleeper was carefully figuring a knotty problem in scale relation. Eventually he was promoted, given a raise, and assigned to a job that kept him standing up all day! Of course, this person had a fine scholastic background. After years of study he'd given up trying to be an engineer to do sculpture on the assumption it was the easier of the two professions.
But the training for both requires undivided attention. I don't mean sculpture and engineering. I mean the ability to work or stall.
Therefore, this ability I have of looking harried, earnest, and deeply immersed in important work, while I contemplate shall I or shall I not go to lunch now, I owe completely to my pal Joe.
Joe never painted overside in that port. Nobody asked him to. He was always too busy. As we carried our paint buckets to the rail and then lugged those splintery planks (our scaffolds) and dropped them over side, his work looked so important the Bos'n, the Swede Mate, and the young Third each gave him an approving glance and left him to weave his gossamer of nothings while they drove us other stupid galley slaves.
Even before we'd be called to turn to, Joe was at it. With the Mate or one of the others watching he would suddenly knit his brows as his eyes (only his keen eyes) saw something up on the prow that needed his immediate attention. He'd hop off the hatch where the rest of us less imaginative dopes sat, snap out his cigarette, and hurry forward, picking up a long strand of rope yarn, and then make the ladder to the prow in two long steps. There he'd tackle one of the big coils of rope or hawser and tie them neatly with the yam. That always happened just a moment before we'd be called to turn to. I never saw him look at his watch; he had an instinct for timing.
Joe would stall around the prow hunting another piece of yam and not finish up that hawser till we were well along with our painting. Seems to me those hawsers were always loosening up and had to be tied almost every morning, either on the prow or back on the poop.
When I caught on after a day or so, I rolled off the hatch and chased after him with another piece of yarn. Two were better than one on that type of job. Then Joe and I would spend the day in a carefully calculated stall. He'd get back to the main deck and walk aft with his eyes knotted in a searching frown. He'd stoop and unearth another long straw-colored wisp of rope yarn. I, following, would hunt another. Then, with the strained look of an expert, he continued along the deck with deliberate tread, trailing the yarn toward midships and climb into the shelter deck, I, his self-appointed assistant, following him.
