My one year anniversary in the vendor market world hits soon, and I remember the first day like it was yesterday, mostly because it was only one year ago and anything prior feels either like it happened in the Prehistoric ages or has tumbled in my brain enough times the story went from fairytale to gruesome horror film. From what I remember, it has been a blast from my future past, a momentary lapse of reason when applying that random $2 discount just to see someone smile, a roller coaster of emotions, a stage to become the balanced and confident person I know lives inside me through the tangled leaves of slightly bipolar, a tad ADHD, a heaping spoonful of crazy, addiction-prone, gabby, perfection-driven, annoyingly-determined wuss that is I, me, my.
One day when dinosaurs roamed Mother Earth, I started tie-dying onesies, and let me tell you, I cannot remember why or how I went about this. If I had to pick a craft today, I would have done stained-glass, pottery, or perhaps given up on my entrepreneurial dream from the start and slipped back into the corporate comfort by joining the franchisers of the world....who knows...but I tie-dyed, and it was fun.
....it still is.
*She smiles, smirks, and realizes life is still so so good.*
If you've been to a craft fair (as my grandmother calls it and I call it and as some hipster jeweler overhears us around the corner plotting to murder our entire family, But only after supper! We say), I mean, vendor market, you know the deal, and you are probably attending, supporting, and loving us, and we love you back.
But if you haven't been to the Land of Merchants, here is a breakdown -
The Vendors, the magicians, the starving fucking artists, because that's what we are whether we have accepted it or not, take the night before to prepare our pile of stuff, most of us staying up a little too late to make one more batch for the sake of it all, our clown cars feeling suffocated from our magical displays crammed strategically where car seats normally inhabit.
Most of us starving fucking artists arrive at the ass-crack of dawn, abandoning our morning routines to be outside in the cold or inside a confused high school who thought school was out of session but wait, not today. We spend a few hours rummaging through our bins which resemble the finale of a bangin' Tetris game, placing them either in the same layout as the last market, or where the invisible energy field is swirling for the day, or in the same arrangement as last week since you sold a boatload because the sun was shining in just the right way. Superstition is everything, analytics are nothing.
Some of us arrive late, cocky from yesterday's market, overworked, or just plain untimely - such vendors are suspicious and are to be semi-trusted, because they either haven't figured it out yet or have it figured out too much.
With asses in the air and heads in bins, the Setup Samba begins - unpacking, muttering, lifting, heaving, retching in the corner if working off the hangover from the night before, dropping, crashing, fuck there goes some precious merch, picking back up, sweeping, cleaning, perhaps crying, all before the show even starts.
But wait, someone is walking by....and they have eyes....and they are looking....at our stuff....a potential sale! Let's watch them like wolves until they come and talk to us.
Nope, it was just one of us, another starving fucking artist, hungry for a peek, bored because they got there too early.
The clock struggles to arrive at the start time and we expect the games to begin with the blow of a whistle like in organized sports, but the crowd seeps in like the last bit of blood trying to ooze out of newly formed clot.
Sadly we simply don't have the funding for the kind of attention we deserve, many of our organizers are also starving fucking artists disguised as business zombies, and like the business world some are better and more attentive than others. They are tired. They tried getting asses in the seats but only before they sat on their crushed velvet throne of $100+ acceptance fees, the honest Abes drowning in fees from the cool entertainment they set up for the day and genuinely worried about the turnout (there are more of these than not), the crooked ones counting their money on their beach vacation as they never bothered showing up for their own event, smashing our hopes with their invisible hands and cackling because they know we will sign up next year.
Oftentimes I dream of interviewing the first person at a vendor market, wondering if their flesh burnt wildly as they entered from all the eyes and heads zeroing in. Do they see the saliva dripping from our chins or is it only in our imaginations? Can they smell our desperation? Are we monkeys in a cage to them or do we have their respect? Is this all a game? When is someone going to tell us?
Our desires are as such: We want you to look and give us the attention we crave, say ooh and ahh, potentially buy something, maybe throw us a few suggestions, and then move on. Take our information, take it, take it, take it, take it. Follow us, know us, love us, remember us, visit us again, tell us it is going to be ok.
Maybe go for my personal favorite and perform the loop-around. You took a sample earlier and walked away, not even flinching when the smoked olive oil hit your tongue. But you journeyed thorough the market, realizing that this must really be the place, coming back to buy the bottle and thus completing the circle of vendor market life.
All in all, we just want to keep going, to keep creating, to keep being and existing in our starving fucking artist outfit. It keeps us content, one more day free from the corporate cubicle world. One more day we can look down at our hands and cry tears of joy they are stained with dye and burnt with lye.
The starving fucking artist carries on.