TOO MUCH SUN

Portrait of Oisan T. DeBurca, mixed media on napkin, David Schoffman. 2012

"It's hard to keep the assassins away."

That's how my dear colleague David Schoffman greeted me when we met poolside at the Standard Hotel in Hollywood. I was in Los Angeles for a few days last week conferring with a cabal of untrustworthy curators and decided to dedicate a few leisurely hours to catching up with my friend.

"Ça va pas, non?" was all I could say, dumbstruck by yet another of David's fantasies of professional persecution. For years, despite his enormous and unwarranted success, my poor comrade nurses one grievance after the next.

"Even paranoids have enemies," quoting, once again, the inexorably quotable Delmore Schwartz.

I know I shouldn't have asked but my better judgement was impaired by the sparingly clad pair of ingenues sitting to our left.  "Who is it this time," I absentmindedly asked as I stole a subtle gander at what I took to be evidence of the existence of God.

David, whose skills of draftsmanship have been the envy of us all dating back to our student days, grabbed a cocktail napkin and within seconds drew the unmistakable profile of the Irish art critic, Oisan T. DeBurca.

I kept the drawing.

I needed something to quickly jot down a phone number.

I truly love L. A.