DB: Playing the Odds

The art game, believe it or not, is very much like gambling. And not just any gambling, we are talking the ultimate game of chance, pitting players united vs. the house; I mean Craps here folks, hard fast red-cubed Craps. Some art games are just crap, but for those of us who bank on making art good enough to sell, there is a chance every day that the rent won’t get paid, and the pantry will be empty, or the gas will get shut off…or your hair will catch on fire. These are the risks we freelance “creatives” run, and most of the time, the odds are with the house.

My friends James and Rob, also artists, took me to the Emerald Queen Casino this weekend, which is technically not in Tacoma, but I think they are putting in a link stop in 2015. Here I discovered this fascinating game named after the famous gaming Russian: Euvegot D. Craps, who invented dice. If you never played then there is little I can suffer to explain the rules via text (I came away with an extremely limited understanding myself). Suffice to say a group of people stand around a table with high walls and felt carpet. In turn, they throw two dice at the opposite wall in hopes of landing a roll on the odds sector where they have placed their chips. There are at least thirty ways to bet, and all sorts of funky here and there’s to get your money out of your tray an onto the board. The most advanced players were playing a game of odds, betting on all sorts of different tiers to increase the complexity, I guess. The thing I liked most about this strange way of loosing money, was that when you win, so does everyone else…house pays everybody. We spent what we won almost as fast as we spent what we brought, but walking a way empty handed every once in a while is a great way to remember how lucky you are outside of that thunderous cavern of titillating video screens and felt covered money funnels.

Odd how this long barn of a building is filled, on a Sunday night no less, with people from all over our region, putting their money into the Puyallup Tribe’s infrastructure. Each and everyone of them only hours away from waking up to an America with an economy that seems to run on the exact principles inside.

Recently in life, I have been blessed with a high roll of sorts that will allow me to remain a citizen of our fair city for another streak. The chips were down, for a minute…it seemed my luck had run out. But I somehow knew, I just knew that I just wasn’t supposed to cash in yet. I don’t want to move. I like my hood, I like my pad and I like that I can walk sweaty out of the YMCA just a few blocks to my own damn shower (with my own damn candles and smelly bath salts). Sometimes you lay an idea out there on the line. A hope, a poem, a painting, or a dream has to be risked in order to manifest. You have to take it out of your stack and put it out there with no guarantee that it will bloom or in the case of a working artist: pay. This risk is the cost of the creative life. In some strange way, for me at least, it is the the reward as well. The stock broker takes the same risks, as does the small business investor and the potential home owner. Somehow in that moment, right before the dice are thrown, you look out at your dreams spread on the Craps table of your life and you know you were right about the hard eight, somehow you just know.

In this case, I knew I wasn’t supposed to move. I had little to lay on the line except the threat of homelessness. Sometimes you put your last two $1 chips on the spot you hope will pay. If you don’t roll out, game over. The day before I had to sit in front of my Landlord’s Property Manager (LPM, I like to call him) the dice turned up double fours. A way was made, and I watched as everything came together in a living situation that will actually be quite a bit more inspiring than the one I am currently participating in (no offense to my current roomies: N.W.S.S). In my world, when I win, more than likely most everyone standing at the table wins with me. Our new living situation will hopefully give access to more dreams, manifesting our ideas into more chips to play with. Glad to be here Tacoma, we will ride this next roller out together. It seems like the more people we have standing at the table, the better the odds we have of going home happy.