I don't want to pray to the beautifully decorated idol you are praying to

We are looking for an apartment, tramping up dark stairwells to lean into rooms, another strange place full of odd smells, another makeshift life exposed. Laundry being folded that sits on a stray chair, an aging tea kettle in the corner, big beds squeezed into tiny rooms. But we meet each one with an open heart, with some hard-fought belief that this just might be our future slice of heaven, a doorway waiting to measure how tall V gets, scratching a new mark every few months.

Deep in a neighborhood called Saburtalo, a statue looms tall in a stretch of grass that divides a great street called Vazha Pshavela.

“Who is that?” I ask Irakli, my wife’s cousin.

“Vazha Pshavela.” He answers. “The poet.”

An odd smile stretches across my face.

Maybe I am too used to statues for generals, presidents, and war heroes.

I think every artist thinks about legacy, a book poised on a shelf long after they are gone. A collection of paintings, a photo exhibit, a novel, a symphony, a reel of film, a magnificent album. As much as people that create are looking for a captive audience, they grow to look far into the distance as they get older. The question “what will I leave behind?” hangs in the air on some days, but there is never an answer. This is all fantastical thinking. The only answer is just to do the work, and keep your head down. Not everyone belongs in a museum. Stay in the game, or call it quits, it is all up to you and there is never a promise of attention. For that you just need luck and there is no way to manufacture that. If you want to get struck by that lightning, you have to stay out in the field.

The name Vazha Pshavela, the person, the story - they are all unknown to me. I begin to dig, and learn that this was just his pen name. He was born Luka Razikashvili, in 1861. I think of my friend Jack Micheline, the beat poet of beat poets, who was born Harold Silver. Maybe he had to change his name, to find it in him to write “Beauty is everywhere Baudelaire/even a worm is beautiful/the thread of a beggar's dress/the red eye of a drunkard on a rainy night chasing the red-haired girl.”

I think legacy depends on relevance. Jack knew what it was to chase a red-haired girl, and so do I. Maybe that is why it sticks with me, gnawing at my ear.

Jack died a good many years ago. I remember walking down 5th Avenue when I got the news, almost stepping right into traffic as a taxi screeched to a halt, the driver yelling at me but I could not even hear them. Just thinking of Jack and how my friend Tracie and I took him for what was his last dinner in New York that night, not that we could have imagined it would be. He gave us a lecture about how onions must be fried before you put them on a burger, never raw.

I remember it all.

---

V is tired from climbing stairs and waiting for real estate agents to arrive with keys and I don’t blame her. We head back, no closer to finding an apartment than we were a week ago. Another exhausting, soul-crushing no.

After a late lunch, I find myself arguing once again about AI “art” as I struggle (and fail) to contain my online self, as people post poems written by chatbots, saying “hey they’re pretty good!” As illustrators and audio engineers get replaced by free AI sites that will create endless revisions - the wild idea of legacy appears again, stinking of our modern world, this absence of dignity, this absence of a moral compass, this gospel of celebrity, this worship of charisma, style over substance and I feel as old as Pshavela.

Who will be the subject of the next statue? An algorithm? Will there be streets named after TikTok? Will we name a playground after a Spotify playlist curator? These are the people that tell our stories now. Midjourney highway will take you there. Take a left at ChatGPT square, you can’t miss it.

Dear readers, I leave you with a quote from Vazha Pshavela, which I find remarkable, as relevant as the day it was written, over 100 years ago.

"Freedom is favorable for the living, not for the dead. It is expressed in the trust-aspiration of a person; Freedom is an action, an exercise of will, thought, feeling, and not rest, being idle. The freedom of the individual and the nation are closely related to each other. Where the individual is not free, the nation is enslaved, and in an enslaved nation, of course, the individual is also a slave, unfree, a toy in someone else's hands.

What is the need for freedom there, when my work brings someone else? Will someone else own the fruit of my work against my will, with my permission? I cry, he laughs, and only disgust for the predator and a sense of revenge boils and spills out of me. I want to study and I am not allowed; I want to establish a university at my own expense and they refuse me; and others and others...

I don't want to pray to the beautifully decorated idol you are praying to.

- Vazha-Pshavela