I damn near hung up on him again!

Yep, I came this close (imagine finger and thumb held apart by the very smallest of margins) to hanging up on SK tonight. I almost did it the very first time he called me too (which was just a bit over three years ago -- the 2nd or 3rd of Jan 2005 I believe). You see I really hate calls from telemarketers (even ones disguised as charity calls, especially because when you check most of the time the charity doesn't exist) and that's what I thought both of these calls were at first. But of course neither call was a telemarketer and I paused long enough not to hang up. I would have been so embarrassed to have hung up on him.

That very first call I was soooo not expecting and once I realised who it was I was having trouble talking, but my mind was racing -- "OMG! Steve Kilbey is on the phone...I'm talking to Steve Kilbey...Oh shit! I nearly hung up on Steve Kilbey!...How the hell did he get my number anyway?" (It actually took me a couple of weeks to figure that last bit out -- I had some trifold pamphlets made up to promote that first exhibit I had and after it was over I sent some to him. It had my phone numbers on the back. :-) ) Anyway, once the initial shock wore off I found him really easy to talk to, so we had a nice chat and by the end of the call I had become his art manager. That kinda boggled my mind -- still does sometimes when I think back on it. We had been emailing back and forth for several months so I wasn't totally wigged out talking to him. In a lot of ways talking to him on the phone is easier than doing emails because I don't have to think of everything all at once and I get feedback right away. Plus I can't agonise over a single sentence for hours which I tend to do when I write emails (and sometimes blogs and blog comments).

So during the call tonight we discussed a couple of commissions he is working on or had just finished and some of the other paintings he's recently done. I'm looking forward to seeing these pieces -- especially the one of David McComb which he's going to send to me for prints (he wants to keep the original). I wonder if we should do a signed, limited edition of that one -- I'll have to ask what he thinks of that idea. Then we talked about the exhibition I'm working on. I'm so glad he called because I had been thinking earlier today that my motivation was just about nil. Yeah I wanted to have an exhibition, but I just couldn't find it in me to give a shit about any of the details. Well now I'm back to being all excited about it. If we (a lot of it me, but that's what I'm here for) can get this to work the way we envision it will be a very cool exhibit. It does push back the date a bit -- I had originally thought of March for it, but that is waaay too close now, so it's looking more like May. I have to make sure I can get the space for then, but if not then we'll just do it another month. We aren't wedded to any particular month. The warmer months will also give us better traffic so that will be good.

I'll almost certainly blather on more about this as it starts to take shape. I'll probably bitch and whine a lot too. ;-)