Why Balloons?

I hate introductory blog posts, but I've wanted to write about this particular subject for a while, and it's introudctoryish, so here goes.

Hello! I'm Ari. I'm a balloon artist. If you've ever seen someone make a balloon doggy, well, that's essentially what I do for a living. One of the most common questions I get is, "How does one become a balloon artist?" I'm going to answer that in a bit, but I'm also going to focus on a related and far more entertaining question: "Why does one remain a balloon artist?" And because I'm of a younger generation that hates commitment to earnest expression, I'm going to give you a few different answers. Are you not excited?

This donkey is excited.

The Validation Explanation

Balloon entertainment is addictive as all heck. There are a lot of fun aspects to it, but the truly cruelly addictive part is the validation you receive.

Have you ever spent a lot of time hard at work on a project, finished it, and then been frustrated that you don't receive compliments and congratulations commensurate with your time, effort, skill, and dedication? Did you hate that? God you hated that.

We're social animals, and half the reason we do anything at all is to have someone tell us that we're pretty snazzy The great thing about balloon entertainment is that it goes beyond people telling you you're the correct amount of snazzy for the work you put in; people think you're the snazziest, even though you're fairly low on the snazzy totem pole.

Part of the reason for this is that so many people have never seen anything beyond the most absolute novice, dogs-and-swords level of balloon art. But it's also remarkably easy to get beyond that level. You can start doing teddy bears and dinosaurs and monkeys with just a couple days of practice, and I got to the "You're amazing!" point after about a month. (And that's with teaching myself balloons from YouTube videos and being secretly really really clumsy with my hands; I've taught other, more dextrous people far more quickly.)

So if you want to put a small amount of work in and get complimented daily on how amazingly talented you are, balloon art is the career for you! And who doesn't want validation far out of proportion to the work they put in? I mean, besides people with reasonable self-esteem, a work ethic, and an aversion to feeling like a bit of a fraud. Those people don't really count.

The Skills Mismatch Explanation

What's that? You'd like me to veer wildly from a cynical explanation where I call myself a lazy insecure fake to one where I talk about the wondrous character building and philosophical superiority I've achieved? GET OUT OF MY BRAIN.

It's tough for me to talk about it without feeling like a kind of douche-y self-help-book guy, but this has become a very important concept to me; having natural talent is great to have, but even if you have it,  hard work and repetition are what give you actual skills.

Somewhere on my personal FB page there is a photo album of my first balloon animals. They are terrible. Dogs with overlong giraffe necks, dogs who weren't meant to be dachshunds, dogs who were meant to have heads. I am not naturally talented at sculpting balloons into shapes. I'm not sure anyone is, really, but if anyone is, it's not me.

Seriously, this was my first documented attempt at a balloon animal. 

Earlier, I mentioned that I'm clumsy with my hands. This is very true. When I was a younger lad (though near as tall), my parents enrolled me in Occupational Therapy to improve my hand-eye co-ordination. (I remember it as That Fun Place Where I Played Catch With Small Beanbags.) I'm still pretty oafish. Even today, after two years of balloon twisting, I managed to scratch myself on my hand with my other hand while making a shark). In fact, I didn't learn to tie my shoes so they stayed tied until I was 30. The secret for me, apparently, was to go back to double knotting the laces. Sometimes in life, the method you learned when you were 5 is the only method you're ever going to be able to master.

But sometimes, maybe even mosttimes, you need to keep pushing yourself to find new things you're pretty sure you can't do, and then goddamn do them anyway. And having managed to do so at least once in my life, it's pretty gratifying to go out there and twist balloons into the shape of a panda and know that I not only worked hard to get here, but had to work harder than someone with reasonable dexterity.

The Last Resort Explanation

Once, a friend of a friend asked the driver of an ice cream truck how one becomes the driver of an ice cream truck. He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then said, "Sometimes, you hit rock bottom. When you have nowhere else to go, that's when you become an ice cream truck driver." Then he drove away.

I have given similar answers to the question of how I got into this line of work. I get a big laugh despite the fact that I say it like I mean it. And I say it like I mean it because it's kind of true. It's not that balloon entertainment is a particularly hard job to master. It's just that most people have something better to do with their time than learn it. I didn't.

Gotta be crazy as this hamster to twist balloons as a career.

When I started twisting balloons, I was really just looking for something to do. A friend of mine had dumped her live-in boyfriend, he'd moved out, and she needed someone to take over the lease.  I needed a change of pace, so I moved to New Jersey and roomed with her for a while. I was playing poker online for a living, but this was after the poker bubble burst (a story for another time), and I knew I needed a new job. However, I had no real skills. I had half of a useless English degree, and most of my work experience involved telephone sales.

Have you ever worked in telephone sales? If you weren't crazy enough to out-loud respond to that question, then you probably aren't cut out for the job.

I wasn't, of course, actually at rock bottom. There are many people who have fewer prospects than I had then. But I really, really, really didn't want another regular job. I don't deal particularly well with authority, I have trouble motivating myself to make a sacrifice for the future (and the next biweekly paycheck can seem like a far future, to me), and I get bored quickly. I'm only in my 30s and I've been fired by 15-20 different companies.

So when my roommate told me that she'd met a guy who was a balloon artist, that was all I needed. I bought some balloons and a pump and logged onto YouTube and off I went.

Last summer, I performed balloons in Central Park (another few blog posts to come on THOSE stories), and the other street artists were... well, let's just say they were a colorful bunch. After my first weird-but-not-yet-scary run-in with Racist Elmo, I turned to The Girlfriend and said, "Am I the only sane guy here?" She responded, "Honey, yes, of course. You're also the only employable guy here. These folks, they can't get other jobs. You're the only person here by choice." (She speaks in italics, The Girlfriend does. At least, when she has a great point. And I'm relaying it. And remembering what a great point it was.)

Racist Elmo, the many portrait artists with limited English, the Balloon Godfather, The Russian (and his mail order bride)... all these folks have nowhere else to go. And when God gives you lemons, well, damnit, you see if you can start a career in lemonade art.

Other Explanations Include, In Short:

1. I love kids.
2. I'm good with kids.
3. You get to be a kid yourself!
4. Jobs where you make something are pretty cool.
5. Even when those things don't last very long.
6. Or maybe especially when those things don't last very long? (Blog post idea!)
7. You get a lot of free restaurant food.

That's it for now, but more musings on why I do what few do when I think I've got a post's worth.

Later!
-Ari