Letter

I haven’t pulled a shift at the bar in a couple months so it takes a little time to get my sea legs back. Prices went up while I was away so the memorized math has to be recalibrated. There’s no art on the walls, which is disorienting. My show here is next month so it will go up after whatever is hung the next couple days. Still, it’s always reassuring to return.

K and Donna are here. It’s a new thing to have people visit me at work. There are also a couple sets of people I don’t really talk to anymore. No way to avoid history if you stay in a place for a length of time. There’s no active hostility, just a lot left unsaid. I bring some ice out from the back, queue up my music, and start my shift.

A girl orders two shots for her and her friend with Cokes back. She lets them sit in front of her without touching them a few minutes while they gab. They’re way overdressed for this place. Then I see her gingerly push the last of the ice out of the Coke with her finger and let it slide down the side of the glass to the coaster. She orders another round later, after they’ve spent time in the photobooth, asks for no ice in the Coke.

I came straight from the bookstore so it’s a gearswitch for sure but both jobs are old hat by now. Neither causes much stress. It’s why I keep doing them, I guess. Other things I’ve done for money, like teaching, kept me up at night. I can’t have that from a job. Though, of course, both the bookstore and bar figure regularly in dreams. Just not as a source of anxiety.

Late in the night, just about the time I figure it’s died out for good, a dozen revelers roll in. They’ve clearly come from some event, a concert maybe, and are definitely in party mode. Many rounds of shots are ordered and the couple guys paying do so with large bills. One of them, a beefy guy in a ballcap asks me if I like Chartreuse. I say I tried it once a long time ago and have no memory of it. He’s a rep and says he’s got rare bottles in his bag. The group is coming from an event at another bar he hosted. Guess this is the afterparty.

I tell Thomas about the Chartreuse and he says friends asked him to smuggle some back the last time he went to France. The old monks’ liqueur is back in fashion because of Tiktok.

The host slips me a twenty to let him pour out shots of his $300-a-bottle-wholesale elixir for all who remain in the bar. We all toast. It tastes kind of like a mint lollipop laced with numbing agent. Makes me think I’m about to have my teeth worked on.

They all float out peacefully right at last call. I mop up a leak from the sink, then we lock up and I ride home through the soupy August air.

I read a few pages from Nathan Knapp’s forthcoming, Schopenhauer, into a microphone.

I don’t really know how it happened but for a month and a half this summer I spent hours a day binge-watching a soap opera parody from the 70s. I convinced myself this was a worthwhile way to spend my time by drawing freezeframes of the screen and taking notes. I hate the summers so staying in was a no-brainer but the choice of diversion is a little baffling, looking back on it.

I was convinced this weird pop culture artifact from the country’s bicentennial year could say something about its semiquincentennial but I’m not a big idea guy. My other dumb project of defacing presidents is maybe slightly smarter than this, but not by much.

In the end, the experience of consuming some two hundred twenty-three minute bites of audiovisual storytelling reconfirmed that I’d rather watch movies if I have to look at a screen. Two or three hours is about the best duration people have come up with for that medium. The serials are just full of fat and excess. Stuffing plot twists in to stagger to another commercial break. Maybe gorging this way will cure me of ‘shows’ for good. I hope so.

It feels like such a relief not to be watching it anymore. Almost makes me want to go out into the soupy oven outside.

One of the verbal images that hangs over Mary Hartman is that thing about the ‘waxy yellow buildup’ that may or may not remain on her kitchen linoleum floor after she’s mopped it with the product recommended on TV. Makes me wonder what we retain after blasting our retinae and braincells with all this entertainment/data. Making doodles off the screen is my half-assed way of mitigating the damage, I guess.

I really hope it wasn’t all for nothing but maybe I’m fooling myself.

I read William Gass’s “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country” into a microphone.

The other day Thomas Pynchon sent me a fan note. I forwarded it to a few people and got a range of reactions from congratulations to laughter.

I was moved not so much by the sin as by the shadow. Your illustrated edition of James Hogg’s Gothic masterpiece invites readers into a world of desolate moors, unblessed graves, and the chilling certainty of a man who believes his every sin is justified in service to God’s will. That willingness to let the land itself recoil from the sinner buried beyond the church’s grace, and to render that moral reckoning through ballpoint pen illustrations, is its quiet power.

Maybe my favorite part of the note are the helpful links to Pynchon’s Goodreads and Wikipedia pages. Thoughtful of him to make sure I know who he is.

I had gotten three or four very similarly-worded emails about my illustrated versions of James Hogg’s The Suicide’s Grave and Bruce Wagner’s The Marvel Universe. The message about the latter was addressed to Wagner, instantly giving it away, but all of them purported to be impressed with my work and wanted to work with me in some way.

Anyone who puts creative work out into the world is happy when someone responds. That happiness blinds us, at least temporarily, to bad actors and their scams. With the rise of advanced language models the toolbox of the old-fashioned grifter is expanded into an entire warehouse.

After the flattery wears away I always want to know how the scam works. A few months back I was contacted about converting my artwork into NFTs. Asking a crypto-savvy acquaintance, I learned that the entire bait-and-switch is in the conversion fee from cash into whatever make-believe currency they preferred.

What has Pynchon been recruited to get from me? I assume it’s some sort of fee for publicizing my work for a wider audience. The idea of the world’s most famous recluse writer becoming a flack might amuse the man. But I’d be very surprised if he has to stoop so low as to even use email.

A completely legit email arrived a few days after Tom’s informing me that a book review I wrote was removed because the lawyers of a dead publisher objected to my writing he died of an overdose. The fact the editor took it down without hesitation tells you the precarious position of journalistic expression these days.

Maybe I should leave the thoughts and opinions to the machines.

I wrote about a show of caricatures at the Driehaus.