Six years ago I hand-typed and illustrated a Stuart Dybek story for Independent Bookstore Day, so when Don asked for a poster for the Hall’s commemoration of that event this year, it felt like coming full-circle.
I love bookstores and books and Chicago, but I’ve never gotten the sense that I’m part of a larger literary scene or community. There are people like Don, or J.R. at Myopic, or Mandy and Katharine at Pilsen Community, who I’ve done stuff with. That Dybek project came about through someone at Open Books reaching out. But I’ve never had the sense of a continuum or anything enveloping or stable; an ecosystem of which I’m a part. It’s probably a defect of my personality.
I know that, to the small extent that people know my work, it is associated with this city. I feel proud when people say that. Like I’ve put in the time. But every morning, I get up and have to do my work alone. Making a poster connects me to whatever subject-matter it consists of——say, Independent Bookstore Day——but when that’s done, I’m back to being a guy alone in a room.
Maybe we’re all this way. You tell me. I went to a birthday party the other night where everyone else was part of the music scene. They had a way of talking to each other I couldn’t be part of. It didn’t make me feel bad or anything, just something I noticed. I tried to imagine a party where every guest is that way with me, but couldn’t fathom it. So, perhaps there is a vibrant Chicago literary/art scene that would welcome me with open arms if I knew how to ask. But I don’t know how to do that.
This past plague year has served to highlight how comfortable I am spending every waking hour alone in a room. It’s nice to be asked to do things, but if the offers stop entirely, there would still be a lot to do here. The walls aren’t closing in and I don’t feel left out. I obviously prefer it this way. But feel free to drop a line if you need something of the book or art variety. Or if you just want to tell me something. I always answer.
Korb rearranges the chairs at 4pm every Monday. He makes them all face the little makeshift stage in the back of the Albatross. It’s hours until anyone will show up to listen to his free jazz combo try the regulars’ patience by alternating squalls of piercing atonal brass notes with barely audible string noodling. But Korb measures the gaps between seats as if he’s at the Village Vanguard before Coltrane hits the stage.
I give the guy credit. His monastic devotion to a narrow definition of pure musical expression is sort of admirable, if a bit creepy. He’s a little white suburban kid who worships at an altar built of the frustration and struggle of the descendants of former slaves. What can Korb possibly contribute that doesn’t smack of imitation or outright thievery? Yet, it’s mostly guys like Korb, fanatical followers with little primal connection, who keep this stuff alive.
Mondays are slow at the bar, so when Korb asks Lon about hosting a music night it seems pretty low risk. The place is empty anyway. Why not let the kid invite his friends to play their weird music? Few of them drink much. They duck their heads into their coats to vape in between sips of dollar Old Style. But maybe if there are more of them it could be worthwhile.
The first night, Korb’s band clears the room in ten minutes. Even Bill, who will linger if there’s anyone at all in the bar to talk at, practically runs out the door. I lean my elbows on the bar and give in to the pain the three guys onstage are inflicting on their instruments. The three nearest chairs are occupied by their significant others. Tough to say whether they’re enjoying the sounds their mates produce. Pleasure isn’t the point. This is art. It’s supposed to be difficult, incomprehensible, unpleasant.
Korb hunches over his saxophone directing all the force he can summon through it, producing a tone which makes me imagine a particularly painful alien birth. His drummer scrapes and stabs at his kit with objects salvaged from the alley out back. The bassist mostly air guitars his upright’s strings while freeze-framing in various dramatic poses.
Afterwards, Korb passes his Kangol around for donations. Lon has given him an open tab for the night plus $50, so this feels wrong. Besides, does he expect his girlfriend to pay for listening? Should probably be the other way around. But guys like him never know that. He believes his audience, whoever it’s made up of, is given great privilege by witnessing him do his thing. He’s doing important work.
He sure as hell won’t get a dime out of me.
Since no one is ordering drinks, I sketch them playing. After a few weeks of Mondays I fill up half a book. There are now about a dozen faithful listeners and Korb’s combo isn’t the only one that performs. But the regulars know to clear out at 7pm sharp.
Things come to a head the night Korb loses it on a birthday party.
Three middle-aged women and their husbands are crowded in the booth furthest from the stage. They come in right after I open. They’ve brought a birthday cake, candles, paper plates. They order shots of Jäger before sitting down. They put candles in the cake, light them, and sing happy birthday. The birthday girl, dressed in a blouse for her 20-year-old self, blows them out with such force that she almost lands on the floor from the recoil.
They cut up the cake and bring me and the drinkers at the bar slices. Then a round of Old Style and more Jäger. They’re getting a little loud but not bothering anybody, so I let them be.
Korb walks in carrying his horn. He nods my way, puts his things down near the stage and starts to move chairs. He gives the party a dirty look now and then. It’s not even 5pm. The band starts at 7.
All the chairs now point toward the stage. Each table and place at the bar has a flier with Korb’s music schedule for the next three months. He lights tea candles and distributes them about the room. He skips the party, but they don’t notice. They’re scream-laughing as he passes them.
As 7pm approaches all the regulars clear out. A dozen young people in carefully chosen thrift-store garb cluster near the stage in the back. A few are talking to Korb and his bandmates. Some scribble intently in tiny notebooks, the rest stare into space. None are drinking.
The birthday party near the door is still raging, even though I’ve cut them off. The last three times any of them came up to order Jäger I offered pint glasses of water instead. They’d leave eventually. But not soon enough for Korb.
After setting up the instruments and passing the Kangol around the crowd preemptively, he marches over to the party and tells them to be quiet. He’s not yelling but his tone isn’t friendly. They stop for a second, look up at him in unison, then burst into laughter. Korb skulks back to the stage and proceeds to lead his combo in a paint-peeling half hour of improvised noise. The birthday party departs at about the halfway point, as they’re unable to hear one another even screaming. I fill up a couple sketchbook pages, then go pick up the dozen empty shot glasses, piles of paper plates, and crumpled napkins and wrapping paper.
Lon comes down just as Korb is packing up his sax. He gives him the customary $50, but says this is the last time. He tells me later somebody from the party, a former schoolmate it turns out, called and complained. After everyone else is gone, Korb sits slumped over his Old Style and complains that he’s been mistreated. That nobody understands his art. I pause a moment or two for sympathy, then go back to washing glasses.
Korb keeps coming in sometimes but he leaves the chairs where they are. The regulars have started to stay past 7pm again.
When someone asks about live music at the Albatross I tell them about Korb.
I got my second shot Wednesday morning, then went home and waited to be laid low, but nothing happened. A little soreness around the area where I was pricked, but not much else. I almost felt cheated. I spent the whole day watching movies.
The next morning I got up early and went to the airport to rent a car and drove to Michigan. It was my fourth trip to Dekker Bookbinding. There was no one available to help me load boxes because it was their lunch hour, so I drove to Russ’ for a piece of pie. I’ve eaten at this place every other time I’ve picked up books, so it would’ve been wrong to skip this part of my publishing ritual. I drove back to the dock and ate pie and drank coffee while waiting. A few minutes a young guy drove up a pallet with my boxes and we stacked them in the back of the SUV. The whole thing took less than five minutes.
I drove south to Kalamazoo to meet Jessi for coffee. We haven’t seen each other in over a year and a half, when she’d left Chicago for Michigan. She was the first friend outside a small circle I see regularly that I’ve seen in the flesh since lockdown. It felt normal, but also welcome. She bought a book, then we said goodbye and I drove back to Chicago.
I took advantage of the car and hit Rogers Park and Evanston to drop off book orders. I left them in foyers and mailboxes, handed them off into a few people’s hands. It’s the most time I’ve spent in a car since driving to Boston last fall, but because of the multiple stops, it reminded me of food delivery and cab-driving. I spent fifteen years doing those jobs, which now feels utterly unreal, absurd. How did I not kill a single person in all that time? Driving is a horrible thing for the human psyche.
I got home and unloaded the boxes, then returned to Midway with the car and took the Orange Line back. I was spent but satisfied with the day.
The next morning I packed and labeled out-of-town orders. It took hours. Thankfully, I passed a USPS truck en route to the mailbox and gave them my garbage bag full of packages. I spent the rest of the day biking books about. I hit Bucktown, Wicker Park, Logan Square, and Little Village. I caught up with old friends along the way. It felt like a holiday, as if I was Santa Claus.
I’m happy with how the book turned out. If it’s the last one I publish, I can live with that. We’ll see. Feels like the end of something in a way I need some time to get a grasp on.
