I’ve lived with the third-floor views from my apartment’s windows for the last five years. In two weeks I will be moving away. These paintings are documents of my time in this place.
A year ago, I was about to move to my new place. I’d ordered postcards to advertise/commemorate my old place on Lituanica. There was to be a show at the Rainbo Club that August. It didn’t happen, as so many other things didn’t.
Every place I’ve lived has had an impact on my work, but the little apartment on Lituanica marked one of the major transitions in my life. It was a change from cohabitation back to single life. There is no going back from the decision I made. It determined the course of my life going forward.
I remade my life without the expectation or hope of being with anyone ever again. There were a few slips, but for the most part, I’ve kept to myself these past six years. It’s been a productive time, a time of coming to terms and making peace with my limitations as a person among other people.
Before moving to Lituanica, I’d held on to some expectation of a traditional marriage/relationship situation, but that expectation died after five years of trying to fit myself into a mode I seemed allergic to.
That crummy little apartment allowed me to be myself, for better or worse. I wanted to celebrate it with a show of paintings and drawings done there. But the world had other plans.
When I look at the pictures that were to make up the Rainbo show, I don’t pine to move back——I like my current spot much more——but I recall what that place did for me. It was crucial. It mattered. It pointed a way forward.
p.s. RIP Monte Hellman, one of the true greats of the movies.
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.
