Letter

I cracked up when I saw the name of the show. I wonder who thought it up. Makes me happy there are Millennials into Marvin Gaye. I thought back to taping “Sexual Healing” off FM radio, not knowing what it was about, but getting a clue when I heard it was my classmate’s mom’s favorite song.

Textual Healing is a podcast for writers talk to about books and music. I listened to a few episodes, then wrote to the host. All the guests were young and their music tastes didn’t necessarily jibe with mine, but I felt some kinship with their overall attitude. They had few illusions about lit world success. Most paid their rent some way other than selling books. I could relate.

To my surprise, Mallory wrote back within a day, saying she’d love to have me on sometime. A couple weeks later, she came by to pick up some books. The walls were covered in the collages I’d been making and she and her boyfriend, Bulent, seemed to be into them, even asked about buying one. They were nice people. They made me glad I’d reached out.

Mallory sounded shocked at my age. Said I was more like what she thought thirty is supposed to be like. She’s thirty, but said she feels a lot younger. Does anyone ever truly feel their age? I’ve felt like a fortysomething my whole life.

Mallory runs an online magazine and indie publishing concern called Maudlin House. By reading a few things there and following a few author and social media links, I got to know a whole community of young writers and artists. They do it all themselves, kind of like I do.

We recorded our talk in January. The conversation was easy, digressive in the way friends’ talk often is. That was a surprise, since we barely know each other. I asked about the name of her show. She said a friend came up with it and that I was the first to ask about it. I wondered how many guests or listeners knew what it was a pun on.

Absent a return to social media or hiring a publicist, podcasts and lit mags are my best chance to get word out about my books and art. Maudlin House ran a chapter from the new book this week.

Maybe the kids are alright after all. They’ve been really nice to me in any case.

p.s. There’s a recording of a very early version of what would become Old Style. It was recorded in 2013 at the Butcher Shop by John Forbes, with Bill MacKay on guitar, Charles Rumback on drums, and Daniel Thatcher on bass. I still have a couple CDs of the full recording, with unique drawn or painted covers, should you be interested.

p.p.s. I made another collage book.

It’s almost baseball season, so I made a book about baseball. Actually, the book this used to be——of which, only the covers and a few pages remain, though most are covered by drawing and collage——is about baseball, whereas what I made is not about anything I could tell you in words.

After months of having to try to make sentences make sense, to have them add up to something narratively in a book, it’s a relief to make something that functions almost entirely via intuition. There’s an internal logic to the way each page interacts with the ones before and after it, but I don’t have to verbalize it, either to myself or to others.

The Three-two Pitch was a book I picked up at a rummage sale. I liked the drawing of the pitcher on the cover with the old-school high leg kick wind-up. I flipped through the pages and was disappointed not to find any more illustrations inside. It’s one of those aspirational sports books marketed to young boys, from the few sentences I bothered to read. I put it on the shelf face out and forgot about it for a couple years.

Since I started on the collages sometime last year, unread unused books look like possible material for art. I’ve got five or six that I won’t ever read and can’t imagine anyone else wanting to read. They’ll become the ground or under-painting for new compositions. I assemble them page-to-page, trying to catch what one suggests for the next, echoing or counterpointing, keeping a rhythm going.

I think I can keep going this way for a bit, not having to make sense to anyone, because it feels right, even though I can’t say how or why.

p.s. Look at all the spreads in The Three-two Pitch here.

Frank texted to ask if I wanted to teach a couple drawing classes at his school. A coworker tore a rotator cuff and was facing surgery, physical therapy, and significant time off. The semester was already underway and they were in a pinch.

I started typing a response, then stopped. I’ve had a couple students over the years, but have never taught a drawing class. Still, forty years of doing a thing almost every day should count for something. I asked how long it would be for and Frank said a month or so. Before I knew what I was doing, I said yes. Then the worrying began.

In 1994, I went to grad school for painting. The idea was to get a master’s so I could teach. Within a month I realized I was done with school and didn’t want to be part of school in the future. I dropped out and went back to driving a cab. Over the following twenty-seven years, many people suggested I should teach. They said I’d make a good teacher. Frank was one of those people. Why any of them thought so, I don’t know. I never felt like a good teacher after the private lessons I gave. I couldn’t tell whether what I’d told my student made any impact or difference.

I was never a good student myself. I fought almost everything every teacher tried to say. Maybe that’s why I assume anything I say to a student will fall on deaf ears.

A week or so after saying yes, I went in for a formal interview with an administrator at the school. I filled out paperwork and posed for a school ID. It all happened very quickly.

Frank sent me the syllabi for my two classes, as well as a bunch of supplementary material, including something called The Elements of Light. It was for the beginning drawing class, the one in which the poor kids have to draw a still-life made up of a cube, a ball, and a cone. But the page reads like a series of aphorisms.

All forms will have a dark tone

Can a kid who never took a drawing class handle something so heavy? Can I?

Beware——cast shadows can destroy other forms that they land on

My first class is in figure-drawing. Four students and a nude model. I tell them I’ve been coming into rooms like this since I was sixteen. That drawing the nude model changed my life, but that it never gets easier, so don’t get discouraged.

In the beginning drawing class, we talk about the cube, ball, and cone. They all want to use their rulers to draw, thinking it will make their drawings “accurate”. It doesn’t, but I don’t tell them. It’s too soon to burst bubbles.

After the second figure-drawing class, I stop to talk to a student tacking her homework up in the hallway. It’s a copy of an old-master portrait drawing. She’s not happy with it.

When I ask what she thinks will make her portrait a success, she says:  When it is recognizably of a human. I tell her this is a damn good goal. Walking out to catch the shuttle to the train, I think that I’ve always had the same goal, though I’ve never put it into words.

Often gets a little lighter near the edges