Letter

New drinkers marvel at our register. It sits like a monument towering over glasses and bottles on the back bar. They ask if we ever use it. After all, it’s an antique. But there are bills in the drawer. No one except Lon knows how much but they’re in there.

When I started at the Albatross he stressed that I should always ring up drinks. The left column of buttons goes up to $90; the right down to 00. cents. Hitting the total the register makes a satisfying sound. The mechanical sound of gears and wheels turning and colliding, culminating in the opening of the drawer. Except at the Albatross the drawer is never shut. That’s another of Lon’s rules: NEVER SHUT THE DRAWER. The key was lost decades ago so now he has to pry it open with a screwdriver, sometimes splintering wood in the process. Bending the fittings. The register doesn’t look so grand up close.

After my first few sales I noticed that the register tape moved in the little window and I could see the price imprinted into the paper but there was no ink visible. I told Lon but he said not to worry about it. He said not to count out at the end of the night either. Just take my hourly out, sweep up, and go home.

Throughout the night Lon comes back behind the bar and stares a moment or two at the register as if staring it down. He scoops out the $20s. He lifts the drawer to see if there are any larger bills and takes those as well. Then he disappears in the back. When I needs $1s or $5s or quarters he disappears back there as well.

Lon had me make up a pricelist for the bar but I’m the only one who sticks to it. When he’s working an Old Style is a buck for the old-timers but two or three for the newbies. Women drink for free more often than paying. Especially if they’re drinking alone. Free rounds are sent out on a whim. When he hits the keys on the old register it looks more like a slot machine. He pauses dramatically before slamming his finger down. Then watches the the total spin to a stop in the window.

Newcomers to the neighborhood order a round, then put a credit card on the bar, ask to start a tab. I want to laugh but patiently explain we’re cash only and to pay as you go. Lon has his own policies on that. Sometimes after one of his father’s old friends has put in hours, slumping eventually to the point of having to be roused, Lon comes around to where they’re sitting, helps them into their coats, and tells them what they owe for the night.

Few complain when I charge them more than Lon does. They know the prices at the Albatross are liable to be adjusted according to the owner’s state of mind. They don’t expect his employees to be as erratic and unpredictable. When he leaves to do his mysterious errands, which can last many hours, the regulars tell me stories about Lon. A few have known him since he was a little boy. They remember when he worked at the electronics store next door. The one that’s now a ramen shop. He’d bring transistor radios over and take them apart at the end of the bar. He always wanted to know how everything worked. He wasn’t so good at putting things back together.

Even now there are springs, gears, and dials scattered about the bar. Lon has long forgotten where they came from. I ask if I can throw them away but he says he will use them. When? For what? He can’t say. Out back he has five other cash registers in various states of disrepair. Does he think some other bar will ever want them? Most bars if they haven’t switched to a POS system prefer there to be ink for their register tape. They Z out their sales after every shift. They make the bartender count out the drawer and explain voids and overrings.

A few times a year Lon gathers a great pile of receipts and documents, throws them in a worn leather satchel and heads downtown to see his accountant. He tells me he’s three weeks late renewing the bar license and looks worried. Says the bar may have to close a few days. When he returns he says they somehow dodged a bullet again.

I keep ringing in drinks as if the $5s, $10s, and $12.50s are being totaled up by someone somewhere. Does Lon know how much the Albatross brings in? He pays the bills he can pay as they come in.

That satisfying sound the old register makes after adding up the charges might as well be one of those special effects from the movies.

I made a second collage book. It started from a folder kept by Brookline Public Schools with writing samples from grades 1 through 12. I didn’t start going to school in that town till 2nd Grade and for whatever reason there are no pieces of writing saved from 8th Grade on. I took out all the writing (for use later, perhaps) and made twelve collages from the manila separators.

‌The good thing about this folder is that since the sheets come out each page can be looked at as a separate picture as well as part of a larger whole.

‌

To break the ice I wrote a sentence or two. Whatever came to mind first about the corresponding school grade. These words don’t form a linear narrative page to page but are more of a way for me to begin. In some of the picture more of the text survives than in others. But they are neither secrets nor keys about the meaning of this book.

‌

Cutting up old drawings gives them a new life. This portrait cut in two might’ve languished in the flatfile for decades if I hadn’t used it this way. A few people have been troubled by my “destroying” old work but I think reusing pictures which chances are no one will ever look at isn’t destructive or negative. What use is anything which no one gets pleasure or insight or anything else from? Saving them for a hypothetical future when they’ll be appreciated seems like complete fantasy to me.

‌

I’ve been thinking about the wordless novels of Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, and others while making these books. How do you tell a story without words? Or what if the words are used the same as drawn or painted marks rather than carriers of literal meaning?

‌

As I finished each page I tacked it on the wall. I sat back and looked at the finished ones to help guide me in where to go next. In this way it’s no different than any other series of pictures I’ve ever worked on. The last one often suggests what comes after.

Four months into my collage experiment I think I’m starting to develop an alphabet. Just as a musician thrives within the restricted means of their instrument a painter confines himself to a chosen palette. I used more or less the same six colors for about thirty years. I know them backwards and forwards. But with scraps of paper, text, drawings, markers, ink, paint, glue, stamps, and various other flotsam the possibilities at first felt overwhelming.

‌

The trick, I think, is to see each element, whether found object or art material, as just a mark. So when one thing is added, if I’m paying attention, a corresponding reaction or counterpoint will become obvious or, at the very least, suggest itself.

Hiding things or covering them with something else is a big part of this work. With text especially, if left as is, there’s a danger it will dictate the viewer’s response. Fragments work much better when the intent is not to let sentences control what the work amounts to. Still, some of their old context inevitably bleeds through. It’s a real wrestling match sometimes.

‌

I spent the past ten years trying to make words work in books. Now it feels like that time is ending and I want to tell most of my stories through pictures again.

Much of my school years were miserable. Thinking about each grade didn’t bring back many fond memories. But scribbling and defacing school materials brings me back to primary activity back then. There are many more doodles and caricatures in my old notebooks than actual notes.

I listened to records I found at my parents’ place while working on this book.

This one felt different than the first. I’ll have to do at least a few more to see themes and tendencies clearly. With other series it sometimes took me a decade or more of working at it to see where it was going. But it’s a start and I will keep going.

Kelly Hogan is one of the dearest people in the world to me. But even if I didn’t know her I’d do what I could to push the new Flat Five record on you. Their music is a strangely insistent ray of light in the oppressive gloom of today. Buy it and you’ll feel like maybe we’ll make it through.

I enjoyed the new documentary about Dusty Groove. I met Rick Wojcik, the owner of the shop, at a craft fair where I was drawing pet portraits. He commissioned four paintings for the store. They’re still there today. The film gets at what records mean to people in a heartfelt way. I hope it receives some distribution and gains an audience.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of Nick Cave’s gut-spilling Q & A tour but whenever he sat down at the piano to sing I forgot about the oversharing  and remembered why I’ve loved his music so much since high school. Now he’s put out a double LP recorded live in an empty concert hall. Live records are usually not very good. Turns out the trick is to get rid of the audience. Who knew? Some of the songs move me to tears and I’m not a crier. So I’ll push this one on you as well.

I’m halfway through a re-read of Don DeLillo’s Underworld. I read it soon after it was published in 1997 but at that point all I’d written myself were homework assignments. This time I can appreciate the technical skill in addition to getting lost in his polyphonic portrait of America. I stop every few pages and wonder how he could compose on such a grand scale. It’s like he’s steering an ocean liner with just a couple fingers. The recurring theme of waste, of mountains of garbage, read as completely of the moment in 2020.

p.s. The president’s personal lawyer is sucking the last drops of blood from his malignant presidency. What will it take for these ghouls to realize they’re dead? Have some self-respect and sink into the earth already.