Letter

I try to catch the Handsome Family whenever they come back to town so when I booked my trip to the East Coast forgetting that I had a ticket to their show here, I wasn’t happy. The band helped me find a buyer for my ticket but that still meant I’d miss a band I love. Then a couple weeks ago I looked at their website and realized they were playing Milwaukee a couple days after my return to Chicago.

I texted my Sunday doorman from Skylark to see what a day’s car rental for a Tuesday might be—his other job’s at Enterprise—and asked him to book one for me. Then I emailed Rennie from the band that I wouldn’t be missing them after all. She offered to put me on the list but I told her I’d already bought a ticket. The one in Milwaukee cost a fraction of the Chicago one anyway.

I got to Milwaukee with a few hours to kill so I went to the art museum. I’ve still yet to witness the famous Calatrava wings opening or closing but enjoy that place anyway. It’s small enough that your eyes don’t glaze over from sensory overload after a visit. There was a good show of Goya prints, many with an eerie resemblance to the front page of the New York Times on most days in 2018. A couple great little John Marin oil seascapes and a Maurice Utrillo streetscape I kept returning to.

I found Shank Hall after a couple wrong turns, then, with a few hours still left before the show, I sat at a Starbuck’s to write up a review of some movie I now can’t remember. A woman in almost theatrically-exaggerated street urchin garb sat next to me and tried repeatedly to interrupt my work with her yammering. I learned without wanting to that she went by Gypsy out on the streets.

I arrived at the club at 9pm sharp and was the first customer. There was an oblong bar near the street-side window and a stage with some cocktail tables in the back. I took a spot next to a couple tables marked “Reserved” up front, ordered a drink, and opened my book. 

As opener Chris Crofton started his set, the “Reserved” tables were taken by some middle-aged couples. Rennie from the Handsome Family came and sat with them for awhile. One of the men kept peering at my sketch of Crofton, then blurted out that he wanted it. I don’t usually give away or sell pages from my sketchbook because I like to keep the books intact, but because the guy was so brazenly forward and was connected with the band I decided to make an exception. I took out my Swiss Army knife, cut the page out, and handed it to the guy. He seemed overjoyed and showed it off to all his friends. Then he left it on the table and walked away to sit somewhere else. 

I went back to drawing, trying not to be irritated, but the drawing sitting forgotten on the next table was like a magnet of bad feelings. I waited as long as I could stand, then snatched the drawing up and slipped it back into my sketchbook.

The Handsome Family played a lot of old favorites as they were celebrating the 20th anniversary of their great “Through The Trees” LP. The club wasn’t full and I don’t know how familiar the audience was with the band apart from that theme song from “True Detective” but I was just happy to hear them play a bunch of music I know by heart. I’ll always think “The Woman Downstairs” should be Chicago’s anthem.

Racing back home down a mostly empty interstate, I thought again about that guy asking for my drawing, then forgetting all about it. There have been many people who have paid me money for my work now but this jackass assumed that, not only could he have it for free, but it was perfectly fine to discard it once his attention drifted elsewhere. I thought about the great band I’d just listened to and wondered how much indifference they have to deal with as they go from town to town. My great advantage is that I rarely have to face the callousness head on because what I do isn’t a public performance. It’s lousy though and it makes me feel less of people.

—Here’s the conversation I mentioned recording with Gil Roth in a noisy NYC coffeeshop last week. Also, a review of William Inge’s Bus Stop. 

—I made some illustrations for this excerpt from a harrowing story of rape in Ghana. 

—Here’s a sketch of God Alone playing their record-release show. You can buy their LP which I painted the cover for here. 

Ever since I read an article about the imminent opening of The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation, I’ve been champing at the bit to go. I booked a flight for May but had to cancel it when their opening got pushed back. Then I wrote to the director to ask if they’d be open by July 11th and was assured that they’d show me around even if they weren’t yet letting the public in.

I landed at LaGuardia, took the shuttle to Alamo, and followed the Google Map directions I’d printed out over the Manhattan Bridge. My friend, Gil, who I’d planned to meet at the museum, texted that he was waiting at a coffee shop across Delancey Street, a couple blocks away. I parked a few paces past the entrance and Gil walked up a few minutes later. Workmen were busy installing a new front door to the former synagogue which used to house Resnick’s studio, so we had to wait for one of the staff to lead us in via a back door. In the lobby we were met by Geoffrey Dorfman, Resnick’s biographer and former student, and Nathan Kernan, the museum’s president. They led us on a tour, with Dorfman doing most of the talking.

A New York Jew straight out of central casting, Dorfman eyed me suspiciously as he asked what my interest in Resnick was. My saying I’ve been a fan since art school in the early 90s was met with wary acceptance, while the Russian Jewish heritage I share with Resnick may have actually earned me a few hard-won points. There were paintings from different periods on each of the three floors we saw. One of the distinctive qualities of Resnick’s work is that much of it is practically unreproducible. All the scale, texture, and presence is lost when reduced and flattened by the camera lens. This is true for all art but especially so for painting which depends on minute surface differences like his. I would’ve liked to’ve spent longer sitting in these rooms but our hosts had a museum opening to prepare for the following day so time was at a premium.

The last thing they showed us was a little alcove housing Resnick’s final studio. Works in progress were pinned to the wall along with doodles, magazine cut-outs, and notes. Brushes, paints, paper, and bric-a-brac took up the rest of the tiny room. A protective piece of fiberglass barred entry but Dorfman slid it out of its notched groove so we could walk in for a minute. The room just outside, used now for stacking chairs, was the artist’s last bedroom, in which he ended his life with his WW2 service revolver at age 87 in 2004. That fact followed us like a ghost as we bid our goodbyes and walked out into the humid NYC summer afternoon. 

Gil and I found a coffee shop nearby and took a table by the window. He set up a microphone to record our conversation. If he posts it, it’ll be my third time on his show. I drew his portrait as we chatted. Just outside the window two middle-aged beardos kept taking selfies together. It was a good time.

I drove Gil to the Upper West Side garage where he’d parked, then continued north toward Maine. My brother, Boris, and his wife, Blakeney, had invited me to visit their new summer house there. I’d printed out the directions but somehow missed a turn or two which took me needlessly through Rhode Island and added an hour and a half to the ride. Good thing I was in no hurry. I had to return my rental and Boris texted me he’d meet me in the basement of the Alamo but I was too tired or spaced out to get that Pee Wee Herman joke.

We spent much of my first day there wresting/repairing one of the porch screens. On breaks, I swam in the lake that is steps from the house. In the evening we went to a drive-in about an hour away to see The Incredibles 2. The fact that drive-ins still exist is a tiny bit of hope for this hopeless country in my book.

We woke at the ass-crack of dawn the next day to make the 7am ferry to Monhegan Island. We got there with minutes to spare and the car basically running on fumes, gas gauge past E. The boat ride was full of postcard views as was the island itself. I informed Boris and Blakeney I had no interest in hiking, then promptly followed them into the woods. We emerged covered in sweat and bug bites a couple hours after. We sat on a bench looking over the town and the neighboring Manana Island to recuperate.

A little museum next to the lighthouse was full of photos and artifacts from the many decades of artists’ time there. I learned to my surprise that Zero Mostel, who’d originated the role of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, was a regular visitor and avid, if not particularly talented painter. In one of the last rooms were a couple plaques, one for lighthouse keepers, the other for a job I’d never heard of. The fog keepers were listed going back to the 19th century, but it looked like the job had been eliminated in the early 60s. At the bottom of that plaque was a short list of Assistant Fog Keepers. I found Boris and told him that that sounded like the job for me. He went over and actually read the wall text and was about to inform me what it actually entailed but I stopped him, saying I preferred to make up my own job description. At a coffee shop near the dock I was happy to see my friend Chris Brokaw on the schedule of upcoming entertainment. It made me feel a bit of connection to this place which had otherwise felt so remote. 

The last morning in Maine I painted a couple views of the inside and outside of the house. I was thankful to have been invited to share my brother’s and his wife’s life for a couple days. It’s a privilege to get a peek into how others spend their time. I couldn’t imagine doing all the work they’ve done on this property or even owning property at all. But that’s the beauty of other people. They’ll show you worlds which wouldn’t occur to you in a million years.

At the airport I got news that my book of sketches and memories called Music to My Eyes will be published. Maybe I should get out of town more often.

Whet Moser heard of me before I ever heard of him. Researching a story on the taxi business for the Chicago Reader he stumbled onto my Hack blog. This was about ten years ago. Long before I wrote a book or even thought of writing one. Whet’s attention to my early writing efforts made me take them more seriously. It also made me make sure to read what else he was writing about.

His great gift is to assemble vast reams of facts and figures into concise, readable prose. A typical Moser piece might feature a pie chart or statistic—elements which usually make my eyes glaze over—but he manages to make sense of this data and to incorporate it into whatever story he’s trying to tell. Over the years many of his articles have concerned Chicago, so I was excited to learn he would be publishing a book about the city.

I get lots of press releases about forthcoming books so I figured the email from Reaktion Books was one of those. Instead it was a request to write a blurb. I answered immediately that I’d be honored to do it and received a link to a pdf a few minutes later. Moser’s book isn’t long—a couple hundred pages with lots of illustrations—but I’m a slow reader. I tore through it by the following afternoon. 

Moser traces the city from its beginnings to the present day through politics, food, infrastructure, architecture, art, and music. It’s a portrait which is wide-ranging yet idiosyncratic, as any one person’s portrait of a place must be. It’s a great gift to be presented with a take of the place you love. This is why anything about Chicago gets my immediate attention. It’s that better when it’s a thing like Whet’s new book, which handles its subject with wit and intelligence.

Getting to read this book made my week. Having a chance to help promote it a bit was icing on the cake. Anyone who cares about this contradictory but resplendent place will want a copy of their own. I look forward to my very own cloth, paper, and ink version when it comes out in October.