Letter

Half an hour before showtime the line outside the Music Box stretched a good way down the block. We weren’t the most attractive bunch. A lot of bald spots, beer bellies, and numerous unfixable fashion faux pas. But we were excited. Because we were about to be the first people in town to see Paul Schrader’s new movie and he was going to answer our questions afterward.

The screening of Schrader’s First Reformed was part of the Chicago Film Critics’ Festival, so the high quota of ugly people was a foregone conclusion. There’s a reason film obsessives come alive in darkened rooms, where they themselves can’t be seen. Perhaps having been in more than my share of such rooms I have no room to judge, but I prefer to think what I’m doing is describing what I see. I’m certainly no better looking or more well-adjusted than any of the others in the neighboring seats.

First Reformed concerns a tormented priest, ecological apocalypse, and humankind’s hopeless longing for grace and meaning. Watching the movie I kept thinking of Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest and Schrader’s own Taxi Driver. The grappling with faith is in most of Schrader’s work, but it’s fully out in the open in this new one. I have little use for religion in my everyday life but find that some of my favorite art is consumed with it. I don’t know how to reconcile that but I’m not too bothered by the contradiction. Schrader’s belief feels genuine so I can accept it.

During the Q and A afterwards, Schrader talked about the influence of Bresson and other filmmakers, confirmed that there’s a lot of Taxi Driver in this new one, and expounded at length on many of the hidden symbols he’d embedded in the story. He was a polished and bemused speaker, ready with a quip to defuse every last pedantic audience query.

Outside the theater a guy I know came up and said I was looking biblical. He was talking about the beard I’ve let get out of hand. Maybe I’ve been growing it out to look the part of a pilgrim on Schrader’s spiritual quest. But more likely it is just a symptom of a person who has stopped minding his appearance, preferring to live vicariously through the flickering images on the walls of darkened rooms.

Skylark’s fifteenth anniversary party will be Sunday, May 6th. That’s a few days after I’m writing this and a day or more before you read it. A band will play and there’s supposed to be pizza. The festivities are to begin around 5pm. My regular Sunday shift doesn’t start till 8pm but I’ll get there early, in case the day bartender needs help. I love working at the Skylark but hate parties so I’m looking forward to this Sunday with a mixture of anticipation and dread.

The trouble with parties is that you’re expected to have a good time. I don’t do well with expectations or scheduled mirth. I always looked forward most to clearing the table at every family get-together growing up. There will be plenty of glasses to wash Sunday, that much I know. 

Last Sunday, a guy straight out of a blaxploitation flick walked into the bar. He had tinted shades, a pinky ring, and a wavy, styled head of hair, which may or may not have come from the store. He drank screwdrivers and told stories about his twenty-plus years in the rap game. He gave me his brand-new CD, the eleventh of his career. A lot of the numbers seemed to be about being a pimp, but he mostly wanted to talk about reuniting with his eighteen-year-old son. To hear Natalac tell it, his son’s mother had kept them apart for years. “I tell him he’ll be walking in my shoes, not hers, and he’s listening to me,” he says.

Then, a man who had repeatedly bothered a woman in the neighboring booth refused to leave the bar. He made a nuisance of himself to the point that police had to be called to escort him out. He kept saying he was friends with the owners and had done nothing wrong. The Skylark’s clientele is usually peaceful and well-behaved so this bozo was an anomaly. You’d think that if you were actually friend’s with the owners you’d respect a place enough not to make an ass of yourself and not show up the employees. A half hour after being bumrushed he had the gaul to come back in, claiming he’d forgotten something. When I told him to leave he was no longer arguing like before. He wanted me to apologize to his friend, the owner, for his behavior.

You meet all kinds at this bar. It’s one of the things I like best about the job. I don’t know if any pimps will show up for our anniversary party but hope that cops are not needed to deal with anyone who does.

I’m proud to’ve played a small part in the Skylark’s success and hope to work there for many years to come. 

I shared the stage at the Hideout once with legendary photographer Art Shay and legendary artist/actor/poet Tony Fitzpatrick for an event which was billed as an evening with legendary Chicago artists. I took my sketchbook up on stage figuring I’d be lucky to get a solitary word in with those two legendary talkers on the mics. The surprise was that Tony barely got a word in either. The then-93-year-old Shay has never let a chance to hold forth pass him by. I just sat back and tried to catch a likeness of the man doing his thing. Now he’s gone, no doubt busy telling St. Peter or whoever the gatekeeper is if there’s a hereafter, about his times knocking about the slums of Chicago with Nelson Algren or about his time fighting in Nazis in World War ll or about how much he loved his wife. With his passing one more link to the legends of the 20th century has been severed.

RIP Art Shay