Letter

Irvine texted to see if I’d fancy a movie. He’s from Scotland so he uses words like fancy as verbs. I was free but had seen most of what was out there that I’d wanted to see. I suggested Thor: Ragnarok only because it was directed by the guy who made What We Do in the Shadows, but he’d already seen it, so we went to LBJ. 

Irvine was sawing logs before the fifteen minute mark—just about the time I was fighting the impulse to leave—but his gentle snoring kept me put. So I was forced to keep watching poor Woody Harrelson try his darnedest to emote through the various prosthetics plastered to his mug. It was hard to believe that this snoozefest was made by the guy who made This is Spinal Tap, but then again both films are send-ups of something or other.

Afterward, we wandered around downtown looking for a place to eat and wound up at some new-fangled taco joint on Lake. We talked a bit about the movie, both agreeing it was a dog but also remarking on how even the worst racist Dixiecrat on screen came off as a dignified statesman compared to the parade of assclowns we’re subjected to these days. We talked about the sex scandals. He said there’s a photo of him hugging Harvey Weinstein out there somewhere. I bet there are thousands of photographs like that being burned, erased, or deleted as we speak. Weinstein made a lot of people rich and famous and no amount of distancing will make that history go away. We saw a preview for the J. Paul Getty movie before LBJ. That’s the one which is now being reshot with Christopher Plummer replacing Kevin Spacey. It’s a weird Orwellian thing that we’re doing, trying to scrub the past and present clean.

Irvine has his own fish to fry. He was in town because he’s going through a divorce and lawyers are in the process of divvying up property and assets which include his soon-to-be-former Chicago home. It’s a shame I won’t see him much anymore but that’s the way life goes. This is what he tweeted about our dinner: 

I’m with a friend who has been off social media for three years. And the fucker is 500 times happier. And thinner. Cunt.

He exaggerated both my happiness and any weight loss, but he was sweet to do so. It got 1.5K likes and a couple hundred retweets. Glad I can still be good fodder for the old social networks.

As bad as LBJ was, something about those outsize historical figures kept eating at me. Maybe it’s because we’re in another one of those periods where powerful people are being felled. In a few decades there will be a boring biopic about the Trump Years too, but for now it’s all too raw and fresh and seemingly-important. I don’t know what will be remembered and what will be forgotten but I hope we stop trying to obliterate and obscure the sins of our disgraced leaders and heroes. There are lessons to be learned from their failures which will not be learned if we pretend they never even existed.

This is in no way an argument to defend Weinstein, Louis CK, Spacey, or any of the dozens of other men whose careers will justifiably be ended because of the way they abused their power. But condemning what they did and removing them from history are two very different things. I ran into my old friend Andrew at the Bottle a few days after seeing Irvine and he wanted to talk about the scandals as well. He didn’t like the desperate efforts at a do-over either but seemed more concerned about whether someone might come forward and accuse him of harassment. He said he felt he was safe but had a worried look in his eye. As for me, on this account my conscience is completely clear.

What these men have done, worse than any sexual assault, is abuse their power. They took advantage of their position to force others to pleasure them and they’ll burn in hell for it. I have no clue how I would have acted in their place. I’ve never felt in control of another human being in my life. To be honest, I hope I never have to find out.

In Rob Reiner’s movie, LBJ is portrayed as a tragic, power-hungry monster and elicits sympathy. But none of our current monsters make me feel that way. They need to pay for what they’ve done but we shouldn’t forget them, because they’re our monsters and they did not spring from the earth fully formed. We made them and we’ll make many more before we’re done.

p.s. I wrote one last time about Vivian Maier...

p.p.s. You can now buy one of those Mute Duo CDs I designed on this page.

My friend Bill has lived in the same building for twenty-five years but now has to move out. It’s a fourteen-story brick high-rise steps from the lake in Rogers Park. The only time I visited him at home a few years back, the apartment and the building as a whole reminded me of my first place in Chicago. It was a mile and change south of Bill’s, at the corner of Foster and Sheridan. Like his, mine had patterned carpeting everywhere and vaguely Orientalist fixtures and decor. If you’ve been to the Music Box Theatre, picture that but as a building full of tiny apartments. Mine was once a residential hotel and, in 1990-91, when I lived there, had a run-down seedy David Lynch vibe too it, down to flickering hall lighting. 

I don’t know if Bill’s building was ever a hotel, but he was forced to move from his apartment on the twelfth floor because of water damage. Now, barely a year later, he’s moving out altogether.

The obvious selling point of places in this building is the view. Depending on which way the windows face, one is afforded vistas of water to the east, Evanston to the north, or the seemingly endless grids of Chicago to the south and west. Bill has taken a photo out his window nearly every morning for the past few years.

Yet, even with a collection of hundreds of photos, he wanted some more permanent or tangible way to memorialize what he saw out his windows all these years. So he asked me to make a painting. Over three afternoons last week, I worked up the picture you see above. I put the finished version first, then process shots of the previous two sessions, so you get some idea of how it came together. 

It’s strange to spend time in someone else’s place when they’re not there. All the more so when that place is in a state of transition. I asked Bill before starting whether he wanted any of the interior incorporated in the picture but he said he didn’t. If he had, there would be packing tape, cardboard boxes, and half-empty shelving. It was not yet someone else’s home, but it was beginning to no longer be Bill’s.

Even though I haven’t lived with this view for twenty-five years, looking out these windows these three afternoons made me feel like a part of this particular place at this particular time. This is why I prefer working from life to anything else. Even if the view is someone else’s, there’s no replacing the experience of taking it in with your own eyes.

Bill’s new pad doesn’t have a vista to enjoy. He told me he plans to hang my painting next to the living room window to remind him of the old place. I hope what I came up with will serve as the reminder he was hoping for. Having spent a little time in his old place, the view he knows better than anyone has, in some small measure, become mine as well.

 

—Got some marker drawings of Pilsen up for sale at Pilsen Community Books. Ring them if you’d like one.

—I wrote about two very troubling art shows which celebrate the centenary of the Soviet Revolution.

—I’ve been invited to read from my cab books at this reading at Taxi Town on Wednesday. Have no clue if anyone will show up, but it’s already been worth it because I got to see their amazing website. In case you’ve ever doubted the importance of apostrophes, it will set you straight. (Though I’m glad they’re so concerned about cabbies’ orgasms…)

—RIP Fred Cole.

The first thing I put on when my shift starts is “Damn the Torpedoes”. I’ve been taking out CDs from the library and copying them to iTunes ever since I started bartending at the Skylark so I could have a wider range of music to play Sunday nights. They let you take ten out at a time and I figure they’ll probably eliminate them altogether before too long so I better take advantage in the meantime. It’s a chance to listen things I don’t know, forgot, or don’t like enough to pay for.

Tom Petty was already around when I first began choosing what music to listen to on my own. He was on MTV dressed as the Mad Hatter, singing for me not to come around there no more. Before that he was getting out of a dusty spaceship singing about how I got lucky. He looked like a praying mantis skulking around. Even in close up it felt like he was far away. The wide-set eyes, pencil-thin nose, and big mouth full of teeth was sort of skull-like, but not menacing exactly, just remote and knowing. Spectral. His songs were on the radio all the time back in the 80s, which was the last time I listened to music on the radio.

I got a couple of his CDs from the library after he died. I never bought any before and figured now was the time to give them a shot. The songs stand up a lot better than much of the roots-rock Americana he’s usually lumped in with. I doubt I’ll be going back to Springsteen or Mellencamp when they pass. The working-class hero act doesn’t age so well in my book. Petty was always his own thing. His laconic tunes became anthems without trying to be, the way some of those other guys’ ones often seemed to overreach and oversell their authenticity.

A young man sitting by the taps, nursing a Schlitz tallboy, slurrily sings along from the first verse of “Refugee” on. He asks if I like Petty and I nod sure. Says he got to see him live a couple times and is shocked when he hears I never did.

—Those guys are like athletes. They really cranked it out.

He goes back to singing along badly as I walk away.

—I can’t believe what a big deal everybody on social media makes when famous people die these days. I mean, he was like sixty! I’m thirty now and I probably won’t make it to forty.

Be careful, I tell him, you might surprise yourself and live to old age the way Petty did. He asks how much the Pabst is and orders one when I say it’s $2.

—I’m poor.

I ask Jesse if he saw Sam doing shots with the guy. Jesse shrugs and says Sam does shots with everybody. The next time I pass him he seems a lot drunker than he was moments ago. He asks how much the free shots are. I say at our prices we’d go broke giving away the bar.

—But you know the bossman’s getting rich, right?

He doesn’t believe me when I assure him the bossman really isn’t getting rich. He’s teetering on belligerent now and takes forever gathering his belongings to leave once it sinks in he won’t be getting one on the house.

Petty’s record ends and I put on something else. The guy takes another five minutes fumbling with his zipper by the door before finally walking out.

RIP Tom Petty.