Letter

On the Orange Line downtown the other day a woman caught my eye. I think she got on at LaSalle or Quincy. She had corkscrew curls which went blond at the ends and wore a furry black coat. But the first thing I noticed was the ornamental button on her cuff. It was a large ceramic thing, glazed shiny turquoise like Southwestern tourist pottery. She sat down and immediately buried her nose in a Facebook scroll on her phone. I didn’t even see her face until several minutes later, after she’d felt my eyes on her.

Her gaze was direct and she sort of half smiled, then buried herself back in her phone. She glanced back a few more times before my stop came. I made sure not to stare but enjoyed having her eyes on me in the periphery of my vision. Nothing else happened. I got up at State & Lake, looked back at her one last time and walked off the train. 

I go to the coffee shop nearly everyday and eavesdrop on moments much like I had with the girl on the train all the time. The staff all know me by now so I can’t be a true stranger there anymore. But customers, even regulars, rarely take any notice of the guy with the book and paints at the table closest to the counter. I’ve done about twenty paintings at Jackalope over these past three years. Only one or two have a person in them. I prefer to focus on stacks of cups, wall decor, the espresso machine, or the riotous combination of primary colors of the wall paint. But to me these paintings are all about the passersby who shuttle in and out of the place in a nearly uninterrupting stream throughout the hours of my visits.

The framed rock posters, dueling tip jars, community flyers, and various tchotchkes sketched or fully rendered in my painting all remind me of misheard bits of conversation, awkward first dates, asinine opinionating, and a thousand other fleeting glimpses into others’ lives.

I suppose I was after that same thing doing marker drawings on the CTA all summer. But I didn’t have my gear as I looked at that girl on the Orange Line, so there’s no painted record of our non-meeting. I’ll just have wonder whether I left any impression on her the way she left one on me, or if I was just another of the thousands of passersby she—and we—encounter every day in the city without a second thought.

When Skyler and Sam asked for some art for the CD they were putting out, I didn’t think twice. I’ve listened to both of these guys play with dozens of different bands over the years and it’s almost always worth it. If either is on the bill you should go. Mute Duo is quiet and kind of spacey/atmospheric but it isn’t easy-listening. This isn’t that wallpaper kind of instrumental pap. The slow build of their sound makes me think of places. Like I’m about to arrive somewhere, or just glimpse it in the distance. I could see this stuff being used in movies.

When we got together at the coffee shop to talk about which drawings to use, it quickly became obvious I should just do the whole design. The front and back are parts of the Excavation series of drawings I did in the garage in back of Bernice’s last year. They had been up at Rainbo in the spring, so Skyler, who works there, got to look at them for a month and liked them enough to want them on his CD. The inside is from a sketch I did of them playing one Saturday at the Empty Bottle. The text was typed on my Smith-Corona and the track “titles” are just altered fragments of drawings. They didn’t want word names for them and I’d remembered that the Butthole Surfers had used drawings for names on Hairway to Steven. So that’s where that came from.  

Mute Duo will have their record-release this Friday at Elastic. They only made a hundred copies of the CD and they’ll be on sale that night. If there are any left after Friday, they’ll be available here.

As a special “bonus”, I’ll be reading a few pages from the bar book I’ve been wrestling with lately. Sam, Skyler, and I have all worked in bars, and the bars I’m writing about are ones we all know, so hopefully it’s sort of relevant. I don’t do many readings these days but when Skyler asked I didn’t wanna say no. We’ll see how it goes.

p.s. I wrote about the centennial exhibition of Nicolas Carone’s paintings and drawings for the Reader. Good show.

A young woman came up and asked for a Chicago Handshake and I didn’t know what that was. She acted surprised, then said it was an Old Style and a shot of Malört. I did my best not to make a face and went off to get it. When I came back she admitted that she’d only heard it from a few customers at the bar she worked at and only in the last few months. What I thought was: if this is some test of local cred or authenticity, then I’d rather stay a phony from elsewhere.

Later the same night there was a heated argument about whether Pilsen is part of the real South Side. Arguments like this are almost always based on anger or insecurity rather than logic, fact, or reason. Voices were raised as the warring sides practically beat their chests to demonstrate how true blue and authentic they were. None of the real Chicago debates ever persuade me. The city is an ever-changing amalgam of different populations coming and going. The people who claim it as theirs are usually venal and small-minded. No town should belong to anyone, especially a town as complicated and contradictory as Chicago.

I’ve lived here more than half my life and will probably spend the rest of it here, but I doubt there will come a time when I’ll wanna claim that it belongs to me. Best case scenario, I will contribute enough to be considered part of it. That would be plenty.

A week later another drinker asked simply for a Handshake. I hesitated a moment, then poured her a pint of PBR to chase her Malört. She didn’t send it back and ask for an Old Style instead. Guess she’s not a true Chicagoan either. That, or the fact that PBR is a dollar cheaper and four ounces more beer, might have consoled her. My friend Paul happened to be at the bar so I asked him if he’d ever heard of a Chicago Handshake. He’s a historian of this city and he’d never heard of it. A quick Google search revealed the drink to be a marketing gimmick cooked up a couple years ago by the producers of the booze involved.

Gimmickry, chest-beating, and posturing are key cultural values around here these days. Beat your chest enough and you might even get to be president. I would never claim to be an authority on authenticity or what is real, but I can smell a sales job a mile away. So if you wanna come shake my hand, that’s fine; just don’t do it to test where I’m from or what I’m worth, or to sell me two drinks I wouldn’t even drink for free.

p.s. I reviewed Pamela Bannos’ masterful new biography of photographer Vivian Maier for New City.