Letter

‌I don’t know what success means. I never have. If I’ve had any, I’ve rarely felt it. But by most metrics I’m aware of, I haven’t had that much. Of course the way you measure how well you’ve done has a lot to do with what your expectations are and that’s one of my main problems—I expect almost nothing.‌
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‌What I do feel and often expect is failure. I couldn’t tell you when I’ve truly achieved something, but I could sure as hell tell you all about all the times I’ve fallen short. Is this a personality flaw, a philosophical stance, or just an inevitable symptom of being involved in an unwinnable pursuit?‌
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‌So far this year I’ve probably sold more paintings for more money than in any other in recent memory. The money makes day-to-day life easier without a doubt, but after thanking the buyer for the business I’m left feeling nothing. It’s not a sense of loss either. I’ve never felt attached emotionally to my pictures once I’m done with them. I also have enough ego to expect to sell my work. I have little doubt that it’s good enough to earn me a living. But that isn’t the same as feeling joy from success.‌
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‌A fellow painter once told me she would masturbate after finishing a painting to celebrate. I had no idea where she was coming from. When I finish a painting—if I think it isn’t a bad one—I have a few minutes of sitting back and looking at what I’ve done, then I forget about it and go on to the next thing. If there’s any exultation, it is at the prospect of a clean slate. Much more understandable to me was when a singer friend told me she’d masturbate in the dressing room before going up on stage to calm her nerves.‌
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The stage or the screen is where success is most often determined in our society. I’ve done enough book readings and other public events to know that I don’t belong on stage or crave that kind of attention. This past week I saw two great concerts. I’ve been going to see both musicians for decades at this point. Afterwards, I wondered what they felt after bringing so much joy to hundreds of people. Where they as happy after the show as we all were? Or did they just mop up the sweat and get back on the bus to the next tour stop? If I ever had any rockstar dreams, they died many many years ago. I love what these people do but have no desire at all to be in their place. ‌
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‌My stage is a blank piece of paper and there is no one clapping around its edges, nor should there be. The most satisfaction I ever feel is when I’m lost in the middle of a drawing. Lately it’s most often happened on CTA buses and trains while drawing with colored markers. I have no sense of where any of it is going, which is a funny sensation to have while aboard public transit. I take the bus or train till it reaches its terminus, then get back on and take it the other way.‌
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‌This aimlessness isn’t just some metaphor. Maybe having some vague directional pull with no true destination is all I’ll ever have. There’s no winning in art because the endpoint never stops moving. Best thing I can do is just keep getting on the bus.‌
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‌A couple weeks ago my friend Don invited me to his office at Columbia College to take a look at the wall across from his desk. He’s been teaching writing there for twenty years and decided his workspace needed a bit of a facelift. His room is in a rabbit warren of similar little rooms for other writing professors. Not much light gets in beyond the slats of the shades and Don assures me the view consists of the never-ending brick of the neighboring building. ‌
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‌The wall in question is currently decorated with a slightly tattered print of Peter Blume’s The Rock; a painting Don claims he doesn’t even like. His initial idea is for me to “go nuts” on the wall itself. But then it occurs to him that he might not be in this office forever and that Columbia would likely whitewash my masterpiece once he’s vacated the premises. So we settle on a more traditional decoration, to wit: a charcoal drawing on a very large piece of paper.‌
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‌After a few hours of inching back and forth around the Columbia campus via Google Street View, I settle on the intersection of Wabash and Harrison. I print out a few photos for reference, tape a 3’x4′ sheet of paper to my studio wall and get to work. My usual thing when not doing illustration is to work directly from the source, so this project takes a bit of self-deception and trickery to really get rolling. I do best with an empty head when drawing. I want as much of my attention to be on what I’m looking at as possible and thinking just gets in the way. But that is a difficult thing to do when what I’m looking at is a couple of shitty printout photos.‌
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‌What makes it ultimately come together is that the drawing is big enough that in its various unfinished states, the parts which needed clarification, augmentation, or erasure almost call out loud to me every time I step back from the thing to see what I’m doing. The drawing dictated what it needed and I did my best to accommodate.‌
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‌I don’t know whether what I’ve made is a masterpiece but it’ll sure beat the hell out of a poster of The Rock. I’ll see how I’ve done when I install it later this week.‌
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‌ p.s. I wrote about a great drawing exhibit at the Art Institute.‌
‌ p.p.s. RIP Bernice Badauskas. Who’ll call me Mr. Coffee now?‌
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I was waiting in the lobby of the Art Institute for Mark to walk me through the new Saul Steinberg show when a man giving directions to some visitors caught my eye. I’d been spacing out for about fifteen minutes, just watching groups of out-of-towners bicker with each other before the ticket-takers when I saw him. He had a buzz cut, glasses, and wore a blazer and tie. He also had a tremor, most pronounced as he pointed out various rooms on the wall map of the museum. I knew him from a long time ago.

In 1997 I moved back to Chicago from Boston. I moved in with my old classmate Frank and another guy into an apartment on the edges of Wicker Park. At that time the neighborhood was only on the cusp of the bro-and-boutique shitshow it’s been for the last decade and there were still some remnants of bohemian life to be found. The epicenter of that dying community was the sprawling coffeeshop Urbus Orbis. It would close by year’s end and eventually be replaced by a gym for yuppies, but during its last year I got a lot of idling in on its worn armchairs and couches. I even got to put some art up on the walls before the place shuttered for good. It was but the first of a succession of coffeeshops I haunted which flamed out in quick succession.

I’d never been particularly good at chess, but the group of enthusiasts at Urbus inspired me to pick up the habit. I would play—and usually get beaten—by the same few guys over and over. Watching them play each other was usually a better time for everyone involved. One of them was John, who I got to know gradually as my chessboard losses to him mounted. He was hardly an artsy type, dressed in polo shirts, and possessed of a stiff, formal manner of speaking. He had an aristocratic aura about him. Like one of those dissipated nobles in books, whose family had lost its fortune tragically and who must now mix with the hoi polloi.

He had a place nearby on a quiet side street lined with mansions. He also had his own coffeeshop on Broadway, just past Boystown, but spent all his free time at Urbus. I would end up having an art show at Cafe La Piazza too, just a year or two before it became the Starbucks it still is today. When my stuff was up on the walls, I’d occasionally journey to that faraway neighborhood and if John was there we’d play a game or two.

I can’t recall when he and I lost touch. Some of the Urbus regulars made the move to Jinx and then to Atomix and to Filter. But others, like John, stopped coming around. I didn’t have a cellphone or email back then, and I never liked talking on the phone, so if I didn’t see people during my rounds in the neighborhood, they might as well have moved to the other side of the moon. In the lobby of the museum I kept trying to make eye contact with him but to no avail. I considered just walking up and reintroducing myself, but then Mark arrived and we went in to see the Steinbergs, leaving John by the stairwell, looking about for visitors to assist. Aside from the tremor, he looked much as I remembered him.

Would he have remembered me and would we have anything to talk about? Maybe I’ll hang around that lobby some other afternoon and find out, but odds are John will just remain a memory.