Letter

There’s a nook in the bookstore, tucked in a corner across from the register, for Spiritual books. The bookshelf to the left is devoted to Philosophy and Occult; to the right, Myth, UFOs, Unknown, and Conspiracy. I’ve never looked too closely at the books marked Spiritual. I always tell Joe this corner should be called the Wingnut section.

From decades in the business, Joe knows to keep an eye on these books and puts them near the register, because they tend to get stolen. The people who gravitate to these books are desperately searching for answers and will sometimes flout laws and conventions in their quest.

I’ve never been one to wonder if there’s anything more out there than what I can see with my eyes or hear with my ears. I’m not against the idea of unknown entities full-stop and I’m comfortable with the fact that there are many things I couldn’t explain, but I’m just not a seeker of secret knowledge. The here-and-now quotidian reality occupies my attention pretty well.

I had occasion to consider these matters recently when a painter I know invited me to put up art at a “spiritual living” center. He sent me photos of a space not unlike a conference room, with a bunch of purple chairs lined up and pointed toward a lectern. In the back corner is an 18-foot-wide wall hung with paintings.

I agree to do it without putting too much thought into it. My whole thing is to get the pictures out there. I’m not particular or controlling about who sees them. I like non-art venues because there’s a better chance for a natural response rather than the rarified, often-forced one endemic to cultural emporia. A wall of a business or other public entity is much closer to where most artwork ends up than the pristine nonspace of an art venue.

In the weeks before the hang, I wonder from time to time whether my collages will be incorporated somehow into whatever activities go on in this metaphysical conference room. I look up their website and can’t get much of a handle on what they’re about. They seem to embrace just about everything. So that’s probably good, right? As I said from the jump, this spiritual business is not really my strong-suit.

K orders me a car for the morning of the hang. Ten minutes into the ride, it begins to pelt rain. By the time we hit Lake Shore Drive we’re hydroplaning through standing water, with poor visibility. My driver, a middle-aged Black man, stumps me by asking whether I prefer the Beatles or Paul McCartney and Wings. The Beatles have been playing the entire ride. Not unlike spirituality, I don’t think about the Beatles much. I answer Neither. Now it’s his turn to be stumped. He helps me carry my artwork up to the building through the rain anyway.

The Cityside Center for Spiritual Living is on the second floor of a converted warehouse. A room along a hallway of other commercial and, perhaps, uncommercial concerns. The only door sign I recognize is for Umphrey’s McGee, which is a popular jam band. Maybe this office on the second floor of a building in Ravenswood is where all that magic emanates.

Norbert basically hangs the entire show. Linda tells him when something is crooked or needs to go up or down. I stand back and let them handle it. It’s a treat not to do this work myself.

The show will run a couple months. There’s an opening Friday, May 29th that you’re invited to. Here’s what you’ll miss if you don’t go. Perhaps that night some of the questions I didn’t ask will be answered.

I reviewed a wordless play at the Trap Door.

Reading something with Paul’s band Saturday at the bookstore. Haven’t decided what yet. He requested something provocative…

The thing about making art outside is you’re at the mercy of the elements. Turner tying himself to the mast comes to mind, even if it never happened. Also, the outside is endless; not like a room with walls on each side and the back, making for a natural composition. You have to cut off all the flora and buildings, etc on your own, arbitrarily, somehow.

I hadn’t carried the French easel out to the alley for a couple years. Can’t pinpoint the reason for such a long break but seemed any day I was thinking to do it, the weather was wrong or there was some book waiting to be illustrated or some movie that just had to be watched right then. It all sounds like a bunch of excuses.

The practice of working from direct observation goes back a long way and is one of the ideas most important to me. Any time I pick up a pen or brush I need something to look at and react to. There’s nothing inside my head or heart that is the basis of what I make. To be sure, the experiences and events I write about have spent some time in my consciousness, but they didn’t originate there, so, to me, it’s not unlike hauling the blank canvas and easel out to the alley when it comes time to put it down on paper.

Over the years, the words and images I’ve made have had to go through multiple stages before ending up in pictures or books. Fewer and fewer are a pure direct response to a subject in real time but that is always the goal. I want it to feel immediate, like you’re right there. Not made up or invented or even recalled but responded to in the moment. It’s kind of impossible but I keep trying.

The times it’s hardest to pull off is when I have to work from a photograph. Nothing takes me out of an experience as quickly as looking at one of those frozen images. The trick becomes to pretend to be in the actual place or looking at the real person rather than the machine rendering. It’s a kind of self-delusion that I never feel quite right about. It’s a shortcut and a cheat. The people who get these paintings don’t seem to mind but it bothers the hell out of me.

I’ve been at it a long time so I can fake it pretty good but not ever well enough to fool myself. When I’m not physically in the place and the time there always something missing. That’s why setting up the easel in the alley the other day was so satisfying. May not be a ship’s mast but I was for sure out there.

Long before K and I became an item a year ago, I was a fan of her writing. fifteen years ago, tried unsuccessfully to get my publisher to give her a book deal on the strength of a zine called Weirdo Du Jour. Now there’s a book.

She says it wouldn’t have happened without my pushing her but I don’t believe that. I helped any way I could but firmly believe this writing would’ve ended up in a book sooner or later. I had the same confusion and fatalist attitude before my first one came out too. It feels like there are miles of insurmountable barriers between a writer and a published book but at this late date most of them are smokescreens and mirages.

It has never been easier to get your words printed on paper, bound in cardstock, and made available to anyone anywhere. I doubt that the percentage of worthwhile writing has increased any since the days of more formidable gate-keepers, in fact, with such a large number of so-called books generated with no human involvement, the number worth bothering about has likely shrunk. And yet there are writers who deserve an audience who aren’t getting it.

K spent decades making zines. There’s an insular community devoted to that form that is not unlike the book crowd, but in miniature. It’s all school-age cliques anywhere you go. If I did anything to help this book along, it was to convince K that she belongs on the outside of the book club as much as she already knows she does outside the zine one. We have that in common. We’re not joiners.

I did some copyedits and suggested a few phrase changes but hardly had to change a thing to the manuscript she sent me a couple months ago. She’s been working up to this book a long time and now it’s here.

We recorded a talk the other afternoon, sitting at the kitchen table of her new place.

I’m proud to’ve played a part in getting this book out into the world. Order yours here.

Cleaning up the studio, I came across a bunch of stapled pages from an old spiral-bound notebook. They were my field notes from my time working for Lifeline in 1995. I transcribed them and posted them for you to read.

I have a bunch of art up at the bookstore but you can buy it without leaving your couch.