Letter

If you grew up in the ’80s and had any interest in punk or alternative music, you would’ve heard the songs of Daniel Johnston. They came on cassettes decorated with odd line drawings of frogs, eyeballs, and superheroes, with titles like “Hi, How Are You?” and “Yip Jump Music”. Bands like Yo La Tengo covered his songs and many others, like Kurt Cobain, became ardent fans. But what were we all so captivated by?

The Incantations of Daniel Johnston is a graphic novel with art by Ricardo Cavalo and words by Scott McClanahan which attempts a personal and idiosyncratic explanation. In his introduction, Cavalo writes that he admires Johnston’s ability to fight, as well as the sincerity and innocence in his work, and considers him a personal hero. Johnston’s fight is primarily with himself and his own demons so Cavalo’s brightly colored illustrations are full of people who appear to be turning themselves inside out. Eyeballs are a signature part of Johnston’s iconography, so there are eyes all over every page of this book. The effect is of a pulsing, overheated consciousness, always aware of the viewer’s presence, always trying desperately to hold it together.

In the original, Spanish version of this book, called El desorganismo de Daniel Johnston, Cavalo provided his own mostly straight-ahead biographical text. What the writer Scott McClanahan has provided for the new edition is a kind of prose poem on mental illness, fame, and the battle between good and evil. Rather than regurgitating the facts of Johnston’s life, McClanahan takes the man’s struggle and makes it his own.“Daniel went to the mental hospital and there wasn’t anything fun about it. It was just another prison like our minds.”

There’s always a danger when people glorify mental illness. When Daniel Johnston was embraced by the rock underground back in the ’80s, what they loved about him was his innocence and unvarnished honesty. But those raw, open emotions came with a psychic toll which wasn’t always acknowledged by his admirers. Johnston often went off his meds in order to be able to sing, but he would sometimes become violent afterwords. One of the strengths of Cavalo and McClanahan’s book is that it acknowledges the complicated and likely unresolvable relationship between genius and insanity.

As the book tracks the many ups and downs of Johnston’s life, the authors’ affection for the man is evident, but so is their knowledge that romanticizing his treacherous journey will lead to a false picture of a unique artist, who deserves his due, but not through rose-colored glasses. “It’s all a lie. There will be no happy endings waiting for any of us. There are only the stories we tell ourselves about shooting stars in the sky.”

But wait! I also wrote a review of Martin Seay’s great debut novel which takes place in three different Venices…Needless to say, I highly recommend you buy multiple copies of that and the Daniel Johnston book immediately!

A couple days before I left for Italy I went to Manny’s for a pastrami on rye. I’ve been going there for decades at this point and always get the same thing. Gino, the guy who makes those amazing pastrami sandwiches, has been there over thirty years. I took my parents there years ago and he still always asks after their well-being. When I told him I was headed to Italy to spend time with them, he asked that I send along his regards. I asked if he wanted me to bring anything back and he said San Marzano tomato seeds without missing a beat.

It took some doing but a worker of my folks’ hosts in Fiesole finally located a couple packages a day before I was to return home. Gino couldn’t believe it when I handed them over. He’s an avid gardener and these tomatoes allegedly make for the best sauce. It was good to’ve had an assignment while I was away and to’ve been able to accomplish it. It made the trip relate back to life at home, however tangentially. 

A couple months back I found two homemade driftwood-looking frames at a Goodwill in Wisconsin. I used one for a painting I’d done at the Skylark awhile back and offered it to the owners. On Thursday it was hung in the alcove by the entrance, right above the table where it was painted. Having a piece of mine as part of the permanent decor of that bar is an honor and makes me feel like I’ve contributed a bit to its history. Now when I go into work I’ll see it out of the corner of my eye and be reminded that I’ve been there long enough to become part of the scenery. This is the polar opposite of the dislocated feeling of travel. Unlike Italy, where driving my parents around and looking for tomato seeds made me feel useful, just walking through the door of the Skylark on a given evening is enough for me not to feel out of place.

—I reviewed a compelling Japanese film about sisters reckoning with their family history after their father’s death and a ridiculous HBO show about a kid who borrows his father’s cab, then gets accused of murder. Also: Here’s a sketch of director Todd Solondz during the Q & A for his great new film Weiner Dog at the Music Box on Saturday night.

The reasons for leaving your home and going other places vary greatly from traveler to traveler. But for most it’s an attempt to shift or refresh one’s attitude towards their lives. Because I’ve been involved in a nearly daily reexamination of my everyday life for many years now, travel to other places has usually felt like unnecessary overkill. I have little curiosity about other places and very little urge for adventure. Almost all the trips I’ve taken outside Chicago over past twenty years have been to visit my parents or the parents of my (rarely-occurring) significant others. Whether these journeys can properly be called vacations is probably debatable, but the idea of just leaving town for the hell of it has hardly ever crossed my mind, so these family rendezvouses must serve in the absence of any alternatives. 

On this visit to Italy, I’ve spent a lot of time behind the wheel as we’ve taken day trips to various towns within an hour or two of Florence. I’ve also spent a good amount of time at the place my parents rented in Fiesole. The idea of renting an apartment in another country for an extended stay, as they have, is an interesting one because the goal is to transcend tourism and to actually live in a foreign place for a time. However, a weeklong visit like mine cannot reach that state, no matter how homey the setting.

On a daylong trip to Venice with my brother Max, we indulged in the unavoidable tourism which is the lifeblood of that city. Between repeated gelatos, we wandered all about, taking care to dodge other aimless wanderers who seemed completely oblivious to others’ presence in their path. We met my other brother Boris and his wife Blakeney and walked about some more, after a meal at a waterfront restaurant. Venice seems like a toy train-set town, an idea of an old city rather than an actual lived place. Still, any direction you look is a postcard-come-to-life and the absence of cars makes for a far less stressful experience in unfamiliar surroundings. 

On the high-speed train back to Florence, I sketched Max as he slept. This felt like one of the more normal moments of the entire trip.

Were I on a CTA train in Chicago, I’d be doing much the same thing. Is there any difference because this happened some five thousand miles away? I couldn’t say. But after nine days it’s good to be going home. Was there any value to this trek other than spending time with family? I truly can’t say. The feeling of foreignness comes naturally to me and shows itself in places I know like the back of my hand. Some people say you leave in order to appreciate your own place. Time will tell whether there has been any shift in perspective. My parents will think they could have done something differently. But they were perfect hosts and did all they could to present a place they love in its best light. It’s not their fault that travel feels like voluntary exile to me.

Now back to the routine: wake up, read, eat, paint, watch movies, write, serve drinks, bus tables, wash beer glasses, sleep. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

—Remember that brand-new sketchbook I wrote about a few weeks back? I somehow managed to lose it at the creepy suburban-style movie theater on Roosevelt before a press screening of a silly rah-rah America agitprop thriller called The Purge: Election Year.