Letter

I hadn’t made a mixtape for someone in a decade before K came along. Now I make them all the time. To be clear, these are not the canonical cassette variety but recordable CDs. I found a bunch in my desk drawer, biding their time, sure they’d be of use once more. Now there are none left.

Nowadays a mixtape—whether made for someone special or to be played in a bar or restaurant to encourage further consumption—is called a playlist. But in order to share one, the giver and taker have to be on the same platform or system. Sadly, such is not the case for K and I. She’s Spotify while I’m Apple Music. But we’ve found very labor-intensive workarounds.

As I said, I make her CDs. I don’t have a CD player anymore but do have a disc burner that attaches to my laptop. When I started, I thought I could download music from Apple and put it on disc but that’s not a nut I’ve been able to crack. The files are encoded in such a way that they won’t be burned. There’s ways to jailbreak them but that’s beyond my technical abilities for now. What I do is hook up my digital audio player—the thing one gets if they don’t use a smartphone to play music on the go—and attach it to the laptop. This device has hundreds of hours of tunes. I spend a lot of happy time scouring it for suitable material. Some of the files are not MP3s—those I upload to an app that converts them—then I rename all the songs so they’re numbered in the correct sequence, attach the burner, load the blank disc, and fill it up.

When the disc is done, I write the title of the mix with a Sharpie all over its top and set it aside. I get cardstock, paper, bits of ephemera, markers, a gluestick, and scotch tape to assemble the sleeve. Before decorating it, I feed the paper into my Smith-Corona and type out the track list. Then I improvise a cover from the gathered materials and it’s done.

The other day, K told me she’s getting a cassette deck. She intends to start making me real mixtapes. This is a serious upping of the game. I have a cassette deck but haven’t recorded a tape in thirty years. I spent this morning researching how to do so with modern equipment. I’m missing at least one necessary cord. I also have to buy blank cassettes.

I can’t wait…

Made another zine. Signed/numbered edition of 30.

I’d never heard of the Highland Clearances when June Sawyers asked me to illustrate her play about them. That play, along with Sawyers’ book on the subject, Bearing the People Away, proved to be invaluable resources as I worked away at the twenty-seven watercolor and Sumi ink paintings that comprise my contribution to her project.

Along with the written record, Sawyers shared many period photographs and illustrations. I based my paintings on these and many other images I found online on my own. I’m not an artist who trusts or is much interested in his imagination. I need to be looking at something in order to make marks on paper. It has to be pegged to something I believe to be real. That said, photography is a fraught and suspect medium to me. It’s always a wrestling match to wring some life out of those frozen frames; but, lacking a time machine, I made do.

My goal whenever I illustrate a book—be it my own or someone else’s—is not necessarily to dramatize key scenes but rather to enhance or accentuate the reading experience, sometimes to even provide a bit of counterpoint. I think of what I do as somewhat related to illuminating a manuscript rather than illustrating it like a children’s book or a comic. The pictures should provide pauses to reflect or daydream rather than do the work of the words.

I hope the paintings I made help tell Sawyers’ harrowing tale. Reading it, I couldn’t help but be reminded of how there seems to be no end to the ways people will find to torment one another. Still, painting sheep, grass-covered vistas, and groups of men and women in antiquated garb was a joy. Doing this work is the only way I know to come to grips with the sorrow and despair that inspires it.

I talked to Alex Sorondo about his epic profiles of William Vollmann and Mark Danielewski, as well as Substack and other things.

I wrote about David Cronenberg’s new film, hoping it’s not his last and talked to Mallory about the delightful Horrors of the Black Museum.

Watch Adam Curtis’s Shifty. It’s about England at the end of the 20th century but even more so about now.

I’m not an exhibitionist. I’ve never been to a nude beach or nudist colony. But my place has always been clothing-optional. Especially through miserable Chicago summers, the idea of having anything on inside feels absurd.

Now that K spends time here, this way of being means something else too, but mostly, it’s still just a matter of comfort.

The first time she came over she got worried about the street-facing windows. They are below sidewalk level, and, I assured her, during daytime, the light reflects off them such that we see out but can’t be gawked at.

One night, while waiting on the sidewalk for her car, she looked back at the house and pointed at how clearly the armchair inside was illuminated by the lamp. But we’re never naked in the front room at night, I answered.

Twenty five years ago, I worked at a restaurant with a tall, mean brunette. She and her boyfriend/husband had a band called Sin Ropas. My dead friend Rachel did their first CD cover. She worked at the restaurant too. I’m listening to that CD as I write this. Well, not the CD—I don’t own a copy, never did—but its virtual equivalent. The music’s not doing much for me. Certainly doesn’t give me the feeling of being unclothed.

Alone, or otherwise.

Here’s an article about a different restaurant. Clothing not optional.