Letter

I look at the view above most of the time while I’m home so it’s past due to’ve been painted. Just out of view is the bookshelf to which I’ve returned several times as a subject. The books and other bric-a-brac always draw me back. 

Last Friday while waiting for the Metra at 35th Street I saw a stocky middle-aged man in a Cubs jersey and cargo shorts walk into view on the platform across. He lay down on one of the benches for a minute then got back up and paced around. A woman in a Cubs t-shirt appeared on the platform as well. After an announcement that outbound trains toward Joliet were to be boarded on Platform 1—where I was—they both hurried over.

The man appeared first and lay down on a bench again while the woman hovered uncertainly behind the schedule board by the stairs. I had been trying to do a drawing of Sox Park in my sketchbook but this couple made me uneasy so I stopped drawing. Then, the man got up and threw a black plastic case with all his might in the direction of the woman. It hit the concrete wall within inches of where she was standing and shattered. Then he walked over to her and threw something else close-range right in her face. She slipped down to the ground and they struggled for a few seconds before he let go and walked back to lie down on the bench. I was looking right at her and she signaled with her hand as if to indicate that everything was ok. She got up and went down the stairs from the platform.

When the train came he walked over to the head of the stairs and waved his hands and she appeared and followed him aboard. I saw them walk through my car together but a few minutes later she walked back in alone and sat down across the aisle from me on the upper level. She sat there staring into her phone doing her best not to cry. I finally asked her if she was alright and she made a so-so gesture with her hand. A couple minutes later I had to get off and I told her to take care as I left and she thanked me.

It’s been haunting me since then. Should I have done more? Gotten between them? So hard to know when to step into strangers’ lives.

South Side Weekly published the short piece I wrote last year to induct Shel Silverstein into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. There are also a couple of other pictures of mine used in the issue as illustrations.

The Chicago Tribune published my review of Layne Mosler’s Driving Hungry in this week’s Printers Row magazine. If you don’t wanna register or deal with the Trib’s paywall but still wanna read it write me back and I’ll send you a text file.

Most mornings during the week I spent at my parents’ place started with this view from their kitchen. My father would come in and make coffee and put out food from the refrigerator and we’d talk. Then sometime later my mother would come in. He’s always been an early-riser and she never seems to go to bed before 3 or 4am. I imagine the alone time has to’ve contributed to the longevity of their marriage.

Most of my visits now include trips to the basement to wade through old photographs, drawings, and children’s books for research material for the book I’m working on. One of the things I found this time though was a sheet of slides of Jinx Cafe paintings. The ones on my site were always kind of crappy so I took the opportunity to make some new scans. 

A couple weeks into smartphonelessness I can report a few observations: the sky is bluer and there are many more hours in a day when you don’t have a screen to constantly distract you wherever you go. I don’t miss “liking”, “following”, “reblogging”, and “retweeting” everything. I do miss the CTA bus-tracker a bit and relearning how to text on a flip-phone’s a bitch. Overall it feels like unplugging a bit was the right move. It makes writing these newsletters a lot more worthwhile if nothing else. 

A few weeks ago on a Wednesday night at the Honky Tonk in Pilsen three of my friends played a set of loose, meandering tunes. I’ve never heard them all play together but I’ve heard (and sketched) Azita, Sam, and Bill play dozens of times around Chicago over the last 20 years. We’re spoiled with amazing music in this town.

Though I flaked out on my friends at the Pitchfork Music Festival, I did go to one of the after-show gigs at Schuba’s. Bully and Protomartyr played. Protomartyr’s probably one of my favorite newer bands so I was pretty happy to be there. Both bands had played outside in the park in the daytime but I have no doubt that the couple hundred of us squeezed into Schuba’s saw the better show. For me music should be played in small dark rooms rather than public parks with strollers and concession stands. I’ve been sketching people playing music for a long time and in the last few years—since I’ve had a smartphone—it’s been my custom to take a quick photo of my drawing and immediately post it to Twitter, then after quitting Twitter, to Instagram. A couple hours before this Schuba’s show I had decided to quit Instagram, thus paring down my online presence to my website and this newsletter. There are many reasons I did this which I’m still processing in my mind but that night, as an immediate consequence, I was faced for the first time in awhile with no instant outlet for sharing my work. I was in a room of total strangers without the familiar comfort of social media. It felt like the beginning of a new chapter.

A few days later I flew to Boston to visit my parents. Looking up listings for music in town I noticed a week’s worth of shows at T.T. the Bear’s in Cambridge marking the club’s closing. T.T.’s has been operating since the 70s and I’ve been going there since sometime in the 80s. In ’88 I saw Jane’s Addiction pack the place just before they really hit it big. I remember Perry Farrell trying to hop around the small stage with his broken leg in a cast. This last Tuesday my friend Chris was on the bill to play a couple songs with his old bandmate Thalia. I saw their old band, Come, many times at T.T.’s in the mid-90s on breaks from my cab shifts. They were one of the bands that helped me survive the many hours behind the wheel. 

Evan Dando banged out some covers and old favorites on an acoustic to an adoring crowd. Sometime in about ’94 or so I was driving a businessman in my cab past The Rat in Kenmore Square and he told me his son’s band had played there. I asked what they were called and he answered The Lemonheads. Without a second thought I blurted out that all their records after Hate Your Friends sucked. He agreed just to be polite to his asshole 20something cabbie, who thought he knew everything and felt the need to share it. 

Thalia’s band ripped through a bunch of their tunes, punctuating it with Chris on guitar for a blistering take on Come’s “Hurricane”. I walked out of the place a few minutes later. With no place to put the thoughts about the old club closing and the passage of time I had to keep ruminating on it until this morning when I sat down to write this week’s newsletter. The day after I landed in Boston I traded in my iPhone for a basic flip phone. The guys in the Verizon store thought I’d lost my mind. Besides saving a significant amount every month, loosening the the deathgrip of the internet a bit will allow me to formulate and distill my thoughts better, I believe. The world will just have to keep turning without my quick takes on whatever movie I just saw or whatever’s pissing me off that moment. I may run back begging social media to take me back but I highly doubt it. I’m about to hit 45 and it’s past time to shed some bad habits. If you’re in Chicago this Wednesday, come down to 57th Street Books to hear me talk with Layne Mosler to talk about her new book. It’s about how she asked cabbies all over the world their favorite places to eat. Oughta be a good talk.