Nathan Knapp’s Daybookis the best piece of new writing I’ve read in a long while. I read the first few pages into a microphone, then wrote a review. But that wasn’t enough. So, after he wrote me a nice note about my review, I invited him to record a talk. So that’s what we did.
It’s difficult to isolate why one thing grabs you and another doesn’t. I’ve put down a book after a sentence and left a movie fifteen minutes in more times than I can recall. But sometimes a phrase or a scene will be enough to let me know that I’m in and I won’t be getting out till the thing is over. Then I’ll regret it wasn’t longer. Best case scenario a piece of art should feel like you don’t want to be anywhere else.
There’s something good happening with my public domain project that I can’t talk about because it’s not in a legal document yet but if things break the right way I’ll be plundering the classics bin for years to come.
It’s strange how a desperate act borne of frustration can become a bridge to some kind of stability and offer a little hope.
I’m at a multiplex watching the new Looney Tunes movie (go see it, it’s amazing!) when Mick texts that his 90s band is playing at the Bottle, says he’ll put me on the list. An invitation is catnip to me. It’s so rare now, that I almost never say no.
Another friend once called this thing of old bands reuniting “zombie bands”. The internet won’t let any band die. That guy’s 90s band recently put out a retrospective box set and played the requisite reunion shows. The world will always make us eat our words.
I’m at the dumb pizza place next to the Bottle. It’s where Bite Cafe used to be so it always feels like haunted burial ground when I go in there. At least I don’t tell the counter person I used to work here twenty-five years ago anymore. Mick is in a booth finishing his meal with his bandmates. We say hello and he says he’ll be right back.
We haven’t seen each other since he played here two years ago. He looks weary. He had to get up at 5am to catch a flight from NYC. His drummer is still en route from Detroit. The whole thing feels like a slog. He tells me he hasn’t played live with any of his non-zombie bands in over a year.
I give him a copy of my Moby Dick after he says he never finished the book. I’m happy it’s out in the world now. We say goodbye so Mick can restring his guitar before playing. Says it’s been a few months and that pushing it is just asking for trouble.
The next night I’m scheduled to fill in at the bar. I haven’t pulled a shift in three months and stupidly don’t realize when I agree to it that it’s St. Patrick’s Day. I get there early, anticipating it’ll be a zoo. It’s busy but nothing crazy. Only thing is Paolo isn’t showing up. We keep looking at the clock and he keeps not walking through the door. I’m supposed to be the second bartender. Skyler, the afternoon tender, finally agrees I need to hop on in Paolo’s stead.
Word comes that Paolo has food poisoning and won’t make it in. Luckily, Tim lives just down the street. He walks in before it strikes 9pm. It was a little ragged but we get through the night in one piece. At some point, I somehow drop a martini shaker top so deep behind the beer taps, I have to lie prone on the floor and stretch as far as I can to fish it out.
I ask Tim what it’s like to play in his old band and he says it’s the best job in the world. But it is a job. It’s not the thing that makes him want to get up in the morning. He says he feels lucky that he gets to do his thing. Feels bad for people who only get asked to recreate things they did decades ago.
It’s a thing that’s very hard for me to imagine. The closest thing is the times when somebody asks for the kind of painting I made thirty years ago and all I can offer them is to make a copy. It’s a hollow thing done almost entirely for money. It’s like being a cover band of yourself.
There’s an older couple at the bar. They’ve been here for hours. The guy keeps trying to engage Tim or I in conversation with comments that ride the line between knowing and obnoxious. He looks vaguely familiar. On his way out he gives me a handful of tiny stickers that say STEPHEN DEDALUS IS A TURD. The next afternoon I do a little internet searching and determine the guy is probably an artist who used to be famous for making fake stamps.
I text Tim about it and he writes back He wanted to be recognized.
I’ve been designing book covers a long time. Above is the oldest one I know. Have I gotten any better at it or peaked at the start? Your call.
My first two published books used my artwork but were put together by others. The first, by Isaac Tobin, is really good; the second isn’t worth talking about.
Five years passed between that disaster and Music to My Eyes. This is the first proper book cover I made. I chose the paper that mimics cloth, scrawled the name and author in my shitty handwriting, and solicited, then typeset the blurbs. This is the last book I bothered with blurbs. There was a recent article once again questioning whether they serve any purpose. I tend to think they don’t do much good. They force a writer or their publisher into the embarrassing position of asking someone famous or influential for something they don’t benefit in any way from giving. It’s a lose-lose. That said, I’m grateful to the brilliant trio who took the time to spill a little ink on my behalf.
With Soviet Stamps, I began a run of five years of self-published books. This meant, for better or worse, that I could do whatever I wanted design-wise. There was no one to object or to consult with about my choices.
Old Style is probably the high water mark of the series of foil-stamped hardcovers I made. It’s certainly the one that’s sold the best, for whatever that’s worth.
All Hack happened mostly due to COVID lockdown. It was a look back and reedit of my first two books, the ones I had least say in producing. It’s a kind of do-over. A corrective.
Then I grew restless. I’d started making collages during lockdown and wanted to try that out in a book. The result is a thing almost no one cared about. I still have some affection for paint-by-numbers but maybe it’s like the tender feelings one has for a lame child.
Mallory asked me to design a cover for her book, so I did.
Then, I guess Nate liked that one enough to make another for his press for a different book. I wish more writers or publishers would ask me to work on their books. I’d like to do more.
To Whom it May Concern turned out to be another moribund project for reasons I won’t rehash. Another failure I like. Maybe someone will find a copy in some thrift store trash heap and write something smart about it after I’m long gone.
Within the budgetary constraints I set, this art retrospective book came out pretty well. But I wish I had a lot fewer copies of it left than I do. This was a kind of breaking point for the mode of self-publishing I’d been committing over the previous four or five years. The prospect of boxes and boxes of books taking up space for years became unbearable. I had to find another way.
The answer came via an article about tech assholes claiming to profit off public domain classics.
Now I’m neck-deep in refashioning old books into new ones. I can focus on art and design with a little social commentary thrown in for good measure. It’s a relief not to actually be writing these books just as it’s a relief not to have to store mountains of them in the hope that someone will one day want them.
These new books don’t even exist until someone pays for them to be printed. I had to make a pact with the devil to make that possible but I’m not sorry. At least I get to keep making book covers.
