Letter

The outside world feels further away than ever. Leaving the house now is like interplanetary travel. I’ve never truly felt part of anything but it’s now as if I’m looking at everything but what I’m working on through a telescope. I don’t know whether this is good or bad. Maybe it was always this way and I didn’t notice.

I’m not jealous of people whose lives revolve around others. I tried that a few times and failed often enough to know that I needed to find a different way. When I sit at bars and coffeeshops, I eavesdrop on conversations. I get a lot out of what people say to one another but it’s rare that I’m envious of the talkers or want to participate. More times than not, I feel relief that I’m not a player rather than someone in the stands.

Aside from chores and the occasional trip to this or that part-time gig, I only leave the house for a movie, a meal, or for music. Extricating myself from a project—Babbitt, in the case of the latest—serves as a necessary pause to gain perspective, to let elements settle into their proper places. In other words, not working on a thing is still a part of working on it. In a narrower sense, putting down a brush and sitting back is as much painting as mixing colors and making marks is.

Last week I went to the Hungry Brain to see a new band featuring a couple people I’m very familiar with. I was the first paying customer through the door so I got my pick of tables. I chose one closest to the stage, with the best light. The band was running through their soundcheck. I read Satantango and listened.

The room filled up. I invited a musician I know to share my table. The opening band was a couple I used to deliver Thai food to in the 90s. Would the 90s me driving around Humboldt Park in a Honda Civic, ringing doorbells, see much difference in the current me sitting in a club a couple miles and twenty-five-plus years away?

I rode my bike home after, as I so often do, looking forward to going back inside and closing the door, but grateful also to’ve forced myself to leave for a few hours.

First thing after getting my coat and hat off and taking a leak, I look through the latest saved PDF iteration of Babbitt to reconnect myself to the place I stopped in the afternoon. In no time, I’m back the world of pencil drawings of the 1910s, of Janson and Futura type, of closeups of this or that detail needing attention. Wherever I was minutes before may as well be another galaxy.

I wonder why I ever left.

Over the past three months I’ve made about a hundred-thirty pen and pencil drawings inspired by two public domain novels. Not much about these drawings is particularly new as far as approach or technique; the novelty is in the way they relate to the source material and in the heavy reliance on photography for visual reference.

The first book was published in 1851. Most of the shots of ships and sailors I drew from were made 1830-1850. It was the dawn of photography. I never tried to recreate these pictures, only to use the positions of people to objects correct, to catch some of what they wore, and, of course, which way the sun or moon lit the scene.

The second book is from 1922 so there are a lot more images to choose from. Having already made ninety drawings for the other book, I was conscious of not just repeating what I just did. That’s why I switched from ballpoint to pencil. It’s not night and day but there’s definitely a difference.

In all the books I made before, the pictures came first, before the words. Now Melville’s and Lewis’s stories were dictating what I drew. When I was studying art as a kid with set designer Alexander Okun, he used to try to make me illustrate books of my choosing. I fought him tooth and nail. I only wanted to draw things I made up rather than somebody else’s work.

Look at me now.

I need to make ten to twenty more pencil drawings for Babbitt before I’m done. I’ve got two more novels queued up to illuminate after, but I’ll probably take a bit of a break to let things settle. I need to make sense of what this latest frenzy of activity adds up to.

In the meantime, I’ve decided to sell all the new drawings for fifty bucks a pop. You can choose from Moby Dick or Babbitt or just get a couple postcards.

I wrote about a Kenneth Lonergan play for the Reader.

I met Harry Snyder when I was about seventeen. I’d been working at a family restaurant called Edibles and a bagel place called Kupel’s—both on Harvard Street, near Coolidge Corner. I was a miserable high-schooler. The jobs were an escape and a relief.

I don’t recall who told me they were looking for help at the movie theater. It was a place I’d loved ever since we moved to the area in 1978. The Coolidge was an old movie palace struggling to stay afloat after the advent of video-cassettes in the mid 80s. Before that, it was a thriving repertory house, with different themed programming for every day of the week. Now it had to compete for artsy and foreign new releases with corporate chains.

I took a pay cut to work there but somehow knew instinctively that it would be more valuable in the long run than a few extra bucks an hour. The staff was a mix of recent art and film school grads, a few unaffiliated misfits, and a sprinkling of angry, strange high-schoolers like me.

I didn’t find out Harry was a painter until several months working at the theater. He had an art opening at a little gallery in Fort Point Channel. I went and bought a drawing of dense, dark trees. It’s one of only two or three pieces of art I’ve paid for to this day.

Harry and I didn’t talk much about art over the thirty-five-plus years of our friendship but he showed me how to carry myself in the world without neurotically making sure anyone who crossed my path knew of my “true calling”. He was a fully-rounded person first but an artist to the core, nonetheless.

Harry died in December and I traveled to Massachusetts last week for a memorial at the Quaker meeting house where he and his wife Amy have been members for many years.

I knew almost no one else in the overflow crowd that packed the open, sunlit room of benches set up facing one another in the middle, rather than toward a priest or pulpit. People got up to share their memories of Harry, then sat back down and waited until someone else was moved to rise and talk. I’m not much for organized religion but this was far preferable to any other faith gathering I’ve ever attended.

The next day, Amy and I went through a couple flatfiles full of Harry’s drawings and ephemera to begin figuring out what to chuck and what to keep. In one manila folder I found a few stapled notepad pages in my own handwriting. They were notes from the few months in 1995 when I worked with Harry at Lifeline, the medical panic button service. My job was to drive to poor neighborhoods, knock on doors, and change batteries on the units. I had to write up the conditions I found at each visit.

Grigsby, Unit 1050, 15 Nightingale, Dorchester—How old is this lady? She was really sweet, but seemed to be barely holding on.

Bishop, Unit 1010, Roxbury—Her mind is shot, does not wear beeper.

M.Brackeen, Unit 1003, 333 Mass—Nice woman, asked how you were, seemed a lot less bitter about life than a lot of them.

I remember I’d applied for a full-time position with Lifeline but didn’t get it. I went back to driving cab, then moved to Chicago for good in 1997. I made a point of seeing Harry and Amy on most visits east to see my parents thereafter.

Harry’d been sick for many years so his passing was not a surprise. The last time I saw him—in the new house in Framingham where Amy and I were now going through his art and papers—he was in bad shape. He held on a lot longer than I would have. As he told Amy days before the end, he really liked being alive.

I’ve known few people in my life who loved living more.

The Moby Dick preorder is live. I dedicated the book to Snyder’s memory. He wouldn’t’ve been out of place on the Pequod.