Every time I finish a book I think it will be my last. The expense—be it financial, emotional, durational—never seems worth the result. But then I remind myself the result’s not what I’m in it for. I mean, I want everybody to read and look at my books, of course, but I make them because I need to make them. After they’re done, they have to lead their own lives.
That’s easy to forget when you have a house filled with boxes of books. My problem is mostly one of logistics. It’s how to get them out of here and into the world. The economics of it are such that in order to manufacture these things at the quality I require, I have to order hundreds at a time. Then it takes years to unload because my distribution system consists of a bunch of cardboard, a scale, and an app to buy postage. I keep thinking there must be a better way.
The last couple months have largely been spent pulling people’s coatsleeves about the art book. It’s difficult to concentrate on making something new while promoting something old but the idea for the next thing has been germinating at least a year.
So much of my last couple years have revolved around the bookstore that it’s a no-brainer that the new thing is about that. I’ve written often here about my experiences at Tangible. Those posts serve as note-taking just as tweets once did for the cabbie book. The internet is a great sketchbook that way. But until I’m drawing, typing, cutting paper, etc the thing isn’t real to me.
Last week it became real. The way I’m looking at it for now is that I’ll make a bunch of artist books and short-run zines and see what it adds up to.
I hope that going back to an incremental approach will keep the thing at a scale and pace that I can handle and that will be worthwhile creatively and financially as it goes.
Eventually, there may be enough of these small parts to add up to something like a traditional book, but I’m not looking that far ahead. For now, I have to decide what kind of paper and cardstock to use for the zine, what the next story will be, and to check that the typewriter has enough ribbon and the printer enough ink.
Those seem like manageable goals but you never know.
I’m not one to move furniture around. I tend to leave things where they are. Once, I lived with a woman who changed the living room furniture around every other week. It was crazy-making. I like things the way they are and want them that way forever. Still, there are times when you have to move some shit around.
It started with my decision to get rid of my library. The newly-empty book case—which is at the beginning of the narrowed hallway-like space that connects the living room to the kitchen—kind of asked to be turned outward. Now, its contents are visible in the main room.
Past the bookshelf is a giant wooden desk. Having it in the hallway narrowed the space to a pinch-point or bottleneck. Also, whenever I worked at the desk, I felt separated from the main workspace out front. It’s dark, so the overhead has to be turned on. I never liked it but didn’t know why or how to fix it, until I turned the bookshelf.
To the left of my armchair was a Craftsman workbench on wheels. I bought it initially to put my palette on and store paints and materials, but because I don’t use the big easel much and don’t paint with oils inside, it’s become an under-utilized storage surface. I swap the office desk and the workbench out and now the apartment feels much bigger. It’s sort of a magic trick. An illusion that’s actually real.
Next, the small book case that housed my Chicago book collection moves from the back of the hallway to kitty-corner to the shelf, flush against the left side of the flatfile. Now I’ll be able to see almost all the books I still own from the armchair. This is crucial, because part of the reason I’m getting rid of books and other belongings is that when they’re out of sight, they’re truly out of mind. If I see them every day, I’ll know whether they’re useful.
The main studio area is next for upheaval. I’ve rearranged this area the most in the four and a half years I’ve lived here. This new configuration is the best yet. Now I can access the deep bay window in the southwest corner that was previously blocked by a work table. The view of the in-progress wall is as unobstructed as it’s ever been. All these small adjustments add up to a huge difference. It feels like a new place though I’ve made it so mostly by subtraction.
I don’t really understand the idea of feng shui. Wikipedia decries how the concept’s been coopted by interior decorators from its old spiritual beginnings. There’s poetical stuff about wind and water that goes way over my head. All I know is that I moved some furniture around and feel renewed.
I wake at 6am, make a cup of tea to go, and drive west. It’s my second time taking part in Paper Plains Zine Fest in Lawrence, Kansas. Two years ago, I mostly went to hang out at Adam and Elizabeth’s farm and to meet a bunch of their friends. This time feels like a long-delayed return. I skipped last year because I was over-extended with concurrent art shows, a new book that was being printed badly by a disturbed person, and events piling on top of events. I regretted missing it anyway. This year feels a bit calmer, pace-wise, so I’m happy to spend time with my friends out in the endless plains.
The big complication this time is a nagging head cold I can’t shake. It begins the day before I leave and lets up just enough for me to handle a day of tabling and a night reading the last day of my trip. My head feels like an aquarium filled three-quarters-full of tepid guck. I’m never incapacitated to the point of being bedridden but never well enough to enjoy much of anything.
I listen to Ananda Lima’s Craft—Stories I Wrote for the Devil on the way out and Yoko Tawada’s Scattered All Over the Earth on the way back. Neither are books I would have necessarily picked up to read but both surprise me in how they get away with magical/speculative elements that normally take me out of a story. The Lima book—with The Master and Margarita hanging over it like an approving ghost—nimbly incorporates myth into up-to-the-moment reality in a completely seamless way.
I get to the farm late afternoon. Adam is running around the house, finishing last-minute chores before a bunch of other out-of-towners arrive. They’re hosting five or six here. Andrew arrived from England already. He and Adam maintain a continual shit-talking banter throughout the weekend. It is borne of prior book/music tours. The reading I’m part of Sunday is the launch of their upcoming jaunt west.
After a time, Elizabeth arrives with Trace. They’ve been running around buying bedding for the guests. I’m wiped out from the drive and the nagging congestion, so I drive with Trace to Jessie’s in Lawrence. It’s where we’re both staying. At her house, everyone else soon goes out to drink; I lie on a thin mattress, tucked into an office/pantry nook, trying to sleep or breathe. Only intermittent success at either.
Day two is a bunch of events I mostly skip. I sit at the house finishing American Skin, blowing my nose, drinking tea, napping. This is not how I meant to spend this visit. I can read a book and be sick much better in Chicago.
I rally enough to go see Jon Nix’s Justin Pearson doc at ECM. There are drinks after in the patio of bar where a woman is doing her best Sheryl Crow/Tracy Chapman impression to the cheerful annoyance of all in our group of snobs. Jessie’s exhausted from running around, so I offer to drive to KC to pick up Rich from the airport at midnight.
Rich is a bread baker in San Francisco. He’s coming just to reconnect with his old San Diego friends Adam and Jessie. He has nothing to promote or sell. I mention the only restaurant people I know in his city and of course he knows them. That Steven Wright line obtains, as always.
I rise before anyone else the next morning. I will myself into the shower with the false belief my head is clearing. The day before I toyed with the idea of just going home, but today I’m determined to power through. I leave the house and get breakfast at a happening spot on the main drag. My server has the ironic mustache and cool band shirt of a thousand recent college grads. Probably in a band, still dreaming rockstar dreams, though too cool to say it.
I’m greeted at the zine fest venue by Elizabeth and immediately put to work cutting out P A P E R P L A I N S Z I N E F E S T from multi-colored printer paper.
Andy sits next to me. He’s here from Plymouth. We talk shit about Boston and he tells me about his podcast. Jessie is publishing his forthcoming book.
The day trudges along the way every day tabling does. My face hurts from false smiling and my voice starts going from repeating variations on an identical spiel. The only positive is a bunch of book sales. It’s almost always the only positive. Afterwards, I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.
At ECM, I put out the books I’d packed up an hour before. There’s a buffet dinner of vegan hot dogs, sloppy joes, and rice. A group photo on the lawn for which Jessie asks to sit on my shoulders for reasons only she knows. Then a reading upstairs in a large hall of the deconsecrated church that now houses this community center. The rest of the readers will go on to do it again in Topeka and points west but my duties to literature, art, and promotion are done for a few days.
In an odd confluence, Deborah is about to move to Manhattan, Kansas, a couple hours down the road from Lawrence. This means I’ll likely be out this way in the future. She says they call her new town “The Little Apple.” I don’t know whether to find that funny, sad, or both.
I drop Andy off at the KC airport, then drive east, back to Chicago. My head is now clear, mostly rid of phlegm, just in time to resume my regular routine. It makes me think of the time I hid a serious ear infection when I was ten so the family trip to Disney World wouldn’t be canceled. The moral is always to stay home.