Letter

I’m working on a review of Colin Asher’s forthcoming book about the impact of prisons on American music. There’s a lot to chew over in its quick three hundred pages.

It’s an ugly history, unsurprisingly. A lot or racism and class hatred all the way through. I loved Colin’s biography of Nelson Algren and this one is written with the same care and scrupulous research. A through-line might be the steep odds people who are born poor and challenge authority face in this country. It’s likely the same in other countries but the two books detail the particulars inherent to this one.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Elmo Hope after learning about him from the book. His story is perhaps the lowest key but also in some ways the saddest. This is a guy who just wanted to play piano but New York City wouldn’t let him. He drifted into addiction and died young.

I’ll have more to say once I finish writing my review but in the meantime here’s a conversation I had with Asher about it.

From William Gass’s Middle C

When young and full of fellow feeling, Professor Joseph Skizzen had been tormented by the thought that the human race (which he naïvely believed was made up of great composers, a few harmlessly lecherous painters, maybe a mathematician or a scientist, a salon of writers, all aiming at higher things however they otherwise carried on)…that such an ennobled species might not prosper, indeed might not survive in any serious way—symphonies sinking like torpedoed ships, murals spray-canned out of sight, statues toppled, books burned, plays updated by posturing directors; but now, older, wiser—more jaundiced, it’s true—he worried that it might (now that he saw that the human world was packed with politicians who could not even spell “scruple”; now that he saw that it was crammed with commercial types who adored only American money; now that he saw it had been overrun by religious stupefiers, mountebanks, charlatans, obfuscators, and other dedicated misleaders, as well as corrupt professionals of all kinds—ten o’clock scholars, malpracticing doctors, bribed judges, sleepy deans, callous munitions makers and their pompous generals, pedophilic priests, but probably not pet lovers, not arborists or gardeners—but Puritans, squeezers, and other assholes, ladies bountiful, ladies easy, shoppers diligent, lobbyists greedy, Eagle Scouts, racist cops, loan sharks, backbiters, gun runners, spies, Judases, philistines, vulgarians, dumbbells, dolts, boobs, louts, jerks, jocks, creeps, yokels, cretins, simps, pipsqueaks—not a mensch among them—nebbechs, scolds schlemiels, schnorrers, schnooks, schmucks, schlumps, dummkopfs, potato heads, klutzes, not to omit pushers, bigots, born-again Bible bangers, users, conmen, ass kissers, Casanovas, pimps, thieves and their sort, rapists and their kind, murderers and their ilk—the pugnacious, the miserly, the envious, the litigatious, the avaricious, the gluttonous, the lubricious, the jealous, the profligate, the gossipacious, the indifferent, the bored), well, now that he saw it was so infested, he worried that the race might…might what?…the whole lot might sail on through floods of their own blood like a proud ship and parade out of the new Noah’s Ark in the required pairs—for breeding, one of each sex—sportscasters, programmers, promoters, polluters, stockbrokers, bankers, bodybuilders, busty models, show hosts, stamp and coin collectors, crooners, glamour girls, addicts, gamblers, shirkers, solicitors, opportunists, insatiable developers, arrogant agents, fudging accountants, yellow journalists, ambulance chasers and shysters of every sleazy pursuit, CEOs at the head of a whole column of white-collar crooks, psychiatrists, osteopaths, snake oilers, hucksters, fawners, fans of funerals, fortune-tellers and other prognosticators, road warriors, chieftains, Klansmen, Shriners, men and women of any cloth and any holy order—at every step moister of cunt and stiffer of cock than any cock or cunt before them, even back when the world was new, now saved with spunk enough to couple and restock the pop…the pop…the goddamn population.

It took a long time because I’m so slow, but I wanted to know what it would feel like to type that out…

As of today, K’s book is available in all the usual places, but also Dusty Groove and your local bookstore as well; just type Ornery Cuss into the search bar on their website and it’ll come right up.

There’s a nook in the bookstore, tucked in a corner across from the register, for Spiritual books. The bookshelf to the left is devoted to Philosophy and Occult; to the right, Myth, UFOs, Unknown, and Conspiracy. I’ve never looked too closely at the books marked Spiritual. I always tell Joe this corner should be called the Wingnut section.

From decades in the business, Joe knows to keep an eye on these books and puts them near the register, because they tend to get stolen. The people who gravitate to these books are desperately searching for answers and will sometimes flout laws and conventions in their quest.

I’ve never been one to wonder if there’s anything more out there than what I can see with my eyes or hear with my ears. I’m not against the idea of unknown entities full-stop and I’m comfortable with the fact that there are many things I couldn’t explain, but I’m just not a seeker of secret knowledge. The here-and-now quotidian reality occupies my attention pretty well.

I had occasion to consider these matters recently when a painter I know invited me to put up art at a “spiritual living” center. He sent me photos of a space not unlike a conference room, with a bunch of purple chairs lined up and pointed toward a lectern. In the back corner is an 18-foot-wide wall hung with paintings.

I agree to do it without putting too much thought into it. My whole thing is to get the pictures out there. I’m not particular or controlling about who sees them. I like non-art venues because there’s a better chance for a natural response rather than the rarified, often-forced one endemic to cultural emporia. A wall of a business or other public entity is much closer to where most artwork ends up than the pristine nonspace of an art venue.

In the weeks before the hang, I wonder from time to time whether my collages will be incorporated somehow into whatever activities go on in this metaphysical conference room. I look up their website and can’t get much of a handle on what they’re about. They seem to embrace just about everything. So that’s probably good, right? As I said from the jump, this spiritual business is not really my strong-suit.

K orders me a car for the morning of the hang. Ten minutes into the ride, it begins to pelt rain. By the time we hit Lake Shore Drive we’re hydroplaning through standing water, with poor visibility. My driver, a middle-aged Black man, stumps me by asking whether I prefer the Beatles or Paul McCartney and Wings. The Beatles have been playing the entire ride. Not unlike spirituality, I don’t think about the Beatles much. I answer Neither. Now it’s his turn to be stumped. He helps me carry my artwork up to the building through the rain anyway.

The Cityside Center for Spiritual Living is on the second floor of a converted warehouse. A room along a hallway of other commercial and, perhaps, uncommercial concerns. The only door sign I recognize is for Umphrey’s McGee, which is a popular jam band. Maybe this office on the second floor of a building in Ravenswood is where all that magic emanates.

Norbert basically hangs the entire show. Linda tells him when something is crooked or needs to go up or down. I stand back and let them handle it. It’s a treat not to do this work myself.

The show will run a couple months. There’s an opening Friday, May 29th that you’re invited to. Here’s what you’ll miss if you don’t go. Perhaps that night some of the questions I didn’t ask will be answered.

I reviewed a wordless play at the Trap Door.

Reading something with Paul’s band Saturday at the bookstore. Haven’t decided what yet. He requested something provocative…

The thing about making art outside is you’re at the mercy of the elements. Turner tying himself to the mast comes to mind, even if it never happened. Also, the outside is endless; not like a room with walls on each side and the back, making for a natural composition. You have to cut off all the flora and buildings, etc on your own, arbitrarily, somehow.

I hadn’t carried the French easel out to the alley for a couple years. Can’t pinpoint the reason for such a long break but seemed any day I was thinking to do it, the weather was wrong or there was some book waiting to be illustrated or some movie that just had to be watched right then. It all sounds like a bunch of excuses.

The practice of working from direct observation goes back a long way and is one of the ideas most important to me. Any time I pick up a pen or brush I need something to look at and react to. There’s nothing inside my head or heart that is the basis of what I make. To be sure, the experiences and events I write about have spent some time in my consciousness, but they didn’t originate there, so, to me, it’s not unlike hauling the blank canvas and easel out to the alley when it comes time to put it down on paper.

Over the years, the words and images I’ve made have had to go through multiple stages before ending up in pictures or books. Fewer and fewer are a pure direct response to a subject in real time but that is always the goal. I want it to feel immediate, like you’re right there. Not made up or invented or even recalled but responded to in the moment. It’s kind of impossible but I keep trying.

The times it’s hardest to pull off is when I have to work from a photograph. Nothing takes me out of an experience as quickly as looking at one of those frozen images. The trick becomes to pretend to be in the actual place or looking at the real person rather than the machine rendering. It’s a kind of self-delusion that I never feel quite right about. It’s a shortcut and a cheat. The people who get these paintings don’t seem to mind but it bothers the hell out of me.

I’ve been at it a long time so I can fake it pretty good but not ever well enough to fool myself. When I’m not physically in the place and the time there always something missing. That’s why setting up the easel in the alley the other day was so satisfying. May not be a ship’s mast but I was for sure out there.