Letter

I wasn’t sure I’d get to design the new Mute Duo record but I’m very glad it happened. I’d done the artwork for their first CD, then the first record, then a tote bag; I had the feeling they were thinking of a different direction. But then Sam, Skyler, and I met up for lunch sometime last summer and they said they wanted me to do it.

They wanted groups of birds and fish. Sam sent me videos of murmurations. I drew sketches in the studio the day they were recording a track with Doug and Andrew playing dueling basses. I made several watercolors of twilight landscapes and schools of fish. I drew clusters of birds, then scanned them in and doubled, tripled, and quadrupled them in Photoshop to form different undulating shapes. I lifted segments of one watercolor and mashed it into another. There were many images for the guys to choose from.

Album design is probably my favorite kind of commission because music is so central to everything I do. Few days go by when I haven’t found something new to listen to. Playing a small part in attracting a listener’s eye to something they should hear is a big reward even if I wasn’t paid to do so. But getting paid is important because it’s a recognition that what I do isn’t a hobby or just for fun. It’s what I do.

Of my collaborations with Skyler and Sam, this feels like the most accomplished one. Maybe because it went through the most permutations or because I wasn’t expecting to get the chance. If they ask me to do the next one, I’ll be happy to do it; if not, I’ll feel honored to’ve done the ones I’ve done. Mute Duo is one of my favorite bands. They would be if I had nothing to do with their album design but the fact that I have definitely doesn’t hurt.

If you’re in Chicago this Thursday, you should be at the Bottle for their record-release. Come say hello. I’ll be the one in the Tall Guy Corner, stage right, sketching.

Speaking of migrants, I recommend the Dardenne brothers’ latest, Tori and Lokita, in this week’s Cine-FILE. It’s a real gut-punch. And The Worst Ones is pretty damn good.

Listen to my talk with artist/dancer/friend Wendy Clinard.

Lisa printed up some more tote bags from the design I made for Tangible. Drop them a line if you want one. Only $10!

I made a little book of bottle drawings. Only 30 of these. When they’re gone, they’re gone.

The last time I drove to Kalamazoo, a couple months ago, I painted a portrait, recorded a talk, went for a walk with a dog through a snow-covered park.

Now I’m driving there again. The portrait I painted wasn’t used but I made other images to decorate the CD, recombined some of the elements for a poster and the world’s tiniest sticker, and now it’s time to celebrate by sharing it with the world.

The travel part of a trip becomes rote once it’s repeated. I’m already familiar with most of this one from the five times I’ve come to pick up books in Wyoming and Saline. I listen to a show about violence interrupters in North Lawndale and East Garfield Park while passing endlessly repeating trees and clusters of signs for identical fast-food, gas, and lodging.

Driving has never been for pleasure but now that I do it so infrequently it serves as a kind of time-out. A chance at what feels like not-life, a kind of sensory depravation. Because I don’t care about what’s out the car windows. This is just a means to an end.

I’m early as usual so I go looking for food. I drive a mile past the venue to a downtown area. There are a couple bars packed with drinkers that I decide against. Then an old-school pizza joint with only pizza and Coca-Cola products on the menu. The oven is by the window and takes up roughly a quarter of the room. It’s not bad. They party-cut the pie the way we do in Chicago.

Then I drive back to the venue and park. It’s an old brick structure with a couple out-buildings. A small factory or warehouse in earlier days; now a recording studio, a listening room, and a rabbit warren of other creative enterprises. I sit in the car and read my book because it’s too soon for the doors to open. I hear the intermittent noises of soundcheck.

Inside a few people are already milling about. The doors to The Clover Room aren’t open just yet. Around the corner is a lobby area with drinks and merch. The CD and stickers and Jessi’s old record is there. Her opener, Kait, sells a beer stein and coffee mug, both labeled BAD MOTHER to a hulking man she doesn’t know. I help her pull the cardboard box of wares from under the coffee table where it has become wedged, so the man can choose from several glaze options. After he walks away she remarks, That doesn’t happen every day. She doesn’t know the guy and he hasn’t listened to a note of her songs yet.

The room is overfilled with listeners and is probably as good a small audience as a musician could ask for. I’ve known Jessi four years but have never seen her play. She’s a natural. Some people look right onstage, others don’t. It’s not necessarily a matter of talent or anything quantifiable. I tell her afterwards she belongs up there.

She invites me to the after-party but I have to get back to Chicago. I have to drop off posters I made, go to an art opening, then another record-release. Full dance-card. The drive back is through whipping rains. There are were tornadoes reported not too far away. I don’t pass any.

I’m glad I got to see Jessi do her thing and to help her get the music out in front of people. Listen/buy here.

Mallory and I talk over Santa Sangre and I write about Edna Ferber’s The Girls.

A limited-edition cassette of a Mute Duo concert at the Bottle just went up for pre-order. That’s a recent collage of mine on the cover.

South of 95th Street and east of the Calumet River, Chicago streets start to have letters rather than names or numbers. It’s far far away from anything promoted in tourism glamor shots of the city but it really should be known. It’s one of the many forgotten pockets of town waiting to be rediscovered.

Periodically I see ad copy about Chicago’s “New East Side”. It’s a couple blocks of new residential skyscrapers at the end of Randolph Street by the northern end of Grant Park. I guess any place people live can be called a neighborhood but the people moving into these high-rises likely don’t know Chicago already has an East Side. Like New Yorkers not considering there was ever a York. I wonder whether old York didn’t have alleys either.

I haven’t been to the East Side since I stopped driving a cab. I read a story in Block Club about a guy renovating a storefront into a gallery and recognized his name. John had been a Bridgeport mainstay for many years. I didn’t even know he’d left till seeing the article. I was pedaling down South Chicago Avenue a few days later.

South Chicago is one of the diagonal streets that break our grid. It starts just south of Hyde Park and more or less ends at the lake, where the steel mills used to be. On a Saturday morning it’s as sparse traffic-wise as I remember it a decade-plus back. The six-way intersection with 79th and Stony is still stressful but otherwise it’s a smooth ride. Miles and miles of old buildings and open lots sitting by either side of the roadway waiting to come back to life.

I knock on the window of Buena Vista Projects and John’s happily surprised to see I biked down. He’s a serious cyclist and outdoorsman, not a piker like me. We catch up a bit, then a couple busloads of high-schoolers pulls up. It’s an after-school arts program. Soon the gallery and then John’s studio is filled with very young people. It’s an amazing thing to witness. Their hunger for the kind of tangible alternative that this space hints at is palpable. It’s an oasis from the generic virtual hellscape most of us waste so much time in. These kids are just starting with art whereas John and I have been plugging away for decades and decades but the sense of fulfillment is the same. It’s almost like a dramatic reenactment to show that the year he’s spent rehabbing this former auto parts store into what it is today was worth it.

We’re both in a bit of a daze as the young people file out to go eat tacos somewhere down the street.

I’m back the following week. I take a different route, past the Museum of Science and Industry and down the lakefront path. I rarely ride there. I like the streets better so long as there’s a bike lane. There are many different ways to go. It’s about thirteen miles from my place. This time John and I talk about maybe setting up a show sometime in the fall. He’s not interested in running a traditional gallery. He wants it to be a place where artists try something they haven’t done before. I have some ideas.

The ride back north is into the wind the whole way but I don’t regret it for a second. Something about reacquainting myself with the East Side has recalibrated my insides a bit. If I had any carpentry skills or wanted to own property, I’d be scoping out those letter streets. It’s only a matter of time till the area becomes a destination for the money people. A few blocks south of Buena Vista is a big sign for a coffeeshop about to open. These are the opening notes of a song I’ve heard in half a dozen other neighborhoods in this city. I hope this one’s sung its own way.

—Listen to a talk I recorded with John, sitting at the worktable in his studio, surrounded by his pictures of waterfalls.