A show at the Rainbo is a special secret. One of those things you know about if you know the bartender or one of the people who will be on the little Polka combo stage behind the rows of Collins glasses.
Skyler says they’re playing at 7 or 8 so I get there at 5. There are two or three drinkers and Skyler who says he’s tired. It’s been a long week. He’s psyched for the show but wishes it would be happening already rather than hours away. The waiting in-between-time of music in bars always kills me too. The band never goes on when it says they will on the poster. And then, so often, you have to wait through two or three other bands before the one you want gets up there. Tonight it’s just the one so there’s that.
Emmett and Jim haul in their gear between 7 and 8. Soundcheck consists of switching on two amps, a couple strums over a fretboard, a few fills. Then they leave out to smoke.
The room fills up. A lot of familiar faces. Azita, Sam, Gillian, Janet, Alicia, Sally, Matt, Finn, Tim, Jenny, many other music and art types. Emmett comes over and says it feels like a hometown show and it does.
The Double plays more or less the same riff for almost an hour. But there’s overtones, undertones, and other phantom sounds all the way through. I wonder whether Emmett will get carpal tunnel or rotator cuff or tennis elbow alternating between those two notes. It’s mesmerizing.
I’m designing a t-shirt for a jazz club. Or trying to at least. It’s pretty open-ended. Not much guidance aside from the example of the shirt and logo they already have. I start with the obvious thing: drawings of musicians and dancers. But that doesn’t feel right for this place. Too anecdotal. It needs to be more univeral or maybe abstract. So I take the drawings apart.
A t-shirt is sort of like a billboard. It should be readable at a distance. I know I only have a maximum of four colors to work with so I have to make them count. I dump a bunch of drawings into Photoshop and start playing around.
I’m listening to Jeannie Berlin read Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge as I work. I try to imagine her spurned newlywed from The Heartbreak Kid but the weathered voice is basically Cyd Peach from Succession. I like audiobooks but find I retain almost nothing I’ve heard. I’m enjoying listening but after five hours (with about thirteen to go) I can’t tell you what this book is about. I wonder why that is. Not that my memory’s so great from reading but it feels qualitatively different. A completely other experience and activity. More passive maybe?
There’s almost nothing identifiable left of the source sketches in the designs I’m coming up with. Don’t know if that’s good or bad but each new one suggests the next. The possibilities expand. Kandinsky claimed he was painting music but I think he was deluding himself. No painter could do what music does no matter their self-confidence or talent. Visual art is a lesser, more limited form. Best to just accept that and work within the given constraints. Still I’d like this shirt to at least hint at what you might expect if you went to this club.
On a break I go to the museum and look at the new show of Bridget Riley drawings. She’s spent decades and decades measuring out shapes and arranging them mathematically to cause sometimes unsettling optical effects. There are handwritten notes on the margins of the bands of color and instances of mistakes or questions that undercut the cold perfection of her finished paintings. I never had much of a reaction to those. But these drawings are really engaging because they show the struggle to transcend into a heightened, clean realm, but not quite getting there. I like when you can still tell the things are made by hand. They’re uneven and imperfect in a human way.
Because I was given so little direction or guidance I just keep going. I change this or that setting in the program and each opens a trapdoor I fall through. I never learned to use Photoshop correctly so oftentimes each move I make involves two steps forward four back. But if I knew what I was doing this would be really boring.
The club used to be a storefront theater. I saw a few plays there. It’s down the street from the latenight bar I worked at twenty years ago. Places like this, even in their new guises, echo memories decades back. This is what happens when you stay in a city long enough. Intersections and buildings trip associations every time you pass by. The area where this club sits is fraught with ghosts.
The owner saw my collages at the Rainbo and bought four. That’s what led to this job. It’s nice when things work that way. One thing leading to another. I’ve sent him about ten variations of the design so far and he hasn’t written back. Maybe none of what I’ve made is doing it for him. Who knows? So many unknown variables. I’ve spent days on this and have enjoyed it. I sort of don’t care even if no shirt is printed.
I’m gonna keep going. There’s so much left of the Bleeding Edge for Jeannie to read before I’m through.
—Listen to my talk with James Jankowiak, then hear me read a chapter from DeLillo’s White Noise, then tune back in Wednesday for a new show with baker/teacher/ex-painter Nancy Carey.
There are about a dozen words in the story/essay—not sure which it is—that I have to look up. Common terms in Nigeria but new to me. They’re peppered throughout the five thousand pieces of text. These words are all that grab my attention. They help me figure out what I need to paint as illustrations.
I accept these jobs pretty much sight unseen. The challenge is to come up with images no matter what they must illuminate. It’s sort of like going to the gym. a way to make myself stretch, not fall into familiar ruts. The first word I look up is asoebi. It’s a term for a ceremonial dress, the image search yields dozens of smiling, posing women in matching colors and patterns covering their bodies and sitting atop their heads. Sort of like bridesmaids but not confined to weddings.
Then I look up aerial shots of Lagos and styles of Nigerian churches. I put the iPad on my drawing desk over my paper and open the watercolors. Three days later I can’t recall which of the three paintings I did first. Feels like a lot has happened since then. One of the beauties of painting is how fleeting an experience it is. Completely engulfing while it’s happening but completely gone as soon as I get up from the table.
Even as I paint I’ve mostly forgotten the story I’m painting for. All I retain is Lagos, church, and asoebi. It’s all I need.
