Letter

It’s rare these days that someone else makes something to promote my work. A flyer may not seem like much but I was touched when the one above arrived a couple days ago. I’m so used to doing all the dirty work of shilling myself. The guy who put it together also released a tape of me reading. This event is related to that tape.

When my first book came out eleven years ago I was already forty-one. I didn’t have a pipe dream about a literary career like ones you see in movies. By that time I’d already been an unknown painter for twenty years. I knew the score. A pivot to another dying mode of expression was not a fast track to anywhere but I likely expected that first book to open some doors. It did. But not to any room or building I expected.

I’m about to publish my fifthe book in four years. One reason for the hyperactivity is that plague lockdown removed the possibility of interaction with others. I was free to just work. The other reason was a backlog of material going back seven years. In that time I pitched projects to publishers and agents and went part way into several books. They all came to nothing. Then I started making books myself soup to nuts and things clicked into place.

After I wrapped up this new one I daydreamed a short time about getting someone else to put skin in the game. But that didn’t pan out. Now that I really know how the sausage gets made I’m not waiting in line at the butcher’s anymore. Something would have to change drastically for me to do so ever again. All I know is I like making books. I hope to continue to do so.

This weekend I’m meeting people I’ve never met before in a place I’ve never been. They only know me through the books I’ve made. Had I stuck to only painting, this would not be happening. It’s a door publishing opened for me. Maybe my new friends will show me some novel way to keep going.

Kansas is a fictional place to me as I type this. It will be real a couple days from now.

Friday morning I’m driving to Kansas. I was invited to participate in the very first Paper Plains Zine Fest. I’ll get to shill my crap and talk to writers and artist who do the same. That night there’s supposed to be a reading at Flagship Books (which seems to only have Facebook and Insta accounts I can’t open.) Anyways, if you’re in the area, come say hello. Maybe buy a book.

I picked up a book on Burma-Shave road signs a little while back. From the 30s into the 60s there was poetry by the sides of America’s highways courtesy of a grooming product’s ad campaign. I won’t get to see any of their couplets on my drive west but they’ve been on my mind. The book I got is falling apart and has a dust-jacket. I cut up the crumbling yellow paper. Used it to make bookmarks I’ll sell in Kansas.

There’s a noir festival at the Music Box this weekend. I saw a movie about twin brothers: one was sent away to school; the other’s death was faked and he was imprisoned in the basement of his family’s creepy castle before escaping and going on a killing spree. Not a great one but it had moments. Probably most notable for featuring two actors who met fates as ugly as any horror movie: Frances Farmer and Albert Dekker. Look them up if you wanna get sad. It also has a very young Susan Hayward, who didn’t live to old age either but whose life circumstances weren’t as tragic as her costars’, so far as I know. Movie’s called Among the Living appropriately enough.

In the second movie of the afternoon, Burgess Meredith is hit on his head with a falling brick from a construction site and forgets who he is. As the story goes on, it turns out this is the second time within a year that he’s gotten amnesia. What are the chances? There are two women in love with him from his two different lives and some guy chasing him trying to pin a murder and collect a rich man’s inheritance. No rhyme or reason to any of it and things end badly for everyone involved as they must in any self-respecting noir. It’s called Street of Chance and it’s a masterpiece.

If the people in these films hit the road, they’d doubtless be treated to Burma-Shave signs. From my book I learned that the company was swallowed up by Philip Morris in the 60s. That’s when the poetry stopped. Noirs were superceded by westerns about the same time. They come back now and then. Saw a good one called The Forgiven with Ralph Fiennes and Jennifer Chastain earlier this year. It’s an evergreen mode for movies. Existential doom never goes out of style for long. 

Unlike certain men’s grooming products.

—Wednesday I talk to musician Sam Wagster. While you count down the minutes, listen to the one with Mick Collins.

“She was my older sister, my first teacher, my first friend, my first fight, my last fight. She was my everything. She was the bravest person I knew, on and off the stage. And life just seems too quiet now.”

That’s Jaime Branch’s sister, Kate, at the end of an NPR obit. I didn’t know Jaime but I loved her record with the pigeons on the cover and it was a trip to watch her play. Prototypically, a trumpeter is tall and thin, a little like the instrument itself. Branch wasn’t that. She didn’t dress like a jazzer either but more like a hiphop kid. Her music was all over the place. Tuneful one second, blaring the next. A wide spectrum of sound but always alert and engaged. Even the quiet moments had an intensity. There was a gig at the Rainbo a few years back where I could just see her enough over the crowd to make a sketch.

When people die young there’s a whole thesaurus of phrases that gets hauled out. Gone too soon/Before her time/Now with the angels/Too good for this world/etc etc. These things are meaningless. A hollow comfort for survivors and grievers. I guess it’s safe to say Branch’s wasn’t a ‘natural’ death, whatever that is. When a 39-year-old musician with a history of smack addiction passes it’s not hard to connect the dots. There’s been no official cause of death given but hard living probably played a part. It’s a cliché for gifted creative people to be swallowed by offstage habits. The trouble is that nothing offstage can match the high on stage. It makes the 22 or 23 other hours every day torture. 

I don’t know for sure if that’s what took Jaime. It doesn’t matter. She’s gone but her music’s still here. I listened to her record three times in a row this morning. It’s the only way I know to pay tribute. She stuck around as long as she could. Her time here wasn’t wasted.

Listen to Fly or Die.