Letter

I’m working on my seventh book. Every one has primarily been written and designed on a laptop. But until I print out pages——as I did for the first time for this new one tonight——they feel like pretend.

It’s strange to feel that way about a thing that is meant to be reproduced hundreds, possibly thousands of times. Why is it any more real on paper than on a screen? Part of it has to be my age. I’m programmed to think of writing belonging between two pieces of cardboard, sometimes covered in cloth, printed with ink on paper, bound with thread or glue. Does a fifteen or even a thirty year old have such requirements?

The other reason I need to make words a physical object is because I come from painting. There are people for whom painting is made up of ideas, theories, concepts, but for me, it’s made of paint, canvas, paper. It can exist in no other way. So, to me, my books are more or less prints with some words scattered around the pictures. Once I started thinking of them that way, it became much easier to conceive of how to go forward.

The thought of working on a thing that has no physical properties is kind of horrifying. It’s not unlike thinking of it having no beginning or end. I know that most artists/writers/whatever keep making the same thing. Trying to refine it, make it a little better, more precise than the time before. But without tangible results, I think I’d have given up long ago.

Limits are crucial. Whether imposed from outside or in, they create a set of rules which allow a thing to have a shape, a direction. I don’t know how you make anything without eliminating thousands of choices at every turn.

The knowledge that the ugly malformed thing in my hands will one day have a form allows me to keep going. Do people who work only on screens have that? How do they know when they’re done? How many pixels does it take to feel any sense of progress or accomplishment?

Write these thoughts out makes me feel old. Stuck in a time that’s passed. But I felt this same way thirty-two years ago when I got to art school. It was clear then that the track I was on was not one that would lead to recognition or success as they were then defined. That feeling of being out of step has never left me.

I don’t know any way except this one. I’ll take my folder full of pages——a third printed on graph paper because I ran out of the blank kind——and read through it, make corrections, improvements. Then I’ll send digital instructions off so someone else can print out hundreds of duplicates, bind them, attach covers, and send boxes of them back to me.

This is all I know to do.

Laura says her aunt told her she has a boring face. It makes her self-conscious. She thinks she’s not photogenic. Luckily for her, I’m not a photographer. I also don’t know what makes her face boring. Are there exciting faces? I’d guess there would need to be extra features for that to be true. Spare eyes maybe? Extra ears or noses? Skin color that doesn’t occur in nature?

I’ve made many many portraits. Not a one was done because the subject’s face was interesting or exciting. I was interested in the person who the face belonged to, not the face as such. Some have been beautiful, others ugly, still others plain or forgettable. But each was attached to a particular being rather than a collection of facial features chosen on the basis of aesthetics.

The faces I’ve painted for money for others are this way too. Though they may not mean anything to me, they do to the ones paying. Dogs, cats, wives, boyfriends, grandmas——not a one was picked for their looks.

Even a nude model I never speak to, who changes poses every five minutes, has to, at least in my mind while I’m working, have to be connected either to me or someone I know. It doesn’t work otherwise. The relationship can be imaginary but it has to be there. Otherwise I’m just looking at a bag of meat.

Hell, after two years of looking at nothing but dental hygienists, every face is remarkable.

I imagine in fashion and advertising it’s the exact opposite. The adman is looking for types rather than individuals. They’re living mannequins. It’s horrible to even think about. They have to slot people that look certain ways to fit a closed vision in their minds. Some kind of ideal world.

There are artists too who deal with tropes and styles rather than actual people. I can’t get into that mindset. That’s why Laura talking about her boring face throws me. I don’t understand what that could mean. The nose, eyes, mouth, ears, skin, and hair I’m looking at are hers. If any of them were different, she would be someone else. Neither more exciting, nor more tiresome; just a stranger.

After I finish her portrait, I ask Laura whether she still believes her face is boring. She says it feels like a burden has been lifted. A good thing, I think.

[Mallory and I talk about Stir of Echoes.]

[RIP Dallas Good of The Sadies.]

A couple women visited my collage show a few weeks back. Then one of them ordered a pet portrait for the other. I get photos of said pet while I’m in LA. I write the pet owner that it might be a week or two before I can get to the painting. But it eats at me the whole drive back to Chicago. I hate feeling work hanging over me.

So when I get home and see the place isn’t yet habitable, I pack paper and paints along with a few days’ clothes. I move the hotel table so it’s by the window and set up a makeshift studio. Amazing how few objects it takes to make a room feel like it’s mine. A couple of glasses with paint-greyed water, some crumpled up napkins, gouache, brushes, and a paintbox. A t-shirt and some socks on the floor. A flannel half-draped over a chair back. A couple books on the night table. All but one pillow thrown off the bed. Now it’s home.

I finish up with Nessie on my second day at the hotel and go to Target to buy a cheap frame. It only takes a couple days to develop a rhythm. I really could live here no problem except for the nightly bill. I write the pet owner I’ll deliver her painting the next day.

I wonder how many weeks in this room it would take to amass a bunch of crap like I have at home. I bet it wouldn’t take that long. Back in my place now, I think about how hard I’ve tried to purge myself of things, yet there’s still so much here. Maybe I should pretend this is a hotel.

I take the Red Line north, then one stop on the Purple, then walk west a couple blocks. It’s a mid-century apartment building with an intercom. I hear Nessie before I see her. She’s barking bloody murder. Her embarassed owner hopes the dog will calm down but she never does. Eventually, she’s locked in another room so the humans can talk. I tell the woman about living with a dog not unlike Nessie for a time. This dog would yap and yap every time I got up from the table. He knew I wouldn’t be there forever. That it was just a matter of waiting me out. And he was right.

The woman says the painting is cute and thanks me. I don’t ask her why she named her mutt after the Loch Ness Monster because it’s self-explanatory. I take the train back downtown to my temporary home.

I paint the view out the window one more time before it’s time to check out.