Ten years later

A needle in these grooves still incites the sort of melancholy comfort found in a sunrise over a valley of ashes. A reminder that God is as present on the empty streets as in the town square celebrations. Figuratively. And vice versa.

My favorite places to make papers bleed

Across the street, two doors over

About a year ago, as I was carrying boxes from the U-Haul to our garage, I was excited to see a neighbor roll down her driveway and pedal toward the city on her bike. I imagined that she was a staunch proponent of responsible transportation, a locavore, a reader, a purchaser of baguettes. After a few days in the new house, I realized the cycling neighbor had a few female roommates who spent a whole lot of time on their porch. Sometimes they’d be smoking, sometimes they’d just be talking, sometimes they’d still be out there when I went to bed. As I sat on my porch they were far enough away to where I didn’t feel like we were watching each other, but I could always hear the muddled buzz of their activity; It leant a sense of vibrance and comfort to the dark cul-de-sac. It wasn’t until we’d been settled for 6 months that I found out it was a half-way house. After the house painter told me, I admitted that I should have been more curious about why 4 or 5 middle-aged women lived together like that. I also realized that the bike rider pedaled by every day because she had lost her driver’s license, not because she subscribed to any of my idealistic suppositions. No matter. Then, about two months ago they had to move out because the owner of the house decided to sell it. When I sit on the porch nowadays I feel like I’m hanging out on an abandoned movie set.

Currently Reading (Still)

"When he asked her would she not have been afraid to ride through this country by herself at night she said that there was no remedy for it and that one must put oneself in the care of God. He asked if God always looked after her and she studied the heart of the fire for a long time where the coals breathed bright and dull and bright again in the wind from the lake. At last she said that God looked after everything and that one could no more evade his care than evade his judgment. She said that even the wicked could not escape his love." - Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing

Chicago in Doodles

Currently Reading

"He looked fourteen going on some age that never was. He looked as if he'd been sitting there and God had made the trees and rocks around him. He looked like his own reincarnation and then his own again. Above all else he looked to be filled with a terrible sadness. As if he harbored news of some horrendous loss that no one else had heard of yet. Some vast tragedy not of fact or incident or event but of the way the world was."

Album and book cover art are my two favorite mediums. While every piece of art contains depth greater than its colors, each piece of cover art is forced to represent all that it literally contains. It's a great burden, and many independently beautiful pieces of art have collapsed on the foundation of weak writing and poorly composed songs. When the level of quality coincides, however, covers are deeply powerful and affect me in a way no other visual form can.

That said, you can imagine how I dorked out when I saw someone selling an exact reproduction of the 1st edition of The Great Gatsby for less than the ugly new version on Amazon. I won't get into the coolness of First Edition Library and how it's currenly on hiatus; I'll just say I was lucky to see this book on the same morning it went up for sale.

Because I teach it, I've read The Great Gatsby eight or nine times, and I love it more each time. The themes are as relevant as the day it was written, the characters inhabit the real word, the symbols are both striking and natural, and Fitzgerald strung words together so beautifully that it's practically a 200 page poem. The cover could be hung in a museum even without an associated story, yet it represents all of these things as well. Does visual art get any stronger?

P.S. Adrian, your senior art show was my favorite.

P.P.S. If people really stop buying physical albums, I think record shops should become art shops where you buy album art that comes with a code to download the album. Of Montreal sort of tried it, but I'm talking shops full of this stuff. Posters, t-shirts, mobiles, etc., each tied to a specific album. What do you think? Bad idea? Yeah, I hope vinyl never dies.