Tim Lane's Blog, page 11

In Which the Artist Remarks on a Painting in Progress

While I often photograph the various stages or phases of a painting in-progress, I usually do not share those pics outside of critique. I am still working on this piece, which is 30x22 inches. So far acrylics, spray paint, gouache, marker and colored pencils have gone into it. It’s on Stonehenge Aqua paper. I think that I have one more idea to add, but I’ve been taking time to look/think. Thinking with the eye. I’ve had a few ideas for a focal point, but I keep coming back to the astronaut. We’ll see. Thanks for visiting. I hope you enjoy the shop, the galleries, the playlists and everything else.

This is the painting in its 2nd phase.

A look at the 3rd phase.

4th phase.

deleting later...

Here’s the first chapter of my next novel. I’m about 2/3 of the way done. Appreciate you taking a look if you have time. It reads pretty fast.

Phil, Horn Dog, Candy Man Extraordinaire

BOOK ONE

Good Samaritans

1.

I drive Stu home in his father’s beat up Chevy Caprice, taking the scenic route between the factories and the river, while Karen follows closely behind us in her Chevette. The play in the steering wheel is wicked, the brake pedal almost goes completely to the floor.

“Where are we going?” His voice is a bat skittering up from the depths of the back seat, attempting to escape through the window. “Take me to Karen’s.”

“I’m afraid we’re taking you home.”

“No!”

“It’s probably for the best.”

“Let’s get some beer.”

“It’s past two.”

“So?”

“Stores can’t sell past two.”

“Since when?”

“Like, since always.”

“Well, fuck me.”

We drive in silence until we thunder over the train tracks. The white orbs of Karen’s headlights violently bob behind us.

“Phil.”

“Yes?”

“If the blacks live on the North and South End. And the Mexicans live on the East Side. And the whites live wherever the hell they want, East Side, West Side, doesn’t matter—”

I pop a cassette into the tape deck. The effort required for him to initiate this conversation is proof of just how wasted he is.

“Don’t be a dick. Don’ cut me off.”

He repeats his assertions about the blacks, the Mexicans and the whites. “Then where do the Ojibwe live? Answer me that. Where do the Anishinaabe live? The Anishinaabeg.”

I turn onto his street and slowly cruise up the block beneath the halos and young silver maples before pulling into his driveway. There is an older although nicer car already parked there. Karen pulls up to the curb in front of the house and gets out to help while I get out and open the back door of the Caprice to assist m’ lord.

The interior dome light makes Stuart cringe.

“I can’t open my eyes.” He is bitching. “I’ll get sick.”

Stuart’s little sister meets the three of us.

“Hi.” I am grinning broadly. I am trying to appear as nonthreatening as possible in the sad yellow hue of the light coming from the bulb above the side door. “We’ll just throw him on his bed, if that’s okay.”

Despite this late-night interruption, the crickets are fierce.

“Why don’t you just throw him in the back yard?” She laughs at her gift for repartee.

“I will cut you,” Stuart mumbles.

We are ushered to his bedroom.

“Karen,” Stuart mumbles, tripping up the stairs. “Karen!” he hisses. “Don’t sleep with him. For the love of God, show some fuckin’ restraint.”

Stuart’s sister points into one of the three upstairs bedrooms. She is barefoot and wearing an over-sized John Stamos t-shirt. In the dim light, John Stamos’ face looks insane.

“There!” She is not concerned with waking anybody, not even the dead. The door opposite Stuart’s bedroom suddenly swings opens. A man in bright white underpants and a glowing t-shirt lumbers into the hallway until he bumps into me.

“Uh, hello, Mr. Page?” I am calling upon reserves of tact I did not know until now that I possess.

He pauses to scratch his belly. A vaguely recognizable disembodied woman’s voice calls from behind in the darkness of the bedroom. “Glenn, what is it? What’s going on?” She is clearly calling from the realms of the dead.

Stuart’s sister admonishes their father in the dark: “Dad, go back to bed! Get back in your room!”

I am smiling to beat all hell. I am actually very well acquainted with Stuart’s mother. We are coworkers. When I am not going to my creative writing class, or selling drugs at El Oasis, or at a hall show, I am usually managing a pizza shop. But now is not exactly the best time for exchanging pleasantries. Imagine me calling out to Stuart’s mother as she lies in bed in a sheer negligee more than thirty years old.

“Yoo hoo, hello, Margot. It’s me, Phil. Do you work tomorrow, er, I mean today?”

“What? Who?”

“Um, never mind. It’s late. You should be resting. This is really all a very strange dream—“

But it’s not.

Glenn comes to life: “Goddammit! What the hell’s going on?”

The hallway is only so wide. I am trapped. Fuck Karen. It is every man for himself.

“Stu’s drunk!”

“What?”

“Drunk, Dad. Drunk. The sonofabitch is trashed. He can’t even open his goddamn eyes.”

“Hey, young lady! Watch that mouth. Goddammit, I need my glasses.”

“Go back to bed, Dad.”

The door slams.

I can hear dresser drawers being ransacked, the mechanisms of plastic wheels on the metal runners of accordion-style closest doors in need of lubrication, and now I am thinking, “Oh, fuck. Guns.”

Stuart’s little sister says, “Throw him on the fucking bed. Jesus, what are you waiting for?”

“Are we about to get shot?”

Once in bed, Stuart gathers his blankets and tucks them between his legs. He giggles but does not recoil when Karen tries to pull off his shoes.

“Karen,” I whisper. “I think this is good. I think we’re done here.”

I notice in the darkness that Stuart’s bedroom is tidy and fairly empty. The walls, however, are plastered with posters of alternative bands, including Joy Division, New Order and the Cure. There are also posters of Black Flag, Suzanne Vega, Apollonia and Prince. I turn back to the two of them. Karen is sitting on the edge of the bed. Stuart’s voice is an invisible wave in the post punk gloom and doom of his bedroom. “You didn’t answer my question, Phil.” My knowledge of American Indian populations within the city limits, or the state, or the country, for that matter, is weak. They used to live on reservations? I mean after the colonists arrived and the government tried to exterminate them. I suddenly long to be in my own bed, with my own posters, stroking the sleek fur of Joe’s cat, Sid. Sid, who is the newest addition to the house on Stone Street, has taken a shine to me lately, which is more than I can say for Karen.

I am depressed. Any flirtatious progress made earlier in the evening with Karen between the synths and drum machines of bands like New Order and Front 242 has disappeared like a squadron of planes flying in formation over the Bermuda Triangle.

“Now what?” Karen had said out loud as we stared down at Stuart sprawled in a stall in the men’s room at El Oasis.

I shrugged. “Maybe we should check his pulse. See if he’s breathing.”

Using her hands to brace herself against the walls of the stall as she straddled Stuart’s torso, Karen had bent over to see if he was still alive.

“He’s warm.”

The offensive odor of the bathroom stall sits in stark contrast to my piqued horn dog awareness of Karen’s tight jeans. Even for a guy with incentive, it is almost all too much. Still, I have to say that the libido hangs in there. The libido clings to the distinct possibility that Karen might take me home. These thoughts are not exactly within the true spirit of performing charitable acts for friends at the end of bar night, but incentives are always right in front of us if we open our eyes. I am hopeful. I do not panic. I am of the opinion that having sex with Karen would be most enjoyable. As pleasurable as it gets. The guys pissing in the urinals are glancing over their shoulders to see what in hell the local recreational drug pusher is up to now. There is a girl in the men’s room. It cannot possibly be the first time for that. Water is running in the sinks. Karen has dyed her hair black this fall, has on this dark purple lipstick. Stuart uncorks like a maggot and rolls to his back, but does not open his eyes. His voice is a shank of jagged aluminum, a beer can torn in half.

“Did I miss last call?”

“Amazing. You almost have to admire such masochism, right?”

“Fuck my life,” Karen says.

“Stuart, are any of these philosophical one-liners in the stall yours?” I ask. It’s a fair question, and if I were to check Stu’s pockets, I would probably find a Sharpie.

Stuart used to tag the parking ramps and phone booths and alley dumpsters with pithy statements and poetry. His alias, Jim Nighshade, enjoyed a brief moment of notoriety, but all of his graffiti has been sand-blasted or whitewashed.

“Karen, punch him like yer always punchin’ me. Punch that sonofabitch in the arm—“

“Here, let me get in there,” I say. “Come on, Stu. Oops-a-daisy.” In the club, some of my customers have informed me that unless they have had some candy, a dreadful feeling settles in when the lights come on and the music stops playing. ‘Jane Says’ ends, the purple lights snap off, the amber lights spring on and one feels unhinged, totally shitty or ready to fight. Last call is almost as bad as waking up in bed with a stranger—that initial wave of terror. Eventually, the novelty wears off.

One develops bad habits.

We emerge from the men’s room with Stuart between us like a wounded athlete, but in the alley he insists on slipping to the pavement where he writhes and curls like a magnificent rolly polly bug.

“Don’t touch me,” he rasps, trying to blow little stones off of his lips. “Leave me alone. DON-huh-huh-owwwn-’t touch me.”

We are joined by my housemate, Joe, and an attractive girl I do not recognize, which is disconcerting. How did I miss her? She is hot. Others pass. I smile and scratch my head. Alternative Music Night is reduced to the odor of a fog machine. On Saginaw Street, the hip crowd is no doubt gathering outside the front entrance but I am out of candy.

“Who’s up for Thoma’s?” I am upbeat and optimistic. The night is not over.

The windows of the taller buildings are impenetrably dark. An orange haze generated by the lights of the factories near the Flint River blots out the stars.

O, lucky stars.

Joe is a sweetheart. “Hi, Stu, how ya doin’?”

“How does it fuckin’ look?” Stuart croaks.

I raise my eyebrows and mouth the phrase, “What the fuck?”

Stuart’s protests get weaker.

Joe says, “He would probably feel a lot better if he puked.”

“Puking is the worst,” Karen mutters. “I never puke. No matter what, I never puke.”

Joe raised his hand in resignation when I asked him to stay put for a moment. I have known him for a long minute. He is dependable. The alley is damp, exudes an aura of ripe, compacted garbage, which I can almost taste. When I got to the sidewalk, I turned back for a look before heading off to the Caprice. Karen had Stuart in an upright position then, and it appeared that he was taking off his shirt.

“Well, now,” Karen says, lighting a cigarette at her Chevette now that we have safely deposited Stuart onto his bed. “Do ya still want to go to Thoma’s?”

The neighborhood is quiet except for the occasional car passing up the street. “Why not? I mean it’s either that or heading home to listen to Joe and his babe having sex in his bedroom. The walls are pretty thin.”

It is more of a hint than the truth.

“Is that his girlfriend?”

Stuart’s sister presses her nose to the screen of an upstairs window and hisses at us. “Go away!”

Karen angles a funnel of blue smoke in her direction.

The AC Delco plant reminds me of an aircraft carrier in dry dock (while I have never seen an aircraft carrier in person, I have trawled on a pontoon boat on Silver Lake). The junkyard gives me the shivers. I imagine rabid raccoons slinking around the premises like thieves, stealing the forgotten relics of the glove boxes from the pyramids of crushed cars. The East Side is semi-quiet, awash in the distant rumble and droning of the parts plant, the cush of trucks on the expressway off in the distance and the constant escape of hot air rushing through convoluted ducts and vents toward freedom. Thoma’s, however, is noisy and packed. Club kids. Punks. Shop rats. East-siders. Bikers. Old-timers in flannel and shop clothes. Teenagers. Whites. Hispanics. A black couple. The short-order cooks are working their sizzling magic. The waitresses are pure and lovely and tough and real: mothers, daughters, girlfriends, grandmothers. I want to believe that what you see at Thoma’s is what you get here in Flint, and that if given the chance, these women could save all of us. One would never have to leave. What is it about these hard-working women that turns me on? Stuart and I have pondered this together. Older, younger, in between—it does not matter. They wield an attraction. Their plain, tired beauty is a tractor beam. And Thoma’s isn’t like a club or a spa where they have to wear skimpy outfits—there is none of that here. Their whispering polyester uniforms are like the uniforms of nurses. The sound of their tight polyester slacks is pure seduction.

Joe and his lady friend are sucking face in a booth in the back wing.

“Ya see what I mean,” I say to Karen, nodding in their direction. “I was not making it up.”

“Yes, they do seem a little preoccupied, don’t they?”

“They do.”

The waitress sets a plate of chocolate pie with a large wedge of whip cream before me.

“Let me ask you something. Can you balance all your orders on your arm? The coneys and hamburgers and fries.”

“Of course, hon.”

“And the plates aren’t too hot?”

“Not as hot as me, right?”

Karen snorts a straw full of Coca Cola out of her nostrils.

“Oh, hon! Let me get you a rag.”

The waitress sashays her intentionally syrupy sweet self away. There is a sense of community at Thoma’s, especially at night—a sense of floundering in a big, collective conversational bubble—but it can be deceptive if you aren’t careful. Every once in a while, I snap out of the hypnotic nesting of conversations and clattering dishes and sizzling hamburgers to find myself furtively looking around to pinpoint who is most likely to punch me in the gut in the parking lot and steal my leftover candy.

Our waitress returns to wipe up our table.

“Busy,” I say, smiling.

She winks.

Karen is smiling at me.

I am ever so slightly sliding in the grease beneath the table. The soles of my shoes skate in place like the puck on a trembling electric hockey table, never really completely touching the atoms of the floor, perfectly in alignment with the incomprehensible laws of physics.

“You’re such a doof.”

“Does that mean you aren’t coming home with me tonight?”

“Eat your chocolate pie, you doof.”

“I’m not sure if it’s real. I mean just what exactly is this? Would you like a bite?” I offer her a quivering, honking bite of gelatinous, mousse-like chocolate ectoplasm on a fork, which she leans across the table to accept. Our eyes meet. I search for myself in those huge blue irises. The eyes no longer complement the hair which used to be the color of tall, dead grass in an empty lot littered with mulched trash and dangerous shards of metal.

“Mmm,” she says.

“Good, hunh?”

“Stuart,” she sighs. “Stuart, Stuart, Stuart. I am so fucking tired.”

A hefty waitress bellows out, “I need three up, three fries, three chocolates!”

Terra Spatium Navis: a New Fluorescent Painting in a Space Travel Series

Terra Spatium Navis is another painting in which I try to depict a broad idea—the idea that a future spaceship might not look like what we are accustomed to, or that space travel might involve an object other than a spaceship, and, that space travel might take place between the fabric of space and time instead of through it. Some of you might be familiar with our 2017 visitor, Oumuamua—the first interstellar objected detected passing through our solar system. It grabbed my attention. What was it? Asteroid? Former comet? Extraterrestrial spy? Reddish in color, cigar-shaped and with a confounding constant rate of acceleration, It’s all conjecture, really, as scientists couldn’t observe it long or well enough. And now it’s gone. But that visit, as well as these other ideas, continue to orbit in and out of a solar system within my imagination.

Terra Form

Original Art for Sale

SWAGGY Side Walk Pics

When Covid set in, I started to walk through my East Side hood more than usual. I have always sauntered through it deep in thought. During one walk, I noticed that somebody had scrawled SWAG in wet cement on a sidewalk along the north side of Michigan Avenue. My series of SWAG walk pics was born. Every time I passed by, I would snap a pic. Sometimes I would snap a burst of photos as I approached and passed over SWAG. Other times I would stop and position my feet in what I hoped would create an interesting composition. A couple of years have passed. I have captured at least a hundred SWAG pics. I post them in my stories.

This spring, @beckysresearch posted a SWAG pic challenge. I had posted the pic below. The pic with the neon pink leg warmers hit my IG messages. I posted a week or so later with the black Vans. @beckysresearch replied in black flats.

@beckysresearch and I met through a local coffee house several years ago. Covid has been hard on everyone, but people are exercising again. We invite you to take your own SWAG walks and upload your own swaggy pics. Just be sure to tag us so I can continue to catalog the photos with a hashtag! I am fond of series. If you search #thelivesofchairs and #tabletablettableau you will find my other series.

Phil: Horn Dog & Candy Man Extraordinaire, a Novel in Progress, Sneak Peek

I humbly submit a glimpse into the new book I am working on. The working title is PHIL: HORN DOG & CANDY MAN EXTRAORDINAIRE. Here is chapters 4 and 5 from part two of the novel. The setting of the story is Flint, MI, 1988ish. It picks up two years after YOUR SILENT FACE ends and contains some of the original characters, however this time Stuart does not get to narrate the story. The story revolves around small fries drug dealer and pizza slinger, Phil McCormick, a buddy of Stuart’s, who is in a good position to observe Stuart's struggles and shenanigans while chronicling his own.

4.

Everything has changed. Karen has asked me out. We agree on an amicable time on a Sunday afternoon. With any luck, the day will be sunny. “Let’s dress up,” she says over the phone. “Let’s get really dressed up.” She wants to visit the Flint Institute of Art. During the post Thanksgiving lull, the weather has been drab. A walk through the permanent collection of the FIA with m’lady in our finest rags will be most excellent. The old paintings from the 1800s of the babies who look like shrunken adults, the pheasants, the hunting dogs. Anyone who is more than a twit has been to the FIA once or twice. The Flint Cultural Center is a treasure. I have actually visited the place with Stuart. He wanted to show me the Bray Renaissance Gallery with its huge tapestries. But it wasn’t the tapestries per se. It was more like the light, the air, the ambience. The high ceiling, the dim lighting, the echoing chamber-like quality of the gallery. “The interior of my soul,” he had said.

On many a summer night, I have taken a girl to the fountains at the Cultural Center, between the planetarium and art institute, to drink and make out. There is a certain thrill to foreplay and the electrifying sensation generated by the knowledge that you could be stabbed in the back at any moment by a haggard figure loping out of the darkness. Of course, that is extreme. More like punched in the head, wallet stolen, a parting kick in the ribs. “Asshole, serves you right for being out here this late.” It has never happened. There is an exaggeration of myth surrounding the urban dangers of Flint, aaaaannnnnddddd, then again, all of the myths are true. There are definitely certain places that I wouldn’t go, neighborhoods where a white kid would never pass through, certain streets or parks or basketball courts “owned” by various gangs. We do lead the country in violence in one way or another. And yet, unlike Stuart, I have never been jumped.

I find it interesting that Karen has asked me out. In El Oasis, after discussing possible dates for a Political Silos, Wasted Reagan Youth and Haute Boys and the Sirens show at Danver’s Hall with Joe and Five-O’clock-Shadow Brian, I did not buy another round of Blue Motorcycles and seduce Karen as planned. We did not dance. I convinced Stuart that he needed to let me drive him home, and we left. We used the back exit. In the alley, Stuart vomited next to a repugnant smelling dumpster. But I didn’t care. It did not bother me. After that lovely moment, we drove to Thoma’s for french fries with gravy. I wanted a waitress to take me in her arms and kiss my forehead, did not matter which one, any waitress at Thoma’s would do. I made Stuart drink some water.

When I broke the news to Delores and Beth, I could see that the announcement afforded me some credibility in their eyes. Gee Beth, I guess he is a good manager. Oh, he’s something all right! They were pleased, and they could not hide it. It was a win.

When I pick Karen up, I can’t get over how amazing she looks. The black frock she is wearing is sort of loose but also kind of form-fitting. The black gloves, black pillbox hat and black heels remind me of funeral scenes in mafia films. I, on the other hand, am wearing a beige tuxedo that I found at Cagney’s, a white tuxedo shirt with frills and pearl covered buttons, glossy beige dress shoes that somebody’s grandfather might have worn to a wedding. Perhaps I do look like Richard Gere or Mickey Rourke; perhaps I look like the dork who found a date to prom from another school with only days to spare. And it is sunny, by God, it is. We are two dilettantes on a lark. I am finally getting somewhere. I will transfer my studies and candy business to Ann Arbor, and maybe I will take Karen with me. But going on a date is not the same as picking a girl up at El Oasis or the Nail or an Our Lady of Lebanon dance. It’s not a conquest. It is a pleasure to be on a date with Karen. I obviously did not date high school girls after dropping out of school. No prom; no Sadie Hawkins for me. Oh, I could have done those things if I had wanted to, but it felt like a trap. What if I had enjoyed myself? And what if enjoying those evenings had made me feel shitty—like I was missing out?

I think it is better that I have met Karen in our college years. There were high school teachers that I liked. I probably should have gone back to visit a couple of them, and I sincerely hope they are doing well. They were oddly enough the same teachers Stuart still talks about. They are not the reason I dropped out of school.

Karen’s hot bod is calling to me. The groin region is on fire. Her body says Phil, Phil, I am over here. Where have you gone? What are you doing? We are on a date for Christ’s sake. Karen, I think, you have my undivided attention. For however long you would like it. We walk through the Contemporary wing first. There is the Grace Hartigan, and the Helen Frankenthaler. Is this really contemporary? The Duane Hansen sculpture of the student leaning against the wall is a trip. So life-like. Nuts. The Contemporary collection elicits a few elongated hmmm’s and succinct wows from Karen. But the paintings are not why we are here. Eventually, we make our way to the Bray Renaissance Gallery with the unearthly atmosphere and gigantic tapestries. The gallery, which is a time capsule, has the feel of a mausoleum, like the one at New Calvary were the bronze statue of the children playing crack the whip is located.

We are here for the impressive collection of glass paperweights. Clichy, Baccarat, Saint-Louis: it all sounds impressive. Karen’s eyes are a vibrant blue, a color of hope and resuscitation trapped in glass.

After a moment of silence and gazing at the glass, she asks, “What do you think?”

“I think they are pretty damn cool.”

“You pass the test.”

“I didn’t know I was being tested.”

“You were. Let’s go to the gift shop.”

I ask Karen to stop before the painting of St. George and the dragon. It is one of my favorites. I think of testing her. But, no, I will not press my luck.

“Do you know what Stuart said one time while we were here?”

“Here here? Or here at the Flint Institute of Art?”

She is aghast. “He said he wondered what the paperweights would sound like if they were dropped from the parking ramp of the Cultural Center.”

I shrug, but it is a sympathetic shrug. The shrug says, Karen, I am with you on this. Stuart is a jackass.

“I am guessing he failed the test,” I say.

“Such a goon boy,” she says.

In the museum shop, I flip through a book about Andy Warhol. Personally, I can take him or leave him. I watch Karen. She is delighted. She is easy to watch. She examines everything. Will she shoplift again? I gravitate to the table with the boxed sets of notecards. My mother likes abstract art. She is easy to please. Rothko, Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Hopper—she is happy. I find myself wondering what Margot might like. Maybe a nice sketchbook with a cool pastel cover. Can I see our beloved pizza server and pan scrubber sitting on the couch, legs tucked under her bottom, sketching a still life of a flower arrangement on her dining room table, which by the way, I have only ever really seen in the dark as I trundled a drunk Stuart up to his bedroom?

No.

I am certain Margot would invite me over for dinner some time if I tossed her some hints. The underfed college student trying to make ends meet, in need of a decent home cooked meal. Wouldn’t it be funny if Stu came home from State on a whim on a Friday evening to find me seated at the dining room table, eating dinner, engaged in lively conversation with Margot and Glenn, holding his little sister at bay with a stink eye only she could see?

I think this date is going well. Our next stop is Billy’s Pub. We will wow them downtown. We will give the regulars something to talk about for the rest of the day. We will park at the Water Street Pavilion parking lot and walk across the worn and dirty Saginaw Street bricks like a couple of characters right out of The Great Gatsby.

We go outside to look at the winterized fountain. The empty reflecting pool strewn with brittle, rattling leaves. Overhead, the clouds seem muscular. They give me confidence. When have I ever need any? Why does Karen always seem to gain the upper hand whenever we are together? I am not used to that. She turns to face me. This, now, is familiar. She reaches for my beige lapels. She is concentrating. Her hands are like the wings of a sparrow, quick and deliberate. She steps back a bit and smiles. A car passes by on the street. A yellow bus full of children on their way to church. I turn my lapel up so I can see the shiny pin more clearly. It is approximately two inches tall. A cheap piece of trash. Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Yellow hair, mint green shell.

“Aww,” I coo. “Did you steal this for me?”

“Uh huh.”

“Does this mean we’re dating now?”

Her smile gets bigger and she blushes. Not only are we shruggers, we are smilers. The smile is as ubiquitous as the shrug. A language all its own. Quite often Karen’s response to my subtle interrogations is a smile. Sometimes the smile reveals an embarrassed Yes. Sometimes it’s a polite No fucking way. Other times the message is not so simple. Anything from Wouldn’t you like to know to You are such a dufus to I can’t believe you just said that to Please come here so I can scratch your eyes out. And the problem of course is that sometimes it is impossible to tell which smile is which. Sometimes it takes an interpreter with whom none of us is equipped. And so I submit to you that we guess.

5.

I will admit that on an overcast and painfully chilly morning, surrounded by nature and engulfed in the anxiety it sometimes evokes in me, I humor Stuart more than I should which has probably made him complacent and thoughtless. I have been working my magic. I have gotten the back up singers. Nailed down a show at Danver’s Hall. This past month has been all about positioning the band—so that one Smith’s song does not apply here: he is getting what he wants. We are looking off into an impenetrably narrowing distance in a dense wood in the country, the car parked along a dirt road just to our right. Or is it our left? I can no longer see the car. The road and the woods were separated by a rusted barbed wire fence onto which we tossed a soggy log so we could cross. The floor of the woods is papered with rustling leaves of death. Making out with a willing and slightly inebriated girl on the manicured green of the ninth hole at Pierce is one thing, but this is something all together different. I am a city boy. So is Stu, I thought.

We have supposedly driven to a spot where Stuart and his grandfather used to hunt for mushrooms in what I imagine was some ritualistic reenactment of Stuart’s grandfather’s reservation childhood. Besides the Bum Woods which surrounds the bowl of Kearsley Park, and maybe an elementary school class trip to For-Mar Nature Preserve, I have never communed with nature in such an intimate way, and, because I do not really know which storm is currently raging in Stuart’s head, I am simultaneously intrigued and nervous. Why are we here? Will it require stripping off our clothes? Self-flagellation? A circle jerk? “How are we supposed to find any mushrooms like this?” I ask. I have not dressed for the occasion—did not fully comprehend that we would be traipsing around in the woods like elves. I guess I thought we would just be using the scenery as a backdrop, like looking at it from the car, or standing on the muddy roadside for as long as it took to thoughtfully smoke a clove. Does Stuart even know what a moment of peaceful reflection feels like?

“Something’s not right, man.”

Oh, Christ, I think. “Uh, which way is the car?”

“I think it’s over there—“

“Weren’t we just over there? I didn’t see the car—“

I am wearing leather wingtips. Pleated slacks. A maroon Member’s Only jacket. There is hardened mousse in my hair and I have combed my eyebrows. There is however some comfort in the observation that Stuart is wearing a heavy trench coat which will hamper his mobility. If I can get a head start, I will be able to outrun him. The muddy pack of inbred feral children who live in a cave will train their efforts on the easier prey. Of course, outrunning him won’t help if I don’t know in which direction to run. My mind is racing. I am outside of my element. The dead branches of the trees conspire to prick my eyes and lips and flaring nostrils. The bushes and thorns and pickers and vines grab for my arms and legs. We are swine in a slaughterhouse. I have scratched the back of my hand. Blood is drawn. The vipers can smell it. “Something ain’t right,” Stuart announces, coming to, surveying the spot where we are standing. He looks up at the sky. Slowly turns in a circle. He appears to be listening intently to something beyond the range of my heightened sensibility. It occurs to me that my groin area is not activated, not today, which is perplexing. “I think it was spring. I think we used to go mushroom hunting in the spring. Dammit! I’m such an idiot.”

Together, we look at the mud on our shoes. I smile. For this particular occasion, I am borrowing a soft version of Karen’s you are such a fucking dufus smile. “Shit, no mushrooms.” He kicks at the leaves. It is more of an exasperated reaction than an indication of a troubled and violent malfunctioning personality. I do not feel threatened. One time when Stuart came out of El Oasis with Karen and her housemates, he karate kicked a parking meter into submission. In the morning, his foot throbbed, and he wasn’t sure why but Karen refreshed his memory. The bruise on his foot lasted for weeks.

“Darn,” I say. The breeze has picked up. The woods are aswirl. “Should we look for the car?”

“I think I might be concerned about Nigel,” Stuart says. “No, I’m sure of it. I’m certain. As a rule, I am not very certain of anything, but of this much, I am certain.”

“Do you think there could be hunters out here?” We have not heard any gun shots in the silently roaring distance. Nor have we encountered any sudden movements crushing the brush among the trees. No stampedes through the woods. From the folds of his trench coat, Stuart produces the postcard which reveals the festering cause of his concern. The glossy, dog-eared postcard is a black and white image of Ian Curtis sitting in a studio or warehouse on what appears to be a guitar amp, cigarette in one hand while he pinches or soothes the bridge of his nose with the other. Stuart and Nigel share a cult-like affinity with the former lead singer of the defunct band, Joy Division. Only all too frequently are we subjected to Stu’s drunken lamentations of the fact that he will never witness a live Joy Division concert. Repeatedly, night after night, he dives into the lyrics of Joy Division’s songs for the foreshadowings of Ian Curtis’ suicide. He maintains that somebody should have seen it coming. He is bitter and angry and hurt. Defending the other members of the band, Nigel is more generous. They were young and stupid, he argues. They were drunk and high all the time. The band was catching fire. “I want to see Nigel,” Stuart announces. “Somebody should go find his ass.” His gesture of disbelief includes the whole woods in which we are lost. One might interpret the flowing message scribbled on the back of the postcard to appear unhinged but it basically fits the general description of how Stuart normally characterizes Nigel’s letters. There are a few harmless observations of the mundane aspects of his daily life as a grunt in the copier room of a large D.C. law firm, a couple of snide remarks about the lawyers with whom he is forced to interact. But no abstract expressionistic smears of ketchup or blood this time. No mutilated Molson bottle caps. No alarms, unless Stuart is reading into Ian Curtis’ isolated, forlorn image on the front side of the postcard.

In Which the Artist Looks Back at the Exhibition History.

I now have a body of work that spans nearly 25 years. I wish I had kept some of the art I had made in my childhood days and college years. In 2019, I started to seriously apply myself as a visual artist. I didn’t have any training. But I knew that I had always been an artist. The link below encapsulates my exhibition history.

Exhibitions Original Art for Sale Your Silent Face Available Now

Paintings in a Series

I always paint a series. I have very, very few one offs. So far I am pretty happy with this new series of fluorescent paintings. The colors are reenergizing. They’re not me necessarily, but they could be you. I am not bold and flamboyant, but then again I refuse to be blasé and unoriginal. These paintings are all in the shop, except for one which has sold. Links in bio.

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Re-entry: another interpretation

I am really digging these fluorescent colors. Bring on spring and summer! I think about space exploration, and a quantum future, a lot. But I think we need to fix this planet, as well. We need to be working on leaving and staying on this planet in equal measures. Earth should be home base for as long as our sun will allow.

Re-entry

Re-entry, 2023, 20"x16" $155.00 Original Art for Sale Your Silent Face By Lane, Tim Buy on Amazon

Review of Connor Coyne's The Darkest Road

5 out of 5 stars, reviewed by me.

The Darkest Road (the third book in Connor Coyne’s Urbantasm series) contains relatable and lovable characters who have become more complex, as has the story. Akawe’s parallels to Flint are all there for any reader who grew up in Flint, and for any others who want to know what it was like. I found myself really pulling for the entire cast of characters, but especially for John and Selby. There’s a lot going on in this novel. Books one and two have set it up. The intricacy and scope of the overarching plot is impressive, and the action and drama really pick up here. Coyne’s sense of poeticism and unabashed maximalism are fine-tuned and in good form. I’m a fan. In this third book, the characters have hit high school. They are dealing with intense emotions, the confusion of adolescence and Akawe’s troubled economy. John Bridge struggles to cope with the challenges his parents are presented with as Akawe’s auto industry continues to crumble, abandoned houses are burned to the ground and urban blight becomes a deeper reality. The dark secrets and past events that motivate Selby, and come to consume John, propelled me along. The web of public school life, auto history, raves and parties and old neighborhoods transformed by hard times, gangs and drug dealing is rich and complex. The themes of mortality, loyalty, morality, growth, decay and God are all there, too. Coyne packs in as much as he can, and he does it well. I’m looking forward to Book 4: The Spring Storm.

Connor Coyne (he/him) is a writer living and working in Flint, Michigan.

Connor has published several novels and a short story collection, and his work has been featured in Vox.com, Belt Magazine, and elsewhere. He is the director of the Flint-based Gothic Funk Press and is facilitator for the Flint Public Library‘s writing workshops.

Connor is a graduate of the University of Chicago and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the New School. Today, he lives with his wife and two daughters in Flint’s College Cultural Neighborhood (aka the East Village), less than a mile from the house where he grew up.

Connor Coyne dot com

Connor Coyne

Urbantasm: The Darkest Road By Coyne, Connor

Re-entry: a New Painting

Really happy with this weekend’s painting results. Taking new risks. I think it’s paying off.

Re-entry, 2023, 7"x5" $45.00 Terra Form, 2023, 8"x8" $45.00