Tim Lane's Blog, page 31

Ian Curtis

How do you get at how and why somebody meant something to you when it is someone you have never even known? I never saw Ian Curtis live in concert. All I have ever had is the lyrics, the songs, the music, the articles, the interviews and the photos. And yet I felt something for him; some kinship. Blake and I talked about him endlessly, or so it seemed. We related to his anguish, in one sense, to his humble origins, in another sense. His perspective captured thoughts and feelings we possessed. His situation echoed ours, to a degree.

We had similar interests, as well: poetry, literature, music, Bowie. I was reading Sartre and Camus and Simone de Beauvoir and other existentialist philosophy. I wrote poetry. I wanted to be in a band, but I didn’t play an instrument, and I couldn’t sing.

I immediately fell in love with the music.

The songs seemed to take the feelings and thoughts that were swirling around inside of me and channel them elsewhere. The music was cathartic. People assumed that listening to Joy Division was an element of my early adulthood depression, but it was more of an element of what kept me going.

I do not admire suicide. I would have liked to have seen what Ian Curtis might have become. His is a sad story. I am glad that the members of Joy Division carried on and became New Order. That they can talk about those days, now, and give us some insight into Curtis’ illness and other struggles.

Photo: Phillipe Carly

Then, Then Again & Now

Then is a very old painting, then again is an older painting and now is a newer one.

Galleries

fiction, art, poetry

Your Silent Face Available Now Original Art for Sale Poetry

The Shape of Things to Come, 2021

There is a new painting in The Sublime series. This is the first time I have painted on Stonehenge Aqua—what a great paper!

The Shape of Things to Come, 2021

acrylic, house, spray, colored pencil & crayon on paper

30”x22”

Original Art for Sale The Sublime

art

The Record Player Song

Do your friends ever send you songs? Or mixes? If they don’t, then you need at least one friend who does. Or at least one friend who makes playlists. Try sending a friend a song and see what happens. It is fun to have friends who share your passions. Or look at the world through similar prisms: the prism of songs, or music.

When you hear the right song, or a song that feels right, you exist a little more intensely for a few minutes. You refract different colors. You think: me. You connect with the song, and you are alive a little more because your friend made a similar connection. They heard the song, and they thought: you.

It is nice when somebody occasionally thinks, Ah, yes, you.

A friend of mine sent “The Record Player Song” to me bright and early this morning. Another friend of mine occasionally supplies me with a flash drive full of new music. Sometimes a friend will text a video or a link. Is there anything more important than music, other than people, shelter, healthcare, justice—the obvious?

I don’t know.

These moments make me here. My friend said, I knew it.

#songs #daisythegreat #friends #friendship #music #recordplayers #GenX #playlists #mixtapes

I had this record player when I was a kid.

Red Skies at Night

I finally got home from work tonight with a pizza and a thirst around 8:30. You know what that means? Scarf some pizza. Walk across the street for a six of Heinies. Shower beer. Now, I’m listening to an awesome New Wavy 80s playlist that Pete Martens and I put together: Red Skies at Night. Have you given it a listen? You can follow all of my playlists on Spotify—they’re public. Just search Tim Lane and look for the blue and yellow hair.

O, Madonna. What’s your favorite Madonna song? I gotta say Borderline. Hands down, for me.

When’s the last time you’ve listened to Nik Kershaw’s Wouldn’t It Be Good?

I tell ya. The 80s was a magical period for music.

Something for everyone.

#newwave #80s #madonna #redskiesatnight #alternativemusic #NikKershaw #heineken

The Young American Poets

My first edition of Paul Carroll’s anthology from 1968, The Young American Poets, which also happens to be signed by the American poet, Diane Wakoski, has arrived! Over the years, I have owned hardback and paperback versions of this anthology, but I was in dire need of a replacement, having loaned out my copies. It is one of my favorite anthologies.

If you can’t tell, Diane Wakoski is on the front cover, at the apex of the pyramid of blue cubes.

O, happiness. O, purple lilacs! O, red-covered, hefty book of poems.

***

I would like to thank my friend, Peter Richards, for notifying the universe that I needed this book.

I would like to thank the United States Postal Service for safely delivering this book to my front door.

I would like to thank Third Mind Books in Ann Arbor for their wisdom and foresight.

#DianeWakoski #TheYoungAmericanPoets #60s #poetry #americanpoetry #thirdmindbooks

FTL, 2021

Another painting for The Sublime series.

This painting started out as a need to simply paint versus a need to say something: it wasn’t going to be part of any series. I needed to get my mind off of some things. Needed to de-stress. So I started making this painting. I decided to work on a perspective that I had been thinking about but had not tried to execute—I don’t know why. So, I thought, “Okay, let’s see this idea.” I just wanted to make it; see it. I did not have any patience. I started working backwards—images first instead of creating a unified foundation. Thus, as the painting progressed, it did not cohere. The negative space wasn’t working. It lacked the unification that an overall first layer would have created. I thought, “Oh, well, doesn’t matter. You can just keep pushing this, trying different things, this is just a fun experiment.”

Eventually, the piece arrived at a place where I felt that it was actually somewhat working, despite the varied techniques and seeming lack of harmony, and I said to myself, “Now, I can say something.”

I’m not exactly sure if I would exhibit this piece, but I think so. I will definitely keep it around for a while. I sort of love it.

FTL, 2021, mixed media on watercolor paper, 30”x22.5”

The Sublime

art

An Excerpt from Your Silent Face: Nigel's Four Stages of Belief

Stuart Page’s buddy, Nigel, gets the girls and does a lot of philosophizing in Your Silent Face. Here’s an excerpt where Nigel reveals his “Four Stages of Belief” at Thoma’s (a coney island) while an intoxicated Stuart fantasizes about the waitress and bitterly observes Kimberly and Karen fawning over Nigel.

Key words: #fiction #comingofage #80s #NewWave #GenX #RustBelt #NativeAmerican #graffiti #urbanpoetry #Flint

Your Silent Face By Lane, Tim Buy on Amazon [image error] Your Silent Face Available Now Your Silent Face: The Playlist

What's Your Line?

Recently, I had to fill out a survey, and one of the items asked me to include my favorite line from a book. I didn’t hesitate. A line that has stayed with me for thirty years is the first line of part two, chapter nine of Walker Percy’s debut novel, The Moviegoer. The line is on page 83 of the Avon paperback edition, which is my favorite. I read this book five summers in a row. The book is narrated by a deep-thinking, yet semi-shallow smart-ass. Or maybe it is more fair to say that the narrator is a thoughtful person who observes society but can’t help being a product of the times. Here is the line:

"For some time now the impression has been growing upon me that everyone is dead.”

The survey got me thinking about other books. I love the opening paragraph of John Fante’s novel, Ask the Dust…

“One night I was sitting on the bed in my hotel room on Bunker Hill, down in very middle of Los Angeles. It was an important night in my life, because I had to make a decision about the hotel. Either I paid up or I got out: that was what the note said, the note the landlady had put under my door. A great problem, deserving acute attention. I solved it by turning out the lights and going to bed.”

Here are five books that make my reshuffled Top 25 deck no matter how many times I shuffle the cards:

The Stranger, The Lover, Ask the Dusk, The Moviegoer, Savage Detectives, Last Nights of Paris.

Okay, so that’s six. What can you do? So many books. Camus’ opening line in The Stranger is perhaps one of the most remembered opening lines of a novel: “Maman died today.”

I actually rewrote the opening line of my novel, Your Silent Face, many times. Too many to count.

“Earlier we had argued whether The Smith’s lyrics were over-indulgent.”

I felt like that opening line had to capture something if not everything the book was about—being young in the 80s.

I always sample the opening lines of a novel before deciding whether to take the plunge.

Marguerite Duras, author of the famous novel, The Lover.

Stories Preserve Places?

Yesterday, we drove into Flint to see family and had to take a detour off of Dort Highway because only two hours earlier, a shooting had occurred outside of the Big John Steak and Onion shop. A shooting at eleven in the morning. The shooting was the result of a theft and the subsequent retaliation.

My friend, who also grew up in Flint, but now lives in Detroit, messaged, “Who is robbing shit on S. Dort???” After I gave her some of the details of the shooting, which I won’t go into, she replied: “And that’s why you don’t rob people off of Dort Highway.”

I really can’t lambaste Flint because I didn’t stick around and try to help my community. My answer to what I experienced growing up, what I saw on the horizon, was to leave. And that’s what I did. I occasionally drive in to see family, meet with old friends and visit the Flint Institute of Arts.

Recently, the friend that I mentioned above informed me that somebody has been burning abandoned buildings again. Two, in particular, caught her attention: the old pharmacy across from the original Angelo’s, and the clock shop on the corner of Dort and Robert T. Longway. Both of these buildings have been vacant for years. But none of these places are ever really abandoned in our minds.

The pharmacy was significant for me because I used to walk to it from my grandmother’s house with my uncle. In my semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel, Your Silent Face, the protagonist and his uncle spend several tense moments together in a fictionalized version of this pharmacy.

Another East Side building that has been torched and gutted is the old Brown’s Funeral Home. This place is mentioned in YSF, as well. Stuart, the protagonist, avoids driving past it as he roves across the East Side because it brings back painful memories of when his grandfather suddenly died.

I am including photos. I do not like to dwell on urban blight, but maybe it has to be acknowledged. These places look nothing like this in my mind—my imagination—and I guess that a part of me tries to keep it that way.

I think my novel preserves a part of Flint—some places, some people, some moments—but I also think that this is complicated. I didn’t sugar-coat anything. I blurred and fictionalized people, places and events while trying to be true to an experience. I might have focused on too many negatives. I might have kicked my hometown one too many times while it was down. I tried to provide a bit of balance while remaining faithful to the perspective of a mixed up, sensitive, angry narrator who dwelt on his tough experiences more than his tender ones—who struggled with class, religion, violence and failure.

Good or bad, or neither, I do believe that stories preserve a place, or, more like one’s experience or perception of a place. It’s a fact, or a Romantic idea. Maybe both. I think that stories can help other people. I think in some way that they can help the person who writes them. I think history matters, and that people have to question stories for historical accuracy. Like I said, I haven’t contributed to Flint’s welfare or future. But I think that I get to have my say because I was born and raised there. I spent all of my formative years there. I like to think that maybe my novel is some sort of contribution, but if I am being honest, I’m not really sure.

#Flint #EastSide #Angelos #FlintEastSide #YourSilentFace

The vacant pharmacy at the corner of Franklin and Davison.

What used to be Brown’s Funeral Home.

Both of my grandparents lived a couple of blocks from both of these places, and for the first six years of my life, I did, too. But even after we moved less than two miles away, this neighborhood was still the hub of my life for many more years.