Tim Lane's Blog, page 32
April 24, 2021
YSF Update
Two weeks ago, I was notified that the 49th and 50th copies of my 80s, East Side of Flint, coming-of-age novel, Your Silent Face were sold. If you haven’t taken a look, I invite you to check it out. Peace.
#80s #NewWave #Flint #EastSide #GenX #RustBelt #graffiti #urbanpoetry #NativeAmerican #bluecollar
Scroll down to the footer for more info about the book.
Reviewed in the United States on October 30, 2020
Verified Purchase
Your Silent Face follows the emerging adult, Stuart, through his first summer at home after his first year away at college. It is set in the mid-80's in the struggling industrial midwest city of Flint. The novel beautifully weaves together the struggles of Stuart as he tries to figure himself out, with the 80's new wave music scene. There is music, alcohol, drugs, dancing, fighting (including a basketball fight), graffiti, poetry, sex, chess, and a mysterious Viking. Read it! I loved it and am hoping to hear more from author, Tim Lane.
Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2021
Verified Purchase
Great read, it is full of things I had forgotten about from the 80’s and the East Side of Flint. Congrats Tim
Your Silent Face By Lane, Tim Buy on Amazon
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Your Silent Face Available Now 
Your Silent Face: The Playlist
April 22, 2021
Robots, Roommates, Kraftwerk, Daniel H. Wilson, Native Land Acknowledgements
#TBT. This is one of my favorite 80s pics, though honestly it is almost a 90s pic. I don’t think I’ve worn a turtleneck in thirty years. Anyway, I often think about robots, and robotics. I see something, analyze it and think, “In the future, a robot will do this.” Or, “This will be automated someday.” The other day, my son said to me, “If you think about it, we’re already surrounded by robots. We just don’t think of them as robots.” Of course, he’s right. The other other day, while I was thinking about the Mars rover, and its helicopter, I was reminded of the first time I saw Kraftwerk in concert. The crowd loved the robots. I saw them with one of my college suitemates. It was an otherworldly experience. I have seen some great concerts with my college roomies, who have become lifelong friends. Most recently, we saw Modern English. That was a great night. I can’t wait for concerts to be safe again. I just hope robots don’t take over the world someday. I recently read Daniel H. Wilson’s book, Robopocalypse, and now I am following that up with Robogenesis. Scary stuff! Wilson is a best-selling author, a robotics engineer and a Cherokee citizen. As I sip my coffee and craft this blog post from Michigan’s capital city, I acknowledge the Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomi tribes that first lived on this land we now call the state of Michigan.
Please enjoy the amazing video of the Kraftwerk robots in concert below, and explore the other aspects of yoursilentface.com.
Original Art for Sale
Your Silent Face Available Now Galleries fiction, art, poetry
April 21, 2021
A Teardrop on My Pillow
It’s been a minute since I made a new playlist. My friend tells me that there is a music genre out there called New Dark Wave. I like it. I don’t know. Everything moves pretty fast, if ya ask me.
The times are almost indescribable. I have really turned to music when I’m not focused on more important matters.
I have to confess that I am thrilled how a lot of alternative rock music has come back to an 80s sound—a New Wave, Goth-ish, techno, 80s post-punk sound. It’s unmistakable. I love it. I was an 80s teen.
According to some articles I’ve read, an 80s Goth revival is here, or right around the corner.
This playlist is a little Dark Wavy, a tad Power Poppy,
Follow my playlists! Enjoy.
Check out the art galleries—all my original artwork. Check out my 80s coming-of-age novel, Your Silent Face.
#80s #goth #newwave #genx #darkwave #synthpop
Galleriesfiction, art, poetry
Your Silent Face Available Now
Your Silent Face: The Playlist
Original Art for Sale 
Gimme Your Masses, mixed media on canvas, 20”x16”
April 20, 2021
Unknown Pleasures, Finally
To explain why I have never purchased a t-shirt featuring the iconic Joy Division stacked pulsar emission graphic would be too boring and embarrassing, so I won’t (I’m not really sure I understand it myself). Peter Saville’s artwork on the album cover of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures is a universal, mainstream image these days. When the album came out in 1979, the graphic was mysterious and, I dare say, seismic. And now, some thirty-five years since I fell in love with the band, the album and Saville’s artwork, I finally have the t-shirt.
Enjoy the official video of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” below.
April 16, 2021
Tribute to Ian Curtis #flashbackfriday
This exploration of small paintings was a good exercise for me. I had not worked small. Working small didn’t cater to my strengths at the time. I was utilizing a combination of emotional expressiveness and calculated thought. When you add experience to this combination, you eventually end up with instincts, I believe.
My formula has almost always been to begin with instinctual, emotional expression which is followed up by bringing in stylized or machine-precise images that convey an idea or message. Big, emotional planes of color, or bold gestures with a brush come off better big. So I was working big early on.
This series, which was a tribute to Ian Curtis, of Joy Division, was an attempt at doing what I do in a smaller environment or format, and I was happy with the results. It was progress. I learned that it could be done.
Why the tribute? I really admired the way Ian Curtis seemingly, unabashedly put himself out there for us: the poetry, the philosophy, the emotion and the body. It was something I found myself incapable of at the age of eighteen. I thought his lyrics, his sense of performance—what video footage I had seen—and Joy Division’s sound were electric and amazing, and it all helped me channel a lot of my own adolescent angst at the time, which very well may have saved me.
Shadowplay
Disorder
Ian Curtis Tribute art
April 15, 2021
"Everything Counts in Large Amounts"--Depeche Mode
Depeche Mode sang that “everything counts in large amounts.” Love that early 80s tune! Small amounts, too, I would say. Many thanks to East Side for the new stars and review at Amazon, and many thanks to whomever for last week’s purchases which helped me reach a personal goal.
If you are unfamiliar with my self-published coming-of-age novel, Your Silent Face, you can check it out here in the galleries, at Amazon, in the Apple Book Store and at KIRKUS REVIEWS. Links below.
Your Silent Face By Lane, Tim Buy on Amazon
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“Lane’s coming-of-age story interrogates timeless themes of class, violence, assimilation, and the rough stumble to adulthood…Readers will enjoy following Stuart’s thought processes, wherever they lead.” —Kirkus Reviews
Key words: #80smusic #NewWave #GenX #RustBelt #NativeAmerican #graffiti #urbanpoetry
Your Silent Face Available Now
Your Silent Face: The Playlist 
April 13, 2021
A Poem for NPM: "Elegy for the United States of America"
It's National Poetry Month. Here’s an old one that would definitely be included in my Selected. The times, and all of the media coverage, affect us internally, until one day you find yourself responding to something in a way that completely surprises you, and you say to yourself, “Where on Earth did that come from?”
Elegy for the United States of America
for Jacqueline & Zachary-Michael
I pulled up & dropped you off, waved & drove away,
late for work, the schoolyard empty, no group of friends for you
to join, & turned around in a driveway less than a hundred yards
later realizing that I hadn’t seen you enter the building, hadn’t seen
you entering the safety of the hallways, couldn’t see you
entering the haven of a school, my hand already covering
my mouth, eyes moist, the imaginary man emerging from the bushes,
from the tree line, sprinting across an empty schoolyard in my
mind, heading for you like a bullet as I turned in the driveway, you
trudging toward the building with your backpack, lunchbox, violin,
all ten years, me knowing as I backed out of the driveway,
the tears wetting my fingers covering my mouth, that this
was completely irrational behavior, a ridiculous leap, a hole
blown wide in logic, that the man could
just as easily have been a woman, some woman crouching in
the bushes for hours waiting to drown my beautiful daughter
in a bathtub with her lime green hat, purple coat, backpack,
lunchbox, violin, all ten years
but what I saw when I turned was a man,
a man, sprinting across the empty schoolyard because I hadn’t
seen her enter the building, hadn’t watched her into
the building, the omission all the more painful because
we’d been talking about the war, about the suicide
bombers, & I thought to myself, naively perhaps, It is
crazy that I have to explain to my ten-year-old
daughter what a suicide bomber is, that I have to provide her
with a definition for suicide bomber to stow within her
backpack of words & ideas, & I realized as I
passed by the schoolyard too late to see her enter the
safety of the building that I had no idea who was in that building,
who was hiding in that building, who was planning things
in that building, that in some small yet deadly way headlines
are like hand grenades, that it was crazy that priests fondled young
boys, that a woman who wanted a baby drove across the state
& cut one out of another woman’s stomach, that young men
& women were blowing themselves up in cars rigged with
bombs, & I told myself as I cried & turned around & drove
back past the school that this was crazy, that everyone was mad,
that the whole world was raving & that I had to accept this because if I
didn’t then I couldn’t explain why I was driving past the school,
why I was seething with irrational fear, why in the hitch of an instant, between
the flash & boom of a detonated bomb, I saw in my mind
the man sprinting across a schoolyard, saw it with my own eyes, as plain as
anything, saw him sprint across the path of my van, saw him
running down the street, saw him emerge from the bushes, saw him sprinting
across the schoolyard with my eyes which immediately started
to blur, & I wasn’t sure if I was all shook up from the thought of this man
attacking my daughter, from the thought of this sick phantom attacking my
daughter, from the thought of men & women so angry & disturbed
they destroy their own children, from the thought of limbs
& lives being torn by bombs like business as usual
& of course the schoolyard was empty, & I cried off & on all the way
to work, angry that I hadn’t stopped, that I hadn’t satisfied my crazy
impulse, & turning off the van I sighed & took off my glasses &
wiped my face & thought, So be it, you are crazy, & I went
in to work & called the school & asked the secretary to let me
speak with my daughter & was transferred to a phone in her
classroom & explained to the teacher that I was Jacqueline’s father—
& I could tell by the tone in the teacher’s voice that she thought
that this was odd, a little unordinary, but she quickly acquiesced.
And when my daughter said hello, I said, Hi, are you okay,
& she said, Yes, & I could tell by the question in her voice
that she, too, wondered, that she would quiz me after school,
if she remembered, then quickly turned around & told her
that I would talk to her later, that I was just checking:
& somehow I manage to resist
the impulse to ask if she, my
country, is sure.
April 9, 2021
seen vs. read SOLD
My newest painting from The Sublime series has sold. I love it when a piece connects with someone, and they decide they want to enfold it into their life. Something is being communicated. Almost seems to me like parallel time lines crisscrossing.
The Sublime art
Cheers
April 5, 2021
Timeless Themes #EastSide
“Lane’s coming-of-age story interrogates timeless themes of class, violence, assimilation, and the rough stumble to adulthood…Readers will enjoy following Stuart’s thought processes, wherever they lead.” —Kirkus Reviews
Always looking for honest reviews which can be left at Amazon, Good Reads, Kirkus Reviews or sent directly to me to be posted on my blog. Please share.
It’s about getting your story out there, having a voice, being heard, helping others to identify their own stories.
Your Silent Face is Available right here in PDF or EPUB format—or at Amazon for Kindles—or Apple Books for iPhones, iPads and notebooks.
Key words: #80smusic #NewWave #GenX #RustBelt #NativeAmerican #graffiti #urbanpoetry #Flint
[image error]Available on Amazon here.
Your Silent Face PDF 4.99 Fiction
Coming of Age
Your Silent Face EPUB 4.99 Fiction
Coming of Age
Your Silent Face Available Now
Fiction Your Silent Face is now available for Kindle at Amazon:
Your Silent Face available at Amazon
or at the Apple Book Store:
Your Silent Face available at the Apple Book Store
You can also purchase here at yoursilentface.com:
What lies ahead that doesn’t suck? Summer break forces Stuart Page to return home and wrestle with his fraying ties to the East Side of Flint, his memory an archive of cassettes he would like to erase. His freshman year of college was lame. More early Cure than Spandau Ballet, he might be overheard saying. More Gary Numan than Falco.
Flustered by visits from a stoic viking, fueled by an endless supply of beer, Stu picks apart an obsession with the lead singer of Joy Division and chugs the sour dregs of insecurity as he drunkenly veers through Flint’s blue collar fight culture, summer hook ups, the aftereffects of Old School Catholicism and Reaganomics in Your Silent Face.
Key words; fiction, coming of age, 80s music, New Wave, Gen X, Rust Belt, Native American, graffiti, urban poetry
April 3, 2021
Seen vs. Read
There is a new painting in The Sublime series. This one stalled for several weeks while I thought about where I wanted it to go. Eventually, I just needed to stop weighing considerations and push myself to make a choice. After that moment—the moment a decision was made—I was able to get lost in process, lost in time, lost in the moment. Ideas and decisions merged quickly.
I am still thinking about parallel universes, multiple timelines, the bending of time and space. Portals. The virtual. The real. The future.
I just read Daniel H. Wilson’s sci fi novel, Robopocalypse, but that’s a whole other blog post. Coming soon!
This painting is also available in the shop (Art for Sale). See link below.
Thanks for stopping by yoursilentface.
Seen vs. Read, 2021
acrylic, house, spray & colored pencil on paper
30”x22.5”
The Sublime art
Original Art for Sale
