Tim Lane's Blog, page 6

A New Space Painting

I forced myself to start a new painting and let the ideas follow. Best idea came while I was walking up to the coffee shop. Things come to me while I am walking.

The Void Without, the Universe Within, 2024, 20"x16" $235.00 2024: New Work 2023

A series of colorful, painterly, expressionistic paintings focused on images of space, astronauts, portals, roses, first contact and singularities.

2022: Astronauts Angels Engines Roses Portals

A series of colorful, painterly, expressionistic paintings focused on depictions of space, astronauts, portals, angels, roses, generators, time, ideas of quantum physics, first contact and singularities.

The Mother of it All: A New Painting

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve worked a new painting, but this painting made me happy. The evolution of theories surrounding black holes is constantly growing and changing thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope. Now, some scientist wonder if black holes birth the matter which makes up universes or house whole universes like a bubble, despite the contradiction in the science as we know it. But we used to believe matter couldn’t escape a black hole, and now we have observed massive jets of matter shot out of supermassive black holes.

The Mother of it All, 2024, 22"x30" $255.00 2024 2023

A series of colorful, painterly, expressionistic paintings focused on images of space, astronauts, portals, roses, first contact and singularities.

Get Your Copy: Phil's Siren Song, by Tim Lane

My second novel, Phil’s Siren Song, is out! You can purchase it below. If you’d rather receive a copy directly from me, you can buy a copy in my shop, and I’ll ship directly to you. It will take a little longer, but it’s totally doable! See the amazon Buy Button or my website shop link below.

Phil's Siren Song By Lane, Tim Buy on Amazon Phil's Siren Song $18.00

Phil's Siren Song, Available Now!

I am thrilled to share that my second novel, Phil’s Siren Song, is out! Check out my new website, philssirensong.com if you need more information.

Phil's Siren Song By Lane, Tim Buy on Amazon

Large Paintings

Early on I made large paintings. I’ve been feeling an urge to paint big again. However, I just don’t have the space for it.

I Was Dying Right in Front of Them, but They Couldn’t Tear Their Eyes from the Television, 2003, 60”x48”

Copy Paste, 36”x48”, circa 2003

Ping, circa 2002, 72”x72”

After Much Thought, 2004, 60”x48”

untitled, circa 2002, 48”x108”

Untitled (You Cannot Change This), 2003, 72”x72”

May Only Goodness, 2007, 60”x48”

Ye of Little Fate, 2006, 48”x48”

The Planet I Love Has More Than Just One Moon, 2015, 40”x40”

DALL-E 2 Images

No Looks Back: A New Painting

I started this in 2023. I set it aside for several weeks. It didn’t feel finished. Now it’s done. I love the beautiful images of space that the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes are capturing. They fire my imagination. I am in awe of space. I try to combine the space imagery with futuristic or relatable, present-day themes.

No Looks Back, 2023-2024, 22"x17" $125.00 Original Art for Sale Your Silent Face Available Now

Your Silent Face is a poignant and humorous coming-of-age novel set in Flint, Michigan, in the mid 80s.

Paintings: 2023 in Review, Part Four

The last installment of Paintings: 2023 in Review.

Black Hole Keep on Spinning, 2023, 18"x24" $245.00 sold out Ancient Civilization, 2023, 8"x8" $55.00 From Whence It Came, 2023, 22”x30” $115.00 The Lane-Nash Fam Reunited in Heaven, 2023, 18"x24" $85.00

Paintings: 2023 in Review, Part Three

Just one or two more posts to finish up 2023 in review.

The Wondrous, 2023, 12"x9", payment plan available $100.00 Spatio Domus, 2023, 18"x24" $85.00 The Imaginary Becomes the Innovation, 2023, 18"x11.75" $85.00 Making a Pass, 2023, 18"x12" $85.00

Phil’s Siren Song: Just a Li’l Teaser

 

I’m gettin’ pretty close to launching this new novel. Just gotta find the time to put in a li’l more work. I hope this teaser tempts you into adding Phil’s Siren Song to your wish list.

 

It’s the 80s in Flint, Michigan. The economy is tanking, crime is skyrocketing, and the punk scene is thriving. For Phil McCormick, an unenthusiastic drug dealer and self-proclaimed ladies’ man, the ultimate question of his 20s is found in a Clash song. “Should I stay or should I go?”

Logic says get out. Ann Arbor, where bougie sorority girls and artsy philanthropists are always on the lookout for a bad boy, is calling. But Phil, who’s searching for just the right exit, isn’t quite ready. Like anyone else, he wants to be remembered, and that’s a problem. Drug dealers simply get replaced.

That alone makes it tough for Phil to turn his back on a hometown where he’s enjoyed his share of success, especially when it needs all the help it can get.

In his defense, there are powerful forces at play, like Karen, whose offhand remarks can alter Phil’s moods faster than the drugs he half-heartedly sells. Her smile can make him question his entire being.

Then there’s his attraction to the seductive waitresses of the East Side’s most popular diner, his relationship with his estranged mother who shares his love of films, and his loyalty to Joe, the housemate who single-handedly holds Flint’s punk scene together. They need him. Or maybe they wouldn’t even notice if he left.

One thing’s certain, accomplished whiner and unpopular frontman, Stuart Page, needs Phil in a major way if his college band is ever going to play a gig at one of Flint’s legendary punk rock shows. Could aiding Stu provide the perfect exit?

In the past, Phil’s taken advantage of opportunities as they’ve come his way. So why does he feel like he’s living in a video for Dead or Alive’s dance club sensation, “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)” now? He’s afraid of getting played. By life.

  

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

Phil’s Siren Song

In Love With Plaid Press

Copyright, Tim Lane 2024

Cover art by Sam Cronin

Before I was hired at Ruggero’s, I worked at Auto World. The indoor theme park based on Flint’s automotive history immediately failed. It didn’t waste any time fooling us with false promises. It is right across the street: a constant reminder of daunting stupidity. If you ask me, somebody was doing a lot of coke. I ran the carousel.

—Phil McCormick

Concerts expose and unnerve you. They toy with your emotions. They make you think for a moment that belonging might be an option, that you are in fact a member of a larger group of like-minded people if you want it, if you reach out and make some effort. But there are no clear instructions—just mimicry—and while you are in the middle of the crowd, you feel one with something and alive with hope.

—Phil McCormick

BOOK ONE

Indian Summer

1.

I drive Stuart home in his father’s beat up Chevy Caprice, taking the desolate route between the Flint River and Buick City plants while Karen follows us in her puny Chevette. The play in the steering wheel of this vehicle is wicked; the brake pedal almost goes completely to the floor.

“Where are we goin’?” There are duffel bags of oily tools on the floor of the back seat where he has wedged himself. “Take me to Karen’s.”

“I’m afraid we’re taking you home.”

“No!” He is shouting under the front passenger seat.

“Probably for the best.”

“Let’s get some beer.”

“It’s past two.”

“So?”

“Stores don’t sell past two.”

“Since when?”

“Like, since always.”

“Well, fuck me,” he says, softening. “I knew that.”

He passes out until the Caprice thunders over the train tracks at Leith and Dort, the car’s rough action jolting him back to life. The white orbs of Karen’s headlights violently bob behind us.

“Phil, 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 and turn it up while he struggles to un-wedge himself and repeat his assertions about the blacks, the Mexicans and the whites.

“Then where do the Ojibwe live? Answer me that. Where do the Indians live?”

His street is lined with young silver maples and telephone poles mounted with streetlights.

Karen pulls up to the house and observes my lame attempts to assist m’lord from the safety of her car.

Signaling desperately with my hands, I plead the obvious. “For God’s sake, help me!”

When the rusted Caprice’s back door slips from its hinge, the grating of rusted door parts makes me wince.

“C’mon, man, ya gotta help me here.”

“I can’t open my eyes.”

“Oh, fer Christ’s sake.”

“Come on, goon boy, get your ass out of the car. It’s time to go night night.”

“Karen, you shut up.”

His charming little sister meets the three of us at the side door.

“Hi, I believe this is your brother.” I am trying to seem as nonthreatening as possible in the yellow light leaking into the night from the bulb above the side door. “We’ll just throw him on his bed, if that’s okay.”

“Uh, I’m not related to that butt wipe.” She is not intimidated. “Why don’t you just throw him in the back yard?”

Before escorting Stuart home, the deserted view of downtown from the Genesee Merchants Building had been memorable, but had left me a little sad. I had taken the fire escape to the roof out of habit more than anything else, a yearning for the times we had partied up there, when downtown had still felt dangerous.

The scene below had looked the same as it used to—the empty parking lots and side streets, the vacant store fronts, a few cars crawling north and south on Saginaw—but something had changed, and I couldn’t put my finger on it.

“Karen,” Stuart sputters, tripping on the stairs. “Don’t sleep with him. Show some fuckin’ restraint.”

Stuart’s sister’s bare feet lightly slap the floor. She is wearing an over-sized John Stamos t-shirt.

In the poor light, John Stamos’ face looks insane, more like Jack Nicholson’s looming in the splintered bathroom door of The Shining.

“There!” She is not concerned with waking anybody, and by anybody I mean the entire East Side.

“Oh, boy, here we go,” Karen mutters.

A bedroom door swings open and Stu’s husky father teeters into the hallway half asleep, in his underwear, until our stomachs touch. His belly reacts like a waterbed.

“Ahem, why hello, Mr. Page.” Confidence is everything.

He pauses to scratch an armpit and adjust his privates as a sleepy, disembodied female voice calls out behind him. “Glenn, what is it? What’s going on?”

Stuart’s sister explodes. “Dad, go back to bed! Get in there! Mom, never mind!”

Now, I am smiling to beat all hell. I am actually very well acquainted with Stuart’s dear mother.

Margot and I are coworkers.

When I am not going to my creative writing class, selling drugs at El Oasis or helping my housemate, Joe, run punk shows, I’m usually at Windmill Place, managing Ruggero’s, a pizza counter where the two of us eke out lame paychecks. But now is not exactly the time for exchanging pleasantries. I chuckle at the thought of calling out to her, though, as she lies in bed in a negligee sheer from years of washing and tumbling dry.

Stuart’s family is as working class as it gets, and no one can say that margot doesn’t work her ass off. I can hear her saying, “I ain’t got the energy to even think about sexy lingerie.”

It’s a shame.

Her tired, heavy voice takes shape in the darkness. “Glenn, who’s there? What’s going on?”

Glenn wakes up: “Goddammit! What the hell’s this?” It is every man for himself, now.

“Stu’s drunk!”

“What?”

“Drunk, Dad. Drunk. He can’t even open his goddamn eyes.”

“Hey!” he barks. It is clear she is not allowed to swear.

“Go back to bed, Dad!”

Glenn retreats. Dresser drawers being ransacked can be heard, 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 sister loses it. “Throw ‘im on the goddamn bed, Jesus Christ, what’re ya waiting for?”

It’s a fair question.

But I can’t help asking, “So, are we about to get shot here?”

Once in bed, Stuart gathers his blankets and tucks them between his legs like a good boy. 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 dim light that Stuart’s bedroom is tidy and empty. The walls, however, are plastered with posters of alternative bands, including Joy Division, New Order and the Cure. 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 in Flint, or historically, for that matter, is weak.

Sooo, anywhere, just like anyone?

Suddenly I long to be in my own bed, far from Stuart’s rhetorical questions, 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, which is more than I can say for Karen.

2.

I am mildly depressed, assuming any flirtatious progress made earlier in the evening with Karen at El Oasis, 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.

“Well,” she says, lighting a cigarette at her Chevette. “Wasn’t that fun? Are you still interested in going to Thoma’s?”

I feel out of place in Stuart’s neighborhood but Karen’s inquiry is reassuring. “Why not?” I say, wondering where the dogs are. There should be a least one barking dog getting scolded about right now. “I mean it’s either that or heading home to listen to Joe having sex. The walls are pretty thin.”

It is more of a suggestion than the truth—Joe rarely brings strangers home.

“Was that his girlfriend?”

A window slides opens and Stuart’s sister lashes out, “Get a room!”

I will admit, when I found Karen standing over Stuart in a stall in the men’s room, I sensed an opportunity.

“Now What?” Karen had said out loud, repeating one of Stu’s more commonly asked rhetorical questions.

“Check his pulse? See if he’s breathing?”

She hands me her drink because she needs both hands to brace herself as she straddles his torso. Thoughts of the toilet are in stark contrast to my piqued, horn dog awareness of her tight jeans. Even for a guy with incentive, the sight of Stuart lying on the bathroom floor is almost all too much.

Stuart uncorks like an insect and rolls to his back, but he doesn’t seem able to open his eyes. His voice is a shank of jagged aluminum, a shot-gunned beer can torn in half by a frat boy.

“Did I miss last call?”

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

“Masochism my ass,” Karen mutters.

“Hey Stu!” The stall is riddled with juvenile graffiti. “Are any of these brilliant aphorisms yours?”

“Punch ‘im,” he mumbles. “Punch ‘im like yer always punchin’ me. Punch the son of a bitch ’n the arm—“

“Alrighty,” I say, nudging Karen aside with one of my bony hips. We are done messing around here. “Let me get in there. Come on, now. Oops-a-daisy.”

In the club, some of my customers have informed me that unless they have had the right amount of “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. Last call is almost as bad as waking up in bed with a stranger—that initial wave of terror. Last call is rough. I can forgive Stuart.

We emerge from the men’s room with Karen’s goon boy (her term of endearment, not mine) between us like an unconscious hockey player—take him straight out the back exit where, in the alley, he freaks out and insists on slipping to the pavement.

“Don’t touch me,” he rasps, pathetically attempting to blow tiny stones from his lips. “Leave me alone. DON-huh-owwwn-’ touch me.”

We are met by my housemate, Joe, and an attractive girl I do not recognize, which is disconcerting. How did I miss her? She is hot.

On Saginaw Street, the hip crowd is gathering outside the front entrance, but it does not matter; I have sold all my candy tonight.

In the alley, I ask, “Who’s up for Thoma’s?” I am upbeat and optimistic. The night isn’t over. It has most definitely become more complicated, but it ain’t over.

Opportunity is everywhere, if we can keep our eyes open.

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

“Hey, Stu, how ya doin’ down there on that pavement?” Joe is a sweetheart.

“How the fuck does it look?” Stuart croaks.

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

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

“Puking is the worst,” Karen mutters, without looking up. “No matter what, I never puke.”

AC Delco takes up nearly 500,000 square feet of space along Davison Road and N. Dort Highway, and although the nearby junkyard is not nearly as large, it also contributes to the East Side’s industrial ambience. The plant, which is where the spark plugs and God only knows what else are pumped out, is surrounded by miles of chain-linked fence, while the crushed cars across the road are stacked and arranged in jagged, rusting pyramids.

At this time of night, the East Side is awash in the rumble of factories, the swoosh made by trucks on the expressway, the incessant turbulence of hot air rushing through convoluted ducts toward vents. Subdued sounds that get into one’s psyche.

Thoma’s, however, is lively. Club kids coming down. Skate punks with skateboards. Shop rats. Bikers. Old-timers in flannel. Whites. Mexicans. A table of black couples.

The short-order cooks work their sizzling magic.

The waitresses are pure and lovely and tough: mothers, daughters, girlfriends, grandmothers. I want to believe that what you see at Thoma’s is what you get in Flint, and if given the chance, these women could save all of us. One would never have to leave this GM forsaken village.

The idea of a hardworking woman who is ready to fill your cup, smiles and calls you hon, is a potent fantasy. Older, younger—it doesn’t matter. They all wield an attraction. Their uniforms are like those of nurses: the sound of their whispering polyester slacks pure seduction. Their plain, tired beauty ignites a pleasant flame in my groin.

A 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? Do you have to practice that?”

“Of course, hon.”

“And the plates aren’t too hot?”

“Not as hot as me, right?”

The waitress sashays her syrupy behind to the counter. There is a sense of community at Thoma’s, especially on rowdy nights—a feeling of levitating in the mosh pit while waiting for a band to play—but it can be deceptive if you aren’t careful. Sometimes, I have to snap out of the hypnotic nesting of conversations and clattering dishes and sizzling Koegel Viennas to pinpoint which miscreant is most likely to punch me in the gut in the parking lot and steal my wallet.

Another waitress stops by with refills.

“Busy,” I say, smiling.

She winks.

Karen is smiling at me as if I am an ass.

My feet tremble in my Chucks like the puck on an electric hockey table, the soles of my shoes never really penetrating the greasy coat of atoms which make the floor slick, a phenomenon in perfect alignment with the incomprehensible laws of physics and love.

“You’re such a dufus.”

“Does that mean I’m not getting any tonight?”

“Eat your chocolate pie, goon boy.”

“Wanna try it?”

When she leans across the table to accept a honking bite of gelatinous chocolate, our eyes share an intense connection, and 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.

She has dyed the hair black.

“Mmm,” she says.

“Good, hunh?”

“Stuart,” she sighs. For a moment, she is back in Stu’s bedroom, beneath a poster of Robert Smith of the Cure. “Stuart, Stuart, Stuart. I am so fucking tired of his bullshit.”

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