I especially love the work from 2014, 2018, 2019. Love the titles, too.
Marion Fink. She commanded the elements of her own holographic reality. Monotype, oil color on paper, 210 x 152,4 cm / 83 x 60 in, 2019
A New Painting in the Shop /
There’s a new painting in the shop at yoursilentface. And it’s an addition to the series The Sublime.
2065 CE, 2020
acrylic, house & spray on canvas
24”x24”
Get the Balance Ri-i-ght /
You’ve probably been wondering if Pete and I have added any songs to our mega deep cuts Spotify playlist, Get the Balance Ri-i-ght. I am happy to say that we have included some more Ministry, a few songs by Martin Gore from the 1989 Counterfeit EP, and more. This playlist is the perfect gift for that amazing GenX’er in your life who doesn’t need anything. Follow it on Spotify so you can keep this amazing playlist at your fingertips!
Viola!
Poetry Alert! The Personal Poems Are Available /
The Personal Poems is a correspondence between two poets (Tom Bourguignon and myself) stretching from 2005 to 2006. The title of the collection is a nod to both Frank O’Hara and Ted Berrigan, in that order. In 1959, FOH wrote a poem entitled “Personal Poem.” After Ted Berrigan moved to NYC in the early 60s, he became friends with O’Hara and wrote his own FOH-inspired poems (Personal Poem, Personal Poem #2, Personal Poem #7, Personal Poem #9).
If you are not familiar with FOH’s poetry, it is worth mentioning that the immediacy of his poems is a well-known signature of his work. The immediacy of Berrigan’s “takes” on O’Hara’s style is equally seductive and engaging.
Tom and I realized that “Personal Poem” by FOH and Berrigan’s later poems were a great model for a correspondence—for a manuscript with an epistolary format. The idea of keeping in touch through poems that adopted a letter-writing flavor allowed us to experiment and generate a fair number of poems.
Tom was in NYC; I was in Lansing, Michigan. He was going to school, and separated from his love by distance. I was an aspiring artist, raising kids and holding down part-time work. It was an enjoyable, productive collaboration.
Use the link below to shop for The Personal Poems. It’s only $4. All proceeds go back into the lifespan of the website.
Tim Lane
Tom Bourguignon
“Personal poem, Sep. 25, 2005, eight forty-three
at night, in the Staten Island Ferry terminal, waiting
for the nine-thirty ferry home. My fiancée
hit the ignore button on her cell when I called,
and as I sit here wondering why I continue
to write
the poem of my day which, in this moment,
consists in pigeons wandering through the terminal,
but the floors are mopped & waxed & there’s no food
for them, I think my mind is mopped &
waxed, too, & as for what I should do about it
I’m not too certain. Being a thousand miles from
Gail is too much—my mind is tired from keeping
myself busy so I won’t realize how lonely I am & how
miserable I am without her around.
Little things creep
up, tomorrow’s reading, that worries me; teaching
Tuesday at the hospital; getting my poem revised &
my Old English done. Do things get done in the
world, anymore? I think, the older I get, the
less I get done per day. I guess I hope I live
a long time—
____
Sunday, September 11th, 2005, we get up
& take the kids downtown for a brunch that
doesn’t suck, or so I lie to myself after
Sheila returns an omelet laced with hair,
such a brave girl, sincere, much braver
than I, who would’ve left it untouched
& paid full price
Outside the sky blue & above us inspires
the windows of buildings which’ve seen
brighter Sundays after football games
during which the home fans tore up
the turf, we must get back to passion
like that, to supreme hatred or effluent
love, forgetting what day it is amidst
discussions of corporate greed with an
eleven-year-old & I still haven’t made it
back to New York, undiscovered &
hungry”
Raccoons, Original Art & Ke$ha /
Yesterday I ran into this little momma (she’s hiding her baby under her) while getting my steps in at dusk. Other than her, and three other people I saw from a distance, I didn’t see anyone else, and that was fine. The sighting seemed like the perfect segue to my gallery, People Enacting the Behaviors of Urban Animals.
Below, a pic of the critter, a sample from the series, a link to the gallery, a link to the shop, and a Ke$ha video!
A Snippet from Your Silent Face /
I am almost ready to launch the novel. It will most likely be available on Amazon, iBooks and here. I can’t thank Gary and Rob enough for their help with this final edit. I hope you enjoy the teaser below!
Cut Throat was the norm at the basketball courts, and if it was your court, you just stepped in; you didn’t have to wait for the next game. If you could steal a game that was almost over you were a badass. But there were pros and cons to being a badass. Probably way more cons; I wasn’t sure. Everyone preyed on losers, but everyone wanted a shot at a winner.
James could take or leave the Howard Jones. Some little girls screamed and made way too much noise while roller-skating on the tennis courts. Kids volleyed tennis balls off of the bricks. The nearby woods were dark and overgrown. The backstops at the baseball diamonds needed repairs. The fields needed plenty of grooming. The young dudes playing basketball were cocky shit-talkers, but they weren’t very good. Actually, they kind of sucked. They hacked a bit, but not too much. They laughed and panted a lot. They were in bad shape. They didn’t take it seriously, that is not until I began to school them. When I took the lead, the environment changed.
I collected a rebound under the basket and laid it back up, went to the line and sank the free throws. Drove left, pulled up and hit a mid-range jump shot. Nailed the free throws. For the most part, I was nothing but rusted chain-linked net. My game hardly changed, if I didn’t think about it. It was like pool at El Oasis. Nigel and I often ran the table, and I held my own, even though I never practiced, as long as I had just the right amount of beer, and didn’t hop on the expressway of racing thoughts in my head.
Predictably, the game got chippy.
The shaggy dude said, “Check this motherfucker out,” to no one in particular.
James was in good shape, but he couldn’t make a bucket.
The next time I touched the ball, I was fouled hard.
“Foul!” I shouted.
“He’s a pussy.”
“Yeah.”
I was careful not to roll my eyes.
I backed off and clanged a long jumper off the back of the rim. I threw up a couple of bricks. I played a layup too hard off the backboard. I let the young guys get back in the game. They grew more excited and animated as they closed the gap.
I made a bucket here and there, but intentionally missed my free throws. When I dribbled the ball off of my foot, it skittered out of bounds. The young guys tore after it. Closing in on it, they jostled and shoved each other. They locked up and grappled like wrestlers. A long gleaming string of slobber hung from the shaggy guy’s mouth. The taller dude stepped back for air. “Gross, motherfucker! Sick! Get that shit away from me!” The shaggy guy paused to wipe his chin which gave the other guy a chance to put him in a headlock. The shaggy guy spazzed and eventually wriggled out of the headlock when the bigger dude relented. Straightening up, he whipped a switchblade out of his back pocket. “I’ll show you Cut Throat, motherfucker!” They zig-zagged around the court as if they were connected at the waist by a rope. They were laughing. The knife-wielder kept shouting, “I’ll show you Cut Throat!”
“C’mon, man.” James was already in motion. Everything was in motion and standing still at the same time. The sky was losing its pink glow. We sat in the car and opened beers and listened to the Howard Jones cassette. It seemed to me that nobody had really noticed what had just happened. The guys had tired and walked away. The roller skaters were tripping and screaming on the tennis courts; the tennis balls were still being slapped against the bricks in the failing light.
“Wow,” I said.
“Fucking East Side.”
“No doubt.”
I was glad for once we weren’t too drunk. As we drove away, I wondered if this would end up being the last time we ever stopped by to shoot hoops at our neighborhood basketball court which, before I had gone away to school, we had basically owned.
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
The Hood Internet 80s Video Mashups... /
are pretty dang cool. 1976-1986 was a great time to be a teenager (just sayin’). A few of my favs of the Hood Internet 80s mashups are below, just for your—as Morris Day might have said—easy access.
These are actually amazing.
#tbt
The Disillusioned, the Loved & the Future /
Yes, there’s a new painting at yoursilentface.com! I’ve really enjoyed the spray paint and colored pencils. Good times. It’s hard to talk about why making art invokes a good feeling. Maybe because each piece becomes an opportunity to say what I have to say and connect with someone.
This painting takes it place it my latest series.
Here’s an image of the new piece.
The Disillusioned, the Loved & the Future, 2020
You can price it out here: