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”
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”
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
This playlist is a companion to my 80s coming-of-age novel, Your Silent Face. Stuart Page is a protagonist obsessed with 80s New Wave and Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Divison. All of the tunes and bands in the playlist get a mention in the novel. The novel is available on Amazon.
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 the 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.