New Review of Your Silent Face /  by Tim Lane

Before continuing with this #saturdayselfpromotion post, I want to recognize the privilege of being able to make it….

There is a new review of Your Silent Face. I invite you to check it out.

Your Silent Face is my 80s coming-of-age-slash-ode-to-New-Wave-music novel. The narrator is Stuart Page. The setting is Flint, Michigan. “Who would you rather be? Ian Curtis or Bono?”

“5.0 out of 5 stars A relatable, emotional story with a playlist to match!

Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2022
Verified Purchase

Lane writes of finding oneself at home after a year in college. A time, for many, that is fraught with boundary testing, alcohol experimentation, friendships reimagined and tender moments as the mortality of loved ones is realized and the uncertainty of what the path forward looks like.

Stuart, like any well-written main character, shows his humanness, is not perfect. The story had me laughing, reflective, annoyed and wondering if maybe I should try my hand at poetry. The answer, good reader, is no, I should not.

Would and have recommended to friends.”
— Heather Surface

#80smusic #genxers #newwavemusic #joydivision #neworder #thecure #prince #funkadelic #donhenley #aimeemann #ledzeppelin #comingofage #flint #rustbelt #nativeamerican #fiction #contemporaryliterature #novels #yoursilentface #yoursilentfacethenovel #yoursilentfacetimlane #lovelansing #clubbing #postpunk #iancurtis

Under the Milky Ways: A New Painting /  by Tim Lane

A long weekend means more studio time! While working on this painting, I discovered an acoustic version of The Church’s song, “Under the Milky Way,” which is really nice. No idea how I missed it back in the day.

I hope you are enjoying the different reiterations of image and idea within The Realities Project.

#worksonpaper #paintingsonpaper #contemporaryart #spaceart #quantumphysics #innerspace #acrylic "#spraypaint #coloredpencils #graphite #stencilsandpencils #contemporarypaintings #reality #dreams #physics #philosophy #time #multiverse #artwork #drawing #artoninstagram #timlane #newpainting #stencils #yoursilentface #yoursilentfacetimlane #lovelansing #artoftheday #GenX #TheChurch #80smusic #collectingart #collecting

Under the Milky Ways, 2022

In Which the Artist Obliquely Characterizes the Problematic Nature of Reality /  by Tim Lane

Sometimes a painting sits in my head for a long time before I can get a chance to get into the studio. Life gets in the way. When I do get a chance to execute my ideas—which I have been walking circles around in my mind for days, weeks, sometimes months—such a painting can happen fast. I have been looking at the elements of the painting for some time, so I know where I want to go and what I want to see.

But even so, you reach a point while in process where decision-making becomes unavoidable—and what you have been imagining becomes a slightly or completely different reality.

You have to choose.

#worksonpaper #paintingsonpaper #contemporaryart #spaceart #quantumphysics #innerspace #acrylic #gouache #watercolorpencils #micronpens #contemporarypaintings #reality #dreams #physics #philosophy #time #multiverse #jameswebbspacetelescope #artwork #drawing #artoninstagram #timlane #artonpaper #newpainting #stencils #yoursilentface #yoursilentfacetimlane #lovelansing #artoftheday #GenX #bigcountry #80smusic #collectingart #collecting

In a Big Countries, 2022

In Which the Artist Asks if You Would Rather Be Ian Curtis or Bono /  by Tim Lane

#selfpromotionsaturday I wrote an 80s coming-of-age novel and in the opening, Stuart Page asks, “Who would you rather be? Ian Curtis or Bono?” It’s a question. Duhhh. The setting of Your Silent Face is Flint, Michigan. You can check out a full review from Kirkus Reviews here. You can find paperback and Kindle versions of the book on Amazon, plus more reviews and ratings. You can also find the paperback at The Robin Books in REOtown, Lansing. And, of course, you can purchase digital versions of the book here at yoursilentface.com. I can also ship paperbacks. Contact me at inlovewithplaid@comcast.net #yoursilentface

“A meandering but vigorous story about wayward youth and the necessity of art.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Stuart Page, working class and Catholic, is on the edge of becoming an adult in this novel set in 1980s Flint. Tim Lane, a Flint native and poet, tells the story in a series of episodes that jump around in time. The best parts of this book are Lane’s descriptions of what it felt like to grow up in Flint after the good jobs left town. Stuart is sensitive and smart. He tags buildings with Krylon, but he also inscribes his poems with a Sharpie on a wall in a parking lot. Stuart’s best friend, Nigel, is a chess master, as well as a quoter of Surrealist poetry, and a good dancer who moves through the world with an unfailing cool. Although Stuart and Nigel are budding intellectuals, they spend much of their time drinking, navigating the simmering violence of the East Side, and bird-dogging chicks. These guys get laid a lot… I think. Stuart is one of the legions of horny young people conditioned by a Catholic upbringing to feel guilty about sex outside holy matrimony. Stuart refers to the sex he has with desirable Flint girls as “mashed potatoes,” which conjures an image of up-and-down movement that ends in something not quite orgasmic.

Nigel lives with his mother, Brenda, (one of several MILFs in Stuart’s imagination) in an East-Side house virtually wall-papered with the maps that used to come with the National Geographic. The map-covered walls are a constant reminder that there is a world outside Flint, presumably better, and a foreshadowing of the escapes to be made by people in Stuart’s circle. Nigel is something of a screen upon which Stuart projects his fantasies of how best to live. It appeals to Stuart that Nigel seems slightly smarter, is good looking (Stuart remarks at one point that he and Nigel look alike), and can produce inscrutable but still poetic speech that seems to plumb the depths where Stuart would go. The Stuart-Nigel relationship is a mystery underlying Your Silent Face.

The narrative is immersed in consumer culture. Lane specifies the brand names of cars, booze, shoes and clothes, colognes. At first, I was reminded of Ellis’s name-checking of brands in American Psycho, but Lane isn’t critical of these products for their role in the superficiality and deadness of American consumerist culture. His adolescent characters identify with the brands. Music is a central part of the characters’ lives in this book, especially Stuart’s. The kind of music you like is the kind of person you are, according to Stuart, who is a complicated amalgam that includes Morrissey, Thompson Twins, Tears for Fears, and at least a dozen others. Stuart and his friends live in this familiar world of corporate consumerism partly because they don’t know anything else, and also because they think it’s fun. Contrast the teenagers’ limited and corporatized experience with the experience of East-side adults, who live in the world of bills, ailing elderly parents, and children to rear. Glenn, Stuart’s father, regularly sits in his living room, staring silently at the crabapple tree in the backyard, embodying exhausted resignation supported by a quiet masculine competency. When shit happens, he handles it as best he can.

Stuart says that Flint is the murder and unemployment capital of the US, and he means the part of Flint on his side of The Wall. In his encounters with the rich people of Flint, Stuart can only see caricature. Stuart has nothing but contempt for one of his girlfriend’s “posh” parents, and Lane’s/Stuart’s use of the word “club,” as in country club, has all of its meaning as a separator of those who belong and those who don’t. Stuart visits his college roommates at a Grosse Point home and is served pina coladas and “hors d’oeuvres” by the mother, poolside. Class consciousness feels like it’s applied with a trowel in these scenes, but it makes for good reading. In perhaps the best scene of the book, Stuart makes a quick exit from Cammie’s party at her rich parents’ house, where everyone is friendly and polite, and heads for an East-side “party,” where there is some kind of gang bang going on upstairs, violent skinheads circle like sharks, and the basketball court is hard-packed dirt.

Your Silent Face has a huge cast of characters, and I can see Lane developing any number of them for future books.”
— Bill Butler

#80smusic #NewWave #postpunk #JoyDivison #NewOrder #DepecheMode #Prince #TheCure #Flint #graffiti #urbanpoetry #rustbelt #nativeamerican #GenX #ficiton #novels #comingofage #literature #contemporaryliterature #contemporaryfiction #DIY #yoursilentface #yoursilentfacethenovel #yoursilentfacetimlane #art #waywardyouth #punkrock #newwavemusic #postpunkmusic #Goth #clubbing #danceclubs #80snewwave #flashbackfriday

Atrocities Exhibition: A New Painting /  by Tim Lane

The next painting in The Realities Series is looser, more painterly.

#worksonpaper #paintingsonpaper #contemporaryart #spaceart #quantumphysics #innerspace #acrylic #gouache #watercolorpencils #micronpens #contemporarypaintings #reality #dreams #physics #philosophy #time #multiverse #jameswebbspacetelescope #artwork #drawing #artoninstagram #timlane #artonpaper #newpainting #stencils #yoursilentface #yoursilentfacetimlane #lovelansing #artoftheday #GenX #joydivision #80smusic #collectingart #collecting

In Which the Artist Ponders Themes of Love and Tension and Time before Valentine's Day /  by Tim Lane

There is this constant tension between the old and new work. Aspects of the old that I miss and appreciate more and more every day. Qualities of the new that feel earned and rewarding.

We’ll Make a Lover of You, 2005 is an old painting that I look back at and think, “Dang.”

It is 60”x48” on canvas.

I stopped making larger scale paintings like this because I couldn’t afford to ship them.

“Dang.”

#contemporaryart #acrylic #gouache #watercolorpencils #oilpaintsticks #micronpens #contemporarypaintings #artwork #drawing #artoninstagram #timlane #yoursilentface #yoursilentfacetimlane #lovelansing #artoftheday #painting #genx #identity #valentinesday

Emit Time /  by Tim Lane

I am still exploring ideas and techniques for The Realities Project, but a few of the new paintings have been on point, and I am happy with them. It’s been interesting to me to develop an image, and then discover that maybe the suggestion of the image works better, or is stronger, than the actual image, itself

I am still grappling with this; I want both ideas to work.

Where the Streets Have No Names, 2022, has started a journey to a new home. Soon it will enter the atmosphere of somebody else’s personal collection. Imagine witnessing a live stream of a spaceship landing on Mars. This is how I feel when I sell a painting.

Wonder. Awe. Humble. And thankful.

Emit time.

#worksonpaper #paintingsonpaper #contemporaryart #spaceart #quantumphysics #innerspace #acrylic #gouache #watercolorpencils #micronpens #contemporarypaintings #reality #dreams #physics #philosophy #time #multiverse #jameswebbspacetelescope #artwork #drawing #artoninstagram #timlane #artonpaper #newpainting #stencils #yoursilentface #yoursilentfacetimlane #lovelansing #artoftheday #GenX #U2 #80smusic #collectingart #collecting

Where the Streets Have No Names, 2022, SOLD

In Which the Artist Talks Depeche Mode, Politics, Deep Virtual, Deep Space, James Webb, Quantum Physics and Fast Colors /  by Tim Lane

“There’s a new game we like to play, you see
A game with added reality”
— "Master and Servant," Depeche Mode (M. L. Gore)

The new work is becoming a series that I am calling The Realities Project, and a lyric from Depeche Mode’s song, “Master and Servant,” from Some Great Reward, 1984, captures the theme.

Q: Has reality always been a dangerous game? A: Yes.

As we continue to pursue just what exactly reality is, we are traveling inward just as far as outward. Deep Virtual versus deep space. Imagination and the James Webb Space Telescope. A coup is a protest is a birthday party. Attempting to overthrow the government is bowling night.

And what of time? Going backwards and forwards all the time and all time always with us like a bubble. And the multiverse? Events playing out slightly different ad infinitum. Recounts, sweet dreams, new stars. At some point all time lines, all reverse-births, all real and unreal energy has to exit or re-enter the engine—has to project.

How to name it, find it, imagine it, understand it, observe it? Science fiction writers have always shown us that whatever we can imagine is a possibility, which is both awesome and frightening.

(Filmmakers continue to explore themes of altered time, manipulating reality, undiscovered psionic powers and alternate parallel worlds collliding—think Inception, Looper, The Man in the High Castle, Stranger Things and Fast Color.)

Master and Servants (Infra Intra Inter Version), 2022

#worksonpaper #paintingsonpaper #contemporaryart #spaceart #quantumphysics #innerspace #acrylic #gouache #watercolorpencils #micronpens #contemporarypaintings #reality #dreams #physics #philosophy #time #multiverse #jameswebbspacetelescope #artwork #drawing #artoninstagram #timlane #artonpaper #newpainting #newartwork #stencils #yoursilentface #yoursilentfacetimlane #lovelansing #artoftheday #GenX #depechemode #80smusic