#355: Southwest Style

Tucson, AZ

I loved some of the hand-painted signs in Tucson, and it was one of the only things that kept me sane in the 103 degree heat and playing rock shows in tiki bars. Some other highlights from the Tucson typography collection: the sparkly, the öddly-ümlauted, and the skull-bedeckled.

#7: Seahorse Seven

Albuquerque, New Mexico

#329: The Wire

Tucson, Arizona

"You read this painting's composition from left to right. But you read the emotion from right to left."

There I stood, bleary-eyed and somewhat hungover, in the gallery of the Hugh Lane, an earnest voice off in the distance cravenly beseeching my attention. My head throbbing with an unnameable pain, I shuffled closer.

In search of the museum café, I had instead stumbled unwittingly onto a lecture in Post-Minimalism. I was not there for the Post-Minimalism; indeed I had not heard of Post-Minimalism until that very moment. Modern art inspires me and the Hugh Lane had been my destination before. I was not in totally uncharted waters here. But to be fair: this was a lazy Sunday. I had gone for the free Debussy concert and stayed on idly to wander the grounds. Craving a croissant and coffee after a stroll through Francis Bacon's paint-spattered, tornado-swept studio, I was ready to call it a day. Nevertheless, I found myself cocking my head like the RCA dog and bending down my ear.

"So what you see is something full of incident . . . up close!"

Full of incident? Indeed, the night before had been full of incident, spent in high spirits with a roomful of friends new and old at a pub in Stoneybatter. Consumed were several Belgian ales, dozens of conversations, and at least one homemade Rice Krispie treat. Cycling home along the quays at 2.00 a.m., a reflective belt over my overcoat, I received drunken come-ons from dim-witted lugs in speeding taxis and laughed as I failed at flipping them off, my mittens thwarting my best efforts to have the last word. Happy but decidedly worse for wear, I had dragged myself out of bed that next morning after a fitful sleep, reasoning that a bit of culture would have to be my hair of the dog.

"But backing up, we see that it becomes half atmosphere, half system."

I backed up and blinked, along with the silent majority, at the blotchy gray-white painting that hung on the far side of the room. I didn't see half system, though maybe, I thought, I could make out some atmosphere.

"Now as we move on," continued the erudite voice, "We must think in shadow."

I coughed and saw fireflies. My head was a masterpiece of ache in ten parts. Thinking in shadow was not going to be much of a problem. Still hungry for my croissant and coffee, I somehow found myself taken in by this pied piper of pithy proclamations and led out of the gallery. For reasons I couldn't fully understand -- maybe I liked big words, or maybe I really did need to see what this Post-Minimalist hubbub was all about -- I ignored my spinning head and followed the throng up the stairs. We entered an austere gallery with a single Waterford crystal chandelier where, affixed to the wall, we beheld the wire. Not a painting. Not a sculpture, not quite, and not merely a drawing. This was --

"Something so ineffable . . . so . . . semi-visible . . ." explained our fearless leader.

I squinted hard at the semi-visible. What I semi-saw was single mangled, tangled, ineffable wire, pinned to the wall, and a roomful of quirkily dressed, bespectacled spectators spectating it. All throughout Dublin, hungover revelers were edging sleepily toward their kettles and toasters, shuffling about in slippers, cracking open the Sunday paper.

I was staring at a wire.

"Richard Tuttle's wire sculptures are in stark contrast to Bacon's self-narratives. Here the artist has achieved his goal and left himself entirely out of the work. This wire is, in effect, an echo. It has undergone an entire journey from line to wire to shadow, arriving, at last, to its destination. It achieves a Zen-like evacuation of subjectivity."

As the words hung there in the air, quivering like the wire itself, I felt a sudden shock of recognition. Left himself out of the work. An echo. Thinking in shadow. A Zen-like evacuation of subjectivity. Why bejaysus, I had gone for modern art and ended up with the perfect explanation of a hangover. I suppose you could call that an epiphany.

#360: Trolley Trolley Clang Clang

Old Pueblo Trolley Company, Tucson, AZ

Every now and then when I'm in the &7 kitchen cooking up a nice piping hot slice of blog pie, I'll get super excited about my upcoming subject matter ("OMG," I think, looking at the next day's number, "I get to write about TROLLEYS tomorrow!") and immediately begin thinking of clever things I can say, peppering my thoughts with allusions and song titles I can work in, only to do a cursory search online and find that every clever turn of phrase I was going to use has already been beaten to death by journalists and prescient idea-thieves. For example? There I was at the helm of my computer, gazing gormlessly at this picture of a Tucson trolley, when suddenly I was seized with inspiration: "Gee whiz! How about I slip in that hokey old song, 'Clang Clang Clang Went the Trolley'?" Which, I was soon to discover, is the hokey old reference nearly everyone with a pen or an internet connection and the word "trolley" on the brain reaches for first. It's one of those PBR ideas -- you don't drink it because you like it, you drink it because it's the first thing someone hands you when you say, "beer."

It's not a new feeling, this sad realization that in writing as in life, as Willie Shakes himself once lamented, there is "nothing new under the sun." (Though take that same idea, feed it into Samuel Beckett's brain, and what comes out of the machine is one of my favorite opening sentences of a novel ever, the memorable first line from Murphy: "The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.")

Along these lines, I remember feeling similar disappointment when, while a starving student at NYU, I sat in the abandoned carrells of stern Bobst Library and scribbled a review for one of my theatre classes on the show I'd just seen, Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. My opening line? "Jacques Brel is alive and well and playing in Greenwich Village!" And subsequently, every single review I have read of the show since starts with some shudder-inducing variant: "Jacques Brel is alive and well and playing in (insert name of town, name of venue)!" Or "Jacques Brel may no longer be alive and well and living in Paris, but he lives on in this zany new production by Horksville's own Redundant Repertory Theatre!"

Ah, it makes me cringe to look at now, but there is nothing quite so deceptive and dangerous than a writer in the throes of so-called inspiration. That's why I'm much more trusting of the days when I write dutifully, angstily, and doubtfully, laboring over each turn of phrase, feeling more like a pack mule than a glittering weaver of ideas.

#350

#350, Tucson, AZ

After this past week, I keep thinking that I'm done with Tuscon, but it would appear that Tucson is not quite done with me.

One of the pleasures of photographing numbers is the sort of reverse tourism it lets me indulge in. Instead of reading about places in a guide book and then seeking them out, I seek out the places first and then look -- often times long after I've returned home -- to see if I can make any sense out of what I've just captured. In this case, the 350 marks the home of Che's, a bar and music venue on the stretch of 4th Avenue. While Che's claims to be a jewel in the crown of this surreal desert outpost, it's surely not as culturally significant than the tiki bar where we played in a hundred degree heat to a crowd of three fans -- including that guy in the cabaña hat who kept talking to himself.

An online travel guide where I sought to find more information on the elusive Che's informs me of this: "Whether you prefer bourgeois elegance or nihilistic debauchery, Tucson can provide an evening's entertainment." Where, exactly, would playing accordion in front of a hookah bar fall on that continuum? And can we call this 350 bourgeois, or should we just admit that Tucson is just clutching at adjectives?

What can I say? It happens to the best of us. And with fifteen days left to the 2009 countdown, I'll be clutching at anything that doesn't move and looks like it came from a dictionary.

#347

#347, Tucson, AZ

It's enough to make you wish you were colorblind. I'm telling you, this town felt like a bad vision quest.

#346

#346, Tucson, AZ

Now that I've spent all that time dissing Tucson, Arizona -- though, in fairness, it's less of a dis to the place itself and more a detailed report of my own existential dread brought about by desert climates -- I feel I have to take it all back, for look at all the nice hand-made things you can get there. Hand-painted numbers do have a quality the others will never have, in the way that a handmade gift is always nicer than a store bought one. Don't you think?

With less than three weeks left to this project, I'm starting to get that weird spring fever feeling that hits one just before graduation from school, only it's twenty-seven degrees outside and there's no diploma for obsessive number collecting.

There will indeed be a full stop once we hit 365, a realization that's making me extra sentimental for something as relatively ordinary as, say, a hand-painted number on a building. What follows in the new year is still being worked out, but I've got some ideas brewing and it's still going to hit all the usual notes -- obsessive collecting, urban scavenger hunts, riffs on everything from Hemingway to Helvetica -- and I couldn't be more excited about it. In the meantime, I hope you'll enjoy as we race toward the finish line.

#344

#244, Tucson, AZ

Cue the jungle drums, pass the espresso, and bear with the wordless pictures for another day or so. Friday (tomorrow!) I hand over the manuscript. See you on the other side -- delirium loves company.

#338

#338, Tucson, AZ

Staggering up and down 4th Street in a hundred degree heat, past the tattoo parlor and the Dairy Queen, past the Jimi Hendrix mural and the hookah bar, looking only for air conditioning and a place to kill an hour before sound check. Back at the tiki bar it was what you'd expect: a jolly roger hanging over the stage and a grass skirt circumnavigating the bar, plastic palm trees stuck in fruity drinks and one dude in a cabaña hat talking to himself. I had to get out.

Tucson and I have that oil-and-water thing going on. Heat destroys me. It bloats my brain and saps my life force. Arid climates are dead zones to me, and it's in these places that a city or town is truly an oasis, the only sign that I'm not in a nightmare post-apocalyptic landscape. If I want to feel like I'm in a Cormac McCarthy book, I'll read one. Just don't make me get out of a van or airplane anywhere near one of those deserts. Five minutes in and I'm unscrewing my industrial sized water bottle. Ten minutes in, I'm hallucinating cow skulls.

One thing that did charm me about Tucson was the effort everyone put into brightening up their buildings. Maybe enough exposure to heat convinces you that a life-sized Jimi Hendrix is just what the town needs. Adobe huts painted bright blue or brick red lined the main drag. Ceramic numbers decorated the walls of cafés. This weirded-out 338 hung above a smoke shop. Bright green trolley cars lurked behind a chain-link fence, waiting to come out and play. It was almost enough to convince you that the place was life-sustaining.

Later on, when we were wandering back up and down that main drag with guitar and accordion and horns and toy piano, drumming up civic interest in our show over at yonder tiki bar, when we were standing outside that Dairy Queen, playing "Love to Love You" to bewildered and bemused natives scooping up peanut butter parfaits and Oreo Blizzards, it was almost like a real place and not just a whistle stop on a bad vision quest.

Of course, one adrenaline-infused gig (my accordion's reeds actually went haywire that night, it was so hot) and two tall frosty drinks later (an alcohol-soaked concoction know to Tucsonians as "The Fat Man," or, for the smaller version, "Fat Man on a Diet"), the room was spinning and the playing field was leveled once more. And doggone it, if that dude in the cabaña hat wasn't still at the bar, talking to himself four hours later.

#315

#315, Albuquerque, NM

Here's another gritty Albuquerque still life to continue Urban Decay Week. Because everybody loves a real, honest-to-goodness ROCK BAR and nothing says decay quite like a skull.

I'll be making my fiction-reading debut tonight at a black box theatre in the East Village, so I'll indeed be summoning all the bad-assitude this skull brings with it. I'm reading an excerpt from that nearly-done novel I keep cagily alluding to, and if all goes well, this will be the first of many.

When I'm not behind the lens or hiding in a café amidst a muddle of manuscript pages, I'm often doing something extroverted on a stage. I've sung Brecht wearing mime makeup and hobbled around as one of Beckett's crotchety old men. I've pretended, via the medium of modern dance, to suffer heroin withdrawal. Heck, I've even played accordion at a party hosted by Salman Rushdie on board the Queen Mary 2.* (Hmm... I notice in this run-down of the event, I'm described as "finishing up a novel." Yup, the same one I'm "finishing" up now. Apparently, I've been "finishing" it since March of 2008. Do not listen to anything I say about deadlines.) But read my own fiction? Like, out loud? In front of, you know, people? What are you, crazy?

Funny the way the nerves kick in when it's your own work you're reading. I may have to bring an accordion along simply for a security blanket. But there will be friends in attendance (including this delightfully talented friend, who will also be reading from her work-in-progress), and there will be wine consumed, and you don't need much more than that to have a class act evening. Bring it on.

* Salman Rushdie, alas, was not in attendance. But dude throws a mean soirée.

#313

#313, Albuquerque, NM

On the road to Albuquerque from God-knows-where, Arizona, passing Meteorite City, the Petrified Forest, and a "Pet the ostrich" roadside attraction. Rolling through New Mexico on the old Route 66 where all the rest stops sound like country/western songs: Crazy Creek, Dead River, the R.V. and Horse Motel. Red rocks and the painted desert remind you of that song by the Handsome Family but the van is cranking out the Pretenders: "Standin' in the middle of my life with my pants behind me." Realize you're mishearing lyrics again and look out the window at the hand-painted sign. CACTUS STUFF / CLEAN RESTROOMS: EXIT 72.

The van pulls into Albuquerque and it's about a hundred degrees. A quick dinner at the Blackbird Cafe and then load-in at Burt's Tiki Lounge where band stickers and tattoo parlor ads plaster the doors and windows. There's no air conditioning inside, but that swirly fan in the ceiling, you're told, will cool you right down. Shoot some pool and drink the free beer while you wait for showtime. Everyone always wants to know what's up with the stage set and the painted white picket fences. Just smile and say, "Welcome to Balthrop, Alabama."

You've been on tour for three weeks and can't keep track of where you're sleeping anymore. A roadside motel, the floorboards of friends. But the next morning it's back in the van, listening to the Red House Painters, going over the show from the night before, that fantastic infernal romp. Cruising back onto Highway 40, stare in disbelief at the billboard on the entrance ramp that reads: "Hollywood Hotties: our slots put out." Pascal, behind the wheel: "Stay classy, Albuquerque."

#304

#304, Phoenix, AZ

Fangs out, everyone. It's Halloween. I was hoping to go as a spooky font this year -- maybe Hellvetica? -- but I'm wondering if that's what all the cool kids are doing. No, I'll probably do what I do most years, which is throw on my white lab coat, write "Zhivago" on masking tape and stick it on my lapel, and go out to find strangers who'll give me candy.

#246

#246, Tucson, AZ

It's a sad fact of modern life that in nine bands out of ten, the band sticker will outlive the band. Think about it. How many times have you ventured into a venue, strolled over to the bar, and noticed the legion of band stickers plastering the black plywood sound booth? It goes without saying that nearly all the names are for bands you've never heard of: Ninjas Who Met God. Wax Fang. The Suicide Instigators.

Vandalism aside a moment, there's something heroic in it, a tragicomic element to the endless trail of bands who were never big enough to even be forgotten, their clever names overlooked night after night for years, their website addresses dismissed, their industrial strength adhesives enduring far longer than the band itself.

The impulse to stick band stickers on walls: I've never had it, but for years I've been an avid recorder of it. This particular sticker, clearly more transitory than the indoor sound booth variety, was an accidental element to the 246. I didn't even notice it until looking over the photo again. It's tiny, but you can see the shape of the traditional eye chart. It's for Dilated Peoples, an underground hip-hop group based out of California. They're still around. Who knows? Maybe the Dilated Peoples, clinging ardently to a variegated wall in Tucson, will be one of the brave few to outstick the band sticker.

#238

#238, Tucson, Arizona

The heat in Tucson in mid-July was nasty and infernal; it's the sort of thing that would drive someone to say, "You know what? I'm gonna stick this wicker chair on the roof." It inspired a perspiring David Foster Wallace to adopt his signature bandana so he wouldn't drip on his manuscripts, and it drove me into a tiki bar (granted, I was playing a gig there) where I ordered a drink called Fat Man on a Diet. Strange things happen in the Tucson heat, and when umlauts appear over numbers, you know you're in uncharted territory, my friend. The 8 also appears to have a blank word bubble hovering off to the side, a feature I've seen throughout New York plastered on ads and bus shelters, but next to a number is a new one on me. All I know is, when the 8 starts talking to me, I'm sticking my head in a bucket of ice.