Anecdote Alert

In November, I received copies of two books by writer and walker Craig Mod. I've been a fan of his for many years, but these are the first of his books I've purchased. Shipping from Japan to Canada, on top of the cost of the books, was what had always stopped me in the past, but I do my best to support artists directly when I can so decided now was the time.

If you're not familiar with Mod, he's mostly known for his work in the book world. He also has a wonderful podcast on bookmaking called On Margins, though he might have killed that as it's been a long time since he's put out an episode. It's well worth listening to if you're into creating things.

Since Craig is a walker and a writer, these books are about walking.

Craig describes Kissa by Kissa as "a book about walking 1,000+km of the countryside of Japan along the ancient Nakasendō highway, the culture of pizza toast (pizza toast!), and mid-twentieth century Japanese cafés called kissaten."

Craig's books are gorgeous. Cloth-bound with debossed covers. The paper is lovely to touch and the photos and essays are wonderful:

Things Become Other Things is Craig's latest book. He describes it as "a 30 day walk in Japan. A memoir. Fishermen, foul-mouthed kids, and terrible miserable wonderful coffee."

You can purchase the fifth edition of Kissa by Kissa here. The first edition of TBOT is here. Both titles are cheaper for members of Craig's Special Projects. Those memberships are how Craig makes his living.

If you'd like a better overview of Craig's work, you can find it here.

Anecdote Alert

These books are the kinds of things I used to bring in for customers of my shop, Volver — beautiful items that I personally own and can recommend — before I stopped carrying non-records. This was an effort to spread awareness and get better prices for my customers by eliminating the cost of shipping.

I did this most successfully, book-wise, with Wendy Erskine's Dance Move, a brilliant collection of short stories which still hasn't been published in Canada. I can't recall how many copies I brought in (20 or so), but they all sold out and still no other shop in the city took it upon themselves to import copies.

I have no idea if Craig would be into this (offering me bulk, wholesale pricing), but I'd consider approaching him if enough Bell Ringers wanted me to try.

Liza Lou's Trailer is a walk-in sculpture made in and of a 1949 Spartan Royal Mansion mobile trailer. Themes within are masculinity, noir, stereotypes — all made with beads.

The video has Lou and curators discussing the piece and its transportation and installation at the Brooklyn Museum.

Here's the museum's official page on the piece and here's Liza Lou's official website.

Anecdote Alert

The piece reminds me of a friend's home in DTLA. He owns a 13,000sf building that consists of two floors. The top floor is his living space and the main floor has had rotating purposes in the 15 or so years I've known him.

For much of it, filmmaker Nirvan Mullick lived there, but for another era, they brought in an Airstream trailer and tarted it up into a nice living space, complete with lawn and picket fence. They would rent that out on AirBnB. It was quite interesting to be staying in a trailer and outside your door was a lawn, complete with outdoor furniture and such but then beyond your fence you were in a loft and outside those doors was downtown Los Angeles.

I mentioned the building in my post on Lem Dobbs as it appears in the film The Limey. I spent many nights in this building and I have grand associations of it with DTLA as it and Skid Row were all I knew about the area for many years.

Today, I read a fascinating long-form piece in White Fungus: Modern Marco Polos — The Global Travels of Nicolaï Michoutouchkine and Aloï Pilioko.

For decades, the two men were lovers and travelers. They shared their own and collected Oceanic Art in galleries and "pop-ups" in over 40 countries. The scrapbooks and journals of their adventures, highlighted in the article, look like fascinating pieces. I wish I had known of them before my visit. I'd have inquired about seeing them...

Anecdote Alert

In early 2020, before returning to Toronto and the Covid lockdown, I visited Esnaar, the South Pacific home of the artists on Efate island. The house was in severe disrepair due to the advanced age of its caretaker, Pilioko (Michoutouchkine passed in 2010).

Near the property entrance, visitors had left their details scrawled on pieces of wood instead of a traditional guestbook. It was a striking first impression that didn't prepare me for what lay beyond the front gate.

Inside, I found Pilioki napping. But he quickly rose to welcome me and my companions and let us explore the property, happily answering our questions. He seemed energized by our presence.

The property was covered in art. The walls, doors, grounds, rooftops... Pilioko seemed to recently become fascinated with one particular shade of yellow, and many items I saw that day were that color.

I was taken with one painting in particular — of female Ni-Vans water drumming. If you're not familiar with the artform, see it demonstrated here:

I regret not buying the piece, though it would have stood out in my place, where most paintings are abstract.

After reading the White Fungus piece, I searched and found that Pilioko died in October 2020. No cause of death is listed in his obituary, and I wonder if Covid was involved or if the pandemic-induced loneliness (no travel to the island for over a year) affected the artist.

It's been over four years since his death, and I'm curious about the museum's fate. Was there a foundation or trust to keep it open, or has it fallen to developers eager to build on the south lagoon shore? Googling turns up no answers.

A few days after meeting Pilioki, I was having dinner at a friend's place on Mele Bay. My host, Kieran, has an original Michoutouchkine on his wall, and I mentioned my visit to Esnaar. His brother fetched a book on Oceanic Art, which had a chapter on the two artists, emphasizing their significance and foundational role in South Pacific art. Kieran and Brandon, New Zealanders by birth, have had a home in Vanuatu for years and have decorated it beautifully with local art.

Most expats I met in Vanuatu have left, but Kieran still has a home there. I make a mental note to check if he knows what happened to the bizarre live-in gallery, Esnaar.

Fantastic info and accompanying video footage of a Robin and their chicks.

Anecdote Alert

One morning, while hiking with my dog, I crossed Parkside Drive to enter Toronto's High Park when something in the sky drew my attention. It was a bird, but it wasn't flying; it was falling, and it hit the ground, hard. It was a Robin, choking on a worm.

I scooped it from the road before a car could squish it and I slowly pulled the worm from its throat. I waited while the bird lay motionless on its side. A few seconds passed and it regained consciousness, slightly stunned. It looked at me and I at it and we sat there for a moment, both of us thinking: Well, that was something!

The bird started to hop but seemed reluctant to fly. It took cover in some brush and stood there, looking at me. I picked up the worm and laid it near the bird, waiting to see if it would eat it again, but it didn't. It just stayed there, blinking. I imagined it was experiencing satori.

I rose, and Shakedown and I continued our walk.

That was four years ago, but I think of that bird every day because I pass that same stretch of road daily.

I like birds. I've always liked them. There is a Heron that watches over me called Gilgan that I've seen in six countries in one form or another. One day, I'll have a her tattoo'd on the top of my left hand. Two years ago, I swiped right on a Tinder profile because of a woman named Wren. It was a small movement, but one of the most impactful in my life, for we became great friends. Before meeting her, the word Wren summoned Auguries of Innocence, which I always incorrectly recall as "He who'd harm the little Wren / Can never be a friend of men."

Of course, the poem also mentions the robin:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 
And Eternity in an hour
A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage 
...

My other associations with the bird are Leonard Cohen (I can't keep track of each fallen robin), and this:

Do robins walk or hop?

This is a question from the smash-hit 80s board game Trivial Pursuit. My family played it often and one time this was the winning question for me. I concentrated as best I could, trying to decide. I'd seen plenty of robins, but I have minor aphantasia, meaning I cannot create moving pictures in my mind's eye. Think! How do robins move?

The sand in the timer was running out, so I figured I'd just guess and have a 50/50 chance of winning.

"Hop," I said.

My stepbrother-in-law, who was a monster of a man, was delighted to tell me I'd got it wrong. He showed me the card. The answer was Yes.

Caleb Stein's, Down By the Hudson, a series of b&w photos taken at a watering hole in Poughkeepsie, NY, explores the camaraderie and simplicity a gathering place engenders by simply being.

The full series, including gallery shots and accompanying text, is on Caleb's site.

Anecdote Alert

The image of the soaped-up boy reminds me of people I encountered on a weekend drive as a teenager. I was camping with some friends at a lake. There was a cliff with a rope tied to an overhanging tree. Locals would emerge from the water "clean," after soaping up, swinging, and letting go. One child, who couldn't yet have been 10, forgot to wipe his palms on his shorts before grabbing the rope. The excess Sunlight stymied his grip and he plunged into the shallowest part of the lake, just that side of the rocks. When I think of it, I see him strike stone and break — some times his head, some times his arm, most often his leg — complete with crack!, or blood, depending on what's been struck. It's an overwhelming "memory" that I have to remind myself didn't happen. He was fine, though a bit shook. I don't doubt that what he saw bursting through the water — the horrified looks on the observers' faces — is burnt into his brain the way the reverse has settled in mine.

That whole weekend was one of the strangest of my youth, and none of it in a good way.

Interesting interview with Maggie McCart, who suffers from Prosopometamorphopsia, aka Demon Face Syndrome.

I always find this kind of thing interesting as I have a bit of prosopagnosia myself — that's a general face blindness. You could ask me to describe people I've known for decades and I'd have trouble with the face and facial area. If I recognize you on the street — which I won't — it's actually due more to your gait and silhouette than your face. Bless you if you've got every day carry accessories: a cane, a satchel, a dog.

Anecdote Alert

I became aware of my issue when I was about ten. My mother didn't come home when expected. A couple hours later, I called the cops and when they came over, they asked me if I'd seen her that morning. I had. They asked me what she was wearing and I couldn't say. They asked me to describe her and all I could do was illustrate her height. I went and got a photo of her from the mantel and showed it to them. "Does she still look like this?"

"What do you mean? That's her. That's a picture of her."

"It looks like it was taken in the sixties."

I was very baffled as to why that mattered. "Is her hair still this color?" They turned the photo to show me.

"I'm not sure."

"What do you mean? You said you saw her this morning!"

I shrugged. I could not tell them if she had curly hair or straight hair, red hair or blonde hair, if she wore glasses, earrings, or a necklace, if she had any missing teeth, or what color her eyes were. That was 45 years ago and I still cannot tell you the answers to any of those questions. I'd have difficulty answering those questions about anybody, even people I've known decades.

Just then, my mother walked in the door. Before leaving, the cops chided her for raising a kid who played practical jokes on the police.

A few years ago a woman I fancied and knew quite well asked if she'd ever introduced me to her cousin. I said I wasn't sure. She pulled out her phone to show me a picture. As I watched, she flipped through her photos looking for one as I watched. She briefly paused to consider one. I took a good look at it and said, "I've never seen that person before in my life." She looked to see if I was joking. "Seriously. Never," I said.

"Lincoln, that's me two years ago."

I Have a Rare Disease That Makes Me See Demon Faces Everywhere. It’s, Uh, Not Fun.

When I look at human faces, I see dragons, demons, and nauseating potato people.

SlateLuke Winkie

In Appendix-B of his book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders asks us to write a 200-word story using only 50 unique words, constraints which Saunders suggests typically encourage an escalation of tension. Of course, someone's gone and coded a site to help you do just that, The George Saunders Escalation Exercise.

The GSEE reminds me of David Milch's process for defeating writer's block:

1. Write for no less than 20 minutes and no more than 50 minutes.
2. Write no description, only dialogue, using the descriptors Voice One and Voice Two.
3. Take what you wrote, put it in an envelope, and seal it. Never look at it again.
4. Do this every day at the same time until you're no longer blocked.

Believe it or not, this works.

(David Milch is a TV writer, which is why he's focusing on dialogue.)

Anecdote Alert

I believe Milch to be one of the greatest writers of all time. I've loved his work for many years. He's one of my heroes in art and heroes in life. I think Deadwood is as good as any Shakespeare, Picasso, or Dylan.

Years ago, after reading Mark Singer's terrific 2005 New Yorker profile, The Misfit, I reached out to Singer to ask if he still had the transcripts mentioned in the piece. He wrote back quickly to say he didn't.

About a year later I received an email from David Milch's assistant. The email simply said, "I hear you're looking for these." PDFs of the transcripts were attached. Just over 100 pages.

I've owned davidmilch.com for years and one day will make a site about him. I'll be sure to put those PDFs on them.

I've been a fan of Lem Dobbs since around 1987 or '88, back when he was known throughout Hollywood for writing Edward Ford, which many consider to be the greatest unproduced screenplay of all time. That script is one of the first things I sought when I got on the internet in the early 90s.

Today, Dobbs is likely best known as the writer of The Limey. Steven Soderbergh directed the film and Terance Stamp starred in it. I believe it's not only a great "gangster picture," it's also Soderbergh's best and one of the most accurate film portrayals of memory.

If you have the chance to listen to Dobbs' commentary on The Limey DVD, I highly recommend it.

There's a notorious 90 second scene in The Limey, which you can watch here:

In the commentary, Dobbs uses this scene to highlight a problem with film critics — and perhaps the public's understanding of filmmaking in general.

Dobbs notes that the film's negative press often referred to it as "underwritten," while the positive press praised Soderbergh's "brilliant direction." Many of them cited this scene and how the camera waits outside, forcing the viewer to imagine what's happening inside while increasing the menace as Stamp's character approaches after exiting.

The irony is that the script was not underwritten. Soderbergh cut out much of what the critics wanted. Furthermore, in the screenplay, which Dobbs wrote years before Soderbergh was involved, Dobbs instructed the camera to remain outside:

Dobbs took the blame for what Soderbergh changed and Soderbergh received credit for what Dobbs envisioned.

Such is the life of a Hollywood Screenwriter.

All this to alert you to this lengthy interview with Dobbs. Admittedly, not the prettiest website, but an interesting read nonetheless.

Anecdote Alert

For years, I used the name Dobbs as one of my heteronyms. Both Lem and I took the name from the same source: Humphrey Bogart's character in Treasure of the Sierra Madre. (Lem's birth name is Anton Kitaj. He is the son of painter, R. B. Kitaj.)

I have another very odd connection here. The scene in the clip above was filmed at the far end of this street in downtown Los Angeles:

To get to it (just prior to the clip), Wilson walks past the building on the left, which happens to be owned by a friend of mine. I've spent a great number of American Thanksgivings there over the years — the best dinner parties I've been to in my life have all been in that building.

On one of the first trips I took after my stroke, I ended up crashed here while my friend was out of town filming the devastation of the Camp Fire in Paradise, California. Another friend of his, filmmaker Noaz Deshe, was also staying there at the same time. I have fond memories of deep discussions of film history with Noaz. What was particularly delightful is that they were the first signs that my memory wasn't completely shorted-out from the stroke — something that had been deeply troubling me. In particular, we had a mutual fondness for Miklós Jancsó's films, The Red and the Black, and Round Up (posters below). Good times.

Footnotes

If you want to read the screenplay for The Limey, you can find a PDF here.

You can also get a PDF of Lem Dobbs' celebrated, unproduced script, Edward Ford.

If you're a fan of Terance Stamp, I recommend the audiobook for one of his memoirs: The Ocean Fell Into the Drop, which is unfortunately an Audible Exclusive.

I've been a fan of JSG Boggs since first hearing about him in the 90s. He passed in 2017, but I've been thinking about him lately as I'm about to launch A Tiny Bell.

Boggs did one thing and he did it very well: he drew money.

Here's a scenario: Boggs goes out for lunch, and while sitting there having his sandwich and drinking his coffee, he finishes drawing a $20 bill he'd started days earlier — just one side of it — and signs his name as "Secretary Treasurer." He then offers it to the waiter as payment for his lunch. If the person declines, he pays with "real money" and goes on his way. But, if the person accepts his art as money, Boggs expects his proper change from the twenty along with a receipt.

Boggs then sells the receipt and the change to an art dealer and the art dealer goes to the address on the receipt and attempts to purchase the Boggs bill from the waiter. If successful, the change, receipt, and bill are then framed as a complete piece of art which is then again sold by the dealer to a collector.

If Boggs used the bill to purchase a non-consumable, that item is also part of the finished piece. For instance, he once drew five one thousand dollar bills and used them to purchase a $4999.00 Virago motorcycle:

Fascinating, yes?

Lawrence Weschler wrote a great book about Boggs, Boggs: A Comedy of Values, and there's a good, low-quality 15 minute short about him on Youtube with the same name:

Anecdote Alert!

I once tried to convince Boggs to let me design him a website and he could pay me with Boggs Bills. He didn't have a site at the time, but he didn't hesitate — the proposition broke his rules and he declined. Very disappointing, but completely understandable.

All this talk about money reminds me of my first trip to Los Angeles. May, 2010.

I was in a West Hollywood Target. In the checkout line, I got stuck behind behind a man who was taking an inordinate amount of time to pay for a 2L bottle of orange soda. The holdup was because he insisted on drawing on his bills before surrendering them to the cashier.

Wanting to leave the shop, I offered to pay for his drink to speed things along. The cashier checked his progress and turned to me and said, "He's almost done." Indeed, he was, and when he handed over the second bill and left with his purchase, I asked her what was up. She shrugged and said, "Dunno. He always does that. They're the same every time."

I asked if I could have his bills in my own change and she obliged. To to this day I carry them with me for luck when I travel. Here they are:

For more info on this Boggs, visit the official site: The Estate of JSG Boggs — which I did not design.