Tag: personal

When there’s nothing there.

I remember visiting my old block.

I hadn’t been back in more than 20 years, but I was back in LA for a high school reunion, and I begged my then-girlfriend to drive me to my old house. I had planned this trip out meticulously; who I’d see, what I’d eat, things I needed to reconnect with after a long time away from the place I was born and raised.

We parked across the street from my old house, in front of a neighbor’s house which had housed a lot of the kids I played with from ages 6-16. Their house was up for sale, I could see, but the lawn I used to roll down was still evident. I resisted the urge to roll down said hill at my age and looked across at my old place.

I took pictures to send to my mother, so she could see that they cut our cypress trees. Had taken down our basketball rim. That our lawn now had a bunch of kids toys on it. I crossed the street, wondering how I could play football on it. This wasn’t the wide avenue of my childhood, it couldn’t be.

We left there, and I was…sad. Sad not for what was, but for what wasn’t. My childhood home now had a family in t I didn’t know making their own memories, and any hint or trace that we were even there was gone.

Evanston, Illinois, has a special place in my heart. Besides going to college there, a lot of my formative memories as a young adult were made there. I met some great people, did a lot of things in an environ that was a great incubator for me.

It’s also where my wife was born and raised, and after we got together, she shared with me a lot of Evanston I had previously been unaware of. The history of its interracial marriages. The mixing made possible by their high school. The places she’d go I had never heard of or couldn’t make it to because I had no car.

And in Evanston were her parents, still living in the same house that she and her two sisters were raised in. It was tiny by any standard, but we’d go once a month to visit her mom and dad and eat and talk and laugh with them, and small or not, I could see that house for its charm and the love contained within its walls.

A lot has happened since then; that may be an understatement.

The house was sold to another family making their own memory. The parents’ bodies are committed to the earth, memory still aflame in the personage of those they lived by and worked with.

We were talking the other day, my wife and I, and she mentioned that she had to go get an emissions test, and she was going to go the Evanston one, since it was off the beaten track, not many people know of it, and it takes less than 20 minutes.

She sighed, and said “There’s no one left to visit up there anymore.” And we got incredibly sad.

Trips to do stuff on the north side of Chicago or on the North shore was an excuse to drop by and see her parents. Even as they endured their last physical days, were still in the area making hospital visits and runs to their senior living apartment.

Now, no more. Her folks weren’t there any more. Her house was someone else’s house.

We’re not one to visit their graves often, and all the business that we had to take care of is long settled. What now? What is there besides memories, the old joyful ones drowned out by newer, rawer, sadder ones?

What is there?

Posted on by ~tbg~

Joy of Art, part one.

Recently, I was in Miami, and I got a hankering to go do art stuff. There is a Museum of Graffiti in the Wynwood neighborhood, and a Taschen book store.

I’ve been to Miami just once before, and we didn’t stay long enough to really do much. This time, we had a couple of days, and so I was relaxed in figuring out how I wanted to move and what. wanted to see.

First off, I was amazed by the vibe in Wynwood. The vibe was great, and the amount of street art everywhere was unlike anywhere else I’d been. The colors, the variety, the sheer volume of it all! I was snapping pictures out the car consistently.

The Museum of Graffiti is small but mighty. A relatively small space, given it’s expansive subject matter, but it is a must for fans of the art. Graffit has expanded past the aerosol on the walls; now we’re doing corporate disruption, billboard “adjustment”, and spotlighting writers from oppressive regimes around the world. We suffer from a sense of the art world (among other things) revolving around us as Americans, and graffiti is truly a worldwide expression. I dropped some good money in the gift shop.

In the same block is the Art of Hip Hop museum, and it is also small, but the exhibit on view was one that opened my eyes. Cey Adams was the art director for Def Jam Records in their Golden Age, when they were making serious cultural inroads from Run DMC and the Beastie Boys to the ascendancy of Jay-Z and 50 Cent. I had no idea who he was, but I knew his work, and they had a collection of work he’d done, along with videos, shirts, and other designs he was responsible for. Illuminating, and a great use of time.

I was asked, as I was walking out, if I’d been to the art gallery which handles the works by both museums. The two spaces have a cooperative set up, and I was very interested in the work at that intersection of graffiti and hip-hop. The gallery was situated between the two; I had walked by and missed it. So I stopped in.

I spect the next two hours in that gallery.

Thing is, I don’t get to talk art a lot. My friend group and I look at art, and I talk about particular pieces with others, but I got to sit and talk about art, specifically modern art. Where is it going, who are the main players, what we really thought of their work and their reach.

While having these talks, I was able to look at works from a Graf artist I’ve been knowing about since my beginnings. To be in the room with works that were selling for six figures were….not humbling, but definitely an eye-opener. There is room to talk about art as a vehicle for money laundering, and room to talk about art as a function of a soiety beset by AI and work demands and growing poverty, but right then? I was immersed in what I saw and what I felt and dusting off the vocabulary to describe it all.

Afer I left without buying anything, I made my way back to the hotel, snapping pictures as I went. Murals, bright colored characters, wall burners – I was amazed at the work it took not only to make them, but the efforts the city put into maintaining it.

It was a great trip, and I came back energized and ready to make things. Which is the point, right?

Posted on by ~tbg~

After.

In my planner, I called it “After”.

That’s it.

I’ve written about the stuff we’ve been going through, and I am constantly amazed and grateful for the kind words and extra-squeezy hugs that have come my way. Over the past year, I’ve lost my father- and mother-in-law and two uncles, so Death and I are quite familiar.

But now, is the After.

Now we’re trying to see what is normal, what will not trigger those memories which make us pause and tear up. All of those home projects we had on the docket, which were on hold while we watched this all play out, have to be done.

Or do they?

The normal winter urge to nest, to make the house as comfy as possible, is starting to recede as spring and summer approach, even in the Upper Midwest. Change is happening.

We’ve had too much change here lately.

Posted on by ~tbg~

To manifest.

The goals of this here space are multifold.

To be able to write thoughts on things going on, both on a macro (the world around me) and the micro (personal) level.

To put together some thoughts that I’d like to turn into a collection at some point. A book, if you will.

To give shine to those who I admire, and I idolize, and who I think are doing good work, creatively or personally. 

To get these things out of my head. Because if something happens to me, I’d like someone to have a record of who I was and where I was mentally. History is written by the hunter, sure, but if only the lion could have writtenm somewhere, that the hunter is holding his cub hostage, maybe you’ll think about that hunter a bit differently…

Let’s go.

Posted on by ~tbg~