Yesterday morning I awoke from a bad dream—a kind of nightmare. Although there was a love interest in the dream, I recall having to crawl through small spaces. And there was this guy who kept chasing me. … Nothing is worse, however, than someone recounting details of his or her dream. I’ll stop here.
By way of introduction, I am an illustrator/musician. At least that’s what it says on my tax return. In other words, I claim deductions for both. I earn my bread as a freelance illustrator for magazines, and I work at home. The music part is a job, too, but with negligible income.
Yesterday, Sunday, was a day of rest for me. Often an illustrator will be overloaded with deadlines on a weekend, but this weekend I managed to keep it clear. After 200 revolutions with my jump rope, I got a call from my sister in Minneapolis. We yakked for a while, and I drank my tea. Then my friend AS called from the pro-choice march in Washington, D.C., to tell me she had just seen comedian Ali G filming there. This reminded me of the people I saw on 42nd Street the other day with photos of dead fetuses. (Or is the word “feti”? Octopi? When my grandpa Marcellus was in the same room with me was it “Marcelli”?)
I left my apartment at 2 p.m. and rode my bike up Avenue A beneath an overcast sky. Two cops escorted a man with a can of Colt 45 in his hand from a cafe as I entered. Finding a seat near the wall, I scanned the room for something sketch-worthy. I am a habitual sketcher. I do it for different reasons. Sometimes it is an attempt to assuage boredom. Sometimes I am driven by high-minded ideals of posterity and/or high art. Other times it boils down to an obsessive primal need to make a mark and confirm my existence. I have my artistic heroes. I once aspired to capture New York like George Grosz captured 1920s Berlin. Also, the watercolors of Charles Demuth and the etchings of Edward Hopper and John Sloan have each had their influence on me. Last year I got into Paul Hogarth.
Across the room sat a round-faced man who I deemed worth drawing. People ask me whether I get caught sketching someone. It actually happens less than you’d think. The biggest problem for me is when I decide to draw a person and suddenly they move or someone else stands in front of them. It is a sort of Murphy’s law of sketching.
I scribbled down a few likenesses and was pleased with myself. By then my friends SB and CM joined me for lunch.
At 3 p.m., I headed to the practice space on Avenue B and rehearsed with my band, White Hassle, for a show on Monday at the Knitting Factory.
Later, CM and I wandered the lazy Sunday streets and found ourselves at Milady’s, a bar/restaurant in Soho. This was a real blue-collar establishment complete with wood paneling and sports trophies, an anachronism in Soho. CM insisted that the bar was Mafia-run. We ordered soup, and I surveyed the scene. Red-faced Sunday regulars sat around the bar drinking and watching basketball on TV. I dove right in with my sketchbook and pen.
Suddenly a voice behind me said, “I’m trying to figure out what he’s drawing.” I was caught. A large mustached man grinned at me from the bar, proud of his catch. Then a woman who looked like it was not her first time in a bar piped up: “Draw me! I got a big nose! Let me show you my nipples! Ha ha ha.” Her friend dissuaded her from that notion. I laughed politely. CM sipped his soup.
I, too, sipped my soup, and eventually everyone’s attention shifted back to the television.
I was able finally to get some of the scene down on paper. When “Hotel California” came on the jukebox, the woman with the nipples sang, ” … Up ahead in the distance, I sar [sic] a shimmering light.” Later I saw Eternal Sunshine, and it rained.
