The point of this world

5 questions from the mailbag

A poem from Newspaper Blackout

Hey y’all,

For fun today, I’m trying something a little different and answering questions submitted to the mailbag. (If you have a burning question you’d like to ask me, scroll down to the sign-off of this letter and click the button.)

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A weekend in the year 2011

In Steal Like an Artist you say on P. 71 "About a year ago I started playing in a band again. Now, I'm starting to feel whole." What happened next with the band? Did it have a name? What instrument did you play? (My guess is a keyboard.)
—Ridge, New Jersey

We were a guitar/bass/drums trio who just played straightforward garage pop rock and roll. I dubbed us The Concrete Blocks. I was the drummer, which is ridiculous, because, well, I am not really a drummer. We never played a gig, and I think we actually stopped playing together before the book even went to press.

What happened was: We had babies! And what is really funny to me is that those babies are tweens now who are all musicians themselves!

Even though The Concrete Blocks don’t play together anymore, we’re all still making music in some way. I don’t think you ever really stop being a musician, which was kind of the point of that passage in Steal: If you’re a musician, you need to make music, otherwise, it’s like a phantom limb that causes you pain.

(Below: one of those babies, Owen, age 3, in my studio, 2016)

How do you balance being a dad, husband, artist, and writer (are those even separate things)? What is bringing you joy these days?
—Anonymous

A huge influence on me before I became a dad was the comic strip American Elf by the cartoonist and musician James Kochalka, who said, way back in 2008:

Here’s what I’m trying to do with my life and my work. I’m trying to fully integrate everything. So the transition from work to play to everyday life is all seamless. So that it’s all one thing. There’s no difference between living and making art. I’ve gotten really close. Music, comics, writing, painting, playing with Eli, doing dishes, cooking, all that, fully integrated into one seamless unit. That’s pretty much my goal…

And that’s sort of been my own goal from the very beginning.

My younger son turned 10 last week, and looking back, I feel really lucky that I had some good role models of people who seemed to be devoted parents and artists at the same time. I don’t think I needed so much to know how they did it — it seems impossible to generalize how one does it, because everyone’s context/family/situation is so wildly different — it was just enough to know that it could be done, that it was possible to be a decent parent and a decent artist at the same time, and that, maybe, being good at one could even help you be better at the other. (I have always felt that they have taught me more than I’ve taught them, which is one of the major themes of Don’t Call It Art.)

As for what brings me joy these days: We live in a 3-bedroom bungalow, but the boys bunk together, so we have an extra room that’s a full-functioning recording studio filled with all my old instruments — piano, full drum set, guitars, bass, amplifiers, etc. Most nights after dinner, we go in there and make a racket. Here’s a video of some of the results (the instrument at the end is a Moog Theremini I bought Jules for his birthday):

You seem to have focused your work and play on a specific kind of art, some form of interplay between visual art and words. I know, music as well, but you've said it's more of a hobby. Have you been thinking about applying your creativity to other approaches and/or other art forms?
—Anonymous