faves

[First pos­ted, May, 2001:]

The Dra­wings:

[This is the car­toon that ins­pi­red the name “gaping­void”. I drew it way back when, in college. Click on image to enlarge.]

When I first lived in Manhat­tan in Decem­ber, 1997 I got into the habit of dood­ling on the back of busi­ness cards, just to give me something to do while sit­ting at the bar. The for­mat stuck.
All I had when I first got to Manhat­tan were 2 suit­ca­ses, a cou­ple of card­board boxes full of stuff, a reser­va­tion at the YMCA, and a 10-day free­lance copyw­ri­ting gig at a Mid­town adver­ti­sing agency.
My life for the next cou­ple of weeks was going to work, wal­king around the city, and stag­ge­ring back to the YMCA once the bars clo­sed. Lots of alcohol and cof­fee shops. Lot of weird peo­ple. Being hit five times a day by this strange desire to laugh, sing and cry simul­ta­neously. At times like these, there’s a lot to be said for an art form that fits easily inside your coat poc­ket.
The free­lance gig tur­ned into a per­ma­nent job. I sta­yed. The first month in New York for a new­co­mer has this cer­tain ama­zing magic about it that is indesc­ri­ba­ble. Incan­des­cent luci­dity. Howe­ver long you stay in New York, you pretty much spend the rest of your time there trying to recap­ture that fee­ling. Cha­sing Manhat­tan Dra­gon. I sup­pose the whole point of the cards ini­tially was to somehow get that buzz onto paper.
Although I haven’t lived in New York since 1999, it still lives in me. Far too much, some would say…
The ori­gi­nals are drawn on either busi­ness cards or Strath­more Bris­tol Board cut to the same size i.e. 3.5″ x 2″. I use mostly Koh-I-Noor rapi­do­graph pens of var­ying widths. Occa­sio­nally I’ll use other things– pen­cil, water­co­lor, ball­point etc, but not often.

Per­so­nal Faves:

An artist is quite a fucked-up thing to be, and to be honest I’m not sure if I would recom­mend it to any­body. Still, in my collec­tion there are a cou­ple of exam­ples that, in some sick and twis­ted way, make the whole thing seem worthwhile. For the first five minu­tes, at least:
The Shark Bar

When I first moved to New York, I sta­yed at the YMCA on West 62nd.
My first dra­wing as a New York resi­dent was on my second eve­ning, sit­ting on a bars­tool at the Shark Bar– a hip, young place in SoHo.
Having only been in town just over 24 hours, I was fee­ling a bit overwhel­med by New York, to say the least. Plus I had drunk quite a lot that eve­ning. I think both show up in the dra­wing.
I’ve been back to the Shark Bar a cou­ple of times since then, but it never had the same insane magic of that first eve­ning. Great name for a bar, though. Espe­cially in Manhat­tan.
Vanished

Spring ’98. I was at a bar, it was late, I was kinda tipsy.
Sud­denly I rea­li­zed that my life hadn’t chan­ged much in the last decade since lea­ving college. Work, bars, car­toons, ran­dom con­ver­sa­tions of a big-city nature, second-hand bookshops and art films, the occa­sio­nal bout of ran­dom or regu­lar sex to tide things over etc etc.
It wasn’t as inte­res­ting as it used to be. But I hadn’t moved on, really. And I had no idea where to go next.
Wel­come to New York.
The best car­toons are the ones that give you these ama­zing moments of cla­rity as you draw them. That’s the best thing about car­too­ning, really. Everything else seems rather secon­dary in com­pa­ri­son.
Fanelli’s

Decem­ber 29th, 1997. Fanelli’s, on Prince and Mer­cer in SoHo, is one of the great bars in Manhat­tan. I had been in New York only a cou­ple of days when I found myself there, drin­king hea­vily.
I no lon­ger drink much, howe­ver at the time I had this idea that seriously heavy drin­king was essen­tial in order to enjoy New York pro­perly. I don’t think I was wrong, either.
Around mid­night at the bar I bump into an old acquain­tance of mine from Chi­cago, Mark Mann. He had moved to New York about 3 months pre­viously to do something with his film career. He is one of the fun­niest and most inte­res­ting peo­ple I know, but at the time I didn’t know that. We were quite sus­pi­cious of each other for the lon­gest time before we admit­ted that we actually were friends.
I hadn’t told any­body I was moving to New York except on a need-to-know basis, so he was quite sur­pri­sed to see me there. A ghost from his for­mer Chi­cago life– just pop­ped out of nowhere.
Told him my story. Told him about being laid off in Chi­cago. Told him about this new job I got in New York. Told him I only knew I got the job offi­cially 5 days before Christ­mas– only about a week pre­viously. Asked him how he was liking New York.
“It’s great,” he said. “Everybody’s insane with lone­li­ness, but that’s OK. After a while you rea­lize that’s part of the edge.“
I was hit with a para­dox. I wan­ted to be in New York, I wan­ted to be “part of the edge”, but I didn’t want to be “insane with lone­li­ness”. Was one neces­sary in order to have the other? Was it a price worth paying? To this day, I still have no ans­wer.
A cou­ple of months later (July, ’98) I drew this, sit­ting on a bars­tool. Thin­king back to that con­ver­sa­tion with Mark, sud­denly I had a rea­li­za­tion: The sim­ple truth about big cities is that peo­ple don’t go there to give. They go there to take, or at least, to get. If you feel like giving, good for you, somewhere an angel is smi­ling yada yada yada, just don’t expect other peo­ple to follow your exam­ple. And if you’re fee­ling lonely, at least now you now know why. This dra­wing is partly about that.
Com­mit­ment

Within 1 week of mee­ting this per­son you rea­lize that not only have you found your soul­mate, but you’ve found your soul­mate who likes to have sex 4 times a day in the bed, on the dining table, on the kitchen floor, in the chan­ging rooms at Bloomingdale’s etc.
Within 2 weeks you’re already tal­king about moving in together.
Within 3 weeks you’re tal­king about having babies together.
Within 4 weeks you rea­lize this per­son is a com­plete psycho­path.
Within 5 weeks this per­son also thinks you’re a com­plete psycho­path.
Within 6 weeks you’re sit­ting at a res­tau­rant with an old friend who is giving you the “How come you only call me when you’re sin­gle” speech.
I Knew My Pain

Some­ti­mes life throws you a devas­ta­ting curve ball. And you’re never ready for it. Ever.
Eric

I remem­ber being young and stu­pid. How utterly sweet and sim­ple life see­med back then, but I also knew in the back of my mind that these days weren’t going to last fore­ver. Ouch. Hope­fully, in a decade or two I’ll be loo­king back to this time now with equal affec­tion. I think that’s all you can do, really.
Com­plete

Early 30s is a great time to be alive– you’re still young, but you have expe­rience. A power­ful combo.
The down­side is all that weird rocks­tar shit you believe about your­self is well past its sell-by date, and if you haven’t out­grown it by then, it starts to fuck up your life.
New York is tough enough if you’re a man. God knows how the women manage to do it.
Please

The piece is not par­ti­cu­larly cle­ver nor espe­cially beau­ti­ful to look at. But something gently dis­tur­bing resi­des just beneath the sur­face. Hmmmm� sort of like apart­ment bro­kers.
C.F.A.

Yes. Exactly.
Mighty

All clients want one, I am told.
Cheap Plas­tic Toys

Some of it was my fault, some of it wasn’t. Regard­less, I’ve made a list and they will pay dearly.
Mis­ta­kenly

There are many advan­ta­ges of get­ting older… more money and res­pect from the world at large being the main one. Howe­ver, with all this newly found cash & kudos comes the idea that maybe the world isn’t such a nice place, after all. That maybe all that unhap­pi­ness you see on the faces of your fellow com­mu­ters is there for a rea­son. And no mat­ter how much you try or how hard you work, none of that will ever change.
Still, I sup­pose it’s bet­ter to know that said bru­ta­lity exists, rather than bur­ning all those calo­ries pre­ten­ding it doesn’t. I just wish I’d wised up a decade ear­lier than I did.
Lying

OK, this one isn’t exactly subtle. But it doesn’t take any pri­so­ners, either. Unres­trai­ned bile is actually pretty hard to pull off, artis­ti­cally.
Wolf vs Sheep

No, I don’t have an ans­wer to which option is bet­ter. Both exact a heavy toll, even­tually.
Too Many Cats

Good thing a cer­tain friend of mine never reads my web­site.
Dorothy

I’ve always been a big Dorothy Par­ker fan. Urbane wit at its finest. Would I trade my life for hers in order to be that talen­ted and famous? No way. Like all into­xi­cants, talent can be a poi­son. Rea­ding her bio­graphy, it seems she lear­ned that more than most.
It’s 2 am and I’m in this crazy Mid­town Irish bar. I have no idea why I’m there. I shouldn’t be there. I should be somewhere else. Asleep, com­for­ta­ble, happy, sha­ring my bed with a sen­si­ble girl from a good family, Brooks Brothers’ pyja­mas, insuf­fe­rably middle class. But no.
Every­body in that bar is crazy. I tell myself I’m the only sane one but I think I’m kid­ding myself.
Being an artist/creative is like wea­ring funky clothing. Every year gets a little bit har­der. After a while it just looks stu­pid. Even­tually the stu­pi­dity reaches cri­ti­cal mass and the late-night tails­pin begins. At a mid­town Irish bar at 2am, while I’m dra­wing this pic­ture, these things no lon­ger seem to mat­ter.
I like this card because it’s the kind of thing poor old Dorothy would have writ­ten.
All The Time

After years of strug­gling in impe­cu­nious obs­cu­rity, a very old friend of mine recently had a bit of suc­cess in his busi­ness.
Sud­denly, every­body in the industry knew who he was, and would mob him at trade shows and con­ven­tions. Peo­ple who wouldn’t have given him the time of day only a year before were sha­me­lessly thro­wing them­sel­ves at him, scat­te­ring busi­ness cards like con­fetti.
My friend, the rock star. Who knew?
Shortly after one of these little fee­ding fren­zies, we meet up for a drink, as we do.
He’s telling me all about it. All the off-the-record stuff that hap­pe­ned. All these relent­less peo­ple coming after him, like terriers on the bone.
“How weird,” I say.
“Sure is,” he says. “Now I know what it’s like to have a vagina.“
Pic­kaxe

One eve­ning after a grue­some day at the office I went into a cof­fee shop on 6th Ave to write. Got a cof­fee, found a table, ope­ned my lap­top and loo­ked around. I’m not kid­ding; there were nine other peo­ple in the caf� with open lap­tops, wri­ting away, just like me. Nine. I coun­ted. They were pro­bably wri­ting the same tedious crap I was.
“It’s a novel about some guy who moves to New York to break into the high-brow lite­rary scene and score with lots of chicks yada yada yada�“
One of the rea­sons I stick to car­too­ning is because my tra­di­tio­nal prose wri­ting is so god­for­sa­kenly awful.
Wri­ting about New York is a bit like wri­ting about sex– it’s already been done to death. And done. And done. And done again. It’s a form of lite­rary nec­rophi­lia. Unless you have something com­ple­tely uni­que and visio­nary to say about New York (I have yet to meet some­body in the flesh who does), any kind of Manhattan-fuelled artis­tic ambi­tion runs the risk of tur­ning you in to a “lig­ger”.
“Lig­ger” is Scot­tish slang. A lig­ger is a hanger-on, a wan­nabe, a parasite-to-the-hip. Some­body who goes to art ope­nings to drink free wine, but never buys a pain­ting. Some­body who sees art as not something you make, but something you milk. Some­body who is always seen, but never remem­be­red.
Living in New York is only pos­si­ble if you treat it like a reli­gion. Lig­gers are really good at this, for some rea­son. Hence their vast num­bers; hence why a big part of your ave­rage day in New York is spent sepe­ra­ting the lig­gers from the real peo­ple.
Henry

So you’re going out a lot. Pretty soon you’re going out too much. Par­ties. Bars. More par­ties. More bars. So you decide to cut back a bit, y’know, start living like a nor­mal per­son.
So you trade in those wild & crazy times for deli­ve­red Chi­nese food, For­bes Maga­zine and Sein­feld reruns. You’re just going to try it for a cou­ple of weeks, and see how it feels. After all, this is a “new you” we’re tal­king about. A bet­ter you. A saner you. A wiser, more sen­si­ble and com­pe­lling you.
But you know in your heart of hearts that you didn’t move from subur­ban Cle­ve­land, Den­ver, Pitts­burgh etc to a $3000-a-month Manhat­tan apart­ment just to watch Sein­feld.
In New York, you always think that if you try har­der, work lon­ger hours, make more money, spend more time at the gym, put more effort into net­wor­king, read more books, go to bed ear­lier, drink less booze, avoid nega­tive peo­ple, be less sha­llow about the whole sex thing, be more sup­por­tive to your close friends, eat more vege­ta­bles and stop smo­king so many damn ciga­ret­tes, you will even­tually be able pull off that great Miracle Of Mirac­les i.e. you’ll finally, finally, finally be able to live in Manhat­tan while simul­ta­neously lea­ding a healthy, pro­duc­tive, emotionally-balanced life.
Ha.
(PS: I no lon­ger live in New York, obviously)