Someone From Nirvana Sent Me A Postcard

The front of the postcard Krist Novoselic sent me.

 

I like meeting musicians.

I never have a problem going up to a musician and saying hello. It’s not something everyone has or every cares to have, it’s something that matters to me. I like to make a connection between myself and what I’m listening to. Doing that makes things a lot more real to me. I’ve driven around the country to stand in old recording studios. I’ve forced my wife to travel to fields in Mississippi just so I could feel closer to Charlie Patton for a few minutes.

For the living musicians, the ones that I can say hello to, I have rules.

Not all musicians are created equally for me. There’s the punk affiliated musicians that I don’t really see walls with. Those people I go up and say hello to, I shake their hands, say something nice, and then I walk away. When I met Killer Mike in a Raleigh elevator, I asked for a picture. When I saw Carrie Brownstein in that same elevator, I didn’t ask for a picture. I didn’t even say hello because I was mad at her and Corin for dumping one of my favorite drummers, Janet Weiss, but that’s beside the point. I didn’t get a picture with Mike Watt, Ian MacKaye, or Thurston Moore. I wanted to get a picture with John Cale but he got away before I could take out my phone. There’s a dividing line. Punk kids, I give nice words to but I take no pictures. Non-punk kids, picture.

Of course, there are exceptions. There’s always exceptions to ridiculous punk orthodoxy. Some punk kids are just too big. No, I’m not talking about anyone involved with chemical romances. No, there’s the big one, the real big one. Anyone involved with Nirvana, no matter where they came from or where they’re going, are on another level. No matter the connections, they’re my generations Beatles, and I’d have a tough time seeing them as just mere mortals. I shook Lori Goldson’s hand just because she played on Unplugged in New York. Consequently, I shook Dylan Carson’s hand for a much worse connection, he bought the shotgun Kurt used to kill himself. The myths are too big even if they help destroy the thing you love.

Some weeks ago, maybe months ago, I found Krist Novoselic’s address online. It was a PO Box, not his home address.  A few people online mentioned how he responded through the mail. I’ve sent random postcards to all sorts of PO Boxes in the past. I’ve sent to record labels, famous addresses and business, and a lot of fan clubs. I haven’t heard much back. The only person that has responded to me with a unique piece of mail, was Ian MacKaye, but refer back to the top of my diatribe; he’s a mere mortal punk: a person. He doesn’t want to be seen as a totem. MacKaye helped shape my life in meaningful ways but was not someone I saw ten-foot-tall on MTV’s Live and Loud 1993 wearing an SSD shirt. Good luck unpacking that list. MacKaye is appropriately sized. Novoselic, no matter the indie word he came from, dosen’t feel real to me. His immensity was implanted in my memory when I was too young to be able to understand what I was seeing. I’m never going to be in a room with Novolselic but I’ve been in one with MacKaye many times. I’ve said hello.

When I got a postcard from Krist Novoselic I was shocked. I couldn’t believe that he would actually send me something back. I didn’t send him a stamp either, this was Nirvana money paying the sixty-six cents. Although he didn’t have to, he made the effort. He took the time to cut my address from the envelope and stick it to his postcard. Krist wrote on the card, “Dear Jon. Thanks for the cool art. Rock on! Krist.” 

The back of the postcard.

 

For the rest of the day I thought about the card he sent. I thought about him holding what I had sent to him, a couple collages and random pieces of paper in his hands trying to figure out what they meant. I thought about how comically low he wore his bass. I thought about watching the constant MTV coverage of Cobain’s death in 1994.

A few days later, I sent him a thank you collage. I wrote a few lines on the card about how I was a mail-artist and that I was adding his address to my active list. “I’ll send more,” I wrote.

Education Without God Makes Crafty Devils "Thing"

Since I write most days, and have done so for over 20 years, I’ve amassed a lot of words, too many words, like way too many words. Most of them deal with the boring minutiae of my day to day, or thrift store encounters. Most of what I write equate to doodles in words, you know…aimless writing. Sometimes things come together to form a proper structure. Sometimes this just randomly happens and other times it’s intentionally. The joy of having a large archive of words, no matter their reason for existing, is that you can always plumb the depths of your doodles to create something new. Being these doodle can be searched with a basic keyword, you can have a loose, theme in no time. Keyword “teaching” or “school” produces dozens of returns. Put those returns into a long list and you have something that is almost cohesive.

The cover made from a recycled thrift store book image.

So yeah, that’s what I did. I took all of my notes and put them into a long and meandering text connected through the keyword of “teaching.” It was a lot of words, initially over 100 pages, a “thing.” I can’t use book here, zine seems somewhat wrong, so thing it is.

I put all of this together a couple years ago, not sure what I wanted to do with it or even sure I wanted people to see it. If the “thing” feel into the wrong hands, I might have to answer some questions I didn’t want to.  I’d start playing around with it, and then feel like I needed to abandon it. This happened a handful of times. A couple months ago, I found the file and started playing around. I started whittling out uninteresting doodles and references to anyone or anything specific. Does it really matter? After making a lot of things like this over the course of years, I knew no one really cared. I knew only a few people would ever read it, and I doubted any of those people would be bothered by my interaction with a student from a decade ago. I’m fascinated by people, and the weirder the interaction, the more I’m drawn to it, and then better chance I’m going to write it down.

Pulling teeth for money. I don't like this part.

Without thinking too much about it, I finished up my mild edits, and ordered 25 printed copies through a self-publishing / printing place. I guess it’s published if it has an ISBN and its printed if it does not. 25 sounded like a good number. I didn’t expect to sell that many, but I know I could definitely mail off that many. When they arrived at my house, they were larger than I had expected. They were magazine sized when I thought they were going to be trade paperback sized. The difference means more postage which means I lose more money. Over the next couple of weeks, I tried to see who was interested in a copy, and then pulled teeth to get them to send me the ten dollars, which barely covered the print and postage. In trying to sell them, I didn’t want to eat the whole cost, just a portion. It was more important they exist than I make money. Surprisingly, a lot of folks came through with the monies, making it a viable thing. I’ve sold more than half and given the rest away. 

They exist, 3-D and all.

Now that I’ve done this once, I know I’m going to do it again. I’ve actually gotten a few ideas lined up for the next few editions. The next one is just going to be broadsides, no reading. The one after that I want to be a large collection of writing and images, a best-of all the garbage I’ve mailed over the years. Maybe one on my Richard C. collections and writings, but that’s way into the future.

Children's Block by Block, Glueing It All Together

The amount of paper I have upstairs (where I do most of the makings) is staggering. It’s mostly organized, but there’s a lot, so some of it isn’t so organized. There’s the stacks of old magazines and books, the piles of “processed” paper (paper ripped from old books), and then there’s the cut pieces, or pieces ready to be incorporated into a collage. The latter is the last step in a long process that could take years. Anyone looking at these piles might not see pattern, but I do. It all makes sense, mostly. Because things are put together in such a fashion, I can dive into collage-making in no time, which for a very time-conscious me, is important.

Over the past year, I’ve focused mainly on creating paper collages. When I have an hour or two, I can go upstairs and be making something within minutes because of my “system.” It’s one I’ve not deviated from too much. I’ve forced myself into a pattern for more than a year just to see how things change and morph over time. Even if you do the same thing over and over, you’ll do it differently over a stretch of time. I’ve forced myself into repetition. 

Lots of old cardboard, pieces of board games, and even some Japanese money in there.

And then I had a lot of collages leftover from my Christmas making period, like a lot. Most of them went into thrift store frame destined for little libraries around the area. Some of them were stuck to books and some were affixed to pieces of wood (children’s blocks and toys) for no particular reason. Side note, making stuff without purpose is freeing. When you find yourself gluing for an hour and taking stock of what you’ve done, it’s a great feeling. Trying to identify what to do with three dimensional objects is a puzzle that comes from repetition. No way am I going to mail them because of heft and thus price, so now what?

Books and magazines have a section upstairs, but so does non-paper items. These things go into two drawers built into the side of my work space. Honestly, I don’t know what’s in there, not really. I find stuff for free, or at a thrift store, and it gets dumped there. Maybe I’ll use it or maybe it’ll last forever and ever in large piles. My wife and I have been in our house for six or seven years, so those drawers are full. 

The "frame" is a children's puzzle.

Yes, that's Shirley MacClaine's eye in there!

So…I have a bunch of small pieces of things I glued together without a plan, blocks and dice and small bits of plastic. I went digging in the drawers and found two painted boxes that puzzle pieces once went in. No idea how long ago these were painted, or even why they were painted? Some of the glued pieces fit right into these painted boxes, giving them a shadowbox feel. Think Pop Art Joseph Cornell. In a couple of these boxes I worked in a baby doll foot, a paper collage I had on my desk, board games pieces, and some repurposed old cardboard. I really love old cardboard, I have a giant box of it upstairs. Slowly something started to emerge. I went from being bored at my and desk and indiscriminately gluing stuff, to somehow producing these objects of varying quality.

Now that things have taken shape, I have a focus, a vision for what might come next. For me this means a lot, namely I’m thinking about these objects during my daily routine. This changes how I go into thrift stores. Over the coming weeks, as I try and finish up some more boxes, I’ll think of what can be included. I’ll look a little longer at thrift stores, especially the kids section. Taking apart children’s games is so much fun and cheap. And I’m sure I’ll dig through the trash a little more than I normally do. Just yesterday I bought some things with the express idea of finishing a couple these boxes. I found some plastic balls and tiny bowling pins and a few old board games with 50 year old cardboard inside.

Side note. I’m fascinated with signs, I love signs. You know signs, like the ones that give you direction while you’re driving, I think they’re terse poetry. I’ve always made things like these. I especially like them when they’re not doing exactly what they need to be doing. Signs that confuse as much as clear up. Signs that play with puns while trying to tell you something in just a few words. I’ll end up making a lot of these with blocks and scrabble letters. 

This is capital "A," art!