Years ago when I first moved to the city, I got a job at a scummy little paper called the Spag Island Review. Don’t look for it, it barely existed then and mostly it’s better forgotten now. There never was any Spag Island, so don’t go looking for that either. The paper mostly ran hearsay and rumors about local politicians between ads for local politicians, lawyers, porn shops, massage parlors and pawnshops. The editor/owner himself wrote most of the articles, in a vague style where every line sounded like the headline. Mayor caught with union leader, sex alleged. Opponents see opportunity for advancement. Mayor issues no comment. Stuff like that. It didn’t matter, nobody read it.
But believe or not, there was an Arts and Entertainment section, consisting only of me and another guy. There were two categories: Reviews of Things Experienced and Reviews of Things Not Experienced. My beat was the second one. His ran on Friday, mine ran Monday, usually three or four items. I recall he went to the circus a lot.
We shared a tiny office in the basement of a place that ran a lot of loud machines, for textiles or something. “Office,” was a funny joke between us, it was really a closet with a typewriter in it. We could only use it at night. The paper had no real office: the editor had spread his entire staff and equipment in cheap or unused rooms all over town. The police beat guy set up in the lobby of the police station. The sports guy typed up his stories in the sports department of another paper. The advertising guy took care of accounts from behind the hotel desk where he worked. Having the whole paper hidden in the cracks of the city helped deter the inevitable libel complaints. I never did find out where the printing press was.
So picture it: There I sat in a tiny, sickly-green concrete room, hoses and still-wet mops next to me, with the rumble of machines above. I sat there staring at a blank sheet of paper, trying to come up with critical appraisals of movies I hadn’t seen, music I hadn’t heard, books unread. This with the other guy popping in from time to time to see if I was done with the typewriter, with his dumb circus balloons in tow.
My column was called Impressions, because that’s all I had, the faintest of impressions of a thing, based on things only tangential to the object. I started with music, because at least I could look at the album covers. My criteria at first was simple, your album cover dictated your sound. If your cover was a glacial blue with stark white lettering, a streak of red, a dash of green at the top suggesting north lights (as Lester Bowie’s Avant Pop), I’d reimagine it as an album of traditional songs from some long lost Arctic Ice-people celebrating the coming of the night.
I also had reputation to impress upon me, as well as hearsay, rumor, critical reception, hype, popularity, context, cultural impact, notions of authenticity, and personality or biography of the artist. From my end I also had my memory, personal associations, prejudices, moods, whims, preferences and posturing to guide me. Basically, all the stuff that surrounds a piece of art and affect how it is perceived, except itself —its footprint. Later I preferred it this way. When you have all this stuff, hearing the actual music was a little too much for me (not to mention usually disappointing). I wondered about real reviewers who listened to the music, they seemed to me disingenuous, pretending that the extra stuff didn’t matter.
I tried to outdo the other guy by writing as imaginatively and as vividly as possible. I hated him and I hated the fact that he got paid to experience things while I sat and stared at a wall. I bitterly strove to make my made-up reality better than his reality. We were supposedly splitting the paycheck of one full-time employee, but I suspected he was paid more. He certainly had more expenses than me.
As I branched out into other media—films, books, drama, concerts—I created an entirely new world of art in my head. Artists had parallel careers: filed under the same names, but with different successes and failures, duds, comebacks, their work took on entirely different meaning. It was like latticework ghost architecture of art in my head—the structures were all there, but their fulfillment was the stuff of dreams—fleeting and wonderful.
As I accrued a following, people began to shoehorn my “understanding” of something into the actual item. People often told me I’d opened up new ways of thinking about a film or a particular artist. I suppose that happens when you try to reconcile two things that don’t fit. I got a reputation for being insightful.
Once I had a reputation, I flexed my powers, probably too much too quickly. I spent most of my time in that room, writing reviews and carefully avoiding exposure to anything. I reviewed more and more things, around the world—I did imaginary tours of foreign cities, Istanbul, Buenos Aires, Helsinki, Kabul, Paris, Kyoto, even Vermont. I reviewed famous places and said they weren’t much; I championed imaginary corners of the world. I would make bizarre critical statements just to see what people would make of it, like my famous declaration that the best new music of the year was a particular chair in Prague. I was known as provocative, but by now there was weight behind my words. Clearly I had to be stopped.
In the end, however, it didn’t matter what happened. The editor/owner was arrested for laundering money through the paper, and the Spag Island Review vanished immediately. I was kicked out of my little hole, the typewriter repossessed and I stepped outside and listened to street performers for the rest of the day. I’ll spare you opinion on their quality, but for me it was like eating after a long fast.
