A Cherry Blossom for Mark E. Smith
How making an artist book helped me process the loss of my musical hero.
[Impromptu memorial for the passing of Mark E. Smith, 1/24/18.]
Listening to music is my fixed star. It locates me.
Admittedly, that’s not particularly unique.
We all have vivid musical experiences that indelibly mark moments of our lives, right? Like that song that came on the radio right after she broke your heart? Or, when she said “yes?” Doesn’t that song take you right back to high school?
I always listen to music when I make art, and more often than not, it bleeds in.
[Long Time Gone: Bird Gets the Worm, page one (detail). “Birdland” bird sings Charlie Parker’s solo on “Lover, Come Back to Me.” India and colored ink and collage on comic board, 2008-9]
In part, Long Time Gone (my graphic novel in-progress), is a giant love letter to my musical heroes, with pictures. The title itself is taken from a Bob Dylan song that was unreleased at the time I began work, and the chapters, too, often contain musical references: Bird Gets the Worm is a Charlie Parker composition over “Lover, Come Back to Me” changes, In a Mist is a Bix Beiderbecke piano improvisation, Calypso Tap Number is from a Dylan quip about the next song he’ll play, Senza Titolo “Where’s the Captain?” comes from a line in “Oleano” by The Fall.
Here it is from a video from when I was repeatedly listening to “Oleano” while making the cover and title page of Long Time Gone: Senza Titolo “Where’s the Captain?”
Eventually, perhaps inevitably, I made art about listening to music.
When Tod Lippy fulfilled one of my of greatest creative dreams by asking me to contribute to Esopus, I decided that I’d make a Long Time Gone episode about music, and how it shaped my life. The Fall recorded a cover of Sister Sledge’s “Lost in Music,” and it would provide the title for Long Time Gone: Lost in Music.
https://www.esopus.org/contents/view/372
(I will compose a Substack post on making the nineteen-page graphic novel. There’s so much good stuff there. From continuing to collaborate with my then fourteen-year-old daughter, Fiamma, to managing to pull Richard Nonas and William Sutton in too.)
[Cover “playlist” detail with Fiamma and Will’s drawings with Richard thinking “Goats itch.”]
I just made a list of the music references in Lost in Music, and it’s a little insane: Green Day, William Sutton, Lou Reed, The Velvet Underground, The Fall, Adele, Taylor Swift, Sister Sledge, The Clash, Nick Cave, John Lennon, The Cure, The Smiths, Grateful Dead, Steely Dan, The Doors, Lone Justice, Talking Heads, Arlo Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Bob Marley, Otis Redding, Maria McKee, Peter Tosh, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Muddy Waters, The Lounge Lizards, R.E.M., Suzanne Vega, David Byrne, Laurie Anderson, 10,000 Maniacs, The Band, The Housemartins, Kate Bush, Prefab Sprout, Billy Bragg, The The, The Wedding Present, The Polemics, Captain Beefheart, Sex Pistols, The Sugar Cubes, Roy Harper, The Undertones, Lloyd Cole & The Commotions, Pet Shop Boys, The Police, Charlie Parker, Jay McShann & His Orch., and Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
[Panel from Lost in Music. At our first meeting, Will and I exchanging favorite musical acts.]
However, it’s the music of The Fall, with lyrics and vocals by Mark E. Smith, that holds Lost in Music together. His music had hit me like a meteor, blocking out most other music from my ears, eclipsing past personal giants, and changing the way I thought about music itself.
The Fall’s music is definitely not right for everyone, but it’s perfect for me, John Peel, and Jonathan Demme (“Silence of the Lambs”).
The point for this narrative is that by then M.E.S. had taken complete hold of my imagination, I got lost in his music, and then he died.
Unexpectedly.
Well, maybe as unexpectedly as another hero of mine, Shane McGowan.
Anyway, The Fall were coming to Brooklyn on a planned tour, and I had tickets. Field recordings proved they were in top form. I’d seen them in 1998 at Coney Island High in NYC at perhaps their lowest ebb: the infamous “Levitate” tour (they’d break up a few days later at Brownie’s following an on-stage brawl and M.E.S.’s subsequent incarceration). But back then I had no real idea about their music. I did have a pair of talismanic cassettes, inadvertently gifted by my high school roommate as he withdrew from school…
[One of those blonde heads could be me in the audience…photo by Stefan Cooke]
After January 24, 2018 there followed a period of profound shock and loss. By May, with new life blooming all around, I finally found a way to celebrate the life he lived.
I lived near Green-Wood, one of the most beautiful cemeteries I know, and where I often find solace.
On May 6, 2018 I picked a cherry blossom there and drove it to my studio in Queens.
Over the next three days I made a series of huge watercolor paintings on full sheets of “Arches” watercolor paper (22 x 30"). I’d rotate the flower a little for each consecutive page, offering the reader a circling view of the blossom.
While making the book, a M.E.S. line from “Spector vs. Rector” hit me as appropriate for the moment. In a nod to M.E.S.’s typographical flair, I pulled out the typewriter that once belonged to my relative, Ruth Sperry.
I wrote the text, cut it into single words, glued them one word per page, and bound them between watercolor pages. So the reader gets text, art, text, art…
Read together, this is what it reads:
The bound book book is one of the largest I’ve ever made and it’s hard to get a sense of its scale on a screen. So I made this little video while listening to The Fall at “The Band on the Wall,” Manchester, 5/3/82. Take a peek (you may want to mute).
Books have always gifted me unenumerable joys.
Making this book, I found solace for an unutterable sorrow.
M.E.S. Lives!
You can see more of A Cherry Blossom for M.E.S. over on my website:
https://www.georgecochrane.net/a-cherry-blossom-for-mes
Thanks for reading! Please check out more about my work here on Substack.