• Published on

    Book Launch at the Art Show: October 13!

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    UPDATE: The book will be available for sale online soon. If you would like a copy immediately, email me directly.

    This isn't the New York book. This is different. This is smaller, but you want it that way. This is special, private, exclusive.

    You may remember that I'm represented by Eric Myers, of Myers Literary Management, in New York. Eric Myers is a mensch and a man ahead of the curve, because he believes, accurately, that what people want now are books that celebrate compassion, especially between those of diverse ethnic, economic and class backgrounds. There's a trend in books that's on the point of tipping into burgeoning being.

    In these divisive times, snarky outrageousness has become ordinary. When snarky outrageousness is ordinary, the new radicality can only be nuance and kindness. Acceptance. I don't know how we got to where these things have become refreshing and unusual, but that is where we are, and Mr. Myers, mensch that he is, has had to suffer what all forward-thinking trailblazers must endure: those who are afraid to deviate from the status quo. 
     
    Realists are forever doomed to mediocrity, Lukas Richter once told me, because they lack the necessary naivete to believe in the possibility of great things happening. Trailblazers find this boring and tiresome, but we know it's part of the game. We put up with doors closing in our faces for months or years on end, because we know. Eric and I are just waiting around for the publishing world to catch up. The blog's enthusiastic readership, media interest, and my platform all indicate how well a national book would do- especially as all major cities in the US are currently experiencing the issues I discuss here. Not to mention the reception from you thousands of readers, who daily tell me how meaningful the blog is, how rare, how hard it is to find material that offers a similar sensation: an authentic view of real human kindness and positive possibilities. But, alas.

    You won't be surprised to hear the big houses are not the most adventurous of risk-takers. As ever though, Eric's a man ahead of the curve, and I applaud him for taking a stand in that lonely place. It's how things get done. Nobody, not one soul, was ever remembered for sticking with the status quo.

    While he and I wait around for New York to figure out that people like reading about people being nice to each other, I have a surprise for you.

    I'm releasing a limited-run book version of my blog that will, as of this writing, be available for one day only, and only in person. 

    As I said above: this isn't the New York thing. This is a treat for those of you in Seattle, and a gesture of my gratitude.

    My solo art show on October 13, hosted at ArtForma, is also a book launch. If you're there, you'll have the opportunity to buy (for a mere $20, to cover print costs) a book that celebrates the best of what my blog has to offer. 

    This won't be your standard best-of-the-blog narrative compilation of the most popular stories (that's what the New York book would be). No, this is more exclusive than that. These are the deep cuts. The bootlegs. Call them what you want: the stories that are particularly precious to me, the little treasures that longtime readers know are buried in the depths of my blog, and remain impossible to find again. It's my own personal curation of the site, and even if a national book is published in the future, there won't be any overlap in stories (with literally thousands of them, there's no need). These are the special stories.

    I'm also happy about this book because it's the fruit of collaborations with artist friends I care about. If you're involved in graphic design in Seattle, you've heard of Tom Eykemans, a book designer at Lucia | Marquand and formerly UW Press. He's a friend of mine, and a genius: the book's design is inspired by a bus schedule, and it will be published by Tome Press. Jacqueline Volin is a longtime editor and was the editing, design, and production manager at UW Press. She has performed here with aplomb on editing duty. And if my enthusiasm isn't good enough, we have endorsements from the Seattle Review of Books' Paul Constant, Fresh Ground Stories' Paul Currington and the Stranger's Charles Mudede.

    People have been asking about a book version of the blog for years. In an age where anything is searchable, knowable and buyable, it's the stuff you can't get with a click that has unique value. The stories I write celebrate authentic kindness happening in real life between real people. It only makes sense for the book to premiere in the tangible world, in the elemental truthfulness we were born in a bath of. People talking to each other in a room. While Tom and I hope to make the book available both online and through a bookstore in the future, we can't guarantee with any certainty that'll happen, and due to the personal nature of this venture, I’m doubtful.

    But for at least one day, it will exist. I want to put this book into your hands– in person. 

    See you Saturday, October 13th. 

    (Details and location here)
  • Published on

    All the Nathan Interviews

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    Photo by Sam Smith.

    An update to the site today– a new page that links to all the various interviews with me from over the years, divided up by format– television, radio, print and more. Check it out here!
  • Published on

    Hard Right to Happy

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    ​Sorry for the infrequent posting this month: I'm preparing for my art show! More here!

    ​It's a waxing gibbous tonight, yellow, a sense of possibilities from high overhead. I'm done for the night– or almost done, seconds away from putting it in park and shutting off the lights, ready for the sound of the motor cutting into silence, the way the bus seems surprised you'd ever want to shut it down.

    I turn the double-length articulated coach onto its lane assignment, the last turn of the night, and why not do it with a little pizzazz, keeping alive the freshness that got me through the day? I even have an audience. There's a colleague, walking the walk of having completed the day. She's coming from one of the buses parked up ahead, further up the line.

    Even if you're the last coach to park on a lane, there's still enough room to square it off perfectly, so you're not bleeding over the striping with your back tires. Go a little too deep, as deep as you can before you start the turn, hard right, then you overcorrect left after you're a little too far right, the bus changing its mind, and you're thinking about your middle wheel and turntable now, taking your time. You've got the real estate on your left side to reposition the front, and here's the back wheel sliding in perfectly, straight as an arrow on the last second. Not half bad, you say to yourself, allowing yourself a little hop off the front step, the skip that wants to tap your heels together.

    She's caught up to where I am now, and we finish out our walk back to the Base together.
    "Nathan!"
    "Hey!"
    "Were you just drivin' that 7?"
    "You know it! Such a great night." I change my voice halfway through, realizing I probably sound like I'm bragging. I'm just happy; the exhilaration of a completed shift.
    She says, "when did you start driving that thing?"
    Pause. Putting it together. "I first did the 7 in, '09."
    "And you just stick to it, huh?"
    "Well you know you just find something you like and you kind of get in a rut, you know? In a good way."
    "I know tha's right," she grins, with a smile that stops you from calling her middle-aged. "That's how I am with the E. People look at me–"
    "Me too! I love the E!"
    "And I have a great time out there!"

    I look at her. I don't know her, but I do now. Different race, age, gender... never mind all that. I call it kindred spirits. I say, "well probably 'cause you got a great spirit, and people can feel that!"
    "Yeah!"
    "'Cause respect has such huge currency out here on the street, and if you put that good energy out there,"
    "'Hi,' 'good evening,'"
    "People notice that. They appreciate that in a big way."
    "Sometimes they'll start doing their little thing," she admits.
    "Yeah."
    "And I'll say something."
    "Yeah."
    "And they'll stop."
    "'Cause they know you from before, that goodwill! Sure, it's a couple days out of the year that are pretty tough–"
    "It happens."
    "It happens."
    "But man, all the other days? It's beautiful!"
    "And I'm just gonna keep doing it!"
    "You and me both, friend!"

    I felt the expansion of the moon and stars, a heady exhilaration beating in my chest, the confirmation of common secrets, known and shared. There are a lot of like-minded, positive drivers. I've had variations of this exchange before. What about this conversation made my heart rise with such particular joy?  

    It was the ready acknowledgement even if our approach doesn't work all the time, that doesn't make it worthless. Because it works ninety-nine times out of a hundred, and usually still helps in the remaining percentile. Your working method isn't dashed if you have one bad trip. It happens. It's okay if things fall apart spectacularly after you've done your best, as they sometimes do. No single approach solves every moment. You work on it, think about what you'll do next time, and breathe. The main thing is, you're getting the overall. You didn't escalate things. Don't beat yourself up, don't question your good-natured outlook just because it fails once or twice. 

    It's just the world. 

    In this crazy place, going home happy most every night is something worth celebrating.
  • Published on

    Pretty Sure I Don't Deserve This

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    Note: video of these events will be posted in the near future.

    "Congratulations," a friend once told me, after I'd finally gotten a New York literary agent. "Let yourself feel it today, and breathe. You deserve this."

    The thing is, I don't know how to do that.

    Humility is one of the great human virtues, and maybe the final pit stop on the spectrum of goodness, of right action. I tend to think of kindness as the absolute end-all, but isn't humility what's needed first? The recognition that there are others, that we can learn, serve, listen... it is this frame of mind that allows us to feel joy, to live in a sense of wonder. You can't be excited if you think you know everything. Can't be pleased if you think the world owes you something. Humility. At the very least, it's key. I'm no expert, but I work at it.

    And because I work at it, doing my best to normalize it, I have a tendency to shut out compliments and accolades. I'm hugely grateful for every one, but I know that if I were ever to actually start believing all this stuff... well, you know what I mean. I have to turn them around in order to stay sane. 

    This praise from a passenger is actually just evidence of his own appreciation of kind personality. That award is really a tribute to all of us drivers, filmmakers, or artists– not just me. Or it's a celebration of those who've taught me. Things like that. I've even noticed when reconstructing conversations for blog posts, what I have the most difficulty remembering are the moments when someone's giving me compliments! You understand where I'm coming from here. You have to brush this stuff aside or you'll become intolerable.

    One effect of all this is that I'm not an entitled brat. But another effect is that when I receive truly meaningful, well-intentioned appreciation, I have the hardest time hearing it.

    The Wall of Fame is an internal award handed out at the State level. The public doesn't know about it, but it's a big deal in transit. Of the 3,000 operators at Metro, I was the single driver who received the honor. No individual operator here has won it before, in the 45 years since Metro's inception.

    There isn't a bone in my body that allows me to think, for one second, that I earned this accolade on merit. 

    We know the implication that I'm better than all those tens of thousands of operators is categorically absurd. But that isn't what the award means. Something hit me as I sat with my chiefs in the enormous conference room at the Three Rivers Convention Center in Kennewick, where the ceremony was taking place (how big was this room? There were a bunch of buses parked in the back corner. That's how big!). These experienced professionals, my bosses, treating me now as a peer, had somehow deemed, along with a multitude of other transit top brass at King County, that I was an appropriate representative of certain attitudes and skill levels seen throughout the operations workforce. That these attitudes were worth highlighting. 

    The Secretary of Transportation shook my hand, and excepting his own WSDOT staff, I was the only award winner that night he took a photo with. He briefly interrupted the proceedings to do so. Could it be? I stood under the high ceilings feeling weightless, daring myself to trust their judgment, allow myself to feel it, even if for a blink– letting the size of this hit me. Maybe, just maybe in the smallest way, perhaps. 

    Perhaps I was a half-decent embodiment of all the best operators who came before me, who work alongside me, the chiefs and teachers and parents and friends and passengers who've mentored me from day one of this strange adventure. It was a sensation of immensity I could hardly grasp– that maybe they were here tonight to support me, rather than the usual versa vice.

    What could be more humbling? I stood alone in the hotel room afterward, feeling small in a precious way. Had I really, actually brought something to the table? Not for me to say. There are such remarkable people in my life. I feel mainly like I've been a person gathering– observing their styles and absorbing them like a sponge, combining them into my own flavor. They may not know they're teaching me, but they are.

    Brian's prodigious but gentle wisdom, his utter lack of a need to assert himself over others. Paul's generosity of spirit, entirely genuine and without motive. Abiyu's quiet dignity; he and I talking quietly in a corner at the base about children, perspective, life. These guys have no idea how much they inspire me. My chiefs laughing at our table, they who negotiate the bureaucracy and hang on, easily, to their best selves, caring and vivacious and light. My friends and lovers of past and present, each a hive of radiant goodness, their very own, glowing.

    The way I've never heard my parents complain about anything. The way they've made certain modes of engagement like arguing, whining and bragging completely foreign to me.

    They, who help me think the world is a good place.

    Let's forget for a moment that it was me who got this. There were plenty of other ground-level employees celebrated that night– drivers from agencies besides Metro, trailblazers in planning, data, HR; our very own tunnel maintenance team, guys I wave at regularly, getting their due; and John Rochford, a true pioneer in Paratransit services and more than deserving of his recognition.

    Global western culture today is dense and loud, polemic. It has the space to swallow everything, and what doesn't get chewed up immediately seems mainly to be that which is most outrageous or extreme. It resists thought. Only in such a bite-sized and overloaded culture would we have the sociopolitical issues we now face, where things as basic as skill and truth get pushed aside.

    But these transit workers were not being noticed for being outrageous or sexy or extreme or loud. They were just a few women and men doing important and unglamorous work really, really well.

    Now that is worth celebrating.
  • Published on

    The Last Show: Why You Should Come, Part I

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    This is the nice post. For the no-holds-barred skinny on what really happened at Evergreen, click here.

    ---

    They're closing the last color darkroom. Evergreen College, famous worldwide (not an exaggeration) for its liberal arts programs and unique freeform educational structure, has new management. Uh-oh, you're thinking. 

    You would be right. 

    The new management has, in its wisdom, decided to permanently shutter many of their internationally renowned art departments– drama, motion picture film, and others... but most crucially, their color darkroom. Why such a fuss, you ask?

    It's basically the last one in the United States. Yes, three others remain on our continent, but they're all either smaller, less well run, harder to gain access to (try Googling them!)... in so many words, Evergreen was always the best, the last holdout of quality analogue color. 

    We forget that color film is (was?) one of the newest and shortest-lived of art mediums, one of the last invented before the glut of ones and zeros came along and jump-started society's obsession with speed over quality. 

    ---

    For a mere forty-odd years, you could throw a roll of 35mm Color in your inexpensive (and unbreakable) Pentax K1000 and capture light with a vibrance and organic richness digital media still can't compete with. Digital gives you thousands of colors. How adorable. Film gives you millions. Digital is a fine medium and looks lovely... as long as it's the only thing you're looking at. 

    Inkjet and laser prints give you black ink; again, how cute. Photo paper gives you silver halide crystals burned by light. Does anyone really think black ink has something over on burned silver crystals? Put the two next to each other, and you'll see what deep blacks are supposed to look like. 

    Or try scanning a cross-processed negative, and look at how the computer tries to grasp the subtle aberrations of the tone curve. You'll start to chuckle, realizing your high-end scanner doesn't have the faintest idea how many colors green is. The same with your $3,000 Canon, which can't get the range of skin tones your $50 film camera and $5 roll can in its sleep. 

    ---

    We know this isn't anomalous in materials manufacturing. Ask your grandpa what they used nylon for during the Great War. Ever notice how his shoes last forever too? How the zipper on your grandma's coat slides more smoothly than your three-year old Columbia jacket? The way your grade-school backpack lasted longer than the one you use now. We’ve grown to accept poor quality in most of the products we’re invited to repeatedly consume. Take your ancestors to the shelving section of IKEA, and try telling them any of the items are “sturdy bookcases.” You know they would dissolve in peals of laughter.

    This isn't nostalgia. It's common sense. Film yields a better image. Yes, you need skill. You need patience. Yes, it requires more infrastructure. But who would expect quality without such a price?

    ---

    You're probably thinking Evergreen is cutting their program for the same reason many other schools and art centers have over the years: money. Black and white darkroom is cheap and easy. It isn't going anywhere. Color is unique, toxic, requires a different skill set. You don't work under a red light; the prints have to made in pitch-black darkness. You can't touch the chemistry. The processor (above, center image) is the size of a small car.

    But Color isn’t a major expenditure when your processor, equipment, and other infrastructure are already in place. Evergreen’s lab is by far the best-running, most organized, most kept-up of any lab in the US (again, not an exaggeration– we’re discussing a pretty special place here). Compared to some of their other programs, it's not very expensive. The photo director just retired; find another. There are knowledgeable people out there who are willing to teach. They are having budget issues, but cutting Color isn’t a major savings at all. Plus, everyone knows what you do if you’re a school in need of money; cut your science, medical, and business programs, and watch new funding flow in a year later. No, money isn't the reason. They'll try to tell you it is, but it isn't. They have the money for this.

    It's laziness.

    Among the new management team is a woman who says "color photography is a joke." She's said that and similar remarks to artists. To students. To staff. The administration could expend the effort to hire staff to teach a practice that's been taught for decades, during a time when film is gradually regaining popularity, when a large and loyal majority of staff and students embrace these arts, when an entire community has grown out of the surrounding cities who use the darkroom... but they'd rather ignore these facts and kill their darlings. I don't believe I'm being unfair here. They could've consulted with the professors, or asked the students what was important to them. But they were lazy. (Click here for even more dirt on what went down.)

    ---

    I have friends who've traveled from Germany to study at Evergreen because of its unique offerings. I've traveled down there myself countless times because, well, it's the only color darkroom. Others come from Portland, Poulsbo, Vancouver and more for the same. I doubt the administration has a clue. In ditching the very golden geese that made their institution so praised in so many cultured circles, they reveal they've forgotten something fundamental:

    Art is the only profession that explores the act of what it means to be alive. 

    Everything else is secondary.

    Several years ago I was told that stewardship would be the new buzzword of our time, that young people would care about culture, about helping each other and bettering society through thoughtful expression. Actions like that of Evergreen's new administration are why this hasn't happened. When a culture doesn't have art, it stops being a culture.

    ---

    But: enough moping!

    What do you do when the end is near? Learn how to say goodbye. Through the good graces of several key players, I've been able to print like crazy this last week. This last color darkroom closes forever on the 30th, and I've been making every minute count. 

    My photography practice, ever since graduating UW a decade ago, has centered around analogue color photography. I've put black and white printing aside because I knew this day would come earlier. We would lose color first. Now it's happening. And I'm ready.

    They say it takes about an hour to test, print and finalize one picture in the color darkroom; I can make 100 prints in eight hours. I mention community above, and I do value the wonderful people I print with, but you won't catch me making much small talk. I keep my head down and churn out as much as I can. Time is short. It's like passing the bar and then learning the profession of lawyers is being eliminated. I got a degree centered on how to do something that won't exist next month. I don’t regret it.

    This is our time.

    We came in at the end, but we were still here. Very soon it will be impossible to make an analogue color image. People will forget what they look like. They'll lose the sensation of looking at an original– that feeling you get when viewing a painting– when they see a color picture. Paintings are precious because they can only be made once; shortly color photo won't even be able to be made at all. As though they disallowed paint and brushes.

    I have a solo show on the second Saturday in October, at ArtForma in Georgetown. It will last for only one evening, and given what I'll be showing there I find that fitting. The large-scale portraits you'll see on display will forever be the last, and therefore permanently the newest, analogue color prints you're likely to ever see. 

    The technical details briefly mentioned above are fun, but ultimately unimportant; it's about what we feel, looking at the images. The organic, handmade object, like ourselves; an original, slightly different from all the rest, ephemeral and delicate and sensitive; strong and vibrant, but most notable for its subtleties. 

    Doesn't that describe your favorite person, the best parts of life?

    It won't be the best show, nor the worst. But there'll never be another like it. You owe it to yourself to stop by.

    See you there.

    ---

    ArtForma Visual Art Space is located at:
    6007 12th Ave S, Fl Second
    Seattle, Washington 98108

    Saturday, October 13

    The show will last from approximately 5pm-9. Look for further details forthcoming.
  • Published on

    ​The Perspicacious Hairdresser

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    The accent. I knew him from before. The vowels drawled out in between clipped consonant edges, a straining against the upper mouth, little enthusiasms in every double vowel. Did he stem from a country of one? Who else sounds like this? Black hair spiked up, flaxen gold skin, leather, sunglasses that didn't frown, the sharp teeth grinning besides. He was a hairdresser, and there was no one else like him. 

    How could I forget his first words to me, years ago? The friendly and unknowable voice, loudly. The proclaiming voice. "You shoul' be driver of da yeeeeah, man! Not of duh month. Of duh yeeeeah!!"

    Today I watched him transform into sunshine upon seeing me, alignments of posture and expression reborn, the body coming together now, no longer a tired man after a long workday. Sure, it's just an acquaintance seeing an acquaintance, but that can be enough to rejuvenate you, your best self now without even trying. The power of a consistent smile.

    "My friend!" I exclaimed.
    "It's duh best number 7 bus driver ever!" Eb-buh.
    I laughed, appreciating his glow. "How's life?"
    "Life in 2018?"
    "Yeah man, tell me!"
    "Just another story," he replied. "Sad story, happy story, it doesn't matter. It's just another story."

    The thick accent, the sunglasses and spiky hair; the tilting roadway, dilapidated in the crossfade of light and gently turning time. How can a line be artless and artful in the same breath, too brief to be profound and yet too concise, too all-encompassing to be anything else? The best sages turn a book into a single sentence.

    I drift sometimes. We all do, especially these days. Despair is just around the corner, and it's addictive. When you've "been through some stuff," as they like to say out here, the reminder that life is a system of peaks and valleys carries with it particular comfort. His line put me back into perspective. To acknowledge the struggle as we comment on the intrinsically beautiful texture of existence allows us– allows me– all the more, to believe. Sometimes it's glorious, life is, and sometimes it's terrible.

    We take it in stride.

    Take things as they come, and make the best of them. "Yeah," I nodded. "Just another story!"
    "Jus' another story!"