I realize this is exceptionally short notice for a reminder, but I'm compelled to share once again that I do have work in Pioneer Square's Shift Gallery tonight. It's not a solo show, and I don't have a huge amount of work up, but I think you'll quite like the work that is on display– not to mention some pretty extraordinary stuff from my fellow artists!

Curator Liz Patterson's desire to incorporate not just my art but specific the bus-related side of my art is exciting to me. These two worlds of mine generally have so little crossover... except when they don't: both are really about the same thing, the creative urge to express and explore human nature. That's what this blog is about– the magical place where booksmarts and streetsmarts meet and intertwine.

If you're doing the artwalk or in the neighborhood tonight, stop in for a chat and some art! I'm there from 5-8.

Details, location and more here. 

"How was your evening, Mister Ernie?"

What ends up being formative? Do we know, in the moment? Sometimes it can be as fleeting as somebody's line, a seemingly throwaway word sequence that reveals volumes, rewires how you consider life. Before I began this job I'd ride around with my close friend Brian Bell, who at the time drove delivery for Honda Auto Parts. We'd sit in traffic together, catching up. One day I asked him how he dealt with all this ridiculous traffic. The backups, the slowdowns, people zipping in and out.

"You get used to it," he said.

It was his tone which struck me. I'll never forget it. It was so calm, so nonchalant. It revealed he was in a headspace where traffic problems were of such minor concern as to be almost completely inconsequential. What should it matter, after all? You're a professional. It doesn't bother you. 

Brian may not even remember that brief reply of his, but I've carried its implications through the years, and it's proven formative in how I think about traffic.

You get used to it.

Ernie, above, is a colleague whom I've looked up to since day one. In reviewing the earlier years of my blog I've discovered I've quoted almost exactly the same line of his several times. It too was a formative sentence. He first said it when I rode his bus one evening (here), and I later restate the line in different contexts here and here, with another brief thought of his here. I thought I knew the line's import, but I didn't, and would only later fully internalize the concept through a horrific incident that proved excellent as a learning lesson. It's too much of a wound right now, though; maybe I'll write about it when it's a scar. 

In any event, Mister Ernie and I were walking to our cars at the day's close, and our brief discussion circled toward another facet of that key idea of his which has been so useful for me. 

"Great," he replied, in answer to my question. "So great. There's some challenges, but…" he paused, but only briefly, finding the words. "When you're serving, everything is better. Everything is better. 'Cause you know what? It moves yourself out of the way, and things are unstuck."
"'Cause it's not even about us!"
"No! It's not!"
"It's not about–"
"No!"
Our words tumbling over each other in our enthusiasm. I said, "we're not good to people so that it comes back at us,"
"No!"
"Although it often does,"
"It does,"
"It's about. It's about giving it out there."
"And leaving it there."
"Exactly!"
"And then doin' it better the next day. How do you fine-tune–"
Yes, I thought. Yes. Wow. This guy. I couldn't contain my admiration, and exploded with: "Ernie! You are one of the great, towering, thundering statues of existence in our time!"
He laughed. "You know what, I throw it right back at you, Nathan! I throw it right back at you with impunity."
"Thank you."
"With impunity! It's always an honor just to see you, even if you don't talk. I just know. I know. I just know."
"Right back atcha! Ernie!"
​
He grinned wide, laughing out the line one last time: "With impunity!"

There is no entitlement in Devin. Among society's disadvantaged, some people act entitled precisely because they're not, trying to cover up for their bruised egos by over-asserting themselves. But there are those who recognize kindness is not a right. It is a privilege, to be treated well, and something to be thankful for. Devin's like that. He's disadvantaged only in the sense that in appearance, he's precisely the physical type people have been stereotyped into being afraid of:

Strong, young, hip, strapping black American male.

I imagine he's regarded standoffishly, suspiciously, or worse too often, and you can see the appreciation light up in his eyes when you give him the opposite. That enthusiasm carries a spark both profoundly beautiful, but also hauntingly sad to me, because it even has to exist.

"Hey," he says at Andover tonight. "Could I ask you for two transfers for me and Mister March Fifteenth?"

"March Fifteenth" being our colloquial code name for his friend Anthony, so named because Anthony and I have similar birthdays. The two of them represent a certain go-getter motivation I find hugely inspiring, and best represented on the blog by one of my favorite exchanges, wherein Anthony gently spars with an older drug dealer about how to go through life. As for Devin, you may remember him reacting hard at the end of the Black Lives post.

I reply with, "how could I turn you guys down, that would be absurd!"
"Ha!"
"Tell him I said hey!"
"Will do!"
"That's good of you to look out for him," I say, noting their friendship, his consideration of Anthony's needs.
"Hey, that's how him and me do it. 'Cause I know he would think of helpin' me too." 
"Tha's beautiful."
"And we don't keep track of how many times I've given or he's given, we just keep carrying it on." I can learn from that, I think.

We're about the same age, he and I. We've spoken before, and on tonight's empty bus, our conversation moves to relationships. This was during my break-up phase. We talked at length about different methods of parting ways, how some are kinder, how some take two to put in the effort. The notion of having the courage to redefine a relationship as a friendship; the value of sustaining civility, such to emphasize the impact of good you had on each other. Devin finally said, "end it on good terms, always be on good terms so no matter what, you could call, if you was in the neighborhood you could say hey, how's everything, hope everything's goin' well in your life." 
"Man, you need to run for president."

Devin beamed, looking at me with pleasant surprise.

This was during the Obama years. Today, the sentence would certainly be no great compliment, and pre-2008, telling my African-American friend in the 'hood to do so wouldn't have had the requisite sense of possibility. It would have sounded more hopeless than invigorating. But for that real and glorious moment in American history, on that night in Rainier Valley, the sentiment carried real weight.

​I was trying to tell him his perception was sharp, his opinions considered; that he had the motivation to go far and the deep broadness of perception to understand and sympathize with the needs of others. I could tell no one had ever said anything like that to him before. I was trying to tell him he was kind, and about having a reach that exceeds, then expands, your grasp.

He heard me.

That's no Instagram– it's 35mm Polaroid Film in a Holga! Photo by Daphne Chu.

Seattle Art Fair starts August 3rd, and Shift Gallery is part of it. If you haven't been to Shift Gallery, you've walked past it. It has that cute little entrance on Washington between Third and Fourth, north side. Liz Patterson, curator of the August show there, has a lot on her mind to share, and one of them is the idea of foregrounding the neighborhoods and textures of Seattle this blog revels in, and which generally never see the light of day in art galleries. The other side of Seattle, so these out-of-town fair people can get a more dimensional feel of all the city represents.

I'm excited to show you a few pieces of my own and share in taking in some really compelling work by others in Liz Patterson's group show Untitled, which opens Thursday, August 3rd from 5pm to 8. Stop by for a chat if you're in the neighborhood!

Details, location and more here.

These images are rather more important for me than many of the others I've shared here.

Click here for why, the galleries, and more! Enjoy!

I'd never smelled anything more horrible in my life– and I've driven the 358! I've walked through LA's skid row. I've strolled down the alleys of the wrong part (more like wrong half, let's be honest here) of Napoli. This took the cake. The Breda bus had a huge driver's side window, and I put every inch of it to use, barely able to keep from vomiting. I'm ashamed to say I described the smell as "poop death" in relaying the story to others, as I could come up with no more accurate adjective. 

How do you politely tell someone they smell awful?

He was a big man, twice my weight and a head taller. In one hand was a full-size plastic chair which he carried as though it were a paperback book. He might have been forty, dark-skinned American, clad in a large black top with a scarf of sorts wrapped about his neck. He had kind eyes. 

[The rest of this story is in my new book!]