Dear Robyn

Dear Robyn,

So many times working on this project I have wondered if I’m dying or already dead. 

On New Years day in 2013 me and T were in a bad car crash. We totalled the old Jeep. I thought we both were dead but neither of us was even hurt. The one memory that stands out more than anything is how intensely calm I was when I thought I was about to die upside down in the passenger side of that little black '94 YJ. 

From time to time since then, I’ve wondered if I actually died there. 

The magic in this story seems unlikely among the living, and yet, I’m living it.

It started as a hobby project where I would find a story throughout the lyrics of The Gaslight Anthem and Brian Fallon’s music. Writing has always been a happy place to escape. Music too. 

There was no plan. I had no idea what it would be and it was about just following clues and going wherever they took me. It was about finding a story rather than creating one. 

Now, the treasure hunt—the magical, mystical, living art, fiction-non-fiction, sci-fi, VR quest in the real world—has gone on for more than a decade and I have no idea where it’s going next.

It became an art project that currently includes around 100 paintings in progress along with countless essays, notes, and stories. There are multiple storylines. 

It’s about family history and fictional characters intertwining. 

While some of the characters are fictional and the stories are fictional, they tend to intersect and overlap with real life people and situations in weirdly coincidental ways. 

It's about impossible synchronicities.  It’s a journey inside the psyche, and it’s outside of time and space. 

It’s all about the interconnectedness of everything. And it's about how music and art are sources of connection, healing, and joy that every one of us can access.

It's about paying attention. 

The story is ever evolving. I have no control over how it will end. I have lots of ideas for fictional tangents but I've found that the fiction life hands me is often better than what I could have made up. 

Story details are often taken from real life in precise detail. My interpretation of the details makes up the fiction. Though, some days I’m not sure that they are completely separate. 

When I talk about real people I’ll use initials instead of names. DJ is my VR name and I'll go by that here too.

Jackson and Mae are fictional, I guess. And at the same time they are so real that to think they are not with me all the time is absurd. 

They are always watching from the paintings. I can see their faces.

Sometimes it feels like I have entered the story. And Sometimes it feels like I've been there before.

The process is completely intuitive and I’ll write more about that process later. Figures and characters and scenarios and clues reveal themselves in lyrics, in paintings, and in real life. I go with whatever it gives me.

The story takes me on hunts through deep musical rabbit holes. I’m so grateful for all the music I might never have known without it. I started a thank you page here for the music that makes up the layers of these pieces. 

It’s a true collaboration with the music. With different music it would be a different story. 

Everything is connected in the most fun and amazing ways. 

The story has roots on our beach in Cape Breton and it’s definitely connected to New Jersey--though I've never been there.

Wouldn’t it be cool if someone in New Jersey is writing a story that's connected to Cape Breton in ways they don’t understand?

I don’t think this thing is entirely mine.

I wonder sometimes if when Poppy was in his early drunken days and trudging around New York and Chicago, if maybe he left pieces of a family behind in New Jersey. The more the story goes on the more closely connected to him it seems to be. There’s been a pull in me to write about him for years.

While the story is rooted in Cape Breton and New Jersey, the characters have been in a lot of times and places. They've been in Harlem in the 20s, Queens in the 40s, and on the Brooklyn Bridge in the future. They were on the Titanic and in Hollywood through the decades. They’re at football games and concerts, in theatres, diners, and churches, in VR, in space, at the beach, and in my real life.

The art is an adventure. I only started painting in my 40s and I’m learning to paint as a I go. I’m learning a lot and trying lots of things but it’s really freeing to know this is not about making a grade. I know a little about art, enough to know the rules, but this is all instinct and I don’t get bogged down in expectations. It's purely about joy. 

When the rules don’t follow the story, I don’t follow the rules. 

The paintings always felt like worlds looking into other worlds. It’s like every canvas is a verse in a multiverse and the whole set is a puzzle piecing pieces of the story of the multiverse together. 

There are always clear images of faces staring through the layers, some familiar. 

The clearest faces and most fascinating illusions often emerge from sections that are all different tints and shades of blue. Blue cubes.

I think of the line we might always be blue from Myles Davis the Cool, right before the crowd shouts Jackson! He lived in that song until I found him.

The painting is already there in the layers and my only job is to pay close enough attention to uncover it as it wants to be. I remember hearing Michelangelo’s “angel in the marble” idea and feeling like that summed it up perfectly. The music lays the foundation and I just follow directions until all of the angels are freed. 

Each painting is a draft and most parts will be painted over and over. But there are stories in every layer. Each layer informs the next and leaves pieces of itself behind peeking through. I try to take a lot of pictures because I find the evolution of the painting fascinating. At the same time there are so many layers never captured because I was so deep in the story and did not want to come out.

Whenever I learn something new or see something I like online it goes into the next layer. The paintings are rarely done and most of them are continuous works in progress that can change at any time. 

A few times there have been paintings that hold pieces of the story so specific and meaningful that I can no longer paint over them. That is one circumstance when a painting might be done. Not finished, just stopped. There are a few that I’m getting close to stopping now.

This website will be a kind of archive. A way to organize and piece together the story as I go.

Try and remember that I am years behind the telling of this. It continues everyday and I continue to write it everyday. 

I don't know how far it will go.

The story is almost too big for me at times and that it’s ongoing is overwhelming. Sitting in front of a painting is like binging a series on Netflix. There is no way I can record all that I see. 

So much of the magic is lost in the moment and in my own senses. If their purpose is to show me joy, I’ve seen it and felt it on a level many people might never experience, though I wish everyone would.

Entries here might be lots at once and then few and far between. They might be stream of consciousness about what I’m seeing in the paintings in the moment. It could be casual emails just telling more of how the story came together. 

Some entries are essays like I would write for a class and some might read more like journal entries. Sometimes I might even post voice notes if it’s flowing better that way. I still don’t know what form this is going to take so it’s a little all over the place.

It may not be told in order although I’ll try to make it make sense. There is so much to it that there will be tangents. If I mention something that is not clear yet it will be clear in another story.  

Somethings are still not clear to me.

I’ve become an expert at recognizing patterns and connections. I’m decoding it and interpreting it and it doesn't feel like I'm making it up. 

Margaret Atwood says "when you're writing fiction, everybody thinks you're secretly writing about real people and things. But if you write an autobiography, they think you're lying as one does."

This is neither and both of those. 

While the story feels connected to me and my family, I'm just one part of it and I get the sense it doesn't totally belong to me. Art is a living thing. If someone sees this and connects with it, I hope they create something of their own that brings them joy. Maybe they will have pieces to share. 

More of the story here.

We'll have coffee at the beach in the summer and you can tell me what you think.