City Stuff by Chipka
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Description
I mentioned—a few posts back—that I’d purchased a book entitled Slow Chocolate Autopsy. I mentioned that I looked forward to reading it. Since that mention, I’ve read it.
By the blurb on the back, the book is a novel, a piece of literature that is supposedly science fiction. The book itself is something other than a novel, and something other than science fiction. It is a baroque convulsion of rambles and fragments, held together—allegedly—by a character named Norton.
I’ve since learned that the author, Iain Sinclair (I hear he’s big in the UK) is interested in “geo-psychology.” Most fiction with a pronounced sense of place can be considered “geo-psychological,” and in the interests of that concept, I decided to do my own geo-psychological explorations: not of London (airfare is expensive!) but of Chicago. I searched for the real symbols of Chicago, the core personality of the city; I wanted to see what would happen if I consciously set out to find them.
I found a bar. I found a red-stone three-flat. I found lots of rusting wrought iron, and ossified pigeon drops; and for just a few moments, I felt as if I’d stepped into the pages of Aleksandar Hemon’s novel, The Lazarus Project, though only half of that novel takes place in the dark (somewhat stinky) psychic milieu of the “eternal” Chicago. I was amused that a blurb on the back of a book about London could actually provide some small pathway into an exploration of a kind of timeless Chicago. Of course, it didn’t hurt that I wasn’t very far from what was once Chicago’s Haymarket, where in May of 1886, someone threw a bomb at police and started a riot that further exposed both the seething tendrils of xenophobia and the philosophical divide surrounding the organized labor movement in the USA: both of these issues continue to dominate US-American politics and personal philosophies; they’re what theorists call “deep niche” memes in the psychology of Chicago, and that’s just a fancy way of saying that (in terms of Chicago’s psychology,) these things aren’t going away any time soon.
Now that I’ve read Slow Chocolate Autopsy, I find that I know less about that odd literary thingamajig than before I read it, but since I’m a writer, I’ll rewrite the plot and simply say that the book was the excuse I needed in order to step into the psychology of Chicago, even though my steps led me directly into an explosion in 1886; well, they led me to a bar and then an explosion a few miles away (never mind that it was all 129 years in the past.) And now that I think of it, maybe I just lived the novel that Iain should have written, though I do hear that he’s positively gargantuan in London.
I didn’t enjoy Slow Chocolate Autopsy but it’s a valuable book, simply because without it, I would have taken a lot longer to nab a version of the photograph above this text. I’ll probably read select parts that book again; it’ll probably inspire more photographs, and it will be interesting to see what I uncover….
As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week.
Comments (14)
beachzz
Oh man, this is so different from your usual fotos and I just LOVE it. Now that book, well, I saw chocolate but then I saw autopsy and was trying to figure out how that could be. Since you said you didn't enjoy it, I think I'll pass, but it IS a great title. Back to the foto, well, it just rocks and is another great street shot!!
giulband
Fascinating image !!!!
Faemike55
Great image and interesting & though provoking narrative
Wolfenshire
Interesting narrative and scene. It doesn't sound like I would have enjoyed that book either.
Hubert
Fascinating indeed! Very intense!
durleybeachbum
FAB photo! Apart from the red hydrant this could be London. I haven't read any Sinclair. Just about to start 'The Suspicions of Mr Whicher' by Kate Summerscale.
kgb224
Wonderful writing my friend. God bless.
jmb007
bonne photo
anahata.c
I've heard of Sinclair, but never read him. I've definitely heard of Hemon (heavily bolstered by your references to him), but also not read him. I still mean to. But I'm glad Sinclair's piece brought you to this, and hopefully other pieces like this, because it's a snippet of many big cities---in fact, this could be a big town---with tons of life going on inside those flat walls. The way you've treated the photo reminds me of the paintings of John Baeder (if you haven't seen them in books, you'd be frustrated by what's on the web---the jpgs I've seen are way too small to be of any revelation). He was akin to the super-realists, but he has a heart that they often didn't have. But, when one looks closely at his photo-like paintings, one sees they really ARE paintings---and you got that sense here. I mean, this is so painterly, I can't get over it! I know it's a photo, but you treated it to that warm human touch that makes it a painterly interpretation. The deep yellows on the walls (from reflected windows across the street!), the deep reds in the shadows, the buttery yellows of the stairs, filled with stains. The deep brown and green of the tavern. Your treatment of the sidewalk---where it looks like you painted those hues, even though they're actually 'there'. And a hydrant of saturated red that, again, looks painted, "interpreted" into the photo, so to speak. Baeder treats his photo-realist paintings with these touches. His work is perhaps more sunny than not, but he still unfolds mysteries of day to day streets, diners, abandoned town centers in early morning, or the enclave-worlds of a cafe snuggled into a lost neighborhood with a huge city behind it. The reflections in the windows are beautiful, here, too...A wonderfully treated photo, and it shines with a small-city feel, in and near an area that was fraught with hell (and is still, as you say, fraught with it), and which is part of the vast underbelly of Chicago's 'diadem' central district. You made that underbelly a glowing saturated very inviting patch of warm humanity, it's really beautiful. Even your tilt is beautiful. Beautiful once more, Chip, and I'd have never guessed it was Chicago if I hadn't read the signs, read your prose, and known it was shot by you. It feels universal...
jendellas
I love the photo, like the contrast between buildings. xx
helanker
WOW! These vivid colors are really calling me. I love this shot and the spots of sunlight on the walls add to the whole. Thank you for sharing this beautiful capture. Could be a nice watercolor :-P
MrsRatbag
This makes me think of a story (not sure if it's been written, but it exists in my head) ... a place that only exists when the reflection of its sun hits it, and that's when all life takes place. When the sun moves everything ceases to exist until the next "day". So maybe it's not a Pulitzer Prize winner, but it's a thought. A really stunning treatment in this photo, Chip!
wingnut55
good pic ! the colours are nicely florid and somehow retro.
KatesFriend
Let me first say that this is a wonderful capture. I take it that the light is due to window reflections from the buildings across the street. It does evoke another world like feel to what would be otherwise taken as a normal business block in an elder part of the city. And the colours, I've always loved green, but just to have such lovely primary specimens side by side in such a circumstance is a gold mine in itself - ah more colours, I am Sagittarian after all. And of coarse, the open invitation of a tavern, if only I could walk across and examine their menu. I would assume that it is rather hard to peg down the soul of a city or its eternal essence. It's a lifetime search for just an individual's. Of coarse, by definition, the soul is a rather illusive thing anyways. You find it where most people don't look or don't consider. And with Chicago I expect that must be doubly difficult as a result of the Great Fire and the rift that makes in the city's subconscious. As for Toronto, I'd say that at least part of it's essence is that its arteries tend to be people noisy but largely not industrial noisy. Which brings me back to streetcars. It's the circle of life!