Substitute

Pete Townshend by Tom Wills, 2010/2013

Pete Townshend tried to warn me.  I remember reading this in the 1980s, before iPods and ear buds, when headphones were big and heavy and accurately loud:

"The volume during the concerts has not to do with it, it is important that you understand this,”  he said, when asked what he thought damaged his hearing the most.  "Headphones, headphones, headphones!"

"After the concert I got home and played guitar through headphones. My sound --  electrosound -- it cannot be played on an acoustic guitar. I could not drag into the living room the amplifier and speakers ... and hammer on two kilowatts. (With) headphones, all the rate of hearing loss increases at least 10 times. I was told that some muscles related to the eardrum, under the influence of alcohol, just lose their elasticity."

I play the drums. I have an electric guitar, and two amplifiers.  I was onstage from kindergarten through 12^th grade, playing those drums at schools, basketball games, football games.  I played in basements, back yards and bedrooms.
Alcohol was not the problem.

1979

One of my favorite exercises at the time was to string my fat Koss headphones across the bedroom, from the Ludwig drum set to the stereo, and bash along to The Who. “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and the like – I had them all down.  I recall playing all four sides of “Quadrophenia” in succession.  Bet the neighbors loved that.

The Frenemy

I did DJ work, and spent tens of thousands of hours mixing up tapes at home: Cassettes, reel to reel and now CDs.  I still do it, and I still wear headphones – because everyone here bitches about my music volume.  There are four pairs here, including the old Koss phones, which are still the best.

So, I cannot blame Pete Townshend for my problem. I can only blame myself.  Sure, I can hear.  But it’s all at one level.  There is no loud and no soft, no highs or lows. In a crowd I’m a disaster.  People at work have to repeat things to me, because the white noise sound masking system there makes them sound like bad AM radio.

“Turn up your hearing aid, old man.” I can’t tell you how many times I hear that at home.   

Playing loud, which I love, has muted everything else.
I used to think it was just “selective hearing.” But it's become noticeable to others.

Recently I bought some new stereo equipment: Two hearing aids.  Made in China. They work well but are ugly and uncomfortable. I’m trying to get used to them but don’t like them. Eventually I will get smaller ones for inside my ear, I guess, if I really want to hear what’s going on around me.  

Left and right. Stereo.

I haven’t worn them to work and probably won’t until I get smaller models. These are “trainers” for the hearing impaired.  Wearing them outdoors, I can hear everything to excess. Birds sound nice but dogs barking make me jump. I can hear people calling me from inside of the house. Part of the learning curve is finding the right volume setting. It's ironic that it seems to be "2" for me, not "11.5."

All of this was going to be kept under wraps, except to neighbors who will see me wearing one or two outdoors this summer.
But I started sprucing up a drawing of Pete Townshend, originally done in 2010, and thinking on it.
Pete is sliding toward stage front during "Won't Get Fooled Again." I still have the song memorized.

The original Pete rendering was too rough, it lacked a background, and the frame was crappy. It bothered me every time I passed it in the stairway.  It was too good a pose for such a shoddy treatment.

So, this month, I worked over Pete’s face, arms and hands; his clothes and arms; and added a somewhat novel background. 

The original in 2010

"I'm a substitute for another guy
I look pretty tall but my heels are high
The simple things you see are all complicated
I look pretty young, but I'm just back-dated.”

The first frame.

The background was created by shading from dark to light, and then  blotting over it with a kneaded eraser.  The pounding noise generated as I moved the eraser over the paper, reverberating through my wooden drawing table, annoyed my oldest daughter and awakened her baby upstairs.

“Dad, what the fuck are you doing?” she said.

I heard her, but pretended that I didn’t.

No. 197: Storyteller Photography

Storyteller Photography: Images by Rebecca, April 2013.

The adventure is complete!
Here I am at Storyteller Photography: Images by Rebecca in historic Kinsman, Ohio.

Everything is turning to gold?

I have the most interesting circle of friends: Authors, artists, photographers  -- most having spun off from unfulfilling careers in journalism after finding something else that they love to do. All of us are doing things on the side and helping each other out.

Because the slab is so big, I had to paint the big letters upside-down.

So it was, when one of them posted this March 15, 2013, on Facebook:

“I'm looking for someone to paint a sign for my photography business. The sign has already been constructed. If anyone can suggest an affordable, talented sign painter in the Kinsman (Ohio) area, please message me. Thanks! :)”

I bit the next day and emailed her a sketchy sketch.

The humble beginning.

“Hmmmm. I have painted house numbers and the like. I could probably do it, though I have never done it. If it gets to that point, let me know.”

It seemed things were already at that point, so I got the job.: 

"Ok, I will message you later with the details on what I'm looking for. Thanks!”

I told her that I’d do the lettering and my art major daughter Emily would do the painting. As it turned out, I did it all.  But Emily did drive me up to Kinsman in late March to see The Storyteller.

I laid out the 4’ x 4’ stencil on her kitchen table.

Outside,  two guys and a kid were in the driveway, dismembering three vehicles.

She was raising ducklings in her basement.

And we hatched a plan.

Pine green letters to match her house trim.

A tan Storyteller book logo behind the letters, nothing too distracting.
Two-sided sign, as mandated by a zoning commission.

Gold leaf highlights because, well, because!

She gave me two months; I got it done in five weeks. The biggest challenge was finding a vehicle large enough to haul the large slab of wood to and from Cortland.  The Storyteller bought the paint and hauled the wood. Luckily her sister had just bought a new truck.

The near-final stencil.

The painting began on April 12 as I primed the wood, then added the white coat a few days later.

I hauled the slab down the steps to my basement and set it upon my drawing table. I drew grid center lines and made other measurements to correspond to the stencil.

My plan to carbon-copy the stencil letters onto the white wood worked perfectly.

The font is called Herrington, but it’s imperfect because I drew the letters by hand.

We called it “Tombecca.”

Its swirls and curls required a steady hand, apparently an inherited trait.

My mother was an oil painter, my dad painted numbers on Army tanks, and my great grandfather painted advertisements on the sides of buildings.

They may have watched, but they helped me on this job about as much as Emily.

Eliminating an impossible-to-paint web address was the only real deviation I made from that stencil laid out on her kitchen table.  For your information, it is http://storytellerphotographyimagesbyrebecca.com/
By April 20 her sign was done, except for a couple coats of clear polyurethane. That’ll have to wait for warmer weather outside. The basement already smells like a meth lab from the gold-leaf paint.
It was still snowing here, believe it or not. The crappy weather actually expedited the sign project, because it kept spring fever at bay.

Before the gold.

The deal we made is that some money will be exchanged, and I’ll get a nice portrait of myself and my beloved grandson. This sign, we agreed, would be a foot in the door to future – more lucrative -- business. Hopefully that means more business for the both of us.

 

Side Two

Her number’s on it, if you're in the market for a photographer.
"All of the boys in the neighborhood are gonna have your number," I told her.
I’m surprised that I haven’t memorized it, what with all of that drawing and painting.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Rebecca Nieminen, Tom and her son Ethan (photo by Samantha)

This is a Tom Wills Production.

 

No. 195: Ink, Inc.

The Vindicator, Youngstown, Ohio. By Tom Wills, April 2013, from a 1968 photograph.

"Working in Gotham City."

Big, wide, marble steps. Giant steps.

That’s what I remember most about the first time I walked into this building.

Smoky and cold. Echo-y.

It was 1983. The Vindicator building was 52 years old, I was 22.  The newsroom was on the second floor, behind big doors.  It had big windows.

Hello.  Tryout, two internships, then a real job.

Working in Gotham City.

Youngstown, after the bottom fell out.

Concrete and steel on Vindicator Square.

My anniversary here is April Fools Day.

I share the date with the publisher, Betty Jagnow, who observes 65 years at the paper.

This picture is for her.  A card and a cake just didn’t seem enough.

The inscription on the back reads: "Congratulations on 65 years from your newsroom managers."

Sixty-five years and still going, still coming in early, and known to take the stairs.  

You have to respect that.

This, too, will last.

"There have been many cakes."

Her husband -- now retired -- hired me,  and I have tried to be true blue.

The place has longevity.  
Rather, it did for many decades.

All things change with time, however.

The newsroom is now in another building, just across the street.  The steps are smaller, more narrow -- and there are more of them.  There are few windows.

Lately the newsroom is populated by younger people, the new 22-year-olds, who stay for a year or so and are gone.  We train them and have cakes for ‘em when they go. There have been many cakes.

A university uses us for its classroom.  We print the senior projects, the final exams.

We have a radio station inside of a newspaper, broadcasting on the internet.

Mind = blown.

Vindicator Square and Boardman Street

"It took me 51 years to outgrow them."

The place, then, is a mix of long-timers and transients.

A few of us, myself included, are hanging tough here as the newspaper industry struggles nationwide.

In the news biz, “30” means “finish.”

I had been telling everyone, “30 years and out.”

But it's not going to happen: I’m too young, have too much of what my job helps pay for (house, cars, tuitions, loans), and I'm too in need of health care to quit.  

Plus, I know the place needs me.

It needs the other “senior staffers” too, to keep the kids grounded and out of lawsuits. It needs us to teach patience and reasoning.

Some disagree with me here, and that doesn’t bother me anymore.  It took me 51 years to outgrow them.

 

Gotham.

 "The future of journalism looks crummy."

I realize, however, that I am now an echo of the past.

Newspapers, and this place in particular, keep a hold on those of us who remember better times.

Those of us who remember our youth here or out in the field. 

Oh, how we chased stories up those stairs, and many other steps. I used to run like hell, taking two at a time.

Mostly nowadays it’s a different kind of hurry, phoning it in.

We’re giving the news away for free, first whenever possible, on your phone, pad and screen.  

Who wants to pay for it now?

Everyone’s tripping over themselves to gain a lousy minute.

I think it’s a little scary, and sometimes sloppy.

I always tell the kids to be careful, just like a parent.

But the real truth is, they scare the hell out of me.
The future of journalism looks crummy.

I returned to our newspaper’s morgue the two photographs that I used to create this drawing.

“Morgue” is a print journalist’s word for “library,” where we keep old papers and pictures, in boxes and binders and folders. 
The morgue is where everything is turning yellow and brittle.

Nowadays, everything is archived online.

Click this, click that.

I think we lose more stuff now than ever.   

 

"I like machinery but learned to tolerate technology."

I breathe deeply the smell of the morgue. I love old things.
I embrace words. I dig ink and paper.
I like machinery but learned to tolerate technology.

What I'm getting at is, work is not the same place. And it never will be.
I'm not in the same place, either. I think about leaving, more than ever.
That might be harder for me than it sounds: Some of my closest friends are on that second floor. Journalists are the smartest people I know.

There used to be dozens of them here.  Now there are about two dozen, on a very good day.

When I do go – whether on my own, or having been shown the door -- I will be able to look back at the old building, and all of the other concrete and steel on Vindicator Square.

My conscience will be clear.  It won't be my fault.
Until then, I'll take the stairs, usually one at a time. Sometimes I will do two, but not because I'm in a hurry.
I have already had a long run.