I’m back in Eugene! For now.

There’s a lot to say about my short time in Mount Vernon, but I’m frankly exhausted and I’m not really happy with the quality of my work while I was there.

Terse highlight rundown:

1. Played the Wurlitzer at the Lincoln Theater - Split “House of the Rising Sun” with the 90-year-old organist on the theater’s two massive organs. The walls shook. A salient moment in my whole life, buried under a pile of days like dirty laundry.

2. Stayed (mostly) at The West Winds - The kind of hotel that you wouldn’t think existed anymore, what with cleanliness standards and all. There were thick black burn marks on the carpet and the bed. Every surface in room 128 was either dusty, crusty, or sticky. That room also smelled worse every time I came back to it – but, strangely, the exact smell varied from day to day. Day One, for example, it was a sweltery mixture of gym sneaker and something similar to what Dog Rinds must smell like. Next day, it was like fish fins and wood glue. On my last day there, before I walked out the door, it just smelled like the inside of a moldy cardboard box you’d find in a wet basement.

I’m no clean freak (understatement), but the prospect of living there for a month had me walking down Riverside Avenue with armfuls of cleaning products. And Benadryl. (Was I actually allergic to anything in that room, or was it just latent toxins leftover from previously residing pharmaceutical entrepreneurs?)

3. A conversation among the (resident, I’m assuming) house-keeping staff, through a wall, on April 18th:

Girl: “Look at a towels. There’s blood on nem.”

Woman: “What the hell? Oh, damnit.”

Girl: “There’s more in here. We gotta throw these away, right? Prolly crackheads or somethine.”

Woman: “I’ll go get the mop bucket. You start on the sink and the mirror here, and shit.”

* NOTE: I woke up to get my sketchbook, recording this conversation, verbatim. I relay it here humorlessly. This is a conversation that actually took place, about nine feet from where I slept, on the other side of a cheap wall. That afternoon I dreamt there were rats and raccoons scurrying through the open door of my room.

[More:]

4. The Directory - Spent most of my time there in an office, laying out ads and menus for a telephone directory. I usually like to spend at least a few days on an ad project - whether it’s a logo, or a print ad, or whatever. Here, I was doing entire brand treatments for between five and twelve clients a day - and I never spoke with any of them directly. I drank coffee by the gallon. Want to hear something funny? During the day, the only music we could all agree on was “Oingo Boingo.”

To summarize, the trip was everything I’d hoped for and a great deal more. I’ve never been anywhere quite like Mount Vernon… if its heart still beats, it’s somewhere in the basement of the Lincoln Theater.

So what’s next? I’m doing the design work for “Rock the Future” - a concert series, here in Eugene this summer. And I’ll be able to spend more than ninety minutes on it, which’ll feel like a three-day weekend.

I’m also going to be running a trip to Missoula in the next few weeks. …and I want to mention that a large-in-scale project of mine is nearing completion, but I don’t want to give too much away. I always give too much away, and then regret it!

Keep in touch!
-R