There is this thing with me and trains.

When I first began to compose songs, most of them made mention of a train somewhere within the lyrics. The same happened years later as I began to write poems. And now, I find that a lot of my art and photography has trains, train stations and the like as either a prominent theme or a reference point.

The thing about it is, it was rarely intentional.
I was 12 when I came to live in Chicago. My dad used to take me everywhere on the El (what we in Chicago call the subway train...short for 'elevated' ). I soon learned all the stops by heart between downtown and my aunt's house on the west side. I've been riding the trains ever since.

When I sit back and think about it, there are so many stories, characters and events in my history in this city that have to do with The Windy City's El trains...Like how I used to see paranoid schizophrenic singer, the late Wesley Willis when he was a skinny teenager, riding on the very first seat of the very first car, smiling broadly and looking out of the window as he made huge, complex sketches of the city with colored markers onto a posterboard. Or the time I had a conversation with a homeless man, then watched him casually pull the cord to the door and step out of a speeding train - swallowed by the darkness of the night. I'll never forget the afternoon during rush hour when the conductor announced our beloved mayor Harold Washington had suffered a fatal heart attack. The bustling conversation turned to shocked, despaired silence that lasted all the way from the South Side to downtown.

Trains will always hold symbolic meaning for me. I've loved and hated them, like I've loved and hated myself. They have swallowed and birthed me many times, held me in their bellies as I dreamed, read, talked, slept, cried and raged inside and fell in and out of love...or wished for love. So, in this journal, I want to feature some works I found on dA, in order to pay homage to the mighty and inevitable El trains of Chicago. Featured here are deviations of commuter trains and their stations and people around the world.

Meanwhile a little musical interlude, if you will. [link]

___