Circle Takes the Square turns 15. 'Critical Mass'

It was the fall of 1999 when my friend Megan and I saw two guys putting flyers on bikes parked outside our doom in Savannah. I yelled at them from the 4th floor balcony of Oglethorpe House, as if I was genuinely concerned about my $70 Walmart bicycle. "Don't scratch the paint job, ya hooligans!" I knew one of them was in my Drawing I class, a foundations course that everyone had to take. We spent weeks drawing our faces in charcoal on 18"x24" paper. Not the entire face at once, mind you. First the Lips. Then the Eye. And not just one time. Three times each. By the time we got to the Nose I felt like I was getting the hang of it. Drawing your nose the size of an egyptian cubit might have bothered some people. But I was way into it. Maybe that's how I recognized my classmate from so far away. I'd critiqued giant versions of his facial features in class for weeks. "Hey its Rob!" and asked him what the flyers were for. He introduced me to Drew, and they invited us to Critical Mass, some kind of bikes-taking-back-the-streets gathering held monthly. Not being one for gatherings of any kind, I didn't go to Critical Mass that month, or ever.
I didn't see Drew again until our first band practice. Our drummer Jay had met him and asked him to come play with us. 'Oh hey, you're Rob's friend'. I guess that was enough to vouch for each other in our minds. Drew started showing us a bunch of riffs he'd been writing. I asked him what it was called. "Houdini Logic" he said. "Who wassit now?" I said. Took me weeks to learn how to play that song, and what it was actually called. - Kathleen

A portrait of the artist's young nose, as held by Dana Filloon of Junius.