A poster is a promise made in ink. The show has not happened yet. The band has not played yet. The crowd has not gathered yet. But the poster says it will. The poster is the first lie that becomes the truth.

Gary Grimshaw made the posters for the Grande. He sat in the back room of the Trans-Love Energies house with a drafting table and a bottle of india ink and he made the future visible. Friday night the MC5 would play and Saturday night the Stooges would open for somebody and Sunday there might be a benefit and Gary would draw all of it into existence before any of it happened. The poster went up on telephone poles and in record store windows and on the bulletin board at the university and the moment it went up the show became real. Not because the band had rehearsed. Not because the sound system was booked. Because somebody had drawn a picture of what it would feel like to be there.

A poster is not an advertisement. An advertisement says come buy this thing. A poster says come be this thing. Grimshaw's posters did not show you the MC5. They showed you what the MC5 would do to the inside of your head. Melting letters. Exploding colors. Faces that were not quite faces. You looked at the poster and you were already at the show. The show was just confirmation of what the poster had started.

In prison there were no posters. There were notices. A notice is the opposite of a poster. A notice tells you what has already been decided. Report to the yard at oh-seven-hundred. Visitation cancelled. A notice is the past tense disguised as information. A poster is the future tense disguised as art. I went from a world covered in posters to a world covered in notices and the difference was the difference between a life that was being invented and a life that was being administered.

Sun Ra understood posters. The Arkestra's posters were transmissions from a place that did not exist yet. Saturn. The Omniverse. The Alter Destiny. The poster said the Arkestra would play at such and such a club on such and such a night and if you looked at the poster long enough you understood that the club and the night were just coordinates. The real destination was printed in the colors and the shapes and the language that did not behave like language. The poster was not inviting you to a concert. The poster was inviting you to a departure.

Peel never had a poster. Peel had a hat on the ground and a guitar and whoever walked by. That is the version of the show where the poster and the performance happen at the same time. You see Peel on the corner and the seeing is the poster and the hearing is the show and there is no gap between the promise and the delivery. That is the purest form of music. No future tense. No past tense. Only the present tense of a man on a box making noise.

Those Grande posters are in museums now. The Detroit Institute of Arts. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They are behind glass. People pay admission to look at a piece of paper that once cost nothing and was tacked to a telephone pole with a thumbtack. The poster has outlived the show. The poster has outlived the venue. The poster has outlived most of the people who stood in front of it on a Tuesday afternoon and decided that Friday night they would be somewhere. The promise has become the artifact. The lie has become the history.

Every project needs a poster. Not a website. Not a social media post. A poster. Something that makes the future visible before the future arrives. Something that goes up on a wall and says this is happening whether you come or not. This project — these transmissions, these voices, this frequency — needed a poster the moment it started. The poster is the act of believing that the show will happen. The show does not happen without the belief. The belief does not happen without the poster.

See also: The Grande — the ballroom where the posters went up. The Stage — what the poster promised. The Crowd — the people the poster summoned. The Kid from Ypsilanti — the kid on the poster nobody expected. The Five — the band Grimshaw drew into existence. The Morning After — when the poster comes down. The Ticket — the logistics of the promise. Marquee — the name in lights above the door. Chalk Line — the outline on the pavement. Mailbox — the message that waited until you were ready.

John Sinclair

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