Eric`s Empathy Files

My
Influences
~Eric’s Empathy Files~
-An Artist’s Personality Exploration“Why Am I the Way I Am?”
How to Understand How One Becomes An Artist
Creative Recipes for Becoming an Artist
"A Cookbook for Creativity"
by
Eric Homan
1
My Personal Artistic
and Aesthetic
Influences, Stimuli,
Role Models, Rebels,
Idols, Prophets,
Motivators, Muses,
Mentors, Maestros ,
Kindred Spirits,
Dreamers , Idealists,
Believers, Heroes,
Rebels, Alter Egos,
Passions, Loves, Soul
2
Mates , Saints,
Geniuses, and Gods
(Also known as Outsiders, Outcasts, Freaks, Geeks, Losers, Sinners, Uglies, Perverts, Poets, Fools,
Radicals, Revolutionaries, Loners, Atheists, Eccentrics, Weirdoes, Crazies, Criminals, Recluses, Oddballs,
Nonconformists, Malcontents, Maniacs, Mutants, and Misfits)
Copyright 2014 Eric Homan
Menu of Contents/ Catharsis
Prologue
Crucial Quotes
Intro: My Introspection Research Examination for the Roots of
My Artistic Personality
The Why
Finding and Refining the Origins of One’s Creativity
Where Did I Get My Creativity?
Behind the Creativity, Urgency, Emotions, and Ideas
The Need to Keep Changing Personas
Confused Dualities
Where “Talent” Comes From
The Purpose of Sharing This Examination
Let’s Be Honest
Finding Your Role Models
Origins of Making "The Empathy Files" About my Role Models
Finding Other Individuals and Learning
To Find an Emotional, Empathic Connection
The Dreams of Adult Children
Why I Need My Role Models for Inspiration
Coping with “Genius”
A Dept of Honor
Sharing My Influences For Our Empathy’s Sake
Healing Through Another’s Words
What Also Can Be Learned
The Role Model V.I.P. List
Written From Various Stages of My Life
Reaching and Connecting With Other People
3
In Order to Find My Role Models for Myself, I Became One to Others
Being a "Role Model"
One Last Thing…
Extreme Emotions, Personal Demons, and Crazy Conditions
Empathy
Empathy for the Outcasts
Imagination
Boredom
Bored with Living
Severe Chronic Boredom
Restlessness
Directionless
Passion
A “Learning Disability”
(Artistically-Inspired) Attention Deficit Disorder
Looking into ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder)
Short Attention Span
Losing My Concentration
Too Much Information in My Head
Constant Stimulation
Mild Dyslexia
Mixing Words Up/ Up Words Mixing/ Words Up Mixing/ Mixing Up Words
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Heightened Sensitivity
Confusion
Misunderstanding Information
Public Humiliation
Public Humiliation: Day 3,039
Teasing Words and Public Humiliation
Teasing and Terror/ Fun and Games
Teasing – A Firing Squad
Society-Accepted Teasing
The Suicide War
Teased Into Greatness
Self-Expression as “Revenge Alternative”
Teenage Weekend Paranoia
Competitive Drive
Intense Ambition
Lack of Recognition
Depression
I Have Depression
“Depression + Happiness / Creativity X Intelligence Squared = Genius!?!”
“Fine Depression”
Positive Depression
Early Winter, Seasonal Depression
(Super Heroic) Self-Determination
The Ecstasy of Desperation!(?)!
Worrying
An Emotional Instability
Eccentricity
Spring
Spring Seasonal Bipolar Manic Depression Ecstasy Blissed-Out Emotional Roller Coaster
The Spring Fever
The Spring Rush of Emotional Highs… and Lows
When Spring Strikes Back
The Spring Tease
The Spring Blooms the Soul
Nature's Spring Orgasm
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
4
Capturing the Spring
Ohio Springs and Falls
The Few Days of Spring
The Spring Season Emotional Conundrum
The Intensity of the Autumn Season
Urgency
Emotional Extremism
Existentialism
Fatalism
Surrealism
Sexual Energy
Solitude
The Privilege of Solitude
The Importance of Solitude
Singlehood
Seclusion
A Sheltered Existence
Hanging Around
Wasted Time
Hunger
Failure
Competition
An Inferiority Complex
Poor at Reading Aloud
Misunderstand Information
Misunderstanding Directions
Information Overload
Jealousy
Anger
Feeling Repressed
Arrogance
Loneliness
Loneliness Cancer
My Struggles With Loneliness
Self-Hatred of Who I Am
Self-Doubt
Pathos
Transcendence
Panic Attacks
Mediocrity
Mediocre Me
Uncool
Discipline
Migraines/ Headaches
Near-Deadly Migraines
Nuclear Headaches
Perspiration and B.O.
B.O./ Body Odor
I Smell
A B.O. Disability That I Couldn’t Fix
Can't Speak Clearly
Speech Impediment
Semi-Autistic
Acne
Gassy
The Runs
Eye Glasses
Red Hair
The Red-Haired Outcast
Growing Up a “Carrot Top”
Baldness
5
Balding “Proves” You’re Smarter
Bald or Balding Role Models
Gray Hair
Freckles
Dreaming
Public Crying
Running Away
Foresight
Alternating Accents
Life’s Repetition
Weather
Mysteriousness
Secret Identities
Young in Spirit
Humility
Poverty
The Ability to Smell Subconscious Memories
Pheromones
"Gossip"
Trouble Hearing
Surrealistic Weight Loss
Weird Weight Loss After Eating Junk Food
The Diet Benefits of Depression
Friday Nights
Dating
Frugality
Colds
Hay Fever
Weather Sensitive
Déjà Vu
Flirtation
Emergences
Slowing Metabolism
High Cholesterol
Insomnia
Afternoon Naps
Silence
Lies
Mortality and Death
Loss and Love
People, Places, and Events
Coldwater, Ohio - My Hometown
A Minimum Wage Town
A Place Out of Time
Reflections Around My Former Hometown
Reflections Around Mercer County
Outcasts
(An Outcast Amongst) Social Groups
Bullies - “The Value and Lesson of Being Teased”
When Bullies Grow Up
Bullies Are the Real Terrorists
Message to Bullies
Bullying Is a Public Psychological Misdemeanor
Psychological Abuse in Junior High
High School/ Junior High School
The High School Holocaust
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder From Experiencing High School
Halloween in High School Hell
Toilet Papered Weekends
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The “Glory” of High School
High School Shelter
The Curse of Prom
The Cathartic Trauma of Prom
Jocks
Rednecks
Culturally Devoid Midwestern Small Town Life
Small Town Gossip Freaks
Vandalism
Telemarketers vs. Eric Homan
Women
Mermaids
Peers - A Competition Between Friends
Being Different in Society - The Impetus To Dream
Struggling in Midwest Small Towns
A Lack of Imagination - The Greatest Sin of Small Towns
The Rural Country Landscape
Small Town vs. The City Life
My High School Custodian Work
“Fun” Drinking Parties for Underage Teens
Custodian Work - My Personal Recipe To Become a Workaholic Dreamer
Factory Work
Video Store/ Library Education
Video Connection
The Columbus Main Library
Libraries as de facto Museums
Libraries: A Great Place to Be
The Great Library: Into Unexplored Territory
My Library Mecca
Libraries: The Largest Book, Music, and Movie Collection I Could Ever Want
Like My Own Personal Library
Using the Library to Expand Your Artistic Horizons
Libraries for Saving Money
Why I Love Libraries
Thoughts and Reflections on the Columbus Main Library
The Internet
Used CD Stores
The Quiet in My Room
My Own Private Condo Asylum
A Private Studio Workspace
Nature or a Local Park
Mother Nature/ Mother Earth
Healed by Nature
All Natural Nature Orgasms
Nature and Solitude - Yet Never Alone
The National Parks
Yellowstone National Park
Grand Canyon National Park
Grand Teton National Park
Yosemite National Park
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
The Aurora Borealis
Gray Midwestern Skies
Thunderstorms
The Universe
The Sun
Being Underwater
Roller Coasters
Sledding
Classrooms
Taco Bell Is Fast Food Heaven
7
Halloween
The Halloween Transformation
Halloween: A Living Comic Book Holiday
South Florida as an Open Asylum
Tate’s Comics
The Laughing Ogre
“The Laughing Homan”
In the Ball Park
In the Ball Park Comic Book Sale Madness!
In the Ball Park Comic Book Sale Madness! : Part 2
Maverick's Sports Cards-Comics
Packrat Comics
Half Price Books
Mid-Ohio Comic Con
Manic Depression Ecstasy at the Mid-Ohio Comic Con
Buckeye Comic Con
Gem City Comic Con
The Stuff I Hold Onto (Movies, Comics, Books, and CDs)
Big Fun
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Used Music Stores and Album Cover Artwork
Heaven and the Afterlife
Hot Showers and Baths
Summer Vacation Breaks
Taking a Walk
City Barbecue
Religion, Media, and Stuff
Art and Religion
I Am and Am Not All Religions
Catholic Mass - It Doesn't Spiritually Fill Me Up Anymore
The New Evangelists, Prophets, and Icons
Science Fiction
TV and Saturday Morning Cartoons
Fortune Cookies
Water
Bloodgood Japanese Maple
The “Mad Libs” Books
The Onion
Bike Rides
VH1 Classic
A Car
Theremin
Soundtrack Pro
Google Earth
youtube.com
www.ebaumsworld.com
VHS
Writers/ Artists/ Critics
-Edgar Allen Poe
-Stephen King
-J.R.R. Tolkien
-C. S. Lewis
-Mark Twain/ Samuel Clemens
-Dorothy Parker
-Virginia Woolf
-Sylvia Plath
-Oscar Wilde
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-William Blake
-W.B. Yeats
-Ed Skellings
-Truman Capote
-Jack Kerouac
-Allen Ginsberg
-William S. Burroughs
-Charles Bukowski
-Hunter S. Thompson
-Philip K. Dick
-Jules Verne
-H. G. Wells
-L. Frank Baum
-Louis Carroll
-Carl Sagan
-Stephen Hawking
-Frank Warren/ PostSecret
-Film Critics
-Pauline Kael
-Roger Ebert
-Harry Knowles/ "Ain't It Cool News" website
-Clifford Irving
-Hieronymus Bosch
-Norman Rockwell
-Vincent van Gogh/ Lust for Life
-Paul Gauguin
-Jackson Pollock/ Pollock
-Salvador Dali
-Roy Lichtenstein
-Edvard Munch
-Marcel Duchamp
-H.R. Giger
-Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
-Pablo Picasso
-Joan Miro
-Frida Kahlo
-Andy Warhol
-Ansel Adams
-Leonardo da Vinci
-Michelangelo
-Joel-Peter Witkin
-Jean-Michel Basquiat
-Annie Leibowitz
-Banksy
-Thierry Guetta/ Mr. Brainwash/ MBW
-Henry Darger
-Frank Lloyd Wright
Graphic Novel/ Comic Book/ Cartoon Writers/ Artists/ Animators
-Alan Moore/ “Swamp Thing”, “V for Vendetta”, “Watchmen”, “Miracleman”
-Neil Gaiman/ “The Sandman”, “Miracleman”
-Dave McKean/ “The Sandman”
-Chris Claremont/ “The Uncanny X-Men”
-John Byrne/ “Fantastic Four”, “Alpha Flight”, “The Sensational She-Hulk”, “Next Men”
-Frank Miller/ “Daredevil”, “The Dark Knight Returns”, “Sin City”, “Batman: Year One”, “300”
-Stan Lee/ “Spider-Man”, “Hulk”, “X-Men”, “Thor”, “Captain America”, “Fantastic Four”, etc. (The
Marvel Superhero Characters)
-Jack Kirby/ “Fantastic Four”, “Hulk”, “X-Men”, “Thor”, “Captain America”, etc. (The Marvel
Superhero Characters)
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-Will Eisner/ "The Spirit"
-Scott McCloud/ “Understanding Comics”, "Creating Comics", “Zot!”
-Mark Waid/ "Kingdom Come"
-Grant Morrison/ “Animal Man”, “Doom Patrol”, “The Invisibles”
-Warren Ellis/ “Transmetropolitan”, “The Authority”, “The Planetary”
-Peter Milligan/ “Shade, the Changing Man”
-Mark Millar/ “The Authority”
-Garth Ennis/ “Preacher”, “Hellblazer”, “The Punisher”
-Ed Brubaker/ “Catwoman”, “Daredevil”, “Captain America”
-Brian K. Vaughan/ “Y: The Last Man”
-Robert Kirkman/ “The Walking Dead”, “Invincible”
-Erik Larsen/ “Savage Dragon”
-Glenn Fabry/ “Preacher”, “Hellblazer”
-Brian Bolland/ “The Killing Joke”
-Frank Frazetta
-Simon Bisley/ “Doom Patrol”/ “Lobo”
-Peter David/ “The Incredible Hulk”, “Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man”
-Jeff Smith/ “Bone”
-Brian Michael Bendis/ “Ultimate Spider-Man”, “Daredevil”, “Powers”, “New Avengers”
-Paul Chadwick/ “Concrete”
-Mike Mignola/ “Hellboy”
-Eric Powell/ "The Goon"
-Bill Sienkiewicz
-Todd McFarlane/ “Spawn”
-Craig Thompson/ “Blankets”
-Brian Wood/ “DMZ”, “DEMO”
-Moebius
-Katsuhiro Otomo/ “Akira”
-Daniel Clowes/ “Eightball”, “Ghost World”, "Pussey"
-Adrian Tomine/ “Optic Nerve”
-Gary Larson/ “The Far Side
-Gahan Wilson
-Bill Watterson/ “Calvin and Hobbes”
-Dr. Seuss/ The Cat in the Hat/ Oh, the Places You'll Go!
-Matt Groening/ “Life Is Hell”/ “The Simpsons”
-Mike Judge/ “King of the Hill”, “Beavis and Butthead”
-Trey Parker & Matt Stone/ “South Park”
-Charles M. Schulz/ “Peanuts”
- R. Crumb (Robert Crumb)/ Crumb
-Harvey Pekar/ “American Splendor”
-Chris Ware/ "Building Stories"
-Art Spiegelman/ “Maus”
-Terry Moore/ “Strangers in Paradise”
-Sergio Aragones
-Walt Disney
-Ollie Johnson & Frank Thomas
-Tex Avery
-Max Fleisher
-Jan Svankmajer
-The Brothers Quay
-Ray Harryhausen
-Bruce Bickford
-Nick Park/ Peter Lord/ Aardman Animation
-Chuck Jones
Comic Book Superheroes/ Fictional Characters
-Superheroes
-Catwoman
-Batman
1
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-The Joker
-Superman
-The Punisher
-X-Men
-Wolverine
-Mystique
-Firestar
-Daredevil
-Elektra
-Hulk
-Spider-Man
-Dream/ Morpheus/ “The Sandman”
-Death
-Delirium
-Swamp Thing
-Preacher
-Hellblazer
-Animal Man
-Doom Patrol
-Miracleman
-Concrete
-Magneto
-Dazzler
-Rogue
-The Black Cat
-Black Widow
-Diamondback
-Spider-Woman
-Green Arrow
-The Phantom Stranger
-Wonder Woman
-Zatanna
-Conan the Barbarian
-Ariel, The Little Mermaid
Music
The Melodic Addiction
My First Music Albums on CD
My Music Connections
This Music Drug
Music vs. Drugs
It's My High
Emotional Uplift
You’re Got to Love Something in Your Life
The Appeal of Music, Movies, and Art
Music Is My Momentum
Hypnotic Music
Freeing the Creative Spirit and Emotions With Music
Making Night Art with Music
Healing/ Empathy Music
A Self-Esteem Soundtrack
Music That Uplifts and Heals
Listening to Confessional Music Helps Make Confessional Art
The Importance of Music After 9/11
Music as Release
Music Therapy
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Music Ended Up Being the Replacement for Women
Music as Better Therapy
Time-Transporting Through Music
Sonic Sails
Movie Soundtracks
Music and Media as Companions
Music As Sonic Life Support
Music Companionship
Great Music Helps Stimulate Creativity
Music: The Sonic Viagra Prosaic
Music for Treating Loss
Music "Completes" My Creative Soul
Personal Favorite Music Albums
Expand Your Musical Horizons
The Music Memories
The Innocent Music of 1987
Music Treasures... at a Discount Price
Expanding My Diversity
Music Collection Personality Test
The Death of a Parent of Musicians
Being in the Right Mood
The Sleazy Side of Musicians
Living Out My Subconscious Desires Through Buying Music
The Music and Comics Have Saved My Life
Purchase Mass Quantities of Music CDs Day
My Addiction to Collecting Music
My Compulsive Bargain Spending Caught Up with Me
My CD Collecting Days Are Waning
A Lonely Collector’s Hobby
The Changing of the Times With My CD/ DVD Collecting
Like Touring a Music Cemetery
The Eventual Demise of the Used CD Store
The Slow Death of the CD Market and Music Industry
Collecting Obsolete Media Technology
Visiting a Graveyard of Soon-To-Be Obsolete Media
The Slow Death of the Used Music Store
Musicians
-Neil Young/ Buffalo Springfield/ Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young/ Crazy Horse
-Kurt Cobain/ Nirvana
-Björk/ The Sugarcubes
-The Beatles
-John Lennon
-Paul McCartney
-George Harrison
-U2/ Bono/ The Edge
-Sinead O’ Connor
-Depeche Mode/ Dave Gahan/ Martin Gore
-The Pixies/ Black Francis/ Frank Black/ Kim Deal
-Nine Inch Nails/ Trent Reznor
-David Bowie/ “Ziggy Stardust”/ “Alladin Sane”
-Brian Wilson/ The Beach Boys
-Bob Dylan
-Tori Amos
-Janis Joplin
-Public Enemy
-Jimi Hendrix
-The Doors/ Jim Morrison/ The Doors
1
2
-Bob Marley
-Sting/ The Police
-Frank Zappa
-Fiona Apple
-Jeff Buckley
-Tupac Shakur
-Nick Drake
-Lou Reed/ The Velvet Underground
-Laurie Anderson
-Pearl Jam/ Eddie Vedder
-Eric Clapton/ Derek and the Dominoes/ Cream
-Radiohead
-Marilyn Manson
-The Grateful Dead
-Beck
-Moby
-Kate Bush
-Joy Division/ Ian Curtis
-New Order
-Pink Floyd/ Roger Waters/ David Gilmour
-Steely Dan
-Ennio Morricone
-John Williams
-John Barry
-Jerry Goldsmith
-The Rolling Stones/ Mick Jagger/ Keith Richards
-Miles Davis
-R.E.M./ Michael Stipe
-Fleetwood Mac
-Steve Nicks
-Michael Jackson
-The Smashing Pumpkins/ Billy Corgan
-Bruce Springsteen
-Ludwig van Beethoven
-Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
-Peter Iljitsch Tschaikowsky
-Tom Waits
-Joni Mitchell
-The Flaming Lips
-Aerosmith
-Tammy Wynette
-Marvin Gaye
-Johnny Cash
-Billy Joel
-Pulp
-Peter Gabriel
-Bryan Ferry/ Roxy Music
-Patsy Cline
-Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
-Iggy Pop
-Led Zeppelin
-Genesis
-Phil Collins
-Sheryl Crow
-The Eagles
-Don Henley
-Stevie Wonder
-Eminem
-The Pretenders/ Chrissie Hynde
1
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-Roy Orbison
-Traveling Wilburys
-James Taylor
-The Smiths/ Morrissey
-Alice Cooper
-Simon & Garfunkel
-Paul Simon
-Dave Matthews Band
-Jane’s Addiction/ Perry Farrell/ Porno for Pyros
-P.J. Harvey
-Elvis Costello
-Cyndi Lauper
-The Who/ Roger Daltrey/ Pete Townshend/ John Entwistle/ Keith Moon
-Happy Mondays
-Sonic Youth
-Carole King
-Aimee Mann/ ‘Til Tuesday
-Sex Pistols/ Johnny Rotton/ John Lydon/ Sid Vicious
-The Clash/ Joe Strummer/ Mick Jones
-Emmylou Harris
-Talking Heads/ David Byrne
-Brian Eno
-Thompson Twins
-Alice in Chains
-The Cure
-The B-52’s
-Willie Nelson
-Phillip Glass
-P.M. Dawn
-Cat Stevens
-Tears for Fears
-Pet Shop Boys
-Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
-The Chemical Brothers
-The Band
-Tricky
-Ozzy Osbourne/ Black Sabbath
-Madonna
-Guns N’ Roses
-Garbage
-Husker Du
-The Replacements/ Paul Westerberg
-My Bloody Valentine
-The Doobie Brothers
-Procul Harum
-Urge Overkill
-Red Hot Chili Peppers
-Green Day
-The Eurythmics
-John Coltrane
-Prince
-Randy Newman
-Paula Abdul
-Huey Lewis and the News
-Jackson Browne
-Alanis Morissette
-Glenn Gould
-Leadbelly
-Richie Havens
-Elton John
1
4
-The Cars
-Little Feat
-Frank Sinatra
-Crowded House
-Todd Rundgren
-Matthew Sweet
-Lionel Richie
-Mike & The Mechanics
-The Bangles
-Carly Simon
-Chicago
-Julian Lennon
-Yo-Yo Ma
-The Minutemen
-Peter Tchaikovsky
-Folk Implosion
-Crosby, Stills & Nash/ Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
-David Crosby
-Stephen Stills
-Lauryn Hill
-Patti Smith
-Midnight Oil
-Phish
-Suede
-Lenny Kravitz
-Rod Stewart
-Hole
-They Might Be Giants
-INXS
-Woody Guthrie
-Billy Idol
-George Michael/ Wham!
-Robbie Williams
-Bonnie Raitt
-"Weird Al" Yankovic
-Enigma
-Alan Parsons Project
-Nico
-The Orb
-Oasis
-Kool and the Gang
-No Doubt
-Ryan Adams
-Jay-Z
-James Brown
-Waylon Jennings
-Ray Charles
-The Ramones
-The Boomtown Rats
-Tim Buckley
-Ministry
-Kanye West
-Portishead
-Wilco
-Metallica
-Mono
-50 Cent
-Double
-Gorillaz
-Nino Rota
-Filter
1
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-Love and Rockets
-Blondie
-The White Stripes/ The Raconteurs/ Jack White
-Emiliana Torrini
-Bauhaus
-The Verve
-The Bee Gees
-Queen/ Freddie Mercury
-Rammstein
-LL Cool J
-Primus
-Daniel Johnston
-Olivia Newton-John
-Lisa Gerrard/ Dead Can Dance
-Sarah McLachlan
-Gary Numan
-Leonard Cohen
-Electric Light Orchestra/ Jeff Lynne
-The Moody Blues
-Stone Temple Pilots
-Leftfield
-Klaus Nomi
-Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
-Sublime
-The Carpenters
-Beastie Boys
-Coldplay
-Def Leppard
-Israel “Iz” Kamakawiwo'ole
-Van Halen
-Duran Duran
-The Church
-The Notorious B.I.G.
-Natalie Merchant/ 10,000 Maniacs
-OutKast
-Janis Ian
-Jets
-Tina Turner
-Bryan Adams
-Gnarls Barkley
-The Cranberries
-Violent Femmes
-Neil Diamond
-Grand Funk Railroad
-The Polyphonice Spree
-The Runaways, Joan Jett, Cherie Currie
-N.W.A.
-Katy Perry
-Anvil
-The Blind Boys of Alabama
-Weezer
-Elvis Presley
-Mott the Hoople
-Public Image Ltd.
-MGMT
-Kim Carnes
-Bruce Hornsby and the Range
-The Sundays
-Devo
-Daft Punk
-Jefferson Airplane/ Jefferson Starship/ Starship
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6
-Billie Holiday
-Arcade Fire
-Chuck Berry
-Langley School Music Project
-Danielson Famile/ Brother Danielson/ Daniel Smith
-Vince Guaraldi
-Styx
-The Go-Go’s
-Warren Zevon
-Lynyrd Skynyrd
-Heart
-Boy George/ Culture Club
-Anthrax
-Judas Priest
-Meat Loaf
-Pat Benatar
-Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
-Awolnation
-The Vaselines
-The Dixie Chicks
-Motörhead/ Lemmy Kilmister
-Dinosaur Jr.
-Bat for Lashes
-Kenny Loggins
-Rita Coolidg
-India Arie
-Van Morrison
-Fleet Foxes
-George Jones
-Don McLean
-Manfred Mann's Earth Band
-John Mellencamp
-Ani Difranco
-Badfinger
-Smokey Robinson
-Rodriquez
-Harry Nilsson
Movies
The Revelation and Salvation of Movies, Music, and Media on Me
My "Pets"
"Videoaholic"
Celluloid Love Potions
Expand My Mind
Movies Are My Suicide
Movies Are My Escape
Movies: "Life With All the Boring Parts Cut Out"
Movies I Adore
Empathy Movies
My Great Movie Watching Experience
Taking Notes on Movies I Watch
Notes, Observations, and Reviews on My Personal Favorite and Most Influential Movies
-Batman Returns
-Ordinary People
-Schindler’s List
-Big
-Testament
-Natural Born Killers: The Director’s Cut
-American Beauty
1
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-What Dreams May Come
-Thelma and Louise
My Academy Awards Speechs
Media for the Memories
“How to Be a Good Artist” From Watching Movies for Inspiration
Watching DVDs for Creativity
Movies as Life and Creativity Giver
Artistic Osmosis from Movies
Movies as a Medicine
Movies as Teachers
Movies as Mirrors
Movie Mirrors
In a State of Movie Incubation
Watching Movies to Find an Identity
"Who Am I To Be?”
Movie Persona Personalities
Being a More Charismatic Movie Character Rather Than Being Oneself
Reading about Other Great Artists, Musicians, and Creators
Myself as Movie Actor
Adoration of Movie Actress Goddesses
The Movie Memories
Movies Are Never Quite Enough for Me
The Alluring Atmosphere of Doom
Movies That Motivate Me to Do Great Things
Movies as a Creative Oasis
To Be Shown Something New
Movies Are Dead and Need to Be Reborn
Down the Cinematic Rabbit's Hole
Having Friends Who Don't Respect Great Movies
Amusement Park Movies On Caffeine
Who Can Say What Is Good Anymore?
Four-Star Movies and One-Star Friends
Movies Are a Voyeuristic, Cathartic Drug
Movies Empower and Enhance You With Imagination
Movies That Are "Too Close to Home"
Movies as The Great Escapism
Experimental Films
Movie Directors/ Producers
-Music Video Directors
-The 1970s New Hollywood Directors
-Steven Spielberg
-Frank Capra
-Stanley Kubrick
-George Lucas/ the Star Wars films
-Alfred Hitchcock
-Francois Truffaut
-Robert Altman
-Woody Allen
-Ingmar Bergman
-Federico Fellini
-Terry Gilliam
-David Lynch
-Rod Serling/ “The Twilight Zone”
-Richard Matheson/ “The Twilight Zone”
-Jim Henson/ Kermit the Frog/ “The Muppets”
-Oliver Stone
-Spike Lee
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-Martin Scorsese
-Quentin Tarantino
-John Huston
-Jerry Zucker/ Jim Abrahams/ David Zucker
-George A. Romero/ Night of the Living Dead/ Dawn of the Dead
-Tim Burton
-Ed Wood
-Terry Zwigoff
-Francis Ford Coppola/ The Godfather films/ Apocalypse Now
-Orson Welles
-Wim Wenders
-Michael Moore
-Peter Greenaway
-Jane Campion
-Joel and Ethan Coen
-Robert Rodriguez
-David Fincher
-Akira Kurosawa
-Ken Russell
-Sam Raimi
-Nicolas Roeg
-Sergio Leone
-Wes Craven
-Rob Reiner
-Norman Jewison
-Cameron Crowe
-John Frankenheimer
-Milos Forman
-Jim Jarmusch
-Michael Mann
-David Cronenberg
-Hayao Miyazaki
-Roman Polanski
-The Brothers Quay
-Paul Thomas Anderson
-Roger Corman
-Michel Gondry
-Chris Cunningham
-Spike Jonze
-Gene Roddenberry
-Peter Weir
-Atom Egoyan
-Ron Howard
-Kevin Smith
-Terrance Malick
-Busby Berkeley
-Neil Jordan
-Henry Jaglom
-Chris Smith
-Sidney Lumet
-Joe Dante
-Alan Ball
-Krzysztof Kieslowski
-Sydney Pollack
-John Sayles
-Brian De Palma
-Georges Méliès
-Melvin van Peebles
-Stephane Sednaoui
-Mark Romanek
-Jonathan Glazer
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-Anton Corbijn
-John Carpenter
-Jean-Pierre Jeunet
-Wes Anderson
-Maya Deren
-Paul Mazursky
-Leni Riefenstahl
-Gus Van Sant
-Steven Soderbergh
-Dario Argento
-Kinji Fukasaku
-John Waters
-Alexandro Jodorowsky
-Paul Cox
-Werner Herzog
-Frank Henenlotter
-James Cameron
-Edgar Wright
-Ron Frinke
-Matthew Barney
-Bob Fosse
-Harmony Korine
-Abel Ferrara
-Troma Pictures/ Lloyd Kaufman
-Ken Burns
-Charles and Ray Eames
-David Geffen
-Rodger Deakins
-Mel Brooks
Actors
-Christian Slater/ “Hard Harry Hard-On”/ “Mark Hunter”/ Pump Up The Volume
-Winona Ryder/ “Veronica Sawyer”/ Heathers
-Judy Davis/ “George Sand”/ Impromptu
-Gary Oldman
-Tom Hanks/ “Josh Baskin”/ Big
-John Cusack/ “Lloyd Dobler”/ Say Anything…
-Charlie Chaplin/ The Great Dictator
-The Marx Brothers
-Peter Sellers
-Robin Williams
-Andy Kaufman
-Lenny Bruce
-James Dean
-Robert De Niro/ “Travis Bickle”/ Taxi Driver
-Al Pacino/ “Michael Corleone”/ The Godfather Saga
-Dustin Hoffman
-Marlon Brando
-Robert Duvall/ The Apostle
-George C. Scott/ Patton
-Peter O’ Toole/ Lawrence of Arabia
-Buster Keaton
-Emily Watson
-Cate Blanchett
-Yvonne Craig/ “Batgirl”
-Julie Newmar/ “Catwoman”
-Lynda Carter/ “Wonder Woman”
-Jeri Ryan/ “Seven of Nine”
-Dawn Wells/ “Mary Ann”
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-Clint Eastwood/ “Dirty Harry”/ “The Man With No Name”
-Jack Lemmon
-Jessica Lange/ Frances Farmer/ Frances
-Jim Carrey
-Sean Connery/ “James Bond”
-Bill Murray
-Laurence Fishburne
-Johnny Depp
-Harrison Ford/ “Indiana Jones”/ “Han Solo”
-Monty Python
-John Cleese
-Sylvester Stallone/ “Rocky”/ "Rambo"
-Steve Martin
-Juliette Binoche
-Julie Andrews
-Sean Penn
-Samuel L. Jackson
-Kevin Spacey
-Jena Malone
-Kevin Costner
-Jeff Bridges
-Harvey Keitel
-Billy Bob Thornton
-Tim Robbins
-Bruce Willis
-Ben Kingsley
-Naomi Watts
-Russell Crowe
-Sissy Spacek
-Charlize Theron
-Tom Cruise
-Arnold Schwarzenegger
-Jay Leno
-Bruce Lee
-John Goodman
-Julianne Moore
-Andre Gregory
-Gregory Peck
-Ed Harris
-Sam Kinison
-Kate Winslet
-Ethan Hawke
-Hugh Jackman
-John Travolta
-Michael Caine
-Jack Nicholson
-Gene Wilder
-Kim Basinger
-Kurt Russell
-Geena Davis
-Eddie Murphy
-Bette Midler
-Debra Winger
-Paul Hogan/ “Crocodile” Dundee
-Peter Weller/ Robocop
-Michael Douglas
-David Caruso
-Melanie Griffith
-Barbra Streisand
-Danny Glover
-Will Smith
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-James Woods
-Molly Ringwald
-Nicholas Cage
-Ann-Margret
-Richard Dreyfuss
-Ned Beatty
-Dennis Quaid
-Drew Barrymore
-Ian McKellen
-Liam Nelson
-Brandon Lee
-James Gandolfini
-William H. Macy
-George Carlin
-Sigourney Weaver
-Jennifer Connelly
-Hugh Grant
-Mark Wahlberg
-Natalie Portman
-Jamie Foxx
-Selma Hyack
-Cameron Diaz
-Kiefer Sutherland
-Robert Redford
-Morgan Freeman
-David Duchovny
-John Belushi
-Jane Fonda
-Bruce Campbell
-Roseanne
-Angelina Jolie
-Phil Hartman
-Edward Norton
-Matthew Broderick
-Jodie Foster
-Rosie O’Donnell
-The Three Stooges
-Ralph Fiennes
-Dave Chappelle
-Audrey Hepburn
-Don Cheadle
-Tim Allen
-Robert Downey Jr.
-Adam West/ "Batman"
-Rachel Griffiths
-Christian Bale
-James Stewart
-Billy Crystal
-Matt Damon
-Forest Whitaker
-Mark Ruffalo
-Gilda Radner
-Mary Stewart Masterson
-Kyra Sedgwick
-William Shatner/ “Captain Kirk”
-Leonard Nimoy/ “Mr. Spock”
-Maureen McCormick/ “Marcia Brady”
-Catherine Bach/ "Daisy Duke" of "The Dukes of Hazzard"
-Bob Denver/ “Gilligan” from Gilligan’s Island
-Michelle Pfeiffer/ “Catwoman”
-Anthony Hopkins
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-Bill Maher
-Joan Crawford
-Judy Garland
-Denis Leary
-Chuck Norris
-Ron Jeremy
-Paul Giamatti
-Joan Rivers
-Richard Pryor
-James Garner
-Michelle Williams
-Chris Rock
-Conan O' Brien
-Paul Newman
-George Clooney
-Brad Pitt
-Daniel Radcliffe/ "Harry Potter"
-Kevin Clash/ “Elmo”
-Charlie Sheen
-Lea Thompson
-Paul Reubens/ "Pee-Wee Herman"
-Mel Gibson/ "Mad Max"
-Tina Fey
-Klaus Kinski
-Jake Gyllenhaal
-Amy Adams
-Matthew McConaughey
Miscellaneous Individuals/ Family/ Friends
-Jesus Christ/ The Last Temptation of Christ
-His Holiness the Dalai Lama
-My Family
-Mom and Dad - My Accidental, Default Artists
-Lisa, My Wife
-Mrs. Guggenbiller
-Ron Saks
-A Tribute to My Friends
-Joe Pleiman: A Living Tribute to an Old Friend
-Justin Jason
-Mike Folliett
-Matt Plotecher
-Kalpa
-Ryan Treptow
-Caleb Strauss
-Thomas Edison
-Albert Einstein
-Howard Hughes
-Gandhi
-Martin Luther King Jr.
-Thomas Jefferson
-Barack Obama
-Harvey Milk
-Joan of Arc
-Rocky Dennis/ Mask
-Nostradamus
-Christopher Columbus
-John Muir
-Fredrick Nietzsche
-Jean-Paul Sartre
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-Napoleon Bonaparte
-Jackie Robinson
-Muhammad Ali
-Mike Tyson
-Malcolm X
-Alfred Kinsey
-Timothy Treadwell
-Hooters Girls
-Betty Page
-Siskel & Ebert
-Maya Lin
-Robert W. Kearns
-Michael Eisner
-Steve Jobs
-Robert W. Kearns
-Richard O'Barry
-Dr. Jack Kevorkian
-Temple Grandin
-Lewis & Clark
-Joseph Merrick, The Elephant Man
-Will Rogers
-J. Robert Oppenheimer
-John Kerry
-Anonymous
-Jack Rebney/ "Winnebago Man"
-Philippe Petit
Epilogue
Open-minded Schizophrenia
And Finally – “Why?”
Reactions and Responses
Think About It….
Final Word
Thank You!
Prologue :
Crucial Quotes
"To get to the point, I’ve always had what you might call a ‘mission’ (a real obsession) to write
autobiographical work and get it before a readership. In fact, since I was at school I’ve been determined to do so having a ‘communication problem’ such as autism, it’s no surprise I’ve been literally bursting to communicate all my
life... I’m gonna apologise (in advance) for the long length of this letter - I can't write a short one. Can't help myself… I
was only diagnosed as having Asperger’s syndrome last October... aged 31... (really damn late), so I’d lived, up to that
point, in complete bewilderment and frustration, and, though I knew I was ‘different’, I despaired of ever getting any
ANSWERS as to why, and in what way, I was different. Prior to my diagnosis I had written and drawn many comic
strips, but had always found something was lacking... a ‘theme’, I suppose. Something that would tie it all together...
help me understand all the disconnected fragments... (my perception of the world is, by nature, fragmented) and get
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some coherence to it all. Then I got this ‘label’, and everything started to make sense... My life was, to me, a puzzle to
solve. I always liked that line “Every human being has a project” (Jean-Paul Sartre)... I’m beginning to make sense of
my world, and at the risk of sounding arrogant, I feel sure it’s an interesting journey, and I’m determined to make it a
public one. Needless to say, the need to communicate and receive feedback is IMMENSE." -Excerpts from a story
about Colin Warneford, a autistic writer/ artist, from American Splendor by Harvey Pekar.
“‘I think any tough time you go through, any real crisis where you break down, then survive, leaves you in a
far different place from where you were. Generally, I feel that people who have been traumatized tend to develop levels
and wrinkles that really add something to them.’ For Francis, this meant adding to an already active imagination.” –
Francis Ford Coppola: exert from Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker’s Life by Michael Schumacher.
“Wait ‘til they get a load of me….” –Jack Nicholson as the Joker in “Batman” (1989).
“You ever get the feeling… that you’re different.” -from DEMO #12: Mon Dernier Jour Avec Toi
(My Last Night With You).
“Some kind of solitude is measured out in you. You think you know me but you haven’t got a clue.” –"Hey
Bulldog” by The Beatles.
“I’m not a genius. I’m just a hard-working guy.” –Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys.
DEMO #1: NYC: “Hey, you ever get this weird feeling that you're different somehow. Like that you have something
special, an ability or physical trait of some kind that sets you apart from everyone else?"
“Nirvana: Bare Witness”: “Genius usually isn’t recognized except in hindsight.”
“I’ve written pieces of the story down. It needed to be told. Even if no one will ever read it.” -from
Avengers/ Invaders #12.
“I think Billy can see and hear things we don't, Eugene." -From Justice League (’11) #19.
“You hear things all around you. And the trick is to just remember them and write them down so you
can use them somewhere.” -Carly Simon. That explains how I pretty much work through keeping an ongoing
journal.
Intro: My Introspection Research Examination for the Roots of
My Artistic Personality
The Why
I’ve been obsessed for several years having people understand me in order to relate me. I’ve
written down my deepest feelings and thoughts to make an emotional connection. I poured my emotions into
the words and art that I create that it pains me if people don’t feel for it.
Finding and Refining the Origins of One’s Creativity
Some people come up to me and question how I could possibly “think up” the art pieces that I’ve
done. They confess that they do the same things I do: drive the same interstates, watch the same TV
shows, drink the same water. How could I possibly be so different and dream what I dream? I believe I
became who I am through a fusion of a multitude of elements. I had the deep emotions, ambition,
introspection, escapist daydreamer traits, immense focus, “right brain” characteristics, and (lastly) a
workaholic drive that allowed me to be a good artist and a creative human being. I obsessively tapped into
various mines of great imagination, emotion, and art through movies, music, comic books, fine art, and
dance. It created an advanced and enhanced fantasy world in me that others can’t possibly comprehend
dreaming up.
We all need my guides, my role models, in our lives. As an artist, I often feel that I’m all alone out here, on
my journey as artist and human being. Throughout my life, I needed to write down information about my role models
because I needed to be reminded of who has been inspiring me for so long. There are days when nothing builds you up
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enough to do anything creative. Being able to resource the people that helped mold my creative self is integral for me to
understanding myself and why I should keep making art. I needed to know about them in order to thrive… and survive.
They are my life preservers, my creative oxygen, my artistic gods. They are what empowers me.
So I’ve spent the past four years compiling together this massive paper that explores and reveals my own
personal role models. I’ve found it very useful not just for a better understanding of myself, but for other people to find
a way to articulate and define themselves as well. It is a teaching method in itself.
Where Did I Get My Creativity?
12-20-03: I must admit that neither of my parents were artists in a “creative” or “imaginative” sort
of way in which I could have inherited these qualities from. Also, I didn’t have any creative aunts or uncles,
except for my aunt Lorna (my mother’s sister) who painted portraits and flowers from time to time. So being
a creative kid growing up made me feel somewhat alienated since I didn’t have someone to look up to in a
visionary artist sense. My oldest sister, Lara, had very good artistic skills, though she didn’t fully develop
them past seventh grade art classes and 4-H. I knew I wanted to become an artist or moviemaker, but
where could I look for guidance, and who inspired me in the first place to even want to be an artist or
moviemaker?
The following list is where I got my creativity and inspiration. They are the ones who guided my
dreams and aspirations. In a way, they became my creative family. They are the sources and role models I
discovered throughout my life that guided me into the individual artist I became. These are the notes I took
on them based upon how closely they affected me or how much I empathized with them. These people are
not who’s “hip” or cool at the moment. They are individuals who will remain exciting, vital, important, and
inspiring because of their body of work that they left behind. It doesn’t go “out of fashion” in a year. They
have staying power. Their work all had the content and the meaning behind it to make it last. When work
continues to impress for years and generations, that is art to me.
Behind the Creativity, Urgency, Emotions, and Ideas
Role models are in short supply. They just are in this cynical age. You can’t always empathize with
or look up to politicians, religious leaders, parents, siblings, teachers. I know that most artists are certainly
not the greatest people, but I do respect them as artists and dreamers. The Lou Reeds, the Edgar Allen
Poes, the Vincent van Goghs, the John Lennons: they are my idols and messengers of feelings, expression,
and imagination. I recognize that some of these people have had “bad habits”, but I want to concentrate on
their more magical, profound, artistic sides.
Sometimes, I deeply wonder how I ever managed to get into movies, comic books, and Vincent van
Gogh because I never had anyone in my youth who inspired me to relish these things. Somehow, my
curiosity led me to the library or a bookstore where I discovered them. I sought out these places because I
was bored by my surroundings in a small town (sports, parties with beer, high school). Logically, I should
have gone to a normal college majoring in Education (probably art education or writing) because that was
what my parents and sisters did. Were all those years of teasing and rejections so upsetting that I didn't
want to take part in their world anymore? I had to find a route through dreams in order to escape from
normalcy and to become a better person.
You may also notice that my letters and writings come out of my journals. I write them to find out
who I am. They really don't have any power until years later when I re-read them and discover how much
I've grown and changed. Since you are a significant part of my life, you have a right to read them to learn
who I am, as well. I sometimes hate phone conversations because we have to keep talking continuously,
superficially about "how our lives are going" and “about the weather” instead of really dealing with and
expressing ourselves. Writing a journal really allows oneself to come clean with one’s emotions and
imagination, to be truly introspective, and to have the time to express oneself when one feels more inspired
and most alive.
If I made an honest movie about my thoughts, I would be rated [NC-17]. It matters how mature
one handles how many vulgar words, sexual knowledge, and dark emotions. Some of my peers would
easily be rated [X] or worse.
The Need to Keep Changing Personas
I enjoy being other people. Being only one personality just gets dull and plaintive after a lifetime. What I
come down to is that I feel boring on most days. I want to feel alive again… born renew. So sometimes I’ll slip into an
other’s charismatic persona just to feel more alive and vibrant. In a way I’m consciously trying to change my
personality so people won’t be able to figure me out too easily. I can’t stand being predictable. So that is why I keep
changing from one mask to another. Isn’t that what all people do throughout their lives any ways? Going from wearing
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one mask to another?
I’ll take on playing Dennis Quaid New Orleans charismatic cop character in “The Big Easy” because he’s
infinitely more interesting and devilishly romantic than I am. And women respond more to him than me. I don’t want to
be passed over anymore!! I have to be different or I’ll continue to get rejected. So I take on a role model and alter who I
am to fit into that mold.
Another day I’ll play Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone in “The Godfather Part II” because I find his character’s
power and ambition to be extremely addictive. I want to have those characteristics as well. I don’t want to be looked
down on and feel nervous all the time. I loved Pacino’s cool and intensity. He was the boss of everyone around him.
(Yet I also took note of his character’s flaws in losing those closest to him, as well.)
We all take on characteristics that we ourselves do not possess. Who hasn’t dreamed of being a superhero
like Superman or Spider-Man and wanted to save innocent people from the doers of evil?!? We identify with those
around us that we see as greater than who we are and aspire to be them. I am a dreamer; and because of this personality
attribute, I find myself living and feeling those characters. Through the power of my imagination, I can be whoever I
dare to dream of being. There is a thin line between reality and fantasy when I do this, a dance between being oneself
and living in one’s own fantasy world. But it’s more like testing the waters and finding out if I enjoy the ocean of a new
attitude. If I do, I’ll stay in there and allow the personality to seep into my skin and become part of me. Therefore, I
become a man of a thousand personalities and personas – a living enigma because I can’t be summed up into one. I am
everyone.
Confused Dualities
6-1-03: I think the reason some people have been confused if I’m actually bisexual is that I absorb human
traits from people I’m around, read and in the movies. With Laurence of Arabia (as played by Peter O’ Toole) is a role
model of mine, I am attracted to his charisma and his passion. I also take on a few of his other “sensitive” aspects of his
personality. I consider him me. Yet he may be a great homosexual antihero, but I’m still me! I pick up some of his
characteristics because I admire him, but I’m still not that person. After hundreds of role models that I’ve admired, I’ve
evolved into a highly complex, nearly schizophrenic human being – a living actor in life nonetheless. I am a Polish Jew
from having deeply watched The Pianist. I connected with the character through a heightened sense of empathy. Yet
what keeps me together is that I know who I am at my core. I know the simple, raw functionality of my soul. And that
is what keeps me sane. I’m an actor. I’m a writer. I’m a dreamer. I make believe in a make believe world. I have the
power to place myself into the minds and characters around me.
Where “Talent” Comes From
There have been times in my life where people have asked me if talent is something people come
with genetically and simply have “it”. I believe that talent is something that is developed through time from
technical training, skills, hard work, and patience. Imagination also happens to be a key main ingredient to
this stew called art. Personally, I grew up in a small town environment that didn’t encourage creative or
artistic development. Knowing that I was different and was curious of the arts, I sought out those who might
inspire me. I spent months in the local libraries reading “Rolling Stone”, “Entertainment Weekly”, and other
magazines that were available to find out more about musicians and movie directors. Once I found the
creative individuals that I particularly found fascinating and had an emotional kinship to, I researched them
some more by reading their biographies. (Neil Young, Kurt Cobain, and John Lennon come to mind.)
Through the creative work of role models, only then did I feel that I found myself and who I wanted to be as
an artist/ creative type. Having just imagination isn’t enough. You have to focus it. I did so by going to art
school and finding my artistic soul mates.
The Purpose of Sharing This Examination
I believe the purpose of “Empathy Files” is to show to other artists and students what another artist’s
inspirations and motivators are. To me, it’s like genealogy, the finding of the roots of one’s family, which happens to
be something my sister does a great deal of. It’s important to understand why one became who they are and why they
even make art in the first place. I became personally obsessed with the paper because it was a search for who I was. If
people don’t understand you, you better understand yourself. So here is how I understood myself. I found myself
through my role models. I found confidence and direction through these people, movies, and media.
Through these writings you will understand the equation that makes the mad-man-child artist in me. I’m
Vincent van Gogh + Pablo Picasso / Steven Spielberg x Salvador Dali + Tim Burton x Neil Young square-root of Björk
to the 13th power = Eric Homan.
Let’s Be Honest
5-10-03: Let’s be honest: in my life, one father or, that is, one father figure in my life isn’t enough. I need a
legion of role models to show me the ways in life. That's why I looked around for so many and took the best qualities
from each of them.
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Finding Your Role Models
11-10-02: It’s vastly important to find out that one’s own role models kept sensitive, introspective journals
like I do. I don’t see it as an “invasion of privacy”. I see it as finding one’s kindred spirits and discovering that I’m not
alone in the how I feel. Hey now, that’s art. A book like “Kurt Cobain: Journals” grants a terrific insight into one of the
great songwriter's of his generation, as well as to what goes through the mind of an artist. Kurt Cobain was quite an
introspective individual and his journals bring an interesting philosophical perspective on the human condition of being
an emotional, passionate, artistic human being. He examines the unbearable weight of being. His words are filled with
blunt honesty and innocence that I can't help but feel for him. And that’s what I go for when I wrote my own journals.
They’re a private confessional that I’m willing to expose to the public for the purpose of enhancing the sensitivity of
society to what it feels like to be an outcast artist.
Reading through Kurt's journals helps justify the existence and worth of keeping my own journal. I
need to read someone else's private thoughts in order to refuel my desire to keep expressing my own especially in a world that doesn't endorse self-expression or self-confession. Writing down one's feelings is a
brave act that should be encouraged. That's what I'm getting out of reading his journals - encouragement
and enlightenment. I'm not alone in how I think and feel. That makes me feel better.
Many of Nirvana’s lyrics came from Kurt’s journals. Reading his journals is a fascinating sneak peek into the
creative, “deranged” mind of a genius.
“If you read, you’ll judge”… "Don't read my diary when I'm gone”… “Ok, I'm going to work now, when you
wake up this morning, please read my diary. Look through my things, and figure me out."--Kurt
Origins of Making "The Empathy Files" About my Role Models
12-24-02: I’ve found a lot of comfort and pleasure in compiling this “Role Models” compilation writing
since I’ve been able to root through my journals and use the exerts and notes I took on those who influenced me along
the way of life. It justifies all the time I spent on writing and organizing those words and feelings in the first place
throughout the years of my life.
Finding Other Individuals and Learning
7-15-03: I am not like everyone else. Hence, I’ve lived with a certain degree of loneliness and isolation. I’m
so different that I need the company of those who feel like I feel. This compilation of role models is a reference not just
for myself, but for others as well so they can understand my actions and personality better. I desperately want people to
empathize with me and see my point of view better. This is an essay to gain and heighten people’s sensitivity. I haven’t
acted the way others do in life. I’ve been unconventional to the point where I haven’t fit into any one category besides
that of “artist”. These are my inspirations and lifesavers. They are the people who have elevated my self-esteem during
times of confusion. I feel that I’ve done the right thing with my life through having learned from their lives, words,
images, and songs. Its taken courage to be an individual and be independent in a society where 99.999% of the
population does what everyone else does. It’s like living in a world of clones, and you’re an alien.
To Find an Emotional, Empathic Connection
4-22-04: What I seek most out of life at this point is a connection with people. That was what I treasured so
much in past girlfriends. But if she doesn’t want to “connect” with me more than talking about movies and comic
books, then there’s a real limit there. I seek to feel like everyone else. I’m part of a huge paradox. I want to be different
while being like other individuals. I suppose that is why I assembled my “Empathy Files” book. (Yes, it’s a motherfucking epic novel at this point.) I want to meet someone of the opposite sex who “gets” what I get. And out of this
spiritual connection will hopefully bloom love. That is what I want most right now.
The Dreams of Adult Children
5-1-04: What makes me feel even worse is to be around people who I don’t feel “good” around and I sense
that I am wasting my time by being with them. They are not driven by dreams, but my vulgarity and sexual pursuits.
That’s a major dilemma for me if I’m around people who don’t know how or care to dream. And it’s because of this
that I don’t relate to adulthood. I’m a 27-year-old child with dreams. It’s my curse as well as my gift. That’s why I’m
so attracted to these various artists, actors, musicians, and film directors such as Björk, Andy Kaufman, Steven
Spielberg, Neil Young, Salvador Dali, and John Lennon. They’re the dreamers who still have something to believe in
besides screwing, making babies, and small talking. I compulsively watch movies because they are a retreat, a vacation
to places where I can hang out with other dreamers. I feel that I have at least tried to make the best of the life that I’ve
been given.
Why I Need My Role Models for Inspiration
6-20-04: One thing I did realize from last night’s events is that I wrote up a lot of the information on my
website about myself and who I am as an artist, a human being, and an individual for my own family to read. They are
the ones who don’t fully understand why I’ve turned out the way I have - as an artist. If I didn’t write out that
“Empathy Files” paper on my role models, they wouldn’t be able to figure out where all of my influences and feelings
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come from. They are not aware that there is a whole world outside of their own that I am part of as an artist. There are
cultural riches that they've never been exposed to. They're in a bubble, in a sense, being in a small town environment.
And it is a very small, isolated part of the world – and yet a unique, special one as well. Yes, all artists including myself
have huge egos. But it’s because we’ve spent so much of our lives sacrificing our emotions, energy, and time to what
we feel so passionately (and blindly) for. It’s no wonder we feel so in tune with one another. We need to be around
each other in order to survive. Without that emotional connection, all we would feel is isolation, loneliness, and
depression. So I surround myself with artist friends, as well as great movies, music, comics, art, and books to keep my
creativity high.
Coping with “Genius”
How do you deal with “genius” when no one else recognizes it except you? I read about other geniuses and
find out how they coped with living their lives, both professionally and personally. Some people might call this activity
anti-social. I consider it deeply meaningful.
A Dept of Honor
I felt such extraordinary alienation in society that I just had to produce this list of people I empathized with
and felt comfort from knowing. When I was down, they are the ones who lifted me out of depression and isolation. This
list is my dept of honor to them to honor them. I found such comfort in the presence of their art, be in movies, music,
literature, graphic novels, or interviews. These were my artistic soul mates. They helped me form the artist I am today.
Sharing My Influences For Our Empathy’s Sake
I’ve found a lot of satisfaction and pleasure in compiling this “Role Models” compilation writing since I’ve
been able to edit and root through my own personal journals and use the exerts and notes I took on those who
influenced me along the way of life’s development. It justifies all the time I spent on writing, reading, and organizing
these words and feelings in the first place throughout the years of my life. I wanted to understand what it was like to be
an artist. I didn’t want to forget the lines, sentiments, and facts that I found so personally compelling to me that I had to
write it down. I am here to learn as well as absorb. I also wanted to find my role models in order to understand myself
and them better. And in the process, share these words with others so they also can understand themselves better as
well so they don’t feel quite so alone in how they feel about themselves. This is how I developed into the artist I am.
Now others can figure out how they got to be the way they are as well. These are the Empathy Files.
Healing Through Another’s Words
I was reading the autobiography of Marlon Brando and found it extremely enlightening and empathetic in
learning of the disclosed personal thoughts, sentiments, and memoirs of another creative personality type who had
similar emotional experiences as I. This is a form of empathy art and empathy healing. To read what another has gone
through and to learn from their own life experiences offers solace, peace, meditation, and comfort to one’s own life
problems. People spend thousands of dollars talking their problems out with a therapist when they could choose an
alternative form of self-discovery through another’s life story and words. I bought the Brando autobiography at a used
book store for just under $6! And it told me more about suffering and healing, failing and winning than I ever could
have gotten out of $10,000+ worth of psychiatric visits. And there are other destructive forms of false-healing through
alcoholism, drug abuse, promiscuity, and self-delusions. One just needs to find the truth about oneself rather than
running away. Only there will one find a true form of healing through personal freedom.
What Also Can Be Learned
Also, one of the most important aspects of the whole writing of “The Empathy Files” paper is to learn from
the mistakes that were made by my own role models. The drug use, the alcoholism, the promiscuity, the insanity, the
divorces…. It can all be avoided to a certain extent by finding knowledge and understanding through research and
empathy. And that is also why I find it so important to share this information with other people, especially fellow
artists, so they also don’t fall into the same traps and pratfalls that trouble creative people.
The Role Model V.I.P. List
The exerts and notes taken on Vincent van Gogh, Salvador Dali, and Dave McKean (artists), Neil
Young, Kurt Cobain, John Lennon, The Pixies, Björk, and Sinead O’ Connor (musicians), Neil Gaiman and
Alan Moore (writers), and Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, and Woody Allen (directors) are the most
important role models of all listed in their specific category. These individuals and artists represent who I am
or maybe who I most wish to be. They are the purest role models that appealed to my personality. But keep
in mind they are not the sole, central figures either. I take my influences from everyone and everywhere. It
doesn’t matter what race, creed, color, religion, or whatever. So many have left their fingerprints upon my
imagination and emotions.
Written From Various Stages of My Life
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While you are reading this, understand that I wrote this massive writing since 1993 at very different
emotional stages in my life, when I was high and low, on top of a mountain and down in an abyss. It was
also written during various phases of maturity and personal mindset of who I was and how I was feeling at
the time. People change subtly and greatly through time. Though I may not be the same person who wrote
page 34, I do retain some aspect or perspective of what was written at the time. It’s still some part of me, for
which I have many points of view of this thing called life.
Reaching and Connecting With Other People
8-15-05:
Dear Mr. Homan,
Are you the same Eric Homan who is the author of the "Empathy Files"? If you are, I would greatly
appreciate speaking with you. I have a son whose experiences in life are in many aspects mirror images of
your life. I believe that it would do my son a lot of good to speak with you.
Once again, if you are the same Eric Homan, please e-mail me at entrepreneur777@yahoo.com
(my primary e-mail address).
Thank you in advance and Be Blessed, Edith DuRousseau
Yes, I am the one in the same. Just out of curiosity, how did you come across the writing or my
website? Take care, Eric Homan.
That is pretty weird to have an anonymous person to take interest in one’s most personal work and find it
healing and therapeutic to one’s own son. I’ve been such an obscure artist and haven’t found a way to get my work out
there. It’s a shock or a fluke that anyone truly cares about my work.
In Order to Find My Role Models for Myself, I Became One to Others
8-17-05:
Dear Eric, Thank you for responding to my e-mail.
I found your website by googling Stanley Kubrick and Phil Spector, two of my son's favorite artists.
As I read through your website (I was there for a long time), I felt that you and my son had gone through
many similar experiences.
My son is a very gifted musician who has struggled with depression and perfectionism for many years. My
son also is very lonely. I don't know how to get him to come out of his shell.
From your website, it was wonderful to see how you've triumphed over adversity time and time again. I
believe that you'd be an inspiration to him. My son could use a good, strong role model in his life.
I hope that somehow you might be able to inspire my son to come out into the light of life, and to be the best
that he can be--without fear.
Please consider it, and thanks in advance, Edith DuRousseau
Wow. I pretty much spent seven years of my life editing together a lot of the info on the website to better
understand myself. I also put together that “Empathy Files” compilation to write down and figure out who my role
models are. I certainly never expected to be one in the process of organizing such a massive personality overview
outlook. I can see now how it could be useful and therapeutic to others who are creative, confused, talented, and
depressed (which the majority of artists are to a certain extent). Being an “individual” also made me feel very isolated
and lonely about my place in the world. So I devoured as much music, movies, and books as I could to find other
kindred spirits. Subconsciously, I suppose I was writing all of these quotes, lyrics, and reflections down in the possible
case that others could also relate and find peace and connection as well. Art is therapy when not used for bland
commercial purposes. When it’s honest and says something truthful it can be extremely enriching, helpful, and positive.
Sometimes there are painful expressions involved, but they have to be made in order to come out cleansed on the other
side.
Though I am a visual computer artist and teach computer animation and video, I have a strong passion in
music. It is a very pure and direct form of expression that goes straight to the emotions. And it’s so diverse that one can
find inspiration in it from its so many branches. It has kept me going with my artwork and writing for most of my life.
As for coming out of one’s shell, it doesn’t happen automatically. It came about subtly through a series of life
challenges. But a start is in reading about and discovering other people who share their feelings in order to find out that
they are indeed not alone in the least bit. I’d say Neil Young and John Lennon (who was produced several times by Phil
Spector) saved my life countless times and gave me the courage to persevere on.
In a way, I became a teacher at the Columbus College of Art and Design in order to help other artists find
their voice or talent and harness it to make them successful. Working hard is extremely important, though it doesn’t
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guarantee one success. I hope your son reads or scans through the website to find other musicians and artists who he
can also empathize with. I really don’t consider myself all that special. I am just a 29-year-old man living in Columbus,
Ohio who happens to have a lot of passion, creativity, and a “work-hard” ethic.
Glad to talk to you, Eric Homan
The wild thing about this email connection is that it’s the first time my artwork has ever touched anyone. All
the hard work and passion I put into my art and writing has finally paid off today with this recognition. Someone was
actually moved and provoked enough to actually write me personally and say how appreciative they were about what I
had written. And in the end, the greatest irony emerged: in order to find my role models for myself, I became one
myself to others.
8-18-05:
Dear Eric, Thank you so much for your thoughtful response to my e-mail. I so appreciate your consideration of my son's
personal dilemma, and your suggestions on possible options that may be of benefit to him.
Thank you for the great concern that you've shown for my dear son. Your letter has given me hope that my son will have
a bright future--and that he won't just live a life of "quiet desperation".
I'll show him your website. I believe that he will be encouraged and inspired by your life. God bless you, Edith
Being a "Role Model"
8-23-05: The weirdest and most bizarre (though positive) thing that happened to me lately was receiving an
anonymous email from a concerned mother. She had typed in "Stanley Kubrick" and "Phil Spector", two of her son’s
favorite people, into google.com and it came up with my website, www.erichoman.com. Curious, she checked it out
and found herself reading over my 250-page essay called "The Empathy Files" that lists the majority of my role models
and influences, mostly artists, movie directors, and musicians. It also covered significant factors of my personal life and
emotional growth. The content ended up being remarkably close to her own son, who happens to be an inspiring
musician and happens to be struggling with depression and perfectionism among other things. He's confused about his
life and can't find direction. The mother wanted me to help her son for guidance and I wrote her back about why I spent
seven years writing this "Empathy Files" essay to help myself understand who I was, and therefore help others who are
artists to find out why they are as well. This was probably the first time anyone outside my circle of friends and family
that anyone has reacted so strongly to my artwork and writing. She even thanked me personally for being a "role
model". It was quite a gratifying experience.
My website, www.erichoman.com, does indeed have a lot of information about me on it and many years
worth of writing. It’s a multi-purpose website that showcases my resume, artwork, personal beliefs, favorite movies,
and other propaganda. You will never be able to read everything unless you have an extra ten days or if you are an
internationally renowned speed-reader.
One Last Thing…
And finally, feel free to skip around and to various sections that interest you, the reader, the most.
Pick an area, skim through its contents, choose a few individuals you also admire, and read up about them.
You may find yourself learning more about them of how they influenced you by learning how they influenced
me.
Extreme Emotions, Personal Demons, and Crazy Conditions
Empathy
Obviously, this is the first item on the list. Throughout my life, I’ve always felt like I’ve felt too much
inside and for what other people are feeling. There’s been a point where I do have to turn off my emotions
and try to be numb inside so I wouldn’t feel quite so crushed by the weight of all that I felt. It’s certainly one
of those clichés where it’s a gift and curse. Empathy is the reason that provoked me to compile this whole
article personality research paper in the first place. Empathy is what ultimately formed my personality.
Empathy for the Outcasts
2-1-07: This evening, I noticed a heavily obese woman eating by herself at Baja Fresh while Lisa and I were
there. Her only company was a book she was reading to herself. Normally seeing a solitary woman like this would have
brought great sadness and empathy from me. But with Lisa with me, I only noticed her and recognized her loneliness
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without feeling too deeply. It was like I needed to get back to my world with Lisa than deal with the brutal reality that
there are still too many people out in the world without someone to love them back because they’re not “beautiful”
enough. All I know is that I want to remember how I used to feel such empathy for the lonely, the single, the unloved.
Though faintly now that I'm with Lisa, I still recall and remember what it felt like. And that is why I wrote these very
words down. I want to remember. I want to recognize the poignancy of being single and dateless because you're not as
beautiful as everyone else. You're still special to me. Even though I'm no longer single, I want to keep feeling deeply
for the other outcasts out there in the world. No matter what, they'll always be my people. I just want to write that down
and record that sentiment. I hope I never forget it.
Imagination
9-21-96: And then I realized my frustration: Imagination isn't about contrast, depth, color range, and design.
It is about ideas. And imagination is what I’m best at. I’m so bombarded with technical information that suffocates and
overwhelms me so much. Thankfully, art and creativity are limitless. And I am continuously inspired. My creator's
mind and imagination can only make boundaries for oneself. And I can see forever. Yet with technical knowledge, I get
quickly blocked up. Yet ideas are easy for me to come up with.
Boredom
Boredom: it’s something we rarely think about since we’re trying hard to avoid it. Yet it is the very
key to what provokes us as creative human beings (all of us) to work, breath, thrive, dream. I use my own
acute boredom as an artistic drive. I admit it… I create art when I’m feeling desperately bored and restless. If
we were comfortable with our lives, why would we want to create anything new? Boredom is the catalysis to
expressing ourselves.
Some critics say that if you make art it’s just because you have too much extra time on your hands.
That’s a bit too simplified, naïve, and rude. An artist has to have the attention span of a flea and have a
constant need to change and grow. Boredom does spawn creativity - because an artist always wants
something new and meaningful out of life. They make a huge personal sacrifice to make a difference. The
journey will either make you go insane or touch brilliance (or both).
To be brutally honest about art, there are times when I personally make art for the simple reason
that I am desperately “bored” with the world. I have to counter-attack the urgency of feeling useless with
creative expression. I’m a workaholic artist - I want to do something with my life... if not rule the world. For no
other reason would I sketch on a notebook pad or experiment in a computer art software package. I wish to
ease the stress in my mind, emotions, and imagination. I also choose to do art because it allows me the
opportunity to listen to music while I work. The music then allows me to enter a state of consciousness that
keeps me focused on the artistic process. The boredom I use is when I’m alone in a secluded environment
(my studio) where I will have no distractions. Be forewarned: there are days when absolutely no ideas occur
when I’m bored and stuck with waiting in a vain creativity that produces a feeling total emptiness. This can
be extremely emotionally painful when you’re used to being inspired and productive. Moral: It’s just
something you have to accept.
Bored with Living
The reason I act so "weird" and creative is that I am so bored with living. My body
naturally provokes original thoughts out of me so I can keep feeling happy about myself. That is
why I cherish being artistic and being able to express myself. It is so very necessary for me to feel
positive that I am making the best for my life. It is beyond my abilities to control how dull and
repetitive life can be. But I can make my own life become extraordinary. It is my responsibility to
myself… with utmost urgency. So I do not care that people call me “weird” or a “loner”. It is my
debt to myself. I do not care to live a living suicide of self-aware boredom.
Severe Chronic Boredom
3-15-98: I’ve realized that I suffer from severe chronic boredom. I barely have words to converse in
conversation. People's topics of talk bore me to tears. So I choose to live in silence. I feel an incessant need
for stimulation. I want new ideas, new visuals, new sensations. That's why I need to make art. That's why I
constantly watch movies and listen to music. I'm always reading and searching for the greatest art and
masterpieces out there.
Restlessness
For practically every day, I feel rather nervous if I’m not making myself productive. I have a feeling
of constant restlessness. If I go on vacation, I take cameras along to record any images I might see. If I find
myself with nothing to do or say, I’d gladly take out the trash - I just want to be useful in some way. Even
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these words I write are a mark of my very creative and physical restlessness. I want to document everything
I feel because I feel too much. It’s like a form of obsessive-compulsive creativity. There is a part of me that has
to be creative. I can’t help but wake up in the morning and yearn to express myself. It’s what I do.
“I must have my work to forget myself or an inexpressible melancholy will crush me”... “A fire inside me
that I cannot quench, but I must keep ablaze”... “To express sincere human feeling.” -Quote from the letters of Vincent
Van Gogh.
Directionless
2-9-05: The absolute worst feeling in the world to wake up to is a sense of utter uselessness and total
boredom. You’re not feeling creative or sure of how to be productive with one’s existence and how you fit into the big
picture. It makes for a very frightening state of being… lost in one’s own life. It’s a crisis of conviction in living. (Time
to take an anti-depressant.) But feeling directionless can often inspire great art because you've got to find your way. So
you have to create.
Passion
Pain and loneliness are the crucial ingredients for making the tortured passionate artist in me.
“He’s got issues,” they say. Well, you better have “issues” if you’re doing art! Where else will you find the
content and the passion to do work!?
10-22-12: I have to say that perhaps my greatest strength as an artist has been my passion. I may not have
been the most skilled artist as far as technique goes. But technical skills can be learned over time with determination
and patience. Yet passion is something that one must earn inheritably. Not everyone has it. And if you don’t have that
passion through the years, you’ll lose interest in what you’re doing. You won’t be able to make it through the long
hours and years of labor to become a success. I’ve seen this happen to several of my classmates who were infinitely
more “talented” than me. Yet they didn’t stick it through with the arts. Meanwhile, if you’ve got a passion for what you
do and a deep abiding love, you’ll make it through. It’s that simple. You can’t fake passion either. It comes from your
gut, your soul, your being, your emotions, your drive, your fears, your desires, your very self.
A “Learning Disability”
10-4-04: I’ve been meeting a great deal of teenage-to-early-adult artist students who have been diagnosed
with ADD for the “condition” lately. They usually have a low GPA for not doing well in math and science, but
excelling greatly in visual arts and media in highly advanced ways. Even though they have low grades, that doesn’t
mean they’re not gifted. In addition, several of them continue to mention to me how bad their reactions have been to the
medication they’ve been taking. Some simply vomit the pills; others vomit blood and can’t make it to classes for over a
week. As a fellow artist whose brain can’t function or comprehend math and science, I feel a sense of empathy for
them. A few people think I have ADD as well. I was diagnosed with a “learning disability” when I was in the first
grade. But since I got a high GPA in throughout my schooling years in junior and high school, did that mean that I
didn’t have ADD then? And how did I manage to do this with a “learning disability”? I simply came in for extra hours
to keep up my grades by getting tutored in my math and science classes. I learned that I had to work hard. But I also
knew that I was right-brained and had an extremely active imagination. I simply understood and comprehended things
better by seeing them as visuals rather than abstract numbers and formulas. I also knew that the school systems across
the country catered more to the majority, which is those who think left-brained, analytically. And for not being able to
understand commands, lessons, and tutorials that are meant for left-brained people, I felt lost on a daily basis. Now the
professionals across the country call this “ADD”, but I know it’s far more than that.
I suffered from low self-esteem throughout grades 1 through 12 because I couldn’t read as fast as my peers
could. And because of this, I was put into special “slow learners” groups and classes. It was taking me 5 to 10 minutes
to read and comprehend a page of text at a time while my classmates were able to read a page a minute. But what I
realized years later was that I was reading wasn’t all that interesting that allowed my brain to be energetic and enthused
enough to understand it easier. Once I found a book I was passionately into (like a film director’s biography), I was
able to read at a much more rapid fashion! But being forced to read books that you weren’t really into will slow you
down. And that’s how it was for me growing up, struggling like mad to get good grades while feeling frustrated about
learning things I didn’t have much interest in. Only when I got to art school and learned about software and visual
creation techniques did I fully feel like my right-brained side was being fully engaged. Only there did I find myself
reaching my true potential.
Kids who are going up realizing that they are artists have to go through a hellish period of being diagnosed
with a “disease” that isn’t really a problem. They’re just victims to the maladjusted society around them. Society wants
them to conform to their way of thinking so they can be just like them and fit in. There are fascist undertones that we
have to realize and be made aware of so we can accept those who are different, who are creative, who think in pictures
rather than numbers. They are gifted, not troubled. They are special, not disabled. If a child is diagnosed with ADD
because they can’t figure out math or keep their attention during such classes, they shouldn’t be seen as “stupid”,
“dim”, or “in need of medication”. And their low GPA shouldn’t disable them from getting scholarships at the schools
they are looking to apply to. They should be shown the benefits to being who they are as well as being educated about
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the downsides to being who they are. Only then will the healing process begin and the real growth process can proceed.
The rather outrageous conclusion of this book is that the majority of society has ADD to a certain extent. WE
all have several of these very human traits listed as signs of ADD. Does this mean that the world universally needs to
be on medication because we show signs of “dysfunctionality”?!?! There’s definitely a gray area of madness in there.
But the bottom line is that I have to humbly accept that I do have ADD to a certain degree and that I have to
be more sensitive to how I act around people around me because I may not realize the stress I am causing them. In
addition, I hope that other people realize that I am different in how I interpret information and how that makes me
“special” in a heightened creative sense. An artist’s sense of creativity is not the same as a chemist’s sense of creativity.
They’re wildly different in abstract terms of thinking. Emphatic understanding must be made in order for there to be
communication on a sane level.
6-13-01: Reason #6 – “Why I Don’t Smoke Pot”: I have a learning disability
problem. I don’t want to look or act stupider than I already am. I struggle
enough with technical, left-brain everyday duties and I don’t wish to lose
myself any more than I naturally am.
(Artistically-Inspired) Attention Deficit Disorder
8-5-04: Traits where I absolutely have ADD: need for stimulation, entertainment, or a “high” (but doesn’t all
media present flashy, quick-cut visuals to give you easy stimulation?).
Traits that defer me from not exactly being ADD: I am compulsively neat and organized, punctual for
meetings.
The thing with Attention Deficit Disorder that I’ve always been affected by is when I drive on the interstate I
have great difficulty maintaining a conversation with anyone while I am also driving. Because I have ADD, I can’t
easily do both at the same time. It’s simply too much information to take in at the same time! And there’s the added
stress of getting into an auto accident and missing an exit as well in there. I need to concentrate in order to form
sentences. But honestly, are human beings supposed to be doing these two dangerous things at once anyways!?!
Talking on a cell phone in the car is a leading cause for car accident in the country today, so I know it isn’t just me who
is “distracted” and “overwhelmed” and needs “medical attention” for my “condition”.
One thing I’ve learned about ADD is that there is positive ADD and negative ADD. You can either nurture it
or neglect it. I learned early on in my life at the age of eight that I had it and took classes for it to help me with my slow
learning disabilities. My Attention Deficit Disorder is that I am constantly in need of wanting to be productive and
wanting stimulation. But this is how creative people are. We expect more out of life than “average” people who don’t.
We want life’s richness and wealth. We want the world and we want it now. To quote a saying I’d read on a wall of an
artist’s workspace I was recently in: “Aspire to Inspire Before You Expire.” I liked that before I related to that. It
greatly amused me. Artists are always pushing the boundaries of conventionality. We’re not meant to be like everyone
else, nor should we. And because I feared and foreseen that people would misunderstand this principle, I compiled my
massive, epic “The Empathy Files: My Role Models” essay to clarify who I considered influences on my character and
personality so people would be so confused and distorted in their way of perception of me. I am a highly complex man,
and it takes a lot to figure me out. A simple generalization of “He’s got ADD” doesn’t quite begin to cut it”. It goes far
deeper than that, my friend.
I feel I have nurtured my ADD by using it productively by producing vast, prolific amounts of artwork and
writing in a matter of several years. I’ve managed to create hundreds of time-based art pieces in the thousands of hours
of hard work I’ve put into my work. I’ve spent my time well. Meanwhile, I know several other artists also with ADD
who don’t have the drive, motivation, creativity, imagination, and focus to finish or complete one or two pieces without
a few years!! I’ve used my ADD as an asset to my advantage with my artwork.
However, I also see where it causes great hardship when it comes to having a personal life. Now that I’ve
entered a new relationship, I’ve learned to put aside my work and give my new lady my complete attention, ask how
her day went, and offer her my time, my warmth, my hand, and my love. I simply need to organize my day for a time
for work, a time for just me, and a time for my significant other. And I think that’s wise.
Those who “need” this thing called “stimulation”. Who exactly are they? I mean, doesn’t that mean
practically all of the human population to some degree or another? Everyone’s got their “addictions”. Some smoke for
their stimulation. Some screw. Some drink. Some pray. Some work. Some dance. Some fight. Some watch TV. Some
play video games. So I don’t know what classification you can give this really. It’s too vague and too generalized to
make it have any real sense.
Looking into ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder)
I continued reading the book “A.D.D. & Romance”, which my father gave to me as a birthday gift. I’ve found
it rather revealing, especially the chapter about how ADD affects creativity: “People with ADD have been among the
most creative people in the history of humankind. We know through their biographies that Edison, Bell, Einstein,
Lincoln, and Churchill probably had ADD (though undiagnosed) and used their creativity – whether it was inventing
technology or creating world policies – to change the course of history. People who have ADD often have an
abundance of creativity – creativity that can be used in the active expression of romantic love…. Creativity can also
come in handy when trying to solve problems. People with ADD can come up with incredible solutions for some
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complex problems. Solutions that their partner may never even dream of. Why? It’s the creative ADD process that
happens when several thoughts – all being entertained simultaneously – collide in the brain and something new
develops. A brand-new thought, a unique solution to a particular problem.”
The major problem with diagnosing people with ADD is that ADD has negative connotations attached to it.
This is a “disease” that troubled and problematic teens have that are put on medication. The aspect that society needs to
realize is that there is positive side to ADD when used in the right ways, such as in creative or artistic means. The other
problem with diagnosing people with ADD is that the majority of artists would be “diagnosed” with attributes of
having ADD. From what I’ve read in this book, most of my own role models would have ADD of some kind or
another. Based on the biographies I’ve read of these people and from the worked they’ve produced, the following could
have ADD: Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean, Chris Claremont, Frank Miller, Stan Lee, Will Eisner, Grant
Morrison, Peter Milligan, Garth Ennis, Brian Bolland, Simon Bisley, Peter David, Jeff Smith, Paul Chadwick,
Moebius, Katsuhiro Otomo, Gary Larson, Gahan Wilson, Bill Watterson, Dr. Seuss, Matt Groening, Mike Judge, Trey
Parker & Matt Stone, Charles M. Schulz, Robert Crumb, Harvey Pekar, Neil Young, Kurt Cobain, Björk, John Lennon,
Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Bono, Sinead O’ Connor, Trent Reznor, David Bowie, Brian Wilson, Bob Dylan,
Tori Amos, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Bob Marley, Sting, Frank Zappa, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Fiona
Apple, Jeff Buckley, Tupac Shakur, Nick Drake, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Eric Clapton, Marilyn Manson, Beck,
Moby, Kate Bush, Ennio Morricone, John Barry, Miles Davis, Michael Stipe, Michael Jackson, Billy Corgan, Bruce
Springsteen, Ludwig van Beethoven, and so many more!
That’s a massive list… and that’s just the tip of the iceberg! The additional thing that scares me horrifically is
that what if they all were medicated… would they be able to create the work they’ve created?!? It goes back to a
conceptual thought I had once of if Vincent van Gogh had taken anti-depressants, would he have still been able to paint
the masterpieces he went on to do?
What rather annoys me is that the creative drive and the creative spirit cannot be summed up with being
diagnosed with ADD. It is made up hundreds of different and conflicting elements in one’s life. I have been researching
where creative thoughts come from, and I’d have to say that my favorite writer, Alan Moore, came the closest. (You
can read those notes under “Alan Moore” in my “Empathy Files” essay on my role models.)
Still, the aspect that haunts me the most is that the symptoms of ADD seem to be within the majority of the
population in one level or another. Each spouses’ personality, job, past, dreams, desires, and ambitions have just as
much to do with the success in a relationship than if you have ADD. The speed of life has just as much to do with how
much attention you can give to particular people surrounding you. Living in the peace and seclusion of the country will
alter how you feel greatly in contrast to living in deep within a busy city. Yet, boredom also will come into play. What
happens to your sanity if you have nothing to do in the country after a few days of living out there? Needing
stimulation doesn’t mean you have ADD – it means you’re just bored and want to do something with your life instead
of feeling worthless and that you’re wasting your time! That is the clarification that needs to be additionally made.
Short Attention Span
7-20-02: Because I’m a workaholic, I have an extremely short attention span. I’m constantly looking for
something to do. If a conversation gets dull, I meander off someplace else. That explains why I don’t socialize too
frequently with people. If I’m meeting someone for the first time, they captivate me. Yet after a day or a week of
knowing and listening to them, I ready to move on to someone else. No wonder I’m confused about women and love.
And I feel too guilty and shameful about one night stands. I feel upset if I end up in love with a woman for only a short
time. Yet I feel stupid for not being a long-term relationship. See my daily conflict? And I keep working on the
computer constantly so I can get the attention for women to like me more.
Losing My Concentration
9-22-09: I have to say that I get frustrated with losing my concentration while reading a novel or
poetry. Everyone has felt this before. There is a difficulty concentrating on the written word when it is in
Shakespearean prose. It’s quite universal. It may be the best book in the world, but it’s still hard to read and
your right-brained mind can’t stay interested in it. Perhaps it has to do that I can understand things so much
better if it is in pictures, like comics and movies. What's even worse if that you’re going to be given a test on
what you have to read! How frustrating! This was my life throughout my junior high and high school classes.
Too Much Information in My Head
3-10-04: I had a terrific idea tonight. So I picked out some music from my CD collection and rushed
downstairs to start writing it down. Only when I got to my computer keyboard did I suddenly realized I didn’t have a
clue what that idea was anymore. I’d forgotten it that fast. My attention span seems to be shrinking by every day.
There’s just too much information in my head. And I couldn’t get it back no matter how hard I tried remembering!
Now I’m deeply sad there’s something deeply important (or possibly meaningless) missing from my life.
Constant Stimulation
8-2-04: Artists are always in constant pursuit of artistic and creative stimulation in power their work. It is a
never-ending search. In my own case, I find myself on a weekly exploration of the local libraries for movies to rent for
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free to stimulate my brain cells and give me creative inspiration. Some people observe this erratic activity as Attention
Deficit Disorder, which it may have some symptoms of. But it has more to do with my workaholic tendencies of
pursuing great ideas and expressing myself as fast as I can before I get old and die. It’s the urgency in me that I can’t
stop. And most artists are this way. They feed on knowledge, emotions, movies, music, books, poetry, the sun, the
moon, the stars, God, everything. We want it all… and we want it… now. Forgive us, for we’re just being ourselves.
Mild Dyslexia
I do have a tendency to read words together since my brain processes information so quickly to the point
where I’ll read two words together. I’ll end up speaking hybrid words that don’t make sense. If I read “day” and “tray”,
it will come out “dray”. This is also a catalyst for my creativity and originality. I inadvertently come up with surreal
sayings because of how my brain functions. I pick up information too rapidly and what comes out of me is a blur of
cohesion. I always had a great deal of difficulty reading aloud when in school because I’d read things together, and I’d
get snickered at for this imperfection. Driving on a high speed road that I’ve never driven on before causes great stress
too me since I’m trying to take in all the road information while taking in all the new visuals. It’s information overload
at high speed on top of moving in a fast car on curvy roads that could kill me if I don’t concentrate enough.
Mixing Words Up/ Up Words Mixing/ Words Up Mixing/ Mixing Up Words
6-10-07: It’s one of my weaknesses – my ability to concentrate – and it’s not just ADD. It’s a sort of dyslexia
as well. I’ll mix words up while I’m trying to speak and enunciate. There’s like a time delay when the words go
through my brain and out my mouth. I’ll start to say the next word after the first word while trying to say the first word
of a sentence.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
6-26-11: I will also add that the reason I'm excessively physically, mentally, and emotionally wiped out is
because I do have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder to some degree. After having 37 people over, Our house was
rearranged, moved around, disordered, and transformed for this baptism party. So it took quite a bit of work and labor
to put things back in their original place. We had to move things out of the first floor area and put them upstairs in the
spare bedroom, in the basement, and in the garage. It was craziness to put them back at the end of the day especially
when I'm burnt out.
Heightened Sensitivity
9-18-07: If my mind gets too “active”, I get really nervous and I really do experience a type of ADD. I can’t
make up my mind. I'm overloaded with too many decisions to make and too many things to consider. Sometimes my
sensitivity to the world goes haywire. It is the burden (and a gift) I carry every day. I can’t find peace of mind. This is
why I write. I’m ironing out my thoughts and exorcising my emotions and memories. I write these words to clear my
head. It is necessary. It is my psychiatric visit.
Confusion
9-18-07: There are times where I am powerless to how much confusion I feel. I tried really had to be able to
put my words together into sentences that made some degree of sense. I stutter and have to try to talk slowly while
enunciating. Yet I sometimes lose my train of thought and leave myself tangling in mid-sentence. It’s really
embarrassing and frustrating as a professor to students you are trying to get their respect.
Misunderstanding Information
12-29-96: I have a confused perception of reality. I misunderstand information and make it into art. This is
why I lean towards a preference for Surrealism and Dadaism. I can use that to my advantage by creative means. It can
also be a disability when it comes to understanding non-specific directions.
Public Humiliation
"I've been told by doctors and psychiatrists that public humiliation is one of the most extreme and
hardest things to heal from. It's as bad as being brutally raped, or witnessing one of you parents murdered in
front of your eyes or something like that. It just goes on and on, it grinds into you and it's so personal." -Kurt
Cobain.
I grew up in Cruelwater, Ohio – not Coldwater, Ohio, where they teased you mercilessly for being different.
Being harassed and publicly humiliated in high school just because you’re different is a form of racism and
terrorism. Yet, as a nation of truth, justice, and the American way, we still ignore it as if it’s just part of life. Teachers
don’t do anything or enough about it. Parents are mostly oblivious to what their teens do to the other teens. When I was
in high school, my personal security alert level was always on “EMERGENCY”. I was always living in fear and
despair. I didn’t have anything to look forward to besides getting the hell out of high school after graduating. So, is
there any solution to this ongoing dilemma of bullies, jocks, and hecklers? Well, I believe in heightened awareness and
extra-sensitivity to what others go through is a step in the right direction. Empathy is the answer. Once someone feels
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what the other feels, then people will react. Sympathy just isn’t enough anymore.
7-11-10: I also must recognize that I still suffer from the verbal public humiliations I received from my father
and from my classmates when I was growing up. For being different or for being too slow to understand things, I was
taunted and verbally abused. It still messes up my mind into being an obsessive-compulsive disorder mess. I want
order, but can never have it. Therefore, I was left feeling depression - this anger turned inwards.
Public Humiliation: Day 3,039
3-24-94: I had an ugly moment of public embarrassment as I walked down the hallway after lunch. The
situation was odd and unusual as the teen crowds were standing beside one another next to the lockers. It was almost
like the short story “Dream Quest” I wrote (when the teen crowds stepped aside for my Venus to pass by). I heard the
clandestine whispers of “Here come Ric”, which aroused confusion and paranoia, not to mention deep, unhinged
suspicion. Then came the fireworks as a slew of paper balls came flying at my face. One of the throwers was my own
work partner Mitch Voskuel (he just wanted to make himself look good and fit in with in front of his friends). I must
say I was outraged to the extreme, even betrayed by Mitch, who I thought was at least one of my own colleagues. But
no, he was as big of a coward as his friends were. I wish I could be part of the "fun". Sadly, I was… just on the wrong
side of the "fun". All they wanted was to bring someone else down to give their insecure personalities a boost. It took
quite a few minutes until I regained my sense of direction and sanity. All I wanted to do was play an even nastier trick
on my fellow peers so my audible laughter would remain echoing louder than their own towards me. I wanted to pull
out a handgun and fire back at them. I was so sick of being belittled day after day, year after year. I could only take so
much. Maybe bullets would fly out. Perhaps it would be squirts of water. Ha, ha! Jokes on them now. I'd like to see
them wet their pants in front of their own classmates so they could feel what public humiliation feels like. Both would
be a "riot" and fulfill my vengeful desires. “The extreme always seems to make an impress,” charismatically stated
Christian Slater’s character “J. D.” in Heathers. Like I said, it took a while till I came back to earth and returned to my
old self. Yet my powerfully negative fantasies nearly overtook me.
I knew better though. I couldn't start a fight and punch my tormentors back. And I especially couldn't shoot at
them, even with a fake water "fun" gun. I'd be suspended for weeks or even expelled. So much for getting good enough
grades to get out of Coldwater! Yet there's a limit to how much public humiliation one can take. Maybe it would have
been "better" if Mitch hadn't also participated. That hurt the most. How could he be such a dick to me? Oh, wait. It's
high school. People don't think even though they're supposed to be young adults. Where is their empathy or sensitivity
for others?
Teasing Words and Public Humiliation
5-28-97: Depressed from being publically humiliating by a coworker who commented before us that my red
chest hair was "scary". She suddenly resurrected emotions at Coldwater School when classmates teased me until I felt
like a freak. All I wanted to do was leave this world and withdraw. It's no wonder I'd rather attach my being to movies
and books and music. I imagined Phyllis being disgusted with my body. How grotesquely I smelled. Nirvana's "Rape
Me" played dangerously in my head. Evil desires thrived through me. That's what happens when too much negativity
gets infected in you. It just spurs more negativity. It's anger turned inwards… textbook depression. They convinced me
that I am a freak. Depression stunk from my raw emotions. I hated myself. And it was all caused by words.
Teasing and Terror/ Fun and Games
9-23-06: During my years in Coldwater, Ohio, my household was “terrorized” by my parents’ prankster
students by them coming up nearly every weekend and knocking loudly on our front door, sometimes yelling out my
mom and dad’s name for us and most of our neighborhood to hear, and then run off laughing from the thrill of “getting
back” at an authority figure that gave them discipline in the classroom. Although these kids – some of which were my
own peers and classmates at one point – thought this was so much fun and exciting. For me, it was psychological
torture and public humiliation. Living in a small town with little going on, I suppose targeting your least-fun teachers is
all you’ve got for a kick. Too bad they chose to inflict “minor” pain on innocent people without realizing the side
effects of their actions on others. I knew that my parents were not the most popular of teachers and were “tough”
teachers rather than easy, happy-go-lucky teacher types. They didn’t coach sports, so they didn’t get much “respect” in
a town that worships and thrives on sports. Being a target and scapegoat for students’ aggression and “fun” wasn’t
much “fun” for me. After a while, you get numb to the pain. There’s only so many times you can get called names in
the hallway in school before you can’t care anymore. But you do care in the back of your mind of what other people
think of you. I never fought back because I felt I was above them, or just didn’t want to get suspended for “starting a
fight” by punching a so-called “bully” in the nose or throat. All the psychological disturbances that happened at our
house at such a regular basis did provoke me to fantasize of ways to stop them from harassing us, especially at the
peace and quiet of our home. During the winter, I once considered in my imagination pouring water at night on the
cement front porch so it would freeze over. So when one of those asshole students came up there quickly to knock and
yell outside our front door, he’d try to quickly turn to run away, only to slip on the ice and break his neck. Poetic
justice? Manslaughter? Or perhaps a complicated form of suicide in the student’s part. You decide. All I can say is that
I understood exactly why Columbine happened.
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They’ll always say that they “didn’t mean any harm”. Of course. They’re only teenagers… just old boys and
girls… young men and women without sensitivity or experience to know right from wrong yet. So hopefully my
writing all of this down will help educate other people’s minds to the emotional effects their “harmless fun” can have…
especially in the long term.
Teasing – A Firing Squad
Being teased during school was like being the target of a firing squad... they’d shoot, I’d get killed - yet I
remained alive. They shot at me when I made my way to my first class until I got back home. If words were physical
weapons, my body would have been mutilated to the point no one could recognize me. I wanted to fight back so much.
The fact that I didn’t was because of the fear of getting suspended and how it would affect my college chances in the
future, embarrassing my high school teacher parents, and being emotionally unstable troubled me. Yet when all that
teasing was occurring to me, I was secretly obsessing about how I would fight them back in a different way - I’d work
harder than them, I’d make more of my life than them. I wanted to make my life so much better that they’d be
humiliated that a geek like me went further than they did. I’d be the one on top twenty years later because I couldn’t be
when growing up in a grade full of bullies.
Because they had teased me so cruelly for all of my imperfections (red hair, dandruff, my walk, B.O., a red
hairy chest, my parents being unpopular high school teachers, acne, glasses...), my emotions grew an obsessive will to
work hard. It’s like a super power - repressed anger - that built up for some twelve years. It’s fueled me to work.
Society-Accepted Teasing
The amount of teasing I got while growing up made me wish that I were invisible and that people wouldn’t
notice every single flaw and eccentricity in my being. That harassment later made me secretive and mysterious in my
later life since I didn’t want the attention, and I hated any gossip because it was just another form of "society-accepted
teasing". I remember my best friend telling me one day in my senior year of high school that one of my classmates,
Kevin G., told his friends and some female classmates in a 2nd period English class that he thought I was growing an
afro for letting my red hair grow out. It was like his criticism pointed me out as being flawed, and ridiculed me for
being “different”. It was such a simple, little thing, too. Yet it really hurt me that people like to point out whatever they
can to bring someone else down in order to make themselves feel better. I just wanted to be left alone.
The Suicide War
I must recognize the fact that several loners, misfits, and outcasts like me who were teased and taunted in
high school went on to kill themselves. That is why I have so much urgency and passion about this subject of being
teased by your peers in public. It can cause detrimental effects upon one’s mental stability and confidence in oneself. I
was one of the “survivors” who managed to live through it all and try to deal with the cruel feelings that were inflicted
upon me. It’s people’s lives at stack here. It’s a suicide war built out of intense cruelty – a battle of the right to feel
good about one’s self and self image without feeling threatened whenever you walk outside your house.
Teased Into Greatness
From the 1st grade to high school, I was teased a great deal… to put it lightly. My parents were incredibly
unpopular teachers and our home was regularly violated with prank calls, eggings, students knocking loudly on our
front door and windows, or getting toilet papered. Teenagers even sometimes drove their cars through our front lawn
(and hence our neighbor’s front yard in the process) on certain weekend nights. It was public humilation in the sake of
someone else's idea of "fun". At school, I’d be called names by my parents’ students. And when I was a junior and
senior in high school, underclassmen even ridiculed me as I walked down the hallways. I wanted more than anything to
beat the hell out of them – and I probably could by attaching their nerve points in one easy swoop – but I never did. I
was too afraid of getting suspended and embarrassing my parents. You see, what I knew was my greatest weapon was
not physically defending myself – it was leaving my hometown and succeeding. From the fourth grade, I realized that
once I had graduated from high school, those bullies and those who mocked me would lose their power once I wasn’t
around for them to harass. I’d be free to go to a college where no one knew who I was and I’d literally be able to start
over again. And the greatest kick: I’d work my ass off in my chosen artistic field to prove that I was stronger and
smarter than they were. All those years of obsession drove me to become a workaholic. Without that motivating factor,
I doubt I would have become anything at all but mediocre. It was all those years of harassment and obsessing about
breaking free that built me up inside to dedicate myself enough to strive ahead. It was my secret weapon. It was my
hidden inner power. It was not unlike being a super hero, with my secret power being my ambition, imagination, and
creativity as my powers.
But the tale doesn’t just end there without some sort of side effect from this disease. Being an obsessive
workaholic has its massive down sides and drawbacks, such as withdrawing from the human race, obsessivecompulsive introverted characteristics, and not related to the rest of the human race. It takes years to trust people again
and forge new friendships and trusts. Thankfully, I found that in art school and discovered many other artists with
similar stories and pasts like my own. It’s so important to know of others that you can share your collective experiences
with. And that can lead to healing… and forgiveness.
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Self-Expression as “Revenge Alternative”
I recall when I was in junior high and high school when the teasing I was receiving was getting to a degree of
snapping my sanity. I was on the verge of fighting back, but I knew I might go over the edge and actually seriously hurt
or kill one of the bullies and assholes who were constantly mocking me every day to the point where I was afraid to be
alive. I had no life outside of being publicly humiliated in front of my peers on a daily basis. I was different and I was
emotionally ruined because of it. But before I acted out against my oppressors, I thought and fantasized about what the
consequences would be if I did lash out. It could mean jail time and all of my dreams would be for naught. I’d be a lost
cause. So I decided to suffer through, hold patience, and plan for my revenge with alternative methods. I swore to
“attack” back through becoming a great and famous artist/ moviemaker that would prove myself far superior to those
who taunted me so cruelly and senselessly as I grew up. My livelihood became a complex form of counter-attack
through hard work, self-expressive artwork, and self-determination/ obsession rather than resorting to graphic violence.
I have also seen others who were teased ruthlessly who did take out their anger, hatred, and frustration on those bullies
by shooting them and their friends dead. I certainly wasn’t alone in fantasizing about taking revenge. I just did it in a
more passive, less directly harmful form. I found peace through breaking free from them through graduation day and
moving away to college and a better future. Some who were like me never made it. They committed suicide, ended up
in prison, or withdrew from society entirely. I was a “lucky” one.
Teenage Weekend Paranoia
11-11-94: And since tonight is a Friday night, I scare myself every weekend night that our house might be
toilet-papered, egged, knocked, or something. I’m usually the first to hear anyone outside since my bedroom is at the
front right corner of the house. I’ve seen old cars drive purposelessly through our dead-end cul-de-sac street. A dog
barked a few houses down in the back of our house. Teenagers up to no good simply scare me sometimes. They really
do. The worse part about my phobia is that I’m a teenager myself. Who knows what kind of lonely, sexually repressed
feeling I have stored inside of me?!!?
Competitive Drive
I do feel a bit of letdown every time my interactive and computer animation work is overlooked
when I submit it to so many festivals while my peers get their work into them. Yet, the disappointment is
fading with the repetition of disappointment.
You really do start to honestly doubt yourself when endless festivals reject you while your peers’
more conventional work gets the awards.
Life continues to disappoint me. While my peers’ animations manage to win award after award, my
work is passed over. Though their work is extremely well done and is accessible for a mass audience, it
doesn’t take any risks or break new ground. I feel that my work is self-expressive and emotive, yet society
still doesn’t know how to react to it. I feel like I’m a victim of society’s preference for superficial teen pop over
raw passion and deep emotion. No wonder I’m discouraged with festivals.
After entering over six computer animation festivals, my “Life Forms” piece hasn’t won any awards
yet. Meanwhile, my peers’ work, being less psychological, artistic, or emotional, has won multiple times.
There are no awards for art.
There were days when I found out that my classmates were getting accepted in major animation
competitions and I was getting rejected over and over again. Competition is cruel. The disappointment of
believing in myself and my work ate at me. I showed my work to the world, and it was overlooked. And I was
ultimately humbled by it. Yet I tried not to worry or feel bombarded by feelings of mediocrity. I worked even
harder on top of my other disappointments where I swore to work “even harder”.
Intense Ambition
I've got such intense ambition through years of obsession and repression that I’ve spent my life
striving to make a better life for myself and escape my small town upbringing. And I've expressed it all out of
the core of myself in my artwork and writing.
Lack of Recognition
2-27-02: I recently received a newspaper picture cutout of two former Coldwater classmates of
mine who were going to be wed. The sight of old faces spurred memories of yearning for attention. It
reminded me that I still have bent-up hostilities with my past and a deep underlying need to impress my old
classmates from my hometown of Coldwater, Ohio. I still yearn to show them that I am someone not to be
ignored or degraded like I was while growing up. I grew up after I left my hometown. I became my own
person instead of an object of ridicule or mockery. I didn’t have an opportunity to shine in a town that didn’t
celebrate or appreciate art or eccentricity.
When I was young, I was obsessed over trying to accomplish some act of heroism or achievement
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to gain a level of respect from my peers. I didn’t want to be a nobody that girls passed over for another guy. I
was willing and desperate to give my life for this duty. I wanted someone to rob a bank just so I could prove
myself by stopping the crime.
We all want recognition and respect. It’s our obsession with celebrity that hangs over us like a
depression. We think we’re the winner, that we’re the best of them all. We each deserve the award. We’re all
legends in our own minds. We all want E.S.P. We all want to win the lottery. We all want to see a ghost. We
all want to be king or queen. We all want the perfect woman or man. We all want to write a masterpiece. We
all want to hit a homerun. We all want to be rich. We all want to save the world.
Maybe what we really need is nothing at all. Just some personal peace and harmony is all we need.
Depression
What can I say, depression has been something I have personally dealt with and lived through for
the majority of my life. It’s no surprise that most artists suffer from the disease. It just comes from a multitude
of things. Here are a “greatest hits” sample of journal entries of my emotional lows:
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Depression has never taken me so low. I have no way out of winning but to lose by default. I can’t stand
learning the facts of Geography class when I can’t care or understand them. It’s too pointless to do on a sunny, mild
Sunday when I could be doing other things. Unfortunately, I’ve wasted them all away. I vigorously and carelessly used
charcoal and pastels together to create some sort of wild surreality. My hour-long fight for some drawing which would
be interesting and creative was only thrown away as a creative “failure”. It took me ten minutes just to wash my blackcolored hands. The music on the radio was just plain bad. Nothing was good (or on TV). I despised my friends a little
bit and hated whoever smashed pumpkins in our driveway last night. The homework got worse and worse and worse.
So far, I’ve wasted five hours of today already. I haven’t done much but hate and despise. I’m trapped inside myself. I
want so much more, but I can’t reach it because of them, me, and the world. I slept in for a long time tonight dreaming
and forgetting my past for hours. I feel so stupid for being alive. I have nothing. Who cares if I’m creative or a “good”
writer? I believe I’m hitting bottom and experimenting how long I can stay down. I’ve tried developing new kinds of
artwork; little has succeeded so far. The trashed portrait of myself I drew this afternoon was a crazy, wild dramatization
of myself. I used so much charcoal on it; I nearly wiped it across and used my eraser and pastels to draw a cross among
the meadow. I threw that drawing away along with my self-esteem. I’m failing. I don’t care. What’s there to live for if I
don’t have a purpose? Nobody really knows how bad and desperate I really feel inside. I think I’m going to jump from
myself.
I’ve got to survive. So what if my life stinks. Work from there and proceed to success. What do I have to
lose?
I’ve learned a poignancy to life from dying from a lack of artistic recognition.
I Have Depression
3-20-13: I have depression. I have to admit this the same way an alcoholic has to admit that they have a
problem. Depression is my disease that has hounded me for much of my life. And I have to confess this in order to fully
deal with my own disease. And it truly is a disease because it literally causes me dis-ease. It’s something I fight every
day. Even on my best days, it’s still there faintly. If I get a high rush, I’ll fall back crushingly down. Through the years,
I’ve had to learn to stabilize my emotional balance so I’m more in the middle and not so psychologically erratic. I can’t
have those mood swings anymore. They’re much too punishing. And making art has stabilized me emotionally quite a
bit. It’s not the ultimate fix and savior… but expressing myself does help. And it’s for free, unlike going to a
psychiatrist.
“Depression + Happiness / Creativity X Intelligence Squared = Genius!?!”
“I get these ideas.” They come out in idealistic, manic depressive fragments. Life’s a boring mess. It
really is. Especially on weekends when I’m supposed to be out dating someone and getting laid (according
to the de facto rules of society). Staying home and not having any inspiration left is as life-sucking as
existence can get. My life must have creative inspiration. That is why I hang out around artistic/ eccentric
people, create “personal” artwork (personal as in art that I would like to see and feel; I create my own
company through art), watch countless movies, and listen to thousands of CDs. Without these things, my life
support system of emotions would collapse. I simply wouldn’t know what to live for? Where is my
motivation? Where is my drive? Sex is secondary and temporary. Love is fleeting and forever. There must
be more. I grow restless and yearn for the company of friends. Any companionship would be better than
none. Then I feel exhausted and want to be alone. I send valentines to my neighbor Depression since Love
lives too far away across town. I am greatly sad tonight. I make jokes about it to keep remaining sane and
going on existing with this personality and body that I possess. I write words that (99.9% probability) no one
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will ever read. No one. Perhaps not even God. (RIGHT?!?!) The alchemy of the EMOTIONS ignites urgent
creativity and original thoughts. Eccentricity also spawns out from this. The conflict forces the mind restless
and awake. This everlasting sadness and desperation provokes me to make myself feel better and find a
reason to exist. Art becomes an answer. Without it, I’d be nothing – and I’d know it. That is something I
wouldn’t be able to live with. But before we make any art, we dream. And there lies the fire that started from
“nothingness”.
“Fine Depression”
Dreamers have the very best depression. I wake some mornings despising my repetitious existence and
wanting more out of life. I hated the fact that in most cases when I do go out of do something different with someone, it
usually ends up excruciatingly boring and dulling. My dreams are simply better than this reality. I felt trapped. I can’t
make artwork every day to “save” myself with interesting visions and deep expressions. At least, the music I’ve found
sooths me down and up again. The “Great Depression” becomes converted into being just the “Fine Depression”. We
dreamers convert our despair into something funny and creative. That is simply how our minds control the tidal wave
of wild ideas and worries.
Positive Depression
9-4-03: Early this morning, I thought of doing something interesting with my depression: I’d use it instead of
it using me. I’d take my jealousies and problems and despairs and take them into my artwork and writing. Some people
think that depression is a bad thing. I’m manipulating it for my own means now. I’m taking control. If I’m stuck with
depression and I can’t get rid of it after years of struggling with it, I’ll make it my ally and friend. I’ll let it burn within
me to motivate me to work for me by fueling my internal emotional fires.
Early Winter, Seasonal Depression
11-11-08: Speaking of weather, it is indeed gloomy, gray, and cold outside now that winter has arrived. This
seasonal depression seeps into my own body. I hadn’t recalled what it felt like to feel so miserable, depressed, and
panicky inside for quite a few months now. I felt reminded of how I used to feel all the time when I was combating my
internal loneliness mixed with the hopelessness I felt for my personal life. I am quite pleased that I don’t have to worry
so much about finding a soul mate anymore. I’m ever so happy and pleased to just let go of the past and live in the
present for the future.
Yet today was a scary reminder of the days where my emotional state went off the tracks and into the ditch.
It’s scary… a very scary place to be. I felt a bit too much empathy of students who are worried about their future and
getting a job. It makes me feel like I’m standing on thin ice, ready to fall in to my death. How can I be unfeeling when I
see such suffering that could have been very easily my own in another life? It’s that slow sense of dread and despair
that creeps up in you like the possession of a silent vile ghost that makes time move ever so painfully slow. When
you’re depressed, everything feels disturbingly slow… like you’re sinking in quicksand.
Yet once I hit the bottom of my self-loathing and realized that I’m just seeping in negativity, I had to question
if I have to feel so bad? Is this really that awful?! Of course not. And this was the beginning of my first stage of
recovery. I have to realize that I do not have control over everything in my life. I simply can’t. Accepting this helped
me get through the day.
11-12-08: Yeah, I can’t deny it that this chilly November weather is affecting me emotionally. I can
psychologically sense how annoyed I am when I wake up in the morning and wish to stay in bed, under the heavy
comforter covers. I’m not that excited about going to work, let alone being there.
11-17-08: Well, my equilibrium has adjusted to the colder winter weather and I am feeling much about things
emotionally. The colder winter months begin and you have to mentally and emotionally adjust to it. You can't go
outside for nature walks as much as you used to. Being cut off to the outside can be quite disturbing and upsetting to
my emotional equilibrium. I have to accept that the winter months are a more introspective, indoors season. Yet it’s
always that first frigid November chill in the air that scares and worries me a bit too much to the marrow of my bloody
soul. I’m actually getting quite used to being indoors and thankfully having plenty to work on and do. It’s all a matter
of keeping oneself busy and occupied. And it greatly helps to have plenty of people around for company.
(Super Heroic) Self-Determination
9-28-03: I’ve been beaten down by my emotions for the majority of my entire life. I’ve learned to fight and
let go of some of the pain, the insecurities, the jealousies, the loneliness, and all the rest of the negative excesses. All
they end up doing in the end is waste my time and ruin my joy. I’m letting it all go. I felt too deeply and I nearly paid
the highest price with my sanity. Still, I held onto my soul and got through. What seems like a big deal at the time
means nothing in the end. So why trouble one’s mind? Free yourself with that simple realization. We act like we don’t
have super-powers like superheroes do, but we do have control of ourselves through self-determination. All we have to
do it realize it. And it’s not a self-delusion – it’s real. We have the power to save ourselves. There is a normal sadness
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to the state of living. So don’t worry about it. It’s not yours.
The Ecstasy of Desperation!(?)!
9-9-03: While laying in bed drifting off into dream, I did ponder about if I’m happier now that I was when I
was seventeen. In most ways, I definitely am. I’m more confident about myself. I’ve got self-esteem that I never had
back then. I’ve got my life under control in aspects I only dreamed of having. Yet in ultimate retrospect, aren’t those
“horrible” feelings of being nervous and depressed a direct result of not knowing what was coming next? I still do have
depression as an adult. It doesn’t completely go away no matter how many things are going right. One issue is how
repetitious the days are after a while. The thrill of living is diminished once you settle into suburbia with a home, a job,
and a family. At least when I was young and didn’t know what was going to happen with my life and future, I felt an
emotional charge. Now I’ve got a life routine. Take me back when I was feeling things for the first time. When you’re
young, you don’t know what’s going to happen next. That is something I miss. Being older, I’m used to the defeats.
I’ve grown accustomed to it. Love isn’t as magical as it used to seem. No matter how special they are, women are
relatively interchangeable in the end. (To paraphrase a line from “The Last Temptation of Christ”: “If one woman goes
away (through death or divorce), another takes her place.) To feel lost and depressed means you’re at least feeling
something! And that’s not all that bad. I’d take desperation over numbness any day now. I want to excitement back of
extreme anxiety! I want the power of being bothered! I live for the feeling of feeling. I want to be young and naïve. I
want to be anguished again. I was happier when I was sad. I was gladder when I was mad. I was, I was, I was… real.
Worrying
2-8-94: I keep trying to realize that I “like” to worry about the wrong parts of my life. If work isn’t bothering
me one moment, it’s finding a girlfriend, romance, and sex. One keeps replacing the other. I always worry. I swear my
worries are teaming up against me. They’re like jocks.
An Emotional Instability
7-3-08: I must acknowledge that there is an emotional instability in me. I feel it brewing when I get deeply
stressed out and feel that I am losing control. But I must accept the things that I cannot fully change. I must make peace
with my frustrations before they overwhelm me and I lash out on those that I love, even if they are part of the source of
my tension.
Or is it possible that I create my own drama because I am manically bored?
Eccentricity
4-8-08: I’m becoming acutely aware of my eccentricities and how other people notice them. Certain people
are bewildered and even offended by such behavior. And that rather scares me. I’m just trying to make my life
entertaining and interesting!! I’m desperately trying to make things fun for myself. I’m so sorry if the stiffs find me
“unprofessional”. Yet I do know there are times when I’m working at the local insane asylum, I mean, art school where
things get too stressful and crazy. I am just reacting to my environment in order to stay sane. Isn’t that a normal thing to
do? I’ve just got so much bent-up manic energy that I can’t release. I haven't shoplifted since I was seven years old
when I stole that pack of Bubblelicious bubble gum from a grocery store. I haven’t even killed anyone to feel that sort
of rush! (That's a joke and a sign of my eccentric sense of humor!) I haven’t found myself in the thrill-seeking event of
being chased by the cops either! It makes perfect sense why I’m so weird and eccentric. It’s just my subtle way of
making myself feel better about existing. The mundane aspects of life can ruin a man. I just want to feel.
Spring
3-17-05: The weather outside is sneaking in with spring, and as always, this creates a bizarre emotional
reaction in me. I want to start dancing around in the warm cool air and praise the return of the sun. But I chicken out
because I don’t want anyone to call the cops on me. It’s SPRING OUTSIDE!! The cold and gloom and gray have faded
away at last. It’s time for celebration and exercise. I walk around in a state of confusion of trying to figure out what to
do first. I feel like running a marathon, creating art, juggling four balls in the air, and making love in the outdoors all at
the same time. It’s so hard to choose which direction to go. My anticipation levels have reached some sort of weird
atmosphere where they’re moving at ridiculous speeds and I can’t control them entirely. I’m free and I’m adrift in my
emotional fireworks. I’m amiss in my own sense of purpose. My body’s molecules are going wild.
Spring Seasonal Bipolar Manic Depression Ecstasy Blissed-Out Emotional Roller Coaster
2-10-04: Today was the first day of winter that felt like spring. After nearly five weeks of gray depression
mood clouds and bitterly cold weather, Mother Nature fought back with a blowing kiss breeze of sunshine and clouds
with 40 degrees temperatures. My emotions didn’t know how to react. I wanted to jump around and dance, but I
couldn’t because I was stuck in my monotonous work routine. I didn’t have a girl to pick up and drive off to a secluded
state park for us to frolic and make-out. The emotions don’t know what to do with themselves with the world blooming.
There’s a sudden lack of confidence in oneself that I should be doing something wonderful, but I’m not. Depression
breathes heavily down my nerves and I’m not sure what’s come over me. I’m on a spring seasonal bipolar manic
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depression ecstasy blissed-out emotional roller coaster. There’s a restless energy that deliriously needs to be released
through sex, creating art, taking pictures, writing in my journal, running around in circles, or skinny-dipping in a lake.
The Spring Fever
3-2-04: Spring is definitely, definitely in the air. There’s a hyper sexual energy in my 20-something students
that palpable to the extreme. I can see it in their eyes and in their body movement. They want to mate or run around
outside or climb the side of a great mountain. They just want to get rid of all this built up energy. It has to go
somewhere! Now! It makes you want to go out and be super-extroverted – so totally polar opposite from winter’s ultraintroverted intuitions. It made me edgy with repressed lust. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I stayed later at school
and edited my “Hocking Hills of Heaven” pet video project instead. It was like making love to my creativity by way of
the highway of my imagination. An artistic outlet and sexual expression are, in fact, pretty closely related.
The Spring Rush of Emotional Highs… and Lows
3-30-05: It’s dangerous to be alive on these first few days of spring. Your body erupts with anticipation and
excitement. And yet whenever your expectations are disappointed, it’s a hard manic-depressive fall in emotion. There’s
a severe contrast to everything – beautiful weather, lost feelings. You can’t figure out what to do with yourself be walk
around feeling confused and helpless, uncertain of how to make yourself happy when bad news and stress arrives on
such a perfect day. That’s spring for you. It’s so perfect outside, and you feel so imperfect inside and out. You stutter.
You sweat. You smell. You burn. You can’t think of things to say to your girlfriend during lunch. You’re overwhelmed
by bad news with enrollment at work. Maybe you and the sun should take anti-depressants. I feel like I’m dying of the
slowest death. I’m the result in a crash of self-esteem and a change in weather patterns. Too many good things are
happening to other people while I just here observing.
When Spring Strikes Back
3-31-05: My mind is wild and restless, and I can’t quite figure out what to do with myself. There are too
many things I want to do outside. But without someone to go out with biking, walking, out to eat, kayaking, or
whatever, I find myself stagnant and disappointed. I’m lost in my own confusion. Life is “easier” during winter because
you can’t go out with overcast skies and dreary cold weather. You find yourself reading a book or watching a movie.
But during spring, your body and mind are released… but you sometimes have to wonder what to do with yourself.
What should I do now?
The Spring Tease
4-26-05: The weather in spring will have a few perfect days where the once bare trees suddenly blossom with
white flowers across the city. It’s a glorious time of sunshine awakening after a long winter of muted gray tones. We
have several days of perfect 74 degree weather with blue skies erupted above us. Other trees burst with rainbow colors
of Easter spring holidays. But these lovely days are last for two weeks until a hard rain (or a freak snow shower) brings
them all down. What’s left is overcast days and the trees are just green. The spring colors of white, purple, pink,
yellow, and green are simplified to just green. It goes to show that a perfect season does not last for long.
The Spring Blooms the Soul
3-30-06: Late this morning was the first real day of spring during spring that we’ve had here in Ohioland.
The Midwest skies have finally revealed the blue sky underneath their gray skin. Going outside in such gorgeous 70
degree spring weather with no humidity finally opened up my pores and my mind. There’s a palpable rush of
excitement and you’re not sure what to do with it. My ADD (Anxiety Anxiousness Delirium) alarm goes off. There’s
too much to do with so many possibilities of where to run around to. Of course, the cause and effect of such a weather
transformation is that the roads get crazy with motorists desperate to get out and enjoy the day after being cooped up
inside their homes with winter depression for five months. You can feel the nervous energy being released by society as
one. You can feel the agony of those who still have to work through the daylight hours. I went out biking for that
golden chance to feel the cool warmness of everything. It was a rare opportunity to feel a little bit more alive. The
emotional, mental, and physical hibernation of winter is officially over.
Nature's Spring Orgasm
4-17-12: Appreciating the spring flowers and colors is not unlike experiencing an orgasm. It only lasts a
brilliant moment… and then it's gone. And they both produce lots of pollen/ sperm that may go off and grow more of
its kind again.
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
4-11-09: Spring weekends with sunny pleasant weather can be tricky emotionally of what to do. You’re so
used to your routine of just staying at home and watching a movie. Yet your insides want to go out and do something
active and different. Yet what? And where? You’re bored do going on the same old walks. Yet watching a movie at
home while it’s nice outside doesn’t feel right or "good" either. So you’re left feeling unsettled and depressed. It's the
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changing of the seasons and it's got me all messed up.
Capturing the Spring
4-21-06: Spring seems to only last a moment and then its gone. Unlike summer and winter,
spring blossoms bloom all over for just barely a week. Then suddenly, one day every tree sprouts
its leaves and the white, pink, purple, and yellow blossoms fall to the ground leaving a mass of
green in its wake. Where once we had gorgeous displays of Easter spring colors are now coated in
green. I suppose that is why I took so many pictures the past week... to preserve its beauty and
memory. Yet it doesn't hold its fragrance in the air.
Ohio Springs and Falls
5-10-06: Change in the seasons make Ohio unique, especially during an all too brief period in spring and
autumn. This usually neglected and ridiculed area of the Midwest comes alive like few other places can. In order to
appreciate this to the fullest, you have to live through and experience the dullness of Ohio's gray, cold winter and hot,
humid summers. Ohio springs and falls are unlike any other time of place during the year. Both seasons are only
glorious during a short 10-day period. That's only about 20 days of a 365-day year. With all that mundane scenery,
these brief periods feel extraordinary and wild, like the surrealistic seasons of Mother Nature’s very own selfexpression.
The Few Days of Spring
3-13-07: Spring has such an effect on me to the degree where my moods bop, flop, and hop in GIANT
bounds. I can feel such calm and peace one moment with the newness of the cool warm spring air finally arriving after
a long, cold, gray winter. Yet if I am pressed or stressed by someone, I will feel severely agitated. If it was a regular
cold February day, I wouldn’t have gotten so bent out of shape over being corrected about a technical issue by a
colleague at work. But since it was 74 degrees today for the first time in months, my moods got excited, electrified, and
flexed. It’s these first few days of spring that I have to be careful of. I can feel euphoria one moment… deathly pits of
despair the next. My body and mind aren’t used to these environmental emotional highs. It’s so strong and potent that
it’s like being on a Mother Nature narcotic. Are there emotionally unstable poppy seeds in the air? It does take a little
while to get used to the highs and lows that my emotions feel in the spring. I imagine this is a side effect of feeling so
emotionally dormant for several winter months. The cold gray weather gets you down and you eventually accept it. The
cold gray chill just numbs you out. So once you’re suddenly out and about in blue skies, cool warm breezes, and birds
chirping everywhere around you, it’s intoxicating and overwhelming. The green returns! I could foam at the mouth if
rainbows started popping up everywhere.
The Spring Season Emotional Conundrum
4-10-11: Feeling kind of weak this Sunday morning. Kind of sore in spirit. It's going to be such a nice spring
day today. Yet it makes my emotions go in conflicted directions. I had some difficulty deciding what to do with myself.
Should I do artwork, or go outside and play? And when I go outside, should I take more pictures so I can feel better
about myself as an artist? Do I really want to be "great"? Is it worth that price of my own personal happiness? At least
when it's raining or winter cold outside, I know that I will be housebound and won't feel the urge to go into multiple
directions all at once. Spring is such an intoxicating sensation. Yet for those of us who are "extra-sensitive", it's a
season of subtle madness and extreme emotional changes. It's really quite painful and desperate. It's a difficult mental
health time. Your body tells you to go outside, yet my emotions aren't quite ready yet. I am a conflicted man of
polarized extremes.
The Intensity of the Autumn Season
10-18-09: I really went through a nasty spell of depression this morning with absolutely nothing making me
happy. I felt conflicted of even where Lisa and I should drive out to today. It was a perfect day to drive down the
Hocking Hills, yet I didn't want to drive much. And Lisa had some shopping errands and cleaning to do today still. So
instead we just shopped at Wal-Mart and Half Price Books, ate lunch at Johnny Bucelli's, walked around Antrim Park
and the Thompson Tree Park, took a bunch of brilliantly orange tree leaf photos, got some Rita's Italian Ices, and made
a final stop at Sam's Club. I can't tell you how helpful it was just to "get out of the house". I was falling into the same
old trap I used to several years ago when I was single and it was gorgeous autumn outside. I'd have a panic attack
because I didn't know where to go out and take pictures. I wanted to go everywhere, yet I was scared of just going out
by myself. I wanted to take the most brilliant pictures in the world, yet I felt crippled with creative and emotional
insecurity. The intensity of this autumn season could just be too much for me. It was terrifying. I simply feel things too
deeply. It's why I'm in the arts, after all.
Urgency
“You gotta keep your mind active. You can never just go on holiday.” -Jimmy Page, guitarist for Led
Zeppelin.
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From personal experience, I would say that creativity comes from a sense of urgency - to do
something with one’s life... to “save” oneself from being idle. In a way, creativity is like faith, or a fever either you are consumed with it or you are not. When you are, the experience is emotionally and spiritually
intoxicating.
I’ve grown up in with a desperate fear of wasting my life in commercial work. During high school, I
worked as a custodian by cleaning up classrooms, doing the same job every day - eventually staining my
emotions with a passionate need to leave. During the summer when I worked with six other student coworkers, I rarely ever talked. I obsessed about proving myself more than just working class. It scared me to
my core that I’d be a nobody while my peers got all the girls. I had to prove myself by expressing myself. Art
just happened to be the medium I choose. I found myself releasing all of my self through self-expressive,
personal art. It saved me as much as it showed how good of an artist I could be when I set myself to it. Yet,
I’m at the point where I can’t give it up. I need to express myself now. It’s part of me. I can’t help but be
creative, artistic, and emotive. I want my life to have meaning – not lying away in commercial doldrums. I
don’t mind doing some commercial gigs, but I can’t allow myself to be too distracted from being true to my
art. I want my life to prove something. Like a high school kid with no idea of what to do with one’s life, I’m
searching for my life every day through the creation of my artwork.
Sometimes, people look at my work and comment about how much time and work had been put
into it -- yet no more struggle and hardship than by most of the working class. We both think our lives haven’t
made up too much. Things do seem superficial... we both know that’s true. Yet, we strive to do good with our
lives... and that is what, I believe, keeps us sane.
9-2-97: The world had suddenly changed without me. Feeling lost and urgent, I asked Kon, my video
teacher, about where I'd be able to get a job. Commercial "video work" sounded like I'd be abandoning the creativity
and self-expression I had inside that I needed to release. This wasn't a joke or something I could dismiss. I wanted to
talk to someone to release the personal confusion and intensity inside. I wanted someone to hold. My sensitivity was
astonishingly frightening and aware of my situation. I had been working myself obsessively on my art only to realize
that it didn't matter once I got out of school. My idealism and innocence faced death. I restlessly sought to find
meaning, and someone to relate to - only to realize the loneliness I had created for myself for choosing to live with
movies and music instead of friends and family.
9-13-97: Couldn't eat a Subway sub without thinking that I might be working there after I graduate. "Try not
to think about it."
6-7-98: I arrived back to my hometown Coldwater and felt plagued with low esteem. I witnessed a
working class community where people lived unextraordinary lives. They don’t have the money, talent, or
ambition to seek a difference to their existence. Here I sensed an exasperating urgency to find significance
to my life.
8-16-98: I’ve noticed a lot of working class people working ten-hour shifts (grocery store) at jobs
they’d rather not be at (the company of their co-workers helps them make it through the day). The older I’ve
gotten the more obsessed and focused I’ve become about working harder, harder still until I feel that I’ve
made it to the place I need to be. I can’t be second place. Not anymore in this new real world. I have to give
549%. The passion to work is like needing to eat. I don’t think I could make it through life now that I’ve made
this many steps, made this many dreams. I know what artwork isn’t good in this world - about 99.4% of it. I
know that’s... critical, but I have to be in order to judge the worth of my own work.
11-2-00: I have urgency for not having anything else to do after I go home from work. That is why I continue
working on my personal computer projects. Art has meaning... I just have to enlighten it and share with others. Tonight
I worked the “art” out of me until my emotions and body were numb and exhausted enough to not feel any more pain. I
drove home in a daze of ache - in head and heart.
Emotional Extremism
4-15-13: I was going through my 2000 journals and realized what my main problem has been throughout my
life: I’ve just been too emotional. I let my emotions get the better of me. Of course, it was this over-sensitivity and
emotional extremism in my soul that provoked me to create loads of artwork. Yet it also made me excessively
depressed and desperate throughout much of my life. During the past week as I’ve had this cold, I’ve been rather
curiously emotionally mute. And hence, I haven’t been all that upset or depressed, which is a good thing oddly enough.
I’m more in control emotionally by not being so emotionally unstable. Or perhaps nowadays, I’m more mature and try
not to let things overwhelm me so much. I just have to accept that not everything is in my control.
Existentialism
I nearly died on several occasions in my life. One, my mother asked me if my then girlfriend and I wanted to
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come along with her to King’s Island. We were too busy with school, so we didn’t go. On the way home from the
amusement park, my mother was killed in a car accident by a guy speeding in his truck later that evening. So literally
none of my artwork or these very words I write should be in existence.
Fatalism
If you felt you didn’t have much time left to live, you wouldn’t be going out wasting your time or watching
football?! You’d be working passionately in making a difference! That desperate fatalism is what burns deep within my
heart. I can’t help but be “eccentric” and work obsessively on ways to express myself through artistic mediums. There’s
an inherent fatalism to life. I could literally die at any moment, from a random car accident to a terrorist nuclear
explosion. There’s no telling when it’s going to end. So I’d rather make the best of the time I’ve got rather than waste
away and wish decades later I had done something with my life. Damn it, I have!
Surrealism
Since I was teased so much when I was young and found my confidence in the ruins, I had to either
embrace the insanity surrounding me or go crazy from it. Hence, I later on in life empathized with Surrealism
with an underlying feeling of Expressionism. It encompasses us constantly. Religion, sex, suicide, profanity,
miracles, art… all together as one, large, glorious madness.
The evidence is everywhere. Look at war, or the terror, the confusion, the panic, the noise, the
heartbreak. Or what can top the crushing surrealism of the breakup of a relationship?
Surrealism may just be the most honest and consistently relevant of all art movements. Life is, after
all, a confusing mess.
Eating junk food actually kept me thin when I was a child and in my teens. No wonder I’ve
embraced Surrealism.
I’m a surrealist because of the things that don’t make sense in my life. I can eat loads of candy, but I end up
looking skinnier than I was. If I go on a diet and don’t eat any sugar, I gain a gut. Life is a contradiction to my
existence.
The events of 9/11 are Example #4376 of utter surrealism existing in reality. Re-watching the events that took
place that day brought back so much urgency – it provokes such deep, intense emotions. It’s the type of fuel power one
has when one creates art.
The assassination of John Lennon. Proof that we live in a crazy world.
It still shocks me to see a former lover with another. It is emotional surrealism - and it still torments
me. My imagination exaggerates the memories and emotions that once were and a rush of jealousy blush
coldly through me.
I gain weight after eating salads. I dig through dreams in order to find meaning.
Proof of Surrealism: “I Have a Pussy” story: “The Tale of My ‘Pussy’”
Around the time I was in the fifth grade, I had a toy ball covered in fur that I nicknamed “Pussy”. I
treated it as if it was a real pet and friend - as if it were a round cat the size of a baseball. My best friend also
had a “Pussy” as well. Sometimes when I’d sleep over at his house, we’d take out our “Pussies” and play
with them together. We would love throwing them around in the air like hot potatoes covered with soft hair.
My friend and I both reveled in the fact that the term “Pussy” had double-meanings in being a pussycat and
a woman’s private area. It was like being silly while being absurdly vulgar.
One day at school, a bully approached me and asked me if I had a pussy just to humiliate me in
front of our classmates. Either I didn’t want to lie or I just thought it would be ironic, I replied that I certainly
did. “I love playing with “Pussy”! It’s so soft! Some day I’ll bring it in so you can play with it, too. My best
friend Kyle also has one. Go ahead and ask him!” Everyone was quiet for a moment in confusion before they
broke up laughing at me. At that point I got embarrassed and confessed that “Pussy” was just a furry ball
and I didn’t really have a “pussy”. It was too late. The bullies had gotten their laugh out of me. Days later,
upset by what it had provoked, I threw my “Pussy” away. I neutered myself.
My life is too encompassed with surrealism. I ate all sorts of fatty junk food this week for the first time in
over a year. I checked my weight. I actually lost five pounds. Perhaps sugar-coated depression also causes weight loss?
Surrealism from the media can be found simply by reading the top news stories of 9/27/03:
“Bush, Putin urge Iran, N. Korea on nukes” and “North Korea calls Rumsfeld a 'psychopath'” are
followed by “Affleck, J.Lo buy pickup together in Georgia” and “Calif. recall boosting porn star's
career”. There is something seriously screwed up here!!!!!!!
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Real News of the Surreal: “Ex-President Bush Makes Skydive On His 80 Birthday”.
Sexual Energy
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I’d have to admit that a certain amount of sexual energy and passion goes into my artwork when
I’m being creative and creating. Yes, there is an obvious similarity to making babies and making art. Both
are forms of procreation. If I’m not releasing this passion through actual sex, that energy force goes into my
artwork. Most artists that I know of have an unceasing amount of rigor, stamina, and sexual candor. They
usually love sex. They love the heightened senses. So in a way, that performance and abundance comes
out through creative thought and artistic expression.
Solitude
If you want to dedicate oneself to the creation of art and original ideas, being by oneself alone
without company can force one to use their imagination to invent their own company. Through the solitude,
the dreams come out to play out of necessity. And through that quiet and silence comes focus and execution
of one’s ideas into a given medium (writing, painting, dancing, computer animating). One needs a chance to
think and fantasize away from the noise and distractions of outside life. Solitude can elevate the
subconscious to the conscious. Give your mind the opportunity to think, feel, expand, contemplate, and
meditate. It’s about finding the time for yourself and your imagination.
In my own personal case, I left Columbus, Ohio after undergraduate studies and moved down to Ft.
Lauderdale, Florida for graduate studies in computer animation and computer art. It ended up being an
ironically ideal environment for me to work and concentrate on my studies and artwork. I was completely
away from family and friends had entire days to spend on the computer, producing my dreams and concepts
in digital mediums. So there I was in the midst of a vacation paradise (which I sometimes enjoyed on the
weekends) and worked like a man possessed. I knew that I only had less than two years to get my dreams
out of my system before my graduate studies ended and I’d have to get a real job that would ultimately
compromise how much time I’d have to dedicate myself to my art. Though the price I paid for my solitude
was loneliness, I was rewarded with a wealth of what I considered “prolific” and fruitful artwork that was
created during this time.
Concerning my computer work, I’ve come to realize that it only gains significance to me through
giving it deep introspection (sensitive details that I can only feel and think of when I am alone and in
solitude). If I had a party mentality, I wouldn’t be getting anywhere with my work. It’s sometimes tragic to
myself, yet it is a step I have to take in order to go beyond the ordinary of other work out there.
I will say one thing: on evenings, nights, and weekends I actually have extra time for myself to stay at home
and work on redesigning my web page, work on photo retouching, and edit some writing. If I had an overbearing social
life, all this artwork wouldn’t exist. I wouldn’t have the creative time to work. It’s that simple. I needed time without
distractions.
The Privilege of Solitude
8-7-00: After dropping dad off at the airport, I realized how fortunate and free I am to be able to live
by myself. Any distractions would cripple me creatively. I don’t have to entertain anyone except for my art and that’s how I want it to be. I had that privilege taken away from me this weekend while my dad visited.
When I got it back, I cherished it. I needed solitude to be able to make art.
“The solitude of the Midwest gave me the ability to concentrate and imagine... that would make me
able to do the job later.” -Iggy Pop.
The Importance of Solitude
3-23-06: One thing I have learned from my stay at my father’s place is that I am happiest when I am in
solitude. I can concentrate best and find the most peace when I am in the quiet. With noises and distractions around me,
I feel angered, anxious, unnerved, and distorted. A quiet home offers me much needed peace of mind. I still need to be
around people, but I have my limits of how much of them I can take. I am happiest with a good movie, book, or music
CD.
Singlehood
2-16-02: “The singlehood I’ve known in the past two years have made me stronger, more selfdependent, wiser, and world worn. Loneliness can teach you so much about valuing one’s family and
friends. And yet isolation is a trap and a lesson. One can tell how lonely I’ve been in the past by how many
comic books I owned during my lonely teenage high school years, the number of movies I watched for the
past years, and the number of CD’s I’ve purchased the past two years of alienation, singlehood, and
rejection. These mediums of imagination and ideas have been my most reliable passion, friends, and
therapy from a complicated world.”
Seclusion
When I was living as a semi-recluse for several years in South Florida away from family and old
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friends I had know in Ohio, I had a relentless work ethic producing computer art. Fueled by my enrollment at
graduate school for computer animation, I had a purpose to make art. From the seclusion I found myself
with, my imagination grew in an environment free of distractions. There came a time where I was amazed to
the point where I worshiped my creativity. It was narcissistic, but healthy narcissism. When all I had was
myself to concentrate on and dwell within, my very emotions become my muse. I was an unstoppable
creative force. My internal fantasy world swelled up and I had to release it. Thankfully and mercifully, I had a
computer and the appropriate software to purge myself of my heavy dreams and dire emotions. What I
produced during those years was something I believed to be works of true art. The forced seclusion of being
in a foreign land helped me find myself and what I wanted to make art out of. It freed me with time, a place, a
purpose, and space to dream.
A Sheltered Existence
One of my secrets to my success with having a potent imagination is that I've led a mostly
introverted life. I don't care to go out much and I'd spent a good deal of my life in my room. I
wasn't spoiled or wealthy to have gone on trips to New York City, Paris, Venice, or India. Instead, I
imagined those places and created them inside my head. I didn't have the money or the means to
go to those fantastic places - but I did have my fantasy worlds to visit anytime I wanted to. My
lack of exploring in the real world led me to explore my inner world. I became a professional, expert
introvert dreamer. I truly didn't need to go to Paris when I had a more magical version inside my
imagination. My fantasies always trumped reality. And my yearning heart fueled those dreams for
one day visiting those faraway realms. (And when I did finally visit them, they always seemed like a
bit of a letdown since my imagination's version was so much better.) Since I didn't have any place
to go, I had to dream. It was my only way out. It was my airplane to get away. And in order to fly, I
had to learn to dream. So that's exactly what I did for so many years.
Hanging Around
One thing I cannot stand or tolerate is when I’m in a scene where nothing is going on and people just hang
around. I’ve been to bars, clubs, parties, and other so-called “fun” social outings where I will look around, notice not
much is happening, and people are just standing around. They’re talking about the past, smoking cigarettes, drinking
beers, and wasting their time together. I’d rather move on and leave. I’d rather be alone than be together with a bunch
of people with nothing to do but “hang around”. These people are part of a particular scene that they think is special,
but I just see right through it. Maybe you can, too. I don’t have any more patience for wasting my time and life. I’ve got
too much to do than talk of glory days, get drunk, get high, and get lost in oneself. I’d rather be productive or being
constructive. Give me a good conversation. Give me a good movie or song. Give me life. That’s what I need. If that’s
not around, I split. And that’s how I’ve managed to get so much done with my life.
Wasted Time
While in high school, I had the traumatic experience of spending time with my friends and we’d go cruising
around our small town of 5,000 people and other close-by small towns. It was fun for the first few times because we
were behind the wheel of an actual automobile instead of our parents. But it soon dawned on me that we were traveling
in circles, going nowhere, and doing nothing. Sadly, my friends consistently wanted to spend each weekend cruising
around for hours blasting out loud music. I suppose there was some sort of rebellion thing going on that must have been
appealing to them. After a while, I couldn’t take spending time with them. We weren’t even picking up any “chicks” or
“babes”. I’d had enough. I started turning down their offers to go out cruising and started spending those weekend
nights working on my artwork for my art school portfolio. As my ambition grew to have better artistic skills, I found
myself paranoid of wasting my time anymore. I needed to spend my time through more creative pursuits. Watching
good movies and listening to good music were beneficial to my development as a creative human being. Driving
around in circles, playing basketball, and watching bad Hollywood movies were not. I did sporadically spend time with
my friends throughout high school for some human companionship and friendship. I did feel a sense of great personal
conflict inside that I was sacrificing having friends for eliminating any wasted time and getting my artistic career going.
Yet I simply needed something to accomplish! Ever since those high school experiences, I’ve become keenly aware of
how I spend my time. In a way, I’ve become a loner individual for rejecting to take part in what most of society finds
fun and amusing. No one likes to be alone. But I sure don’t enjoy going in circles either. At least when you’re alone,
you always have your imagination.
Hunger
I have found that working while I am hungry gives me a physical sense of urgency to finish what I
am doing faster. Hunger then becomes the motivating force. The death of a loved one or the collapse of a
relationship (among other things) can also trigger a creative release. The weak anxious feeling makes you
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feel weird, mildly delirious, and hyper. It’s a chemical reaction to having low blood sugar. Once your
defenses are down, your creative spirit can now easily be released. The mind melts away from its normal
state of mind and starts getting “lost”. That state of ease/ unease is actually a state of emotional discharge
and liberation. If you can use it to express yourself through art it becomes a perfect stimulus for creative selfmotivation. I just snack on little things for several hours while I work on project to project. The dizziness puts
you in another plane of reality. You can use it to your advantage; or you can simply satisfy yourself and eat,
fill up, feel “content”, and get lazy. (See the difference?) Fuel the moment with music as your source of food
and you’re off! You have nothing to lose because you feel like you’re “dying”. It’s the equivalent of being
drunk while being sober.
I’ve learned to slip breakfast and lunch and continue working for hours before I gave myself a
proper meal. I’d simply snack on a few things while my body sensed an urgency within which triggered me to
feel restless. That feeling provokes me to release it. If I’m in front of a computer screen, it becomes my outlet
through computer art and writing. It’s just proof that low blood sugar blues make great art!
Literally, stay hungry, physically and emotionally. Don’t feed yourself so often to the point where you
become satisfied with the world around you. They’re always some aspect that needs improvement through artistic
expression. If we become too content with our lives, we become cattle.
Failure
I must admit that to have failures in life are the best (and the worst) thing that could happen to an
ambitious artist. They can either motivate and drive one to great artistic achievements; or burn one out and
make one give up on art in defeat and despair. Lately, a couple of colleagues of mine have been receiving
several prestigious rewards for his animation work. Meanwhile, I’m still receiving no replies or more rejection
letters. I admit that with each defeat, I’ve felt a massive amount of depression and inferiority. Yet, I also
believe enough in my artwork despite the fact that it is less popular to contests, festivals, and museums. I
take that rejection and use it as a major motivating force to create better art. If I got accepted right from the
start I wouldn’t have anything to drive me to dream, aspire, achieve, and win. It is better to be a loser and be
unrecognized than it is to be awarded. Failure(s) is what will keep one human - and strong. Phony awards
boost one’s self-esteem, but cloud one’s creativity and range of emotions. That sort of success can make a
failure out of oneself. It’s a leap of faith to be a failure and accept it as something beneficial. There is still a
real possibility of losing for the rest of your life. But, for the most part, one’s art will improve.
Competition
5-21-99: Competition is cruel. I found out that one of my classmates’ computer animation pieces,
Caleb Strauss’ “Jabberwocky”, was accepted in SIGGRAPH, a major competition held in Los Angeles this
year. Meanwhile, my animated piece was rejected. The disappointment of believing in myself and my work
started to eat at me. I showed my work to the world, and it was overlooked. And I am humbled by it. I try not
to worry, or feel bombarded by feelings of mediocrity… like I’ve been haunted by for most of my life. I work
even harder on top of my other disappointments where I swore to work “even harder”. Now let’s see what
comes out of me now!
Frustration
2-23-99: It seems to me that what I’ve learned the most from the people at my graduate school is
the lack of reaction to my work. I know that they’re more technical than creative, so they won’t get most of it.
Yet I want them, too! And when they don’t, I get hurt and work even harder in order to make them feel
something. It’s been sort of a series of anti-experiences. I’m progressing through frustration.
An Inferiority Complex
1-30-04: I’ve come to challenge the realization that I have an inferiority complex that was permanently
emplaced on my psyche from all the harassment I received from bullies as a child and teenager. I feel the constant need
to be loved, which ultimately leads me to never feeling satisfied. Yes, this is beneficial if you’re an artist and you
should always be restless and searching – but it’s hell if you’re also a human being. You feel belittled when good things
happen to people around you. Someone else’s good fortune gives me grief. I want to be king of the world just to show
those people who mocked me for so many years how powerful I could become. This subconscious insanity provoked
me to become an obsessive-compulsive hard-worker with a potent imagination as ammo. Yet nothing will ever entirely
please me. I keep learning and working in order to improve who how great I could become. But these are all forms of
running away from the main problem, which is accepting who I am and forgiving those who damaged me.
“And this is what I think is still hurting me. See we're like a child that's been battered, has to drive itself out
of its head because it's frightened. Still feels all the painful feelings, but they lose contact with the memory. And this
leads to massive self-destruction, alcoholism, drug addiction… all desperate attempts at running. And if there ever is
gonna be healing, there has to be remembering, and then grieving. So that there then can be forgiving, there has to be
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knowledge and understanding.” –“Famine” by Sinead O’ Connor.
Poor at Reading Aloud
3-31-02: To my shock, I realized that I had become a good conversationist and a descent reader.
While growing up, I struggled with reading aloud. My mom would have me practice every day so I would
build up my skills and confidence. Though I got better, I was never as good as everyone else.
Embarrassingly, I stuttered and muttered my way through school in front of my peers and teachers. Even
through to my graduate school years, I had a trouble speaking aloud, talking or reading.
Misunderstand Information
5-26-95: After parking in the vacant Wright State parking lot, I proceeded to the empty cafeteria. My
companions weren’t there. Bang. I realized that the call Lara had just told me about was one of my companions
wondering where I was at. I had misunderstood the time of our meeting. I was devastated and “suffering the
consequences” similar to what Leugers had blasted me with – all because I misunderstand information sometimes.
(Gotta suffer now!) My confusion of contemplating and processing basic to vital information had reached another
hurtful pinnacle. I watched and flipped through cable for ten minutes before I departed in personal embarrassment. Hurt
and hope attempted suicide on me all the way home.
Misunderstanding Directions
8-19-00: Pardon my naiveté in a world so complicated. I get so lost and disorientated while
driving... I can barely manage outside distractions like rain, music, and passengers... Another near accident
in which I almost caused. The traffic’s so bad and universal patience runs dim. There’s too much going on. I
became self-conscious of myself and my actions while being around a different person. When I’m driving,
I’m like a simpleton - always confused with directions. I’m hard of hearing during conversations. I
misunderstand the world around me... and consequently, it misunderstands and laughs at me. I laugh right
back at it with my art and eccentricity.
Information Overload
9-13-10: I was pretty hazy today with my lecturing skills in Motion Graphics and Video I. Last week, I was
sharp and energized. Today I was half-remembering important technical information and kept forgetting what I needed
to teach. Maria in IT called it, what was it… “information overload”. That's what I suffer from. That’s exactly it. I have
to learn so much technical information for my job that I’m starting to forget the information that isn’t necessary
anymore. I’m forgetting how to navigate through Maya now that I haven’t taught a computer animation course in
nearly two years! Or maybe I’m just getting old.
Jealousy
12-2-00: I believe that I partially decided to become a self-expressive artist because of my inability
to impress girls when I was younger. From kindergarten to my senior year of high school, I was never
popular enough to have a girlfriend. I never had the good looks, the nicest smell, the best physical build, or
the greatest athletic ability. In the rural area I grew up in, sports was what made you look impressive. After
being humiliated and defeated in sports, I turned introverted and hurt inside myself. The only way I managed
to release my feelings were through art and escapism. I obsessed about becoming the greatest artist or
writer in the world so all those girls who I had a crush on would be so envious when I was so popular. I
watched movies constantly as art education and as an escape from my reality. Art and writing was the only
way I knew that I could beat those jocks and bullies who teased me so badly when I was young. I had to
watch my peers dance with their dates at their prom while I sat on the sidelines stag. Imagine what bitter
envy that feels like. To this moment I continue working obsessively in search of becoming a great famous
artist. Those desires were built from those years in school in Coldwater, Ohio.
Getting turned down by this recent girl provoked all of these feelings from my past. How
obsessively and compulsively I’ve been working this semester has been related to her preference of another
over me - which I completely accept and understand. But it’s just the same old routine that happened when I
was in Coldwater. There’s no second place in love. There’s only a winner and the losers. And making
second place for too long can make one insane when you know that means you’ve lost and ultimately left
the lonely one.
Thanks, Life, for the motivating force of jealousy and loneliness you’ve given me to have a reason
to do artwork this evening and night. I need a way to prove myself “attractive” in ways I can’t do in a social
aspect. Thanks for making me feel disorder to provoke me do some work. Thanks for letting me wallow in
my own pity... for the bliss of my own despair. Thanks... domestic bliss doesn’t suit me anyway.
When I do not feel loved or love, I work obsessively so that my art will someday give me some
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sense of attention, consideration, and love from others.
Who would have thought that jealousy could be one’s forte?
Jealousy is my hobby.
While proof-reading through my journals from mid 1996, I re-learned that I always felt less artistic
compared to everyone else. Phyllis was winning several awards while I wasn’t. My classmates were getting
better grades than I was. No wonder I’ve been working constantly. The trauma of never feeling accepted has
been emotionally motivating me for years to spend more time on my art. I want the “A” and the ATTENTION
of the class. I was an ambitious kid who never won a trophy. Art and imagination have been the only careers
I’ve been able to excel in. “B” students are ignored - forgotten about!
7-11-99: The tender romance in the movie Rocky reminded me of an old relationship with mine with a girl
who echoed Adrian’s shy appearance. I thought of how our romance never developed up to making love unlike Adrian
and Rocky. I imagined her in bed with her boyfriend and loving him more. The thought re-cut a raw jealous nerve. I
used to use my jealous rage and bitter loneliness to work obsessively on my computer art... to impress a girl, and build
up my artwork, and show this old girlfriend that I was worth keeping. It wasn’t until months later that I realized that my
emotions were blinding me from realizing that she wasn’t a bad person; we just “weren’t meant to be”. My emotional
connection with Rocky and Adrian brought back all these memories and emotions. Yet, sometimes, I can’t help from
remembering back... and I have to turn off my sensitivity to remain calm.
Anger
6-3-97: This overpowering emotion of raw anger that I sometimes feel was learned from what I came in
contact with throughout my life: my dad and through movies with charismatic performances from Robert De Niro, John
Malkovich, and Gary Oldman. When I lose myself in the obsessive turmoil that is anger, I become a very different
person. I don't need a secret potion formula to turn me into a Mr. Hyde. I already have an inner rage. With these
eruptive emotions that come out when things upset and overwhelm me, the good in me can become quickly
overpowered and eclipse any former positive qualities of myself. I can be a nice guy for 98% of the time. Yet once that
anger comes, out it doesn't matter how good I am. I turn. And it's a state of psychosis that so many people have. Who
hasn't had road rage? It's an emotion I constantly have to keep in check and hold back as much as I can.
Feeling Repressed
5-25-05: I think what my main problem is in life is that I’m heavily creatively and emotionally repressed. I’m
artistically repressed, socially repressed, sexually repressed, economically repressed. I want more out of life. I feel that
I’m not able to soar as high as I feel I could go. I’m constantly working on my art and writing every day. I want more
out of society. I feel a lot like Roy Batty from “Blade Runner” when he explains to his creator: “I want more life,
fucker!”
Arrogance
When you grow up in a small town that keeps you down with its world of sports and its beer, you learn to
dream harder and harder. Eventually, you take on a new kind of dreaming: obsessiveness to achieve and the gumption
to work hard at it. But perhaps most of all, it takes some serious arrogance to think you’ll make anything out of
yourself. To a certain degree, there’s a bit of self-delusion that you’ll be the next Steven Spielberg while knowing that
tens of thousands of others are dreaming the same dream. You bet it takes arrogance at an extreme degree to keep of
dreaming and working hard at your abilities in order to make something of yourself from a small town where nothing
really happens.
Loneliness
8-12-00: I do so much work because I’m trying to impress a girl... who I may or may not have met.
There were times in my past where I threw myself into my work to prove to an ex-girlfriend that I worthy. Art
is my way of trying desperately to get the attention I never felt. So I give my love to my art in order to gain
love from another. I work until the pain subsides. My loneliness inspires me.
11-16-00: I realize that I’m on autopilot. I’m barely changing in personality at all. What an easy
experience. I need a stimulus - loneliness! I’m calling for you. I need your emptiness to give me purpose!
Loneliness Cancer
9-29-00: I realize that I suffer from acute loneliness. If I’m going to survive, I’ve got to do something
about it - immediately. I can’t keep allowing myself to wallow in fantasies and worries. It’s killing me inside.
I've got Loneliness Cancer, you see. Every lonely weekend gets worse than the one before. I have to keep
doing artwork and listen to music to keep myself sane. God, I’ve done so much work... it’s a testament to my
inner longings.
My Struggles With Loneliness
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4-23-08: There are no doubts about how wonderful it is to be engaged to be married any more. I must
remember and reflect that my loneliness was my #1 problem in my life that was heavily causing and spurring my
depression. It was affecting my work and how I lived in general. Every day was getting to be a real struggle. I suppose
that was why I empathized so heavily with Harvey Pekar’s graphic novels about the loneliness he also struggled
through. Loneliness and depression can make you feel extremely isolated and alone. It was very healing and calming to
know that there was someone else out there who felt the same way. I also remember envying Pekar so deeply for
getting remarried and having a wife around to keep him company and companionship. I need to recognize and reflect
on how my life is now and appreciate what I’ve got with Lisa. I also need to remember to keep nurturing it.
Self-Hatred of Who I Am
8-17-00: I’m too weird for most people to relate to or take seriously. I admit that my moods are not
easy to live with - that is why I try to be courteous and kind to other people. If I were rude and eccentric,
where would I be then? I'd be in even worse shape than I'm already in. I’ve grown to feel hate for myself
sometimes because people (my own family) don’t know how to react when I get eccentric, emotional, or
excited. My only way of balancing the conflict is through expressing humor. Yet not all of my silly and
eccentric jokes are met with laughter, and I sink deeper into alienation. I cannot help who I am. I know that
there are other artists out there who are like me. I just wish I knew of them in person. I'd be a whole lot less
lonely.
Tonight I bought on sale at Borders “Bach - Goldberg Variations” performed by Glenn Gould and
“Nebraska” by Bruce Springsteen to keep buying more music to keep myself around artists and grand
emotions. Music is such an art form by creating such images and emotions just by using sound. And
listening to music makes me feel less lonely as a creative and artistic mind.
Self-Doubt
1-1-02: It’s amazing how much self-doubt I still go through. But I’m wise enough to know that it’s
because I don’t have company to distract my mind from worries. It is also because of my solitude that
inspires me to work on my artwork and writing. It’s all a giant mixed blessing.
Pathos
Pathos: a quality, as of an experience or a work of art, that arouses feelings of pity, sympathy,
tenderness, or sorrow. Doesn’t this completely describe me?
Transcendence
I feel at my most creative when I don’t care about life anymore. That is the state of mind where you let
yourself go and your best inspiration flows out. The aloof emotions allow your thoughts to flow out instead of being
inhibited by outside distractions, doubts, or concerns. You just create for the sake of it. It releases you from your
depression. You can do whatever you want without someone else bothering you. You just are… and that is freedom.
Creativity flows when you don’t care anymore. There is no fear of rejection. There are no disappointments. You are
creating for yourself in order to please yourself. And from this spring of inspiration comes art. You may not have any
creative drive for weeks, and suddenly one evening in the shower, you get an idea that solves your problems of where
you want your artwork to lead you to. And it only took three seconds to come up with the idea. And that’s 50% of the
work right there – the idea. The rest is all downhill from there.
Panic Attacks
4-6-97: “The trees are in bloom now - one of my favorite sights that comes only for a few days every
spring. The weather feels perfect, not too cool or too warm. Emotionally for me, it is too perfect for me to enjoy. I
relish the sensation for all its bliss. Yet, once a problem disturbs me, my emotions depress my every will to feel
happy about my life. Once I'm at the bottom of desperation, I realize how powerless I am. I watch movies, take
anti-depressants, create art, or talk to Phyllis to save myself from the pain. Yet the bottom line is this: I DON'T
KNOW what to do with my life! I just sit here, doomed with boredom and confusion. I see all these crazy things
going on around me, and I can't make sense out of them. I've expressed these feelings before, yet they do not vanish.
I know exactly what to do to help myself. I know what other people will advise to me. ("I've been exaggerated my
problems by taking them all on at once. No wonder I'm bawling my head off from all this stress.") Yet, I still don't
know....
I'm twenty years old and I've already challenged my existence for meaning. No wonder I feel surprised
when I realize my young age.”
4-7-97: “I don't know how I got to sleep after lying in bed for three (?) traumatic hours. My emotions
could no longer cope with depression. Movies once excited me by filling my time with meaning and escapism.
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Suddenly, they bored me, drained me. I felt nothing but excess for them. It was like I had felt every emotional
situation and now everything was doomed to become cliché (even in real life). Eventually, I found myself confessing
my emotional anguish to my roommate Rob, who calmed me down with understanding words.
I managed to record what effects my anxiety was doing to my body: nervous twitching, cold chills and
hot sweat, panic spells, heightened senses, and emotions scarier than any horror movie.
Today, I talked to Ron Saks about last night panic attack. How surprising, if not uncanny, to hear what other
people have to say about "feeling panic" in their lives comforted me. In fact, it opened up my dormant positive
emotions and set them euphoric and free.”
4-8-97: “Today would have been as hopeless and panicking as the last few days if I didn't feel a sense of
accomplishment and learning. Thankfully, I gained both. I asked many questions about graduate school and fine arts
jobs to a senior who was planning on going to the San Francisco Art Institute after he graduates. He calmed my fears
that he also didn't have all his future planned out perfectly for him. Most importantly, I wasn't afraid of doing
something as ambitious and radical as moving out to California. I worked on Design II during my lab monitoring. I
discussed my school schedule for the summer, fall, and spring semesters.”
6-9-97: “Recipe for Panic Attack: head aching, a neighbor's relenting noise, malicious humidity, repressed
lust, isolation, boredom with anxiety, my VCR died, empathic soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana why are
all things dying, misspelled, not working, part of life/? help me save me, please me, hold me, kiss me, be me, cradle
me, stop this painnnn ldon't whye understand the sun is bright, brighter than me, I hope words help rambling of
me,m I'm too strange for even me. What will I do with myself if I can be? heh. heh. emotions beyond my control knowledge I do not want to mess with - too much and it becomes mindless garbage. Unresponsive to "normality"y7.
invent my own crisis. Emotions! I feel selfish for wanting love. I lived a simple mistake. Please don't criticize my
imperfection! ...Remembering happier, saner times... you don't have to struggle to comprehend society and its army
of information. writing down feelings for "art" or psychology? my emotions are fully, horrifically realized - like a
flower in full bloom? ?Keen, perceptive, aware, nervouS! my imagination's having a feeding frenzy off my
emotions. lobotomies are given anti-social people. do you really believe there is something to do? life came without
directions - just a bible. I want to sleep but my body won't let me. I miss your presence, your simple existence beside
my tired life, your gentle eyes that remind me of peace, your lips that nurture me with romance, your love.
...What made this evening's sudden panic attack different was that I was self-aware of its growth. In the
middle of watching a video, my VCR suddenly "died". My flow of creativity/ entertainment/ time-filler was ceased. It
was like suddenly being taken off life-support (which had been saving me from boredom). I tried taking the VCR apart
to take out the VHS tape, which possibly messed it up moreover. I felt so helpless and alone in fixing it. I had no relief
from hearing my neighbor playing the same chords from his loud electric guitar. I wasn't sure if the humidity or my
nervous emotions were drenching me with the most sweat. In desperation, I called home for help. What I got was the
scary impression that I left a disturbed mindset to Tanya and dad who weren't empathizing with the way I felt and
didn't know what to do. On my bed I cried and wailed in agony. I wasn't tired enough to escape to sleep so I ended up
looking through a box of stuffed animals I had as an infant. I found a small book in which my mother kept record of
my development. To read her caring words as "laughs a lot!", "CLIMBS ON EVERYTHING", "toilet trained after 17
months (very good!)", and (the final words) "keeps house alive and laughing"… was humbling after reading about my
existence at an age of innocence and toys - especially from the heart of my late mother.”
Mediocrity
If you have great ambition in life like I do, you must also harbor a deep, secret fear of mediocrity.
“We all aspire, but are we really good enough? Are we any different from our neighbors and peers? What
makes us different? How can be become exceptional?” These are all questions I’ve damned in my head
since I was rejected by the first girl I ever liked in the first grade. In order to self-improve myself, I use my
sensitivity, analyze what’s around me and in imagination, take notes, and express myself. I don’t always win
or gain the recognition I crave, but I’ve still got all the time in the world.
4-29-97: “To cope with suicidal thoughts and unoriginal expression is to be exhausted to a brink of utter
hopelessness. To be beaten by your dreams even after concentrating and working intensely. I am "scared" emotionally
- and I do feel a "need to write in my journal". I ramble along and alone and I don't care. But I do? I take in the world
with this empathy of mine and I feel the insanity. I am ashamed of how manically depressed I acted today. The
immediate excitement I felt by acting outrageous and bold was desperation. I worked so hard and the best I got was
"B+". Somehow, I can't deal with that. I know that some people care - yet they are not enough.”
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Mediocre Me
8-22-02: One of my greatest hidden fears is that I am so different from everyone else – and possibly
mediocre. There are days when I am in conversation with another and nearly everything I say is dull and boring. There
is no reason for anyone to like or love me. How painfully and desperately alienating.
Uncool
9-11-02: I’ve always prided myself for being uncool, so I have no intention of being cool for anyone. Do I
have to be cool to go out with you? Is there a form I can fill out to be “cool”? God, I want to be more uncool so I’m
more real. The world is obsessed with things being fun, sexy, and exciting. We’ve lost touch with our feelings by
ignoring them, numbing them, or over-stimulating them.
Discipline
I credit my own father for teaching me discipline while growing up and that is how I managed to gain such a
hard work ethic in my life and career. Without it, I would never have gotten where I am now. So I completely thank
him for it. At times, I hated him for how hard he was, but it did focus me enough in ways that I noticed that many of
my peers never learned from their own parents. And that, oddly enough, got me ahead in life while they lagged behind
partying and fucking away their decades away. I love to work. This takes a sense of discipline, a sense of direction, a
sense of purpose, and a sense of focus.
Migraines/ Headaches
I’ve been suffering from migraines since I was four years old. Because of this insufferable condition, I’ve
been forced to be a more quiet, introspective person. Too much noise only intensifies the pain, so I try to stay away
from loud crowds or large groups of people. The physical anguish these headaches bring me provokes me to fathom my
own fragile human condition. Having a migraine headache feels like one is dying. One is useless with so much pain.
These headaches that I get several times a week help stunt my social life to a minimum. They force me to seek shelter
in more calming environments. Hence, the solitude that leads to creating art.
3-16-99: Whenever I have a headache, I often feel like I am dying. I fear my heart will stop or I’ll
pass out and never wake up. One of my friends suggested that I’ve been getting headaches for “thinking too
much”. He’s probably right. Then I feel I am truly doomed because all I do is think and dream things up! And
when the headache finally, finally, finally goes, it is bliss.
1-5-04: I’d say I get sick once every week from a debilitating headache. I can’t imagine living in a noisy
household full of kids and roommates. That would be a living hell. Due to my sensitivity to noise pollution, the stress
would kill me. I need solitude to give me time and a place to heal. I can’t be around people when I’ve got this extreme
pain in my head. Sometimes I wonder if being single is the best situation I could possibly be in.
1-16-04: “This Friday night around 8:30 p.m., I had a date with an old scorned lover: Mary Migraine. I had to
escape to bed for the hope that some sleep would cure me of the emerging dominating headache that was overtaking me
and everything I did. I couldn’t work on the computer, watch a movie, or read a book. I couldn’t exist anymore, even
after taking three painkillers, four tension-relief Excedrin, and spending a half an hour in the hot tub. (I could have had
a heart attack at this point from the extreme amounts of caffeine medication and the intensity was making my heart beat
rapidly). I couldn’t stop this migraine juggernaut. Five hours later, I awoke to a headache that was still there, only now
it was more throbbing than ever. It reminded me of the anguish I felt as a child when I’d awake in the night and
whimper aloud how much pain I was in. I was doing the same thing tonight at 2:15 a.m. I dragged my weary body into
the hot shower, took more Excedrin, two Imitrix, and fell back into the hot tub. By 3 a.m., my body and mind were
mush. I’ve been here so many times before. I barely had the strength and will to type these words to document my
plight. I’m a human vegetable with a migraine. I’m useless. God save me. Doctor save me. Love save me. Heaven save
me. Self save me. Computer save me. Music save me. Save me save me. Prayer save me. Silence save me. Death save
me.”
Near-Deadly Migraines
2-26-04: My migraines have become a daily occurrence this week, especially today with a near heart attack
from taking too much medication in one day to get rid of a nausea-inducing, mind-spinning, blackout fearing, lifehalting headache-from-hell. I wasn’t sure if I was about to have a neural breakdown. I’m dizzy in despair. I need some
air. I felt like I had a temperature of 119 degrees. My emotions got a nosebleed. I could feel myself sinking in an abyss
of pain. I’m desperately trying to go to sleep to save myself. Watching TV is torturous. The noise corrodes my brain.
Average-volume music agonizes my ears. Silence and darkness is all I can take. Working on a computer makes me
want to puke. There’s an unbearable stinging behind my left eye. My throbbing neck aches to the point where every
movement my body makes kills me slowly. My life is halted until I am well again.
Nuclear Headaches
4-22-04: I took some of my migraine medication (Imitrex) this evening and it wiped me out. It was like a
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nuclear bomb went off inside my body to eliminate my grueling headache. That’s one way of winning a war, but at
what cost to my body and mind? There ain’t no life living here except those on life support.
Perspiration and B.O.
1-27-06: One afternoon I got back from walking to the Columbus Main Library. Unfortunately, I
perspired along the way even though it was 49 degrees. I immediately put on deodorant and cologne, but I
knew that I'd still be stinking with my own B.O. for a while. It reminded me of all the times I got back from
recess or physical education and I sat there consciously aware that I still stunk and there was little I could do
about it. No matter how much deodorant or fragrance I used I still felt horrible that I was calling attention to
myself. As a CCAD student, I had to walk seven minutes from my apartment to the school every day. So
every day I'd smell a bit from how much my body swells and smells. It haunted me like a hormonal plague. I
couldn't help the fact that I have this problem. I sometimes dosed myself in cologne to mask the B.O., but
that would create a self-inflicted B.O. all its own that turned people off. I just wanted to be treated fairly
without repulsion to being human. This was no life to lead when you're put down from living in your own
body. It's a cruel, depressing life I'd had to endure and live with.
6-11-01: Part of the reason I drifted out of physical activities and into more reclusive, creative
exercises is that I’ve had a body odor problem since I was young adolescent. It doesn’t matter how much
deodorant I use or how many showers I take - I will still stink when I physically exert myself. I always loathed
Phys. Ed. because I would work up such a sweat and B.O. that my classmates would make fun of me. So I
gravitated towards watching movies and working on art on the computer where I didn’t physically exert
myself so much. Movies, music, and art making enriched my life and enhanced my already sensitive,
introspective feelings.
B.O./ Body Odor
8-15-96: Thank you for disturbing me, for harassing me… my friends, my friends. You teased me for my
B.O. Only you didn't know that I bathed every day in my tears.
11-1-98: Then my dad dropped a verbal bomb on me: “You’ve got a serious body odor problem.
You should take at least two showers a day. Use deodorant and cologne...” This was an overly blunt
comment from my father telling me something too abrasively, too arrogant for my sensitivity to handle
without more compassion. And because of this critical comment to me, all those goddamn repressed
memories from my past - all the teasing and cruelty in school - resurfaced. And now worse, it’s coming from
my own dad. I felt like people don’t like me because I smell bad. I've tried everything I can to prevent it.
Please... I cannot help my situation anymore! You just have to deal with it. How do I deal with my mind
brewing a burning hot emotional cup of insanity? Tune out into art and words? In an attempt to save my life,
I put on headphones and starting writing and typing - escaping just the way I did once before when things
went wrong between us after three days together. I can’t let what is present repeat itself. End
11-2-98: Predawn chills... shivered. Couldn’t help from remembering the weekend, my life. I
experienced a demise of my self-esteem that made me want to release it out in animalistic rage and
ferocious profanity. The humiliation is temporary and small... but the painful memories it agitated made me
question my self-worth in a world where people wouldn’t want to be around me even though I can’t always
help my body odor. Or how I’ve spent my life doing things alone because I’m so uncoordinated with others. I
thought it was funny. I thought I didn’t really care. I’d rather have a flaw like B.O. than none at all. If I didn’t,
I’d be the one playing the impatient, cruel, absent-minded victimizer instead of the one who learns how to
feel with deeper emotions, empathy, and sensitivity.
5-15-02: My dad came to me this morning and gave me Zinc caplets to help me with my "body odor"
problem. I accepted my dilemma and took the pill, willing to try anything that might help. A few minutes later, I had a
revelation: most creative people have a strong body odor. It’s a fact! I have it. The Poet Laureate of Florida has it. (God
bless him!) Most writers, artists, and musicians have it. Could it be that we sweat foully for possessing great ideas and
expressions? Could our stress levels are higher than normal human beings? Could having body odor be a way of telling
if one is great? Not necessarily, but in some cases, it could be true. Artists sweat their stress and creativity. It’s logical.
Possible causes for body odor are: anger, heat, nervousness, sexual arousal, sweat, and creative thinking.
I Smell
My female friend Jeanine asked me this morning if she could ask me a “personal question”. “Wow!”
I thought. “How exciting! What was she going to suggest?” She informed me that on some days I... smell.
“Do you eat a lot of garlic by any chance? Well, anyway, I don’t want you to be known as “the smelly
teacher.” Jeanine has a real way of saying what she feels without holding back… and she's said it. Then
there is the hidden humiliation of her telling me this since I sort of still like her. How frustrating it is to be
alive, take two showers per day, use deodorant soap, wear healthy servings of deodorant and cologne, use
mouthwash, brush my teeth twice a day, and still people say I smell. And I'm not denying I sometimes smell.
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It's excessively hot and humid outside and I can't help but sweat, which causes me to have a body odor. Yet
it’s even more frustrating that I’m a teacher and students are telling me that they don’t want my help because
they can’t stand the way I stink! It’s maddening and makes me immensely insecure. Yet still, I battle on. My
pride has been wounded. See, life is funny.
A B.O. Disability That I Couldn’t Fix
8-30-04: And so it happened yet again this afternoon: another person commented to me “sensitively” about
my bad B.O. This seems to occur every year or so, with a family member, a colleague, or even a student confronting
me how badly I smell. And it’s something I’ve been fighting to get rid of since the fourth grade when my Phys. Ed.
teacher took me aside to tell me I needed to wear deodorant. I take Zinc in the morning because it’s supposed to deter
body odor. I take two showers a day. I wear lots of deodorant and cologne. I use mouthwash. I mean, there’s only so
much I can do!! It’s a human condition that actually makes me hate my own self because of how one smells. I’ve even
gotten public humiliated and teased in front of the girls I liked throughout the fourth grade through high school because
of my bad B.O. So it’s something I’m hugely sensitive to, and yet I can’t solve or help it. It really wrecks my
confidence. After Kon told me that I needed to use more Right Guard, I fell into a deathly quiet silence like someone in
my family had just died. I felt screwed for life, haunted by a disability that I couldn’t fix. And here I was in a teaching
position where I needed to have good hygiene. I talked to Ryan and Ron about if they also felt I had bad B.O., and they
confessed they hadn’t noticed it before. But Ryan did recommend some better deodorant that he also uses to fight B.O.
This smelly teacher problem feels like a curse sometimes. It really does.
Can't Speak Clearly
7-23-93: I keep noticing how frighteningly quiet I get at times. Sometimes, I’m afraid that when I do speak it
won’t be clear or I'll stutter or I'll forget to enunciate or I will talk too quickly. Since I am not very good as a speaker or
talker, I communicate through writing (which I have become rather good at). I do want to become a writer for this field
is perhaps the best way to get one’s personal message out to the world. If the world and its people start to “collapse”, I
want to be a helping hand that lifts it up. Movies are also a great medium to go into, and it is also a possibility, another
creative language.
Speech Impediment/ Stuttering
1-23-04: Some of my students have laughed to themselves while I speak in class because I tend to mix words
together. I’ll slur “push” and “pull” together and say “Plush the play button down.” Three people will ask aloud,
“Plush?” with an amused look on their faces. This is extremely frustrating because a teacher is meant to be clear and
well spoken when educating students in a college environment. It makes me sound slightly retarded. So I found myself
s l o w i n g down when I spoke and e-nun-ci-at-ing more. The humiliation only forced me to work harder to be a
better communicator.
Semi-Autistic
11-9-13: I'm also coming to terms with the fact that I'm semi-autistic… and so is my own daughter. We both
get over-stimulated and need quiet time in order to regain control and focus. We both get easily upset and have sensory
overload. In truth, that explains why I like to write in my journal and make personal artwork. It soothes me. It's
certainly not meaningless to me. And hopefully, it means something to others with a similar emotional difficulty. And
CCAD can't fire me since I've got a disability and that would be discrimination. Maybe that's what I need to focus my
artwork on: my semi-autism. If I've got a disability, I've got a market for my work. If I don't, I've got no audience.
Acne
From the age of 11 to 26, I was plagued with bad acne. It got so bad I had to see a dermatologist. It spread
from across the map of my face to my shoulders and down my back as I grew older. Some medications helped, though
in the most part it was just something I had to deal with as best as I could. Thankfully, it didn’t leave behind scarring
like I’ve seen with others with severe acne. Yet it did a number on my self-esteem during my teenage years where
“looking good” meant everything to impress girls and be that mystifying position of “popular”.
Gassy
9-2-12: I won't lie: I can be a bit gassy at times. It's just part of who I am. I suppose everyone farts. It's funny
that we hold in that we fart when we're around other people. But once we're by ourselves, we just spuirt them out.
The Runs
5-22-07: Having the runs is about as surreal as being sick can get. Instead of vomiting through one’s mouth,
it goes straight out one’s anus. It flows right out like a waterfall. Everything they taught in school about the human
body being mostly made of water and liquids was made into perfect evidence below me in the murky toilet water below
me. Ugh.
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Eye Glasses
1-2-94: I have reason to believe that I will be getting contacts for my eyes in the near future. This means a
thankful goodbye to the glasses I have had to wear since the 7th grade. Contacts will surely be an improvement since
glasses seem to be a character in themselves. Eyeglasses create an image to a viewing person such as a smarter
individual, or a shy one. Perhaps they also show a weaker side to a person by exposing one of their weaknesses in a
physical way. Case in point, I myself have been changed by my first pair of glasses in 7th grade, my school year of great
change. Eyeglasses tamed me in a certain unknown way, so I would dedicate my time to studies more (in a minor way,
of course). Another person who seems drastically changed physically is Steve Castillo. He seemed so evil and psycho
in his face until he got glasses. Now he ironically looks like a college student. It's a weird transformation. My dad also
changed when he puts on a pair of glasses. He looks so gentle and caring with them on, in contrast to without. So I
guess contacts will be quite a change for me. My friend Darren even said I would look a little different without glasses.
I plan to go for them soon. I can't wait to change. Another famous case of personas changed by glasses: Clark Kent/
Superman where glasses were his disguise. So once I get rid of wearing glasses, people might be able to see me more
clearly. They'll see the real me.
Red Hair
There is a long-standing joke in my family that I was adopted since I was the only one who has red hair.
Being a redhead is perhaps a preliminary reason why I grew up an “outcast” in a small town of Caucasian Catholic
German immigrants. If you had red hair, you were the minority – at times both despised (by one’s young peers) and
adored (by older folk). It was like being a Jew or an African-American in a town of redneck whites.
9-6-08: I used to have very red, red hair when I was growing up. It made me look quite like an outcast
amongst everyone else. So later in my life, I wasn’t all that upset about losing my hair and eventually shaving my head.
(Inspired by seeing a semi-geeky red-haired teen who looked a bit like me in the movie “Can’t Buy Me Love”.)
The Red-Haired Outcast
1-18-99: I grew up in a small town where some of my peers were afraid of those who looked
different. Diversity was something alien to them. My red hair made me a default outcast and a minority in a
town of people where people only had blond, brown or white hair. I grew up the red-haired outcast in this
Midwestern small town of Coldwater, Ohio. It remained isolated from the urban world in the lands of rural soy
and corn fields.
Growing Up a “Carrot Top”
In the small town where I grew up, I was treated like an outcast at a very young age because of my red hair. It
seems totally outlandish now to consider feeling insecure about having a different hair pigmentation in the city
environment that I live in with the extraordinary diversity. But you have to understand where I came from to see how
little diversity there was and how isolated just having red hair made me. I grew up in the farming town of Coldwater,
OH, population around 5,000 people, where there were no African-Americans, Jews, Italians, Asian-Americans, or
other minorities. There was primarily white German Catholics and Protestants. That was it. They had brown hair or
blonde hair. There were only three or four other redheads in town. And we were looked upon by our peers as freaks
“because they needed someone to pick on”. They needed some type of scapegoat. So at the young age of four, I started
getting weird names like “carrot-top”, “Big Red”, “Red”, or whatever. It eventually became somewhat flattering in the
years later, but at such a young age, I didn’t want the attention. I just wanted to fit in… desperately. I wanted the girls
to like me. Why did I have to have this red hair?!? Ironically, the only women who were attracted to me and my
“beautiful red hair” were older women, meaning senior citizen women. The most commonly asked question I received
throughout childhood was: “Where did you ever get that beautiful red hair?” I must have gotten that every few days.
(The truth is my mother’s mother had red hair; and on my father’s side of the family, I have a few cousins that have red
hair. So the roots are mixed on both sides, though no one else in my immediate family has red hair. They’re all brown
haired.) So from being the subject of “prejudice” at such a young age, this explains quite clearly why I have such a
strong empathy for minorities, outcasts, and foreigners. They’re my chosen people.
Baldness
8-3-01: I’ve been watching myself go bald for over four years now. And I'm only 25. It’s been a
defeat I’ve accepted - so today I’m going to shave my head. And so I did. I have become transformed. I am
the new me. The new bald me. I'll embrace going bald by being bald. Goodbye, red hair.
12-13-01: I’ve been getting weird, sarcastic, almost negative offhand comments made about my shaved
head. “Don’t introduce me to your barber, buddy!” “Who cuts your hair?” “We were wondering what possessed you to
shave your, er, head?” “Whatever happened to your red hair?” To me, shaving the (remaining) hair off my forehead
didn’t matter much to me. It certainly looked better than looking like I was going bald. I might as well embrace a naked
bald head. Ultimately, it has solved my 15-year-long dandruff problem. Consider my bald head a Buddhist statement.
9-29-02: I’m proud of losing my hair on the top of my head. Shaving it all off is my rebellion of all those
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annoying TV commercials about how much women love a full head of hair – so buy our re-grow hair product!! “If
you have the look of a winner, you need to have good hair!” There is a definite way of defeating going bald – and
that is by embracing baldness.
Balding “Proves” You’re Smarter
8-1-05: Written half-sarcastically: “What’s wrong with you!?! You’ve got a full head of hair! You’re not
going bald like me! My withering hairline is a sure sign of my maturity and intelligence. It proves that I’m a deep
thinker and have worked extremely hard in my life. But look at you!!! You haven’t gone bald a bit! You’re pathetic and
lazy!!!”
Bald or Balding Role Models
10-5-05: I’ve got a bald spot just like my heroes, Harvey Pekar, Steven Spielberg, and Neil Young! All
right!! (Sadly, the rich ones on this list have all gotten hair replacement surgeries to “correct” this particular
imperfection. Jerks.)
Gray Hair
11-10-12: As Lisa and I were sitting on the backyard swing, she mentioned that I had "crow's feet" around
my eyes. I'm getting old. I'm getting wrinkles now. I've got gray hairs all over my beard and facial hair. The hair on top
of my head is certainly thinning. I've got a very noticeable bald spot, too. Yet I don't care. I like growing old! I don't
want to be young forever. That would suck!
Freckles
Aka: “Freakles” because it made me feel like a freak for having so many of them when I was younger. As a
red-headed boy growing up in a small town, I had literally tens of thousands of freckles covering most of my face,
arms, shoulders, and legs. Basically, this made me instantly an outcast and minority in a town full of fourth-generation
white German Catholic immigrants. I looked different and was treated different. Some older women thought I looked
“beautiful” and wonderful. Yet those of my own age regarded me as a freak and derided me from kindergarten through
fourth grade for having so many visible freckles. I was teased for them on the playground at least every few days. I
hated being different because I was attacked for something I couldn’t control. I just had freckles. It seemed so silly and
simple, but being publically humiliated at such an early age while the girls that you liked watched had a terrible effect
on me.
Ironically as the years went by, those tens of thousands of freckles on my face “bleached” together from
years of exposure to the sun. They literally merged into the complection of my face. I still have lots of spotty freckles
all over my shoulders and arms, but noboy really asks me the old question I used to at school every week: “So Eric,
how many freckles do you have? Ha ha ha ha!” (I would usually respond with an exact number like “13,493!” just to
see what their reaction would be.)
Dreaming
9-29-03: When I dream, it’s like I’m living a separate life. I mean, look at what just happened. Last night, I
got married, for Christ’s sake!! Yet when I woke up, I was single again. Yet the magic of that marriage experience
remained with me. Being a dreamer makes one’s life ultimately a schizophrenic experience. Who am I really and which
reality is “on”/ real?
Public Crying
The odd, ironic thing is that besides my present day steely demeanor, I used to cry all the time when I was in
school and when I received a low grade. I’d try my best, and when I realized that my “best” got a “B+”, I broke down
in tears. And I’d have to try to hide my pain away by wiping away the tears. And this was back in college in video
class, too!! How can I put my very heart and soul into my work and only get a “B+” - and live on with that just above
average grade?! It’s incomprehensible!!!?!! It’s like someone sentencing me to suicide. I thought I was an individual,
but instead I’m just like everyone else!?! It’s an unbearable rejection. I was just too sensitive to take it while my
classmates managed to get A’s. I was the ambitious one who was being left behind. “I thought I was different. I thought
I was special. I wanted it to be true so badly. I believed it to be real. Why was I not good enough!?!!?” These were the
trials and tribulations I went through that broke me down on a monthly basis.
Running Away
I used to dare-dream of running away from home to escape all the problems I witnessed at home and in my
home town. I got so sick and tired and crushed from watching my dad fight with my mom. Also, the psychological
abuse I suffered from being teased at school didn’t help at all either. I just wanted out of this hell. I felt so unloved and
trapped in that house and town that I wished and dreamed to be somewhere else. (No wonder I dreamed into fantasies
so much.) I started to consider running away and how escapist that would feel. Yet I knew perfectly well that this was a
temporary solution with no long-term success. I at least had that foresight. I was also terrified of how embarrassing it
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would be if I got caught and how much shame and gossip would rain down on my family. I wanted freedom, but I
couldn’t get it… at least until I graduated and moved away to college. I was terrified of living and running away was a
blissful concept to me. I dislike school in general and life in a small town was boring me to death. All I could do is run
away in other venues of imagination, namely movies, music, and comic books.
9-13-00: When I was young, I often felt the urgency to run away “to a better place”, to escape all the
pains of growing up unpopular in school and the turmoil at home. I suppose I went into art as my personal
escape route. I became a fan of movies and music, all forms of escapism for the masses - aesthetic
narcotics for society.
Foresight
6-3-04: Then at 12:05 a.m. tonight, I suddenly gained foresight into the future. My present day troubles
seemed feeble. Why should they bother me when I know that I will deal with them? All worries are passing. It was like
my future self suddenly said hello to me and gave me a glimpse of what’s ahead. And it’s not worth being depressed
over.
Alternating Accents
1-6-05: Reading about a comic book character who alternates his accents provided a hint of a
psychological explanation for why I found myself as a teenager subconsciously taking up accents after
watching a movie. If there was a scene or a character that had particularly charismatic actors in it, I’d
suddenly find myself talking and speaking like them. I could be British, Irish, Scottish, or Jamaican. I’d
become them in order to find myself – because my “self” wasn’t formed fully yet.
Life’s Repetition
I realized tonight that after the age of eleven, life starts to feel routine and cliché. The movies I saw
when I was young were pretty mediocre, but I still loved them because I’d never seen anything like them.
Now I expect the best because I’ve experienced thousands upon thousands of movies. They begin to fell the
same. Life started to repeat itself. Even love is a rerun affair. Because I’m aware of these clichés, I’ve grown
eccentric to disrupt any familiarity in my life.
Weather
I like watching the rain. It also has a great sound and scent. When I was young, I’d go outside on the front
porch with my family to watch a thunderstorm pour, roar, and lightning through. It was first-class entertainment in a
small town.
3-8-03: Today was the first day of spring-like weather with the temperature up to 55 degrees with bright blue
skies and streaks of white clouds. You could feel the freshness in the breeze. There’s a feeling in the air that something
good is going to happen. It meant an awakening of the spirit… as well as memories. It instantly reminded me of my
youth.
The weather blossomed into near-perfect spring celebration. Suddenly overnight, everyone went from
wearing heavy winter coats to short sleeves and shorts. The girls started wearing tighter shirts. A giddy hormone-driven
personality emerged from me that made me carefree, flirtatious, and happy.
Mysteriousness
I’ll be honest... I like being mysterious, being a wild card. I enjoy people not knowing exactly who I
am and what my past is. I adore that fact that I had a large back catalog of artwork and writing that no one
has seen yet - like a general waiting with his arsenal of weaponry for an Art War to come. I’ve done work in
my solitude that no one knows I’ve done. The number of CDs proves that I’ve been working since I had to
have something to listen to while working on something.
Secret Identities
One of my greatest obsessions is secret identities. That is one of my big allures to “Alias” the TV show as
well as the entire superhero comic book genre in general. I love the concept that someone leads an extraordinary secret
life. For me, it is my “secret power” of great creativity as I await someone to recognize it and be marveled by it. And I
live for that moment where their secret identity is revealed and their friends, family, and acquaintances get the shock of
their lives!! It’s great fun and awe! And that is perhaps why I am rather secretive about my own life. I enjoy having
secrets. But doesn’t everyone have secrets that give them a default secret life/ secret identity? We’re all undercover in
some way.
Young in Spirit
I enjoy exploring the imagination. It is what gives me pleasure and happiness in life. I can do it through
creating art, watching lots of good movies, reading comic books, and listening to music. Some might call this being in a
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state of suspended adolescence. I call it saying young in spirit instead of old in heart.
Humility
The biggest problem with success is that it can go to your head and blow up your ego to a proportion that it
should never get to be. Humility is by far the best and most nurturing thing to offer your life and creativity. Success can
cloud your mind into believing that you’re the greatest. That type of thinking can halt artistic progress because you will
second-guess yourself of what you once thought was greatness.
Poverty
I was hanging out with my sister Lara one weekend day and some art vendors were having a community art
and craft sale. I started to feel very depressed about the lives of artists. There was little financial reward. What really
started to upset me all around was that all the vendors were very poor from a lack of being able to make a living
making art. Because society doesn’t listen much or pay them for their efforts, they lose their love for their art. They end
up feeling lost, unloved, and desperate. And I was feeling empathy for them.
The Ability to Smell Subconscious Memories
8-12-00: I can smell my subconscious memories. Whether it’s an aunt I haven’t seen in years, or a
dinner my dad used to make when I was a kid, or an old girlfriend’s perfume. These scents aren’t present
when I detect them. They’re not even in my mind. They just occur... perhaps because I’m extraordinarily
sensitive.
I believe that subconscious memories can exert an odor. The only reason I can give to how I keep
unexpectedly smelling people from my past in my apartment. In the air suddenly is my Aunt Sue... Karen
Mathieson... Karen Sanok... Bethany... Rhonda....
Pheromones
My former classmate and friend Karen Mathieson is one of the few women I’ve ever known who
exerts something called pheromones from her body and essence. Pheromones are a scent that is common
with certain types of animals in nature when they want to attract members of the opposite sex during mating
season. What is so odd about Karen is she has the nicest scent I’ve ever come across. As a sensitive
human being to the various senses, including smell, I always found it odd how pleasant it was to be around
her. Eventually, I realized I was reacting to the perfume she was exerting. I couldn’t rightly tell if it was the
soap she was using, or if it was indeed her own pheromones. It was like the scent of flowers mixed with
honey, dipped in butterfly wings and angel feathers. I don’t know for sure. There was something abstractly,
beautifully fragrant about it. Most people don’t have a scent to them besides a perfume, cologne, or body
odor. Karen had her own unique hypnotic scent.
"Gossip"
I know quite a few people who like to pry into people’s personal lives, including mine. That’s when I take it
personal. I don’t care for gossip, and that’s what most of these people do – talk about other people like they’re cannon
fodder for them. When they do pry into my life, I simply make up stories for them. It's an old Andy Kaufman trick I
learned. Kaufman intentionally went out of his way to become different characters to completely mess up with people's
minds and expectations. Therefore, who is the real fool who believes everything they hear or see. It's heresy! It’s
actually sort of fun to give them things that are totally not true so they’ll think twice about spreading such rumors and
gossip about me. Then people will laugh at them for believing me. It’s my way of revenge on gossipers. I also think I
do it because my outside life is so dull and ordinary. It’s what’s inside – my creative life - that’s so fascinating and
unique. Still, most people don’t care for them because creativity can be too different, wild, exciting, and surreal to
appreciate. Only the rare few understand them and find such ideas and feelings to be like diamonds and gold.
Trouble Hearing
8-6-03: The reason I can’t stand clubs or noisy environments isn’t just that I have massive trouble hearing.
My brain has severe difficulty processing so much information. When too many voices and sounds are mixing together,
I am not able to make sense with them all. Therefore, I sit around looking confused, impatient, and upset.
Surrealistic Weight Loss
9-27-03: My life is too encompassed with surrealism. I ate all sorts of fatty junk food this week for the first
time in over a year. I checked my weight. I actually lost five pounds. Perhaps sugarcoated depression also causes
weight loss?
Weird Weight Loss After Eating Junk Food
4-29-07: I ate a dozen glazed donuts a couple of days ago. I checked my weight this morning: I lost two
pounds. I just don’t get it. Shouldn't I actually be several pounds heavier?!?
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The Diet Benefits of Depression
2-6-04: #1: Weight Loss. The “South Beach” diet and the “Atkins” diet are nothing compared to a healthy
dosage of misery to keep you from feeling hungry because you’re too busy feeling miserable and desperate. Depression
keeps one from gaining much or any weight. I can pig out on desserts and won't gain hardly any weight! Then again,
with depression, you don't get much of an appetite either. It's the easiest, most affordable weight loss program system
ever invented!
Friday Nights
2-6-04: I usually get my best ideas while staying home alone on Friday nights. It’s just the gorgeous urgency
of being lonely that inspires me to dream up the greatest of dreams. The ideas come to me in the quiet solitude where
my mind talks to itself about existential things and dreams. I am able to see past the horizons. It's just the right
emotional conditions to force me to be a greater artist. Troubled on a Friday Night - how quaint for the right hurricane
emotional quakes to shake my foundations to unearth some new ideas.
Dating
3-18-04: I hate dating. It just isn’t necessary for me. Dating is when you’re testing out the waters for finding
a romantic and personal partner in love and life. Well, I already know what type of woman I’m looking for. I’m not
looking for a temporary “girlfriend” – I’m looking for a wife. I don’t need to “date” dozens of women to figure it out. I
just had to figure out myself to see who would be compatible with me. I can look at a woman or be around a woman
and know if she’ll interest me past five minutes, an hour, three months, a year, or a lifetime. So I don’t see the point of
going out with women I already know how long they’ll last with me. I’m that sensitive (and eccentric). I’d rather be
single than waste my time and money on girls that won’t make the cut.
Frugality
3-22-04: I’ve got a weird way of spending and conserving money. I’ll splurge my money by the hundreds on
used CDs, used DVDs, and used comic books. Yet I’ll save up money by eating really cheaply at fast food places (Taco
Bell at least once a week) and rarely spend on other of life’s necessities, such as clothes and alcohol. I always order
water when I eat out because I feel like I’m saving that money I could spend on a soda on other things like music or
books.
Colds
6-4-99: I am now convinced that medication can alter my moods... with very pleasant results.
Example: after I took some cold and headache pills, I felt rather swell – healed, in fact. The medication
calmed my emotions to a neutral state.
10-29-11: Colds are often an ironic best friend since they drain your energy down. Yet for someone as hypersensitive and emotional as me, this can also be a huge advantage and relief. My loneliness isn't as potent or
overpowering. I don't feel anxiety or boredom or depression or fears or worries when I'm under the weather with a cold.
I just am. Like I said, it drains me well. The cold numbs my sensations. It's a natural pain killer. I'm too distracted with
being sick to worry about all the ills that pain me. It's a crazy benefit to have to get sick with a cold over.
Hay Fever
8-24-08: My hay fever was dismantling me throughout this Sunday afternoon. My nose wouldn’t stop
running. It really immobilizes me. My symptoms were pretty similar to that of a cold, just without the fatigue and lack
of energy that one gets with a cold.
Weather Sensitive
3-25-07: I’ve got to stop focusing on the negative and notice what is positive about my life. It seems these
erratic weather patterns outside are definitely affecting my emotions now that it’s spring outside. I’m definitely
weather-sensitive, hence why I have been doing several art projects dealing with the weather as a mood front. My
emotions get a little too high and little too low because of the dance of temperatures that are occurring this time of year.
Déjà Vu
9-15-02: I constantly feel plagued by déjà vu. I can’t shake that everything I’m doing has been done before –
or I’ve dreamed it before. I’ve known this life already!?!
9-15-02: I constantly feel plagued by déjà vu. I can’t shake that everything I’m doing has been done before –
or I’ve dreamed it before. I’ve known this life already!?!
Flirtation
7-13-06: The key to my sexuality is with the act of flirtation. I need to be played and kidded in order to be
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unwound completely. It's how a crush begins. It's how a love affair ascends.
Emergences
11-19-07: Emergences will always make you feel the most alive. Treasure them. Thank them. Take them.
They are life at its highest state of being.
Slowing Metabolism
3-9-09: I have grown sick of my gut and how overweight I’ve been feeling. I feel compelled to photograph
myself and how overweight I’ve gotten to prevent me from eating any more junk food into my body. My metabolism
can’t handle it anymore like it used to more than a decade ago. So now I have a new fight: to save myself from myself
and the dessert and the greasy burgers of the world. I need to take responsibility for myself and also exercise daily and
fitfully. I need a renewed sense of commitment. Or else I’m just going to lose myself even more. Before I know it, my
gut will simply get out of hand completely.
High Cholesterol
10-29-10: The blood work from my doctor's visit came back today and it appears that I have very high
cholesterol ratings. Lisa mentioned I'll need to go on medication for it, or at least start taking fish oil.
11-4-10: I went to see my doctor again to follow up my lab test results with my blood work having high
cholesterol readings. Basically, I need to completely change my diet, cut out all fatty and fried foods, eat more fruit,
exercise, take Fish Oil, get on a new medication, CHANGE YOUR WAY OF LIVING. I knew this was coming. In
fact, my cholesterol readings were nearly twice they were two years ago at my last physical. So today, I start my life
over again.
Insomnia
11-12-04: Unfortunately, the new surroundings of my girlfriend’s apartment proved impossible for me to
sleep in. So from 12:30 a.m. all the way to 5:30 a.m., I tossed and turned with a strange anxiety and insomnia. Or
maybe I had butterflies in me by sleeping next to my girlfriend. I wasn’t used to having a woman and cat sleeping next
to me and people living above me. The smallest creak in the wood floor would disturb me and keep me from going
fully to sleep. I just wasn’t ready. I tried eating some food so my stomach was full and taking sleeping pills, but nothing
would ease me to dream. I was so dead tired. Yet I just couldn't fall asleep. Something was very wrong with me. So
eventually, I made the critical decision to go home and sleep in my own bed. Damn it. I tried. I really tried so very hard
to fall asleep next to her. But I just couldn't. I was impotent to dream.
Afternoon Naps
9-6-11: It was overcast, 70-degrees, and it made me feel sooooooooooo sleepy. I just had to lay down in the
comforter chair this afternoon after getting back home from work and take a mid-afternoon nap. I mostly laid there
half-awake while listening to the breeze and insects outside. It was incredibly pleasant - sort of like being aware you
were in a live dream.
12-19-11: I think one of my favorite parts of having the day off is getting the opportunity to just lay down in
an easy chair and take an hour-long afternoon nap. There is no greater feeling. I’d even say it is as good as an orgasm.
It just washes over me. I had Queen’s “Radio Gaga” playing on repeat in my head… and that’s a good thing. The cats
were sleeping in the same room with me. Outside, it was cold and gray. And I was inside with a nice warm blanket
keeping me comfortable. The hardest part is just waking back up. I don’t always fall asleep. I’m more in a half-awake/
half-dream state. Images and dreams and memories and visions flood my mind.
Silence
4-25-12: And the days keep slipping away. And I don't mind. I am so dearly thankful for any hours I have to
myself now. It seems so ironic to admit that since it was only seven years ago that I prayed to have a personal life to fill
my direly lonely hours. Now with a baby, a wife, and a heavier school work load, I yearn for any spare fragments of
minutes I can have to myself. I treasure the silence. Nowadays, I'm always working. I'm always doing something. I'm
editing old journal entries from 1994, editing HD video of Alyssa, or burning DVDs of experimental video art that I've
done. Yet the quiet, silence, and lack of distraction allow me to work for long periods of time without stress. And that's
truly a wonderful thing.
Lies
9-13-98: Someone told lies and falsehoods about my sister, my dad, and me... and people have
been believing them. It provokes an intense determination in me to fight back. So thanks for the lies! You
provoked me and gave me the emotional fuel for free to make art! You energize me! After all, part of the
word "bullies" is "lies".
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Mortality and Death
3-26-06: I hear the ticking of my life clock. I know I will be executed one day in my existence. Some call it
death; I call it termination. That fact will jumpstart your emotions to wake up from the sleep of being repetitiously
alive. Your life doesn’t last forever.
Loss and Love
1-2-98: After re-reading my journal entries, I am most touched by an experience I had with my
school consoler the week after my mother's death. I realized then that I had truly felt what Love is - for I
could not come up with any other known reason why I breaking down every time I saw a picture of my
mother... always glowing with a smile. I still do find it horrific that she was killed so suddenly... after doing
charity work for a local hospital with other volunteers!! Her death has humbled me, as well as my family and
those who were close to her. I don't know what else I can write that can express how I am copping. She is
dead. Her love is no longer present in my life! Yet the main thing that helps me go on is that the love she
gave to me while she was alive is part of me now. Her life lives on through me, my sisters, and my dad.
That is precious to me. That is what keeps me from suicidal feelings and what calms me after those realistic
nightmares about her being pronounced dead. I love her and miss her. That is my human nature - crying.
People, Places, and Events
Coldwater, Ohio - My Hometown
4-1-07: I would like to do a personal documentary someday about how small towns are a completely
different world from metropolitan areas. The small town people say “hello” to anonymous strangers – something that
rarely to never happens in cities. Small town folks would help a neighbor without them asking. They’d roll up your car
window if it started to rain. It’s just the way people are. The goodness in them to give of themselves and their time to
others. Perhaps it is a Christian thing to the region. Perhaps it’s just the way people are raised in a tight-knit, remote
location away from the hustle and bustle of modern life.
A Minimum Wage Town
7-30-08: It’s just a middle-lower class small town. And that was my general impression of all the small towns
in mid-western Ohio we drove through the rest of the morning and afternoon. I used to think that Coldwater was made
up of middle class people with a few poor people. But now that I’ve come back after several years away, I realize that
this, like Lisa’s Zanesville, is a minimum wage town. These people have no prospects and never left the small town
world and lifestyle. They live very frugally. They don’t buy new things for themselves because they don’t have the
money.
A Place Out of Time
7-30-08: After my dad and I stopped off at Greenville Falls (or rapids) for a short walk and to take some
more pictures, we stopped at my uncle's farm. It was like stepping into another world. My aunt came out to greet us and
show us around. I was followed around by a cute little skinny farm cat during the whole time I was there. I couldn’t
believe how surreal it is out there in the rural country because people still dress like it’s the 70’s! People wear their hair
the same way they did when their mothers did, which is kind of bizarre. It’s like a big-hair perm look that a lot of rural
farm women keep. It’s quite strange. And their children that are raised and work on the farm seem like they’re from
another alien dimension. They wear really old work clothes that are extremely dirty (obviously from the farm work and
handling manure). Even in a small town, it’s like people don’t care how they look or dress. Modern styles don’t matter
to them once they get married or get old. And that’s just the way that it is. Of course, some of the teenagers don’t quite
feel that way and “get the hell out of dodge”. My dad even half-jokingly mentioned that the real biggest export from
Mercer County is children. There’s just not that many jobs if you stay in a small town unless you’re okay with making
no more than $10 an hour for the rest of your life in a factory, a restaurant, or a farm.
I suppose that the side effect of this trip to back to where I grew up along with my father (who hasn’t been
back to Coldwater either in a while) was to validate our leaving and how much happier we are for having done so. I
had to admit that there just aren’t that many truly educated people from small towns because there is little reason to
read and get educated. You end up working for manual labor where all you need to be is hard-working, healthy, and
reasonably polite. After stopping at my uncle’s farm and I took some pictures around there as well, my dad confessed
to me how glad he is for getting out of farming. My dad and I are both neat-freaks, and living on a farm is like living in
a pig pen – it’s dirty and smelly. Yet life in the rural country is rather peaceful. I do like the like… for a while. Then I
just grow incredibly bored. But for a short while, it’s kind of wild to come back to the uncles’ farms and check out how
they live and work. It truly is like visiting another alien world.
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Reflections Around My Former Hometown
7-30-08: Our next stop was our main one, our mutual hometown of Coldwater. I hadn’t been there in
probably three years and had been feeling rather nostalgic for it. After an hour in town, I quickly realized how wrongly
sentimental I could be. The town itself rather strangely deserted around 11 a.m. The streets and sidewalks were not all
that busy at all. It seemed quite lonely and vacant. Where was everybody? In Columbus, there’s always people around.
Ironically, the busiest time of the year would be this very weekend with Coldwater’s community picnic, a time of social
gathering for the town, it’s residents, and neighboring town residents (since there is so very little to do out in the middle
of nowhere). Our first stop was at mom’s grave at the town cemetery where we spent a few minutes. My dad quickly
wanted to get moving along, which he mentioned at every stop we’ve made so far, which kind of irritated me because I
never got a chance to stop, think, remember, feel, and reflect anything.
Next, I asked to stop at the local town supermarket where we ran into several people we once knew, notably
two of our former neighbors who lived on Marian Dr., as well as one of my old teachers from the 6th grade that I
couldn’t remember her name (neither could my dad). It’s true what they say about how you will run into someone you
know in a small town store. The town is so small – everyone knows everyone. I walked through the grocery store and it
really didn’t do much for me as far as waves of memories were concerned. I quickly realized that my childhood
memories have faded more and more over the years and these places where I once lived and roamed are just buildings
and nothing all that special like the present or Columbus, for that matter!
Then we stopped at the Coldwater Library where my sister Lara’s old friend and mentor Skeet Walters was
working as a librarian there. I asked if Marge Hoops was working and found out that she took a job as the librarian at
Coldwater High School a few years back. “You really haven’t been here for a while!” Skeet exclaimed.
Our next stop was supposed to be Jutte’s grocery store where I wanted to pick up five pounds of German
grits, but it was out of business and the town pharmacy had taken over. R.I.P. My Favorite Food: German Meat PattyStyle Grits.
Dad and I drove past our old house and noticed that dad’s green house was taken down and replaced with a
wood deck. I snapped some pictures of the old place like I was paparazzi, a pervert, or a spy. I probably gave my small
town former neighbors something to talk and gossip about for years to come. “Who was that bald photographer?!”
Next, we stopped at the Coldwater Park and took a walk halfway around it while I took photos of the park
play toys I used to ride when I was a very young boy. I took a picture of The Shack, a small white building where they
sold treats, candy, slushies, and ice cream outside the baseball diamond and swimming pool. I used to love getting Fun
Dips there for ten cents and gum for a penny.
Upon making my way around the park, I realized to my astonishment of how minor and insignificant
Coldwater really is. When I was smaller, it just seemed so much bigger to me. Now, I’ve come to realize that there is a
whole other world and Coldwater is just a blip. You can drive through it at 25 miles an hour in three minutes flat. It’s
got a park, a hospital, two Christian churches, a McDonalds (which wasn’t even built until the mid-90s!), a Subway
(the eating place, not an actual subway), a school, a baseball diamond, basketball courts, a bowling alley, a Dairy Land,
two water towers… and that’s about it. And for its residents, it’s also got drive-thrus and bars where people can buy
their pizza, cigarettes, and cheap (preferably Budweiser) beer. Once we finished with the park, I couldn’t think of a
thing else that I wanted to go see. I mean, that’s it!
Reflections Around Mercer County
7-30-08: So we headed onwards to Celina, which was only about a mere ten minutes away. Thankfully and
mercifully, Casa Rodriquez, my favorite Mexican restaurant for their great enchiladas and hot sauce, was still there,
where we ate lunch. Afterwards, we took a quick driving tour of Celina to see how it all looks and drove along Grand
Lake St. Mary’s. Even Celina’s lighthouse was puny in size compared to how it seemed in my memories. We ventured
over to Windy Point in Montezuma where we took a twenty-minute walk along a stony thin trail that lead into the lake
that we used to walk when we were younger. This was one of the main places where we’d go for “fun”. It’s sad when
you look back and realize that you grew up in such a lackluster locale. You’ve got cornfields or drive-ins to check out.
For me, I settled on hanging out at the Coldwater library. And yet now that there’s the Internet, I don’t know how
important libraries are to young people as they were to me when I was growing up. The Internet has made printed
material seem obsolete, and making certain people feel the same way. Scary. And that’s how it seemed as we toured
through these small towns of my memories. Places that once were there were either vacant for sale, or replaced with
something else. For example, Betty’s Restaurant on Main Street in Coldwater where I used to love going for their
Turtle Soup was now a Chinese restaurant. Weird. Ben Franklin department store is now known as “Ben’s”. Some
things change, some things stay the same.
Next, we stopped at my uncle Howard’s farm where we socialized for a while, took a short tour of his farm,
and got some free corn from his fields. Howard mentioned that some Turkish tourists had come through last week and
had never seen a working farm before. I always knew that rural Ohio farms are such strange alien places not just to
Americans who live in the cities or suburbs, but most of all to foreigners!
Our main final stop was to Charleston Falls Nature Preserve for a short hike before the humidity drained us
anymore. It had been off-and-on overcast all day. Yet no rain had fallen as they had predicted. Still, I was tired and
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mute by the time we got home from exhaustion from being on the road all day. It had been a long day with so many
feelings and thoughts, memories that are now faraway to me. I am glad to be done with the small town world. And I
suppose that causes something of an uneasy friction among my cousins and relatives that “never got away”. Some of
their children stayed. Some went to college and got away. That’s the way it is. All I know is that my dad and I were
both glad we “got away”.
Outcasts
9-1-02: I sometimes consider myself sometimes as a “Catholic Jew”. I have an extreme empathy for anyone
harassed, persecuted, teased, or mocked in society. Now just Jews, but also black, gays, Hispanics, artists, the working
class, or anyone else humbled by those dominant. This explains my profound connection to Schindler’s List and Spike
Lee movies. I am an outcast and I grew up an outcast. I didn’t fit in and I was punished for it. And the harassment only
made me stronger and more ambitious….
(An Outcast Amongst) Social Groups
I’ve always been an outcast in the social groups I’ve been in - and that’s been to my benefit. I grew
up in an Ohioan county that had the highest alcohol consumption rate in the state of Ohio - but I never
drank. I went to an art school where many of the students smoked pot - but I didn’t. I never wanted to be hip.
I didn’t want to be a phony.
Bullies – “The Value and Lesson of Being Teased”
I believe that part of the reason I work so hard is to “heal” past humiliations and teasing I had when
I was growing up. I want “revenge” - or just to show those who belittled me in front of my classmates that I
am somebody. I grew up in a small town that mainly looked up to its high school athletes. As an artist, I
never fit in with that mold and was looked over. Now I want the attention and respect.
Ordering pizzas and making crank calls to my high school teacher parents’ house were the manic acts of
bored teenagers in a dead-end small town unaware of the side-effects these types of actions were going to cause to one
of their more sensitive children. I took it personally because it was hurting my personal life. I couldn’t be popular at
school when my peers looked down and laughed at me. Did they consider what kind of “outsider” mentality that
damned/ blessed upon me?
7-15-01: Yet there may be a real value of being teased. The more my peers teased me when I was
growing up, the more driven and obsessed I got about getting ahead. The more they teased me in front of
girls I liked, the more I wanted to impress them, privately plotting how I would leave our small town and
make it big. It was this suppressed anger from my childhood that propelled me to work. Yet the
disappointments I found through the course of my life devastated me instead of merely discouraging me.
Obsession is a dangerously psychotic game upon oneself. Still, I kept on working.
They say that this sort of humiliation stays with you and haunts you for the rest of your life if you
don’t confront it. Well, why not turn it on its ear and use it as a positive/ negative motivating force?! You can
“confront” those demons and bullies by creating great art! So take that!!!
Many people question why I never fought back when people used to tease me when I was in
school. I was one of the kids who didn’t fight back. Standing up to your oppressors and fighting back is never
that simple or “easy”. There were times where people insisted that I fight back because some of the people
who were mocking me in public were underclassmen and I was bigger than they were. But I knew what the
ramifications were if I did fight back. There was no point to fighting back when someone was teasing or
harassing me. I would have erupted in suicidal rage of fatal vengeance. I would have most likely severely
blinded them, or have tried to kill them by snapping their necks because of the emotional and psychological
harm they’re put onto me throughout the twelve years in school (from kindergarten to my senior year of high
school). Being a teenager I was emotionally too unstable. I couldn’t let that raw anger be unleashed. There
was just too many mixed-up, confused, humiliated feelings in my body. I had built up so much repressed
anger that releasing it through physical violence against someone who was verbally teasing would have
simply been catastrophic to my future, as well as to the reputation of my high school teacher parents. I didn’t
want to shame them or hurt my family’s name. When you’re getting teased in front of your peers (and in front
of girls you want to go out with), I wasn’t entirely sure if I would have killed them for the humiliation they were
causing me. They were destroying my self-esteem as well as my romantic possibilities for love. That is why I
consider bullies in school to be breaking the law because they are provoking emotional and physical
violence out of their victims. I couldn’t afford being sent to jail after committing a murder. I know I’m a victim.
Yet I figured out that all I needed to do is make it through high school and I could “fight back” and prove
myself by working my ass off in college and in my own artwork. Making art is my way of “beating up the
bullies”. While I get stronger artistically and creatively, they’re going nowhere with their adult lives. I knew as
a 12 year old adolescent what often happens to the “geeks” or outcasts in high school and how much more
professionally successful they are further on up the road. I also knew that bullies or the jocks in high school
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often don’t go anywhere in life after their so-called “glory days” in high school. They had no one to pick on
but abuse themselves or their families. So in a perverse, subconsciously masochistic sort of way, I wanted
to get picked on and play the role of the “nerd”. This “fighting back” that I’m doing is one of the main reasons
why I work so hard and remain so dedicated to my artwork. It’s an obsessive desire to heal myself through
the cathartic release of creating art. What it all comes down to is that if I fought back I may not be writing
these words or in the college teaching job that I am. Instead, I’d be in prison wasting my life away. I knew
what I was doing. My future needed to be my own in order to fully escape from those bullies. If I couldn’t kill
or fight them physically, I figured I could by showing off my creative and artistic talents. It’s a competition
battle that goes on under the surface after everyone graduates from high school. It was my only hope and
my deepest obsession to beat them back by succeeding in life.
I have a lot to passionately confess about the teasing that occurs at school to outcasts because it is
an issue that continues to happen with little resolution or empathy to those who get crushed by such
harassment/ discrimination. I had friends who did get teased as much as I did and had their self-esteems
bashed so much that they weren’t about to make it through high school. They simply gave up, got into fights,
got suspended a lot, dropped out of school, and ended up getting into trouble. As for me, I just kept enduring
all the abuse and dreamed about graduation.
The teasing that occurs in school is allowed to continue because some people never knew how it
truly felt to be a “geek” or a “loser”. They don’t understand the damage that is done by mere words. Calling
someone names when they are still insecure and unsure of themselves is extremely dangerous. If I didn’t
have art to allow me the opportunity to release my bent-up emotions, I would have ended up like those
tormented psychos who killed so many of their classmates at Columbine. Art became my outlet and saving
factor in my life.
“Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will break my heart”… and they did. So thanks to
the bullies I grew up around in my small hometown for motivating me to be so driven as an artist. They gave
me my creative and emotional fuel power to work like crazy. Some of you went from friends to enemies to
bullies to (usually) adult assholes. You all provoked me and I couldn’t’ fight back. Luckily, I’m doing my
fighting back through my art now and kicking your asses in the “real world”. How does it feel to be where you
are and where I’m at now? The jokes on you ever since we graduated high school. The tables have turned.
So thank you, bullies… You made me into the raging artist I needed to be in order to be an important,
confessional, self-expressive artist and a stronger human being.
6-10-93: Another event happened today in a high school hallway during my custodian job. I was pulling a
four-wheel cart when I noticed Trent B., my ex-best friend who betrayed and beat me up when I was eight years old,
walking rather down with his grandfather. Trent has been getting into trouble and getting drunk for the past couple
years now and has flunked many of his classes. That’s when I realized an old promise (or threat) I made to him in the
5th grade when he was teasing me in front of a bunch of my fellow classmates. Of course, I was getting pretty steamed
up. I told Trent that I would go farther in school and become a better person (or be more important) than he was. I
guess I have fulfilled my promise. I do, however, feel sorry for Trent. He may never live a good life again. He will rot
in a rusty old chair in front of a TV with a beer in his hand… with a potbelly.
3-5-96: “I am not going to be your nerd or fool to mock! Leave me be so I can live without your bias and
stupidity. If you don't, I'll have my revenge in my life's work. I'll be remembering how you tortured my sanity and
raped my confidence. Until I'm psychologically eased, you will always be inside the hurt of me.”
I won’t forget about the respected classmates and teachers who tried psychological torture on me
for upholding my beliefs and speaking the truth of my mind.
When Bullies Grow Up
4-3-04: This ought to get a laugh out of you (and please don't spread or discuss this with anyone else):
I got this email out of the blue this evening (name edited for his privacy): “Eric, "", here, hope you are well. I
wanted you to know that I visited your web site and there was a lot of good information in it. Seems like you have
accomplished many things and I couldn’t be happier for you. I was a bit alarmed when I read my name in the article as
a "bully" and many other choice words. From my recollection, I never went out of my way to harm or cause ill will
towards you. If I did, I apologize.
I currently have a good job, with my own house, good family, and a great girlfriend. I've worked very hard
for all of them. I don't feel it is fair for you to pass judgment on me for who I was or who I am. By doing so, you are
being hypocritical. From reading your information, you always felt you were unfairly judged and seen as an outcast.
By passing judgment on me when you haven't seen me in years, you are unfairly judging me as well. I feel I have went
somewhere in my adult life and I feel I have a lot farther to go. In ending, I wish you the best in the future.”
In response to an email from one of the guys who had read this portion of this writing and felt hurt
by what I’d written about him: “That was an email I wasn’t quite expecting to get! That was a rather odd thing
to read. It reminded me of that scene from “Mr. Deeds” where Adam Sandler calls up Steve Buscemi and
apologies to him for being mean to him when they were kids. Buscemi doesn’t mind at all, hangs up the
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phone, and crosses out Sandler’s name in people he was going to kill. It’s a silly caricature scene. Trust me,
I’m not that crazy.
I know everyone changes, especially once you get out of high school or a small town, which are
both closed worlds to the rest of the world. Getting out of Coldwater and being at an art school was probably
one of the best things that ever happened to me. A creative artist in a small town full of sports fans and
farmers wasn’t quite an ideal place to grow up.
I believe when I wrote that part about “bullies” I had just gone back through some journals I had
kept during 1990-95. And I don’t think I would have been able to remember much of any of it if I hadn’t kept a
sometimes painfully detailed journal of what I was living through. I must have come across your name or
some incidents of some sort where you were involved. I probably had an emotional flashback and wrote
what I felt as some sort of cathartic release. So if there’s spite in there, it’s from reliving some old feelings
and memories. I’m sorry if it seemed like I was singling you or anyone out. Rereading over what I had wrote
some years ago, it appears that I was simply lashing out as a reaction from re-reading some past journal
entries. In fact, I found some of it rather upsetting myself. It was my mistake that I didn’t re-re-edit and tone
down what I had written (mostly due to the fact that there was hundreds of pages of writing to go through). I
had no right to put you down in your adulthood. It was a drastic mistake to use anyone’s name when I was
thinking back. In any due truth, I am just as guilty for putting down my own peers in the past for being
different or stupid as a psychological defense to make myself look and feel better. It’s all about “being
human”, I suppose. But people, especially when they’re younger in school, have to realize what they’re doing
to each other and to be more sensitive to those around them. As for the writing I did, I should have put in a
disclaimer that people do change. I know fully well you’ve probably matured and grown up to be a better
man. I’m glad you proved me wrong. If you want my forgiveness, you can have it. But some memories still
linger on with only time to heal them. I don’t hold any one person responsible for how I was treated back
when I was in Coldwater. But I’d be a liar if I didn’t state that people provoked me in the worst ways while I
was growing up. And once a fire is lit, it’s hard to make it go out.
In the end, the you who I knew back then is little or nothing like the person you are now. The you I
used to know would never make fun of me if you by yourself. But sometimes if you were with your friends,
you most certainly would just to get a laugh out of my expense. So if there’s one thing I learned from this all,
it’s to have a sense of humor. So I wish you the best, Eric Homan.
P.S. I have not become a raging psychotic and don’t hold any personal grudge. I will take off
everyone’s name off that “Empathy Files” essay I wrote up about what inspires someone to create art, out of
fairness to you. It is hypocritical is summarize someone’s life as “bad” just because they were being human.
But it would be ridiculous and outrageous to ignore that nothing happened. And as part of the writing I was
doing, it was absolutely relevant. It’s in the past, and it was a critique on the past that I lived through. As
Eminem would say, "I’m just fooling with you. You know I love you!”
The oddest thing about having my own personal website up is that I’ve inadvertently “struck back”
at the so-called “bullies” who teased me by having the last world on the World Wide Web for anyone to read.
It’s like what goes around comes around. If you harass someone, they may remember. In the end, the
writing proved some good because it made those who were “bullies” rethink their actions. I don’t believe in
living in the past. I prefer to live in the present while looking towards the future. I will only look back at the
past if there is a lesson there to be learned. And I feel deeply that there is one in the discrimination I felt
growing up at Coldwater Public School in a small town Catholic community.
If I’ve learned one thing by this email response I got today it is that I cannot back down from
expressing myself (though I may sometimes need to articulate things more for others). There is a dialogue
there that needs to be started, and I’m not afraid to speak out. I do have an amicable, passive personality as
well as a fierce, highly charged aggressive personality that are often at odds for control of my personality.
One side doesn’t want any trouble; the other side welcomes it if it is justified. It’s just part of the odd duality
in my nature.
What I also found utterly fascinating was that through writing out a spiteful account of the teasing I
received while back in school in Coldwater and actually naming names of those who had actually harassed
me, I received a defensive, “hurt” reply back from one of them. Everything came full circle. The torment they
enacted upon me came back to hit them back through my releasing the information of the “crimes” of those
times. Alas, the tables have been turned. I got to play the bad guy and he got to feel how it’s like to be on the
other end as the outcast. I am a vicious product spawn of their careless acts of “harmless humiliation”. If you
think about the matter, it’s rather brilliant performance art on my part! What I did was practically diabolic!! I
mean, what provoked me to lash out with the writing I did in the first place about the psychological effects of
being publicly harassed? Think about it…. It’s a question of who made who. Who’s truly responsible? And
who’s left laughing last? It may be immaturity on my part, but its intentional immaturity for the sake of selfexpression and revelation of the effects of public humiliation through being teased for over ten years in a
public school.
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Needing someone to share how I felt, I emailed my old best friend from Coldwater, Joe Pleiman, what "" had
written me and what I had written back. Joe emailed got with this interestingly opinionated response: “And Justice For
All”: Eric, Maybe the saying is true. "I don't get mad, I get even." I find your e-mail from "" to be absolutely
fantastic. To know that what he did to you back in high school is so appalling to him that he would mail you and tell
you it's not fair for you to put him on point, is music to my ears. I met up with "" a couple of times when I was in BG.
I think that he went to school there for a while. I know that "" and his sister also went there. "" also went there. They
would come out to the bar that I dj'd.
Anyway, I think that "" read your page and realized what a complete dick he was. As should about 15-30
other people that went to that school. As for your web page, I don't think you should change a thing. It is there own
problem if they can't handle the truth. If you made reference to how they may be now, it is purely based on information
that you obtained during high school. Given the path they were heading, you have no other option but assume how
they will turn out.
You played him like a fiddle. Bravo, -J.
Bullies Are the Real Terrorists
5-29-02: The people - children, teenagers, and adults - who teased, ridiculed, mocked, and emotionally attack
others are the real terrorists living amongst us. They are the ones who fired the first shots for being prejudice with
people whose only crime is that they are different. Bullies and jocks who emotionally abuse other people are the ones
who deserve the death penalty. The emotional wounds from being teased when you were young don’t heal easily, let
alone go away. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words offer much more lasting psychological scars. Once
the world rejects you, there are only a few options left for you to live by. Seclude yourself from society, keep living
with the teasing, or… respond with violence. The kids at Columbine chose the later because the teasing kept going on.
In either way out, society ends up losing.
Message to Bullies
3-18-99: I had to ask myself the question every unconfident bully who ever made fun of me: “Are
you really so depressed and insecure about yourself that you need someone else to laugh at? To be made
fun of? I am not your toy.” I’m sorry for being sensitive, but I don’t like be laughed at. I’ve had enough of
torment in my past. --I don’t want to be hurt, you were hurting me - so I reacted. It was either through words
or violence.
Bullying Is a Public Psychological Misdemeanor
7-25-97: Today, a coworker resurrected an emotional tension from my past toward anyone who took
advantage of myself and those who are "different". Loud, obnoxious, and insensitive, he was a shy, emotionally fragile
person's nightmare. He exploited his cleverness to his advantage while endangering our emotions and confidence.
Because a female peer had large breasts, he made up a nickname similar to her last name that made those around him
laugh at her in a belittling fashion. If one "geek" wasn't around to play his fool, he'd belittle someone else imperfect.
Then eventually, his attention as directed at me. When my coworker asked me to do him a favor, I misunderstood his
sincerity for being manipulated (for that was how I saw his personality to be) - and acted disturbed and hesitant. He
doesn't work this morning (for he decided to make today an exception.) My reaction left those around laughing and
whispering about me. Inadvertently, their insensitivity provoked my passive-aggressive side to feel such bitter hatred
towards him and his abusive actions. It seemed like a public psychological misdemeanor had just occurred. To be the
target of laughter, pieces of candy, rubber bands, and other objects to amuse others... I never forgot. I'll never forget. I
couldn't dismiss the hurt that had been done to me. I needed to prove my worth back to those who degraded me, my
peers, and myself. I must.
Shocked by the public embarrassment I had received this morning, I stared at the open pages of the book on
my lap oblivious of its content. My emotions were so confused that I couldn't live together when he had to degrade me
to make himself feel better.
Psychological Abuse in Junior High
12-4-97: I cannot ignore how much the movie, "Welcome to the Dollhouse", felt like my own experiences in
junior high school. Graffiti vandalized on your possessions, naïve parents, repressed hormones, popular bullies
throwing paper wads at you, unsympathetic teachers who find one's defiant attitude toward your harassment to be "antisocial". Well, I learned how to be loner from being in junior high school!! I mean, what can you do? Just take in all the
abuse? Leave the spitballs in your hair and take your punishment for being "ugly" and unpopular? They'll tell you:
"SPEAK UP I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" after you've been emotionally tortured. This savagely mean (yet perceptive)
movie also touched upon the psychotic tendencies one receives from too much intimidation. You want everyone to love
you (only to find out that popularity is so very superficial).
High School/ Junior High School
I lived in an open “prison” called school for twelve years. At times, home was also a prison. It doesn’t have
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any bars, but it has the oppressive atmosphere of a prison.
6-6-96: Explaining how upset I am of my school years might take years of psychoanalysis, several
unauthorized biographies, interviews from the peers who hardly knew me, and a little bit more exaggeration. I had my
good and bad times in and out of school. Besides frustrating myself by working so honestly hard for the decent grades
while others cheated, I found myself trapped and shy because I was so unpopular. It didn't matter how polite or mature
I was; my peers wouldn't fully respect me - or at least show it. I hated being a teenager since we're trying so hard to
grow up with our newly developed bodies, hormones, and identities. Some uncertain people didn't know how to, so
they were quiet, shy people like me as a target to tease. I'll forgive them for what they did - but I refuse to forget that it
never happened.
The High School Holocaust
3-25-04: I survived the High School Holocaust, but the memories linger on…. The bullies and their
pretty girlfriends were the enemy. It was a war fought every year in every school across America. The
government doesn’t recognize it. Not even the principles or guidance counselors. They cover it up and act
like nothing is happening. It’s a quiet war… a silent war. An internal war fought with teasing and harassment
as substitute weapons for killing. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” was
a naïve lie. Words were far worse than sticks and stones. They don’t show how much one bleeds on the
outside, but one is horrifically ravaged emotionally and mentally. You live in fear of leaving your house since
someone may call you a name in front of your peers, only to keep you down. Only to hurt your feelings until
you can’t talk anymore for fear of being mocked again and again and again. It never ends until you graduate.
But the depression never stops. It lingers on even if you move away. The emotional scars don’t quite heal
with time and space. The high school war taught me subtle bigotry through clicks and clubs. If you weren’t
part of the in-crowd, you weren’t anyone at all. You were a geek, a nerd, a nobody who couldn’t get a date
because you weren’t “worthy” of one. The girls weren’t interested in guys who were cool. The girls didn’t
want to hurt their image. Those who were picked on were weak in their pretty eyes. You can’t fight back
when you’re outnumbered. And if you do fight back, you might just lose control and actually kill your
oppressor. Now that would be breaking the law. But it was in self-defense. I didn’t start this war. I just was.
And you just was, too. Tolerance and understanding wasn’t taught enough in school. Ironically, if you were
picked on and were a geek, you were educated by default about sensitivity and compassion. You found out
how it felt. The bullies never did. And the geeks became more successful after they graduated because they
survived and endured more pain than anyone else. The bullies never learned that and they never made
anything spectacular out of their lives. Yet some “geeks” didn’t survive after high school. They faded away in
fear and anguish, unable to make it as a human being in real life. They were the ones who didn’t make it
through the high school holocaust. It’s the emotional battle that not everyone makes it through. The thing
people forget is that some causalities are still living, and are slowly dying from the emotional wounds
inflicted inside them. It is the journey that we can’t all fully graduate from. It remains with you for the rest of
your life. It’s part of the life’s lessons that you learn in school, except not from teachers but from the bullies.
So what is there truly to be learned from all of this? For one thing, awareness and sensitivity. Be
aware of your actions towards others and how they may affect them. Never forget that. The massacre that
took place at Columbine of outcasts “fighting back” against the jocks was just a skirmish in this war that our
society doesn’t seem to understand how to help. Well, hopefully my story of these personal feelings are a
way of helping make people understand. Only through empathy will their be a solution. And now, only
sensitive action will solve this problem and try to end this war. Columbine was an act of retaliation that every
person who has ever been teased has dreamed of inside their head, including mine. That makes millions of
teenagers and kids who know how those Columbine killers felt like. Maybe you did too if you’ve ever been
teased and humiliated in public. It’s a self-esteem problem that runs through all of us. We compare
ourselves to other people and bring down those around us in order to make ourselves feel “better”. But what
damage does it do? And to who? Maybe it is a maturity problem that we don’t know what we do to other
people. Maybe we need more empathy art education for children to make them more sensitive. Maybe less
aggressive sports and competitiveness in our upbringing is the beginning to an answer. This isn’t an easy
war to win. But it has to begin somewhere and somehow. Little by little, we can win… and heal.
Yet one must also consider the mentality behind the bullies as well. What trauma compelled them
to want to “innocently” torment others in order to selfishly make themselves feel better? Did they come from
broken homes? Were they abused, physically and/ or emotionally to the point where they needed to hurt
someone below them back?
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder From Experiencing High School
2-24-13: I've figured it out. Soldiers come back from war with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I came out of
high school in Coldwater, Ohio with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as well. It was that brutal on my psyche.
Halloween in High School Hell
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10-28-94: This was a perfect time capsule of the high school experience for me. And it only showcases the
one hour I had to be at high school per day during my senior years (since I was part of the Post-Secondary Program and
was taking college classes at a nearby college.)
Well, get ready and willing for another long journal entry because today had fifteen minutes of absolute
angst, dismay, and envy.
This afternoon, I assembled my Halloween disguise for my school’s dress-up day. I did have second thoughts
about dressing up. But after so much shyness, I figured, “What the hell! It’s my last Halloween dress-up day!” I wore a
black t-shirt under my favorite purple design silk shirt, gray jeans, a blue bandana, a Marti Gras feather mask, and black
grease paint on my chin, around my lips, and waving lines below my eyes. I figured I was crazy for dressing the way I
did – and crazy if I didn’t! I tried to boost my spirits by watching a part of Pump Up the Volume.
I drove over to school, walked down to the back doors behind the school where I always go into, walked into
the teacher’s lounge to pick up today’s Channel One notes, and put on my disguise. It felt pretty dumb with the mask
on, but the perplexing feeling was a good feeling. Mr. Woeste recognized me and I spoke with him momentarily. Dan
Holbrook knew me immediately, too. As I entered the classroom, Darren saw me and laughed really hard. Then my
former teacher Mr. Brunswick asked me what I was supposed to be. I responded with some self-deprecating humor, “I
guess I’m supposed to be ‘a Marti Gras reject’!” It was a stupid thing to say, so I went back to my seat and took off the
mask. When the rest of the class entered, they sort of laughed and snickered at me, except with negatively and scorn. I
just don't think my classmates and peers "got me" or my sense of humor. Karen Timmerman almost mockingly asked
me what I was. I was really shocked by their off-puttish reactions. In their minds, if you dress up for Halloween, you
must be someone recognizable - not anything weird, funny, strange, creative, or original like I was doing. Somehow,
this also seemed like a metaphor for how small town people think of movies: they don't want anything original, just
things they've already seen before. So how dare I be different and odd?!! Yet still, I was stuck and alone in this high
school hell, so I still had to live with this offensive world. I couldn't shake from feeling down and confused. So when
one more classmate, another girl, asked me what I was, I said blankly in a self-defeated way, “I don’t know.” Jayme
Sudhoff stared at me with fucked-up eyes and critically wondered the same. It seemed like her eyes were screaming at
me: "How dare you be so weird?" What started off as a "fun" thing to do by dressing up as an abstract costumed
creation turned into a confused costume Halloween disaster. I had no irrational-thinking, creative, or open-minded
artists around me. I was in a school room full of high school seniors who could only think of Halloween as something
people dress up as “normal” characters. They were too "adult" to dress up for Halloween, unless it was to be ironic and
funny. They wouldn't want to look "uncool", would they? To be honest… at that very moment, I actually felt
threatened by their lack of vision and open-mindedness to something different. I needed to get the hell out of this
insane asylum of "cool kids" who refuse to have fun without being thoughtlessly cruel. This was public humiliation and
peer disappointment on a level I wasn't expecting.
By 2:55 p.m., Mr. Fair announced for all seniors to go down to the gym for the annual Halloween assembly. I
quickly put on my mask and headed off to the gym behind Steve Vagedes. Frankly, I wanted to disappear, and putting
on the mask was the best escape plan I could find. When we were about to walk up to the gym bleachers, he recognized
me and told our group of friends, including Joe, who I hadn’t seen in two weeks. He stared at me in perplexed
amazement and bewilderment that someone as shy as me would dress up as something like this. I was essentially letting
my "freak" flag fly since it was Halloween. As I sat down next to Veg, I looked over at Joe and noticed two girls sitting
next to him. One was a very pretty shorthaired girl (like Bridget Fonda) and the other had glasses and long brown hair.
I realized then that the pretty shorthaired girl was Joe’s girlfriend and her friend. Joe then shouted over to me what I
was supposed to be. I replied trying valiantly to act like I was having a "good time": “I’m a Marti Gras reject!!” or
something like that. Joe was sitting next to a loud and popular Darren Hart. I guess that if you get a girlfriend, you
achieve “higher status” in a superficial high school class system. You get more popular friends. Meanwhile, us single
guys all sat together in the back rows. I looked behind me and noticed Kyle Gansert. I also noticed the ring on his
necklace – a flashy fashion statement for couples to show (off) they’re in love. Finally, my two best friends, past and
present, were now occupied with the other sex. They didn’t need my company anymore. I couldn't imagine things
getting any worse today for me.
And then they did. The assembly was for a costume contest for the entire high school that a student
committee had judged each grade throughout the day and selected the winners. As the agonizing assembly went on, one
of the winners for best costume were two underclassmen dressed like two unpopular high school teachers, Lester and
Liz Homan - my parents. My public humiliation had just been compounded and squared. I had to sit there and watch as
two teenagers two years younger than me walk in front of the whole student body, staff, and faculty while dressed up as
caricature versions of my own parents. This surrealism was at its ultimate breaking point for me. I felt really sick –
mentally, physically, and emotionally. My life was corroding where I sat and all I could do was watch through my
mask. I wanted my life to end. I wanted out of this hell, this high school. I didn't realize that my own high school would
turn into a living hell for Halloween dress-up day.
I did have a psycho mental fantasy while sitting in the gym during that Halloween contest assembly. I
imagined myself winning a prize for one of the best costume categories. As I received my prize on the gym floor, I
would say a few words of “How much I despise you asshole couples.” I would simply go crazy and start shooting
bullets into the crowd. But to my surprise, the gun would shoot only blanks. I would stare wildly at the gun and
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gradually let my facial expression disappear. Then I would glare back at the crowd and comedically yell, “Trick or
treat?! Get it?!!?” Maybe the crowd would laugh at my extreme joke/ prank/ social commentary and accept me as a
wild, outrageous comedian. (Yeah, right.) Maybe, I just stood there on that gym floor in silence as the crowd stared at
me in disgust and repulsion at this outcast son-of-two-disliked-teachers before yelling and teasing me all the more.
Now they would have an even better reason to hate and mock me. He acts odd and crazy, therefore he was asking for it.
I don’t know how to live my life in love and bliss… yet. But I’m willing to find out, or else.
(And I don't think this little "destroy your high school" fantasy is that dysfunctional at all. It's a healthier
outlet to output all of the distress, frustration, and public embarrassment as a fantasy as a copping mechanism than
doing the actual act. I was just projecting my pain that I have received and built up all through my life and into high
school. I needed a way to relieve my agony. If I can do it through writing or art or daydreaming, so be it!)
The assembly ended at 3:10 p.m. and a bunch of my fellow seniors started yelling out to show off. Then
Amy, who I had attempted to ask out months ago, walked by perhaps not even noticing who I was. My friends had
seemingly abandoned me, intentionally or by nature, for girlfriends. And now I was being seen through by every girl in
my grade and school. This was it. I was truly in a teenage dimension of high school hell.
As I walked over to the teacher’s lounge for work, I slipped off my mask in total disgust with my disguise,
my façade, my surroundings, and my life. I only felt comfort when I told myself to accept depression because it is the
only capable way to relieve the damnation of being a teenager. If you can't beat it, join it. I welcomed depression like
an old, familiar friend. I was turning to the dark side. After all, depression was my only true friend that truly
understands me.
We student custodians started work early at 3:15 p.m. so we could leave earlier. As we walked over to the
North end of school, a small innocent kid asked me what I was supposed to be. At my wits end, I blew up at him
saying, “Nobody! Do I have to BE somebody?!” High school only made me a mean person. But I felt that if anyone
could find my costume "fun", it would have been a little kid.
Still, they just wanted something to center on to see "how" I was. Without it, there was no bearing for them to
relate. So in a way, it was my own fault. But then again, Halloween has no rules. There is no requirement that you have
to dress up as a famous person or type. I can just be anyone or anything I want. It's that freedom that drew me to dress
up in the first place. But instead of freedom, I was slapped with discrimination, distortion, and disillusionment. Trick or
treat, indeed.
If I had to label my life this Friday, it would probably be considered “Surviving the Halloween High School
Hell”. I changed the way I comb my hair by brushing it back. I dared myself to wear an eccentric costume creation
even though most of my peers only dressed up in group costume characters. It seemed like none of them had the guts to
go it alone, be an individual, and dress up by themselves. I worked up the confidence to be an individual today… and I
paid the price for it. (My favorite costumed group was the group who dressed like characters like “G. I. Joe, Catwoman,
etc.)
Toilet Papered Weekends
11-12-94: After a while this evening, I heard several doors suddenly slam shut. So I went to the bathroom
window to see who it was. What I witnessed was the surreal nightmare that has plagued me several times throughout
my childhood and into my adult teenage life: our house was toilet-papered. I put on some shoes and almost went
outside when I saw my mom was cleaning up already. So I went back to my room. A minute later, my dad asked me to
help out. I don’t believe I sighed at all as I cleaned up the white strands from our front lawn and the tree branches. I
meticulously picked up most of the stuff as quickly as possible. I even climbed to the top of the roof to get the toilet
paper out of the trees. Suddenly, I heard the approaching noise of loud music from a car. As the car drove around the
circle, they took off down the street honking their horn. During that moment, I was hiding on the shadowed side of the
roof, just watching them. I came down from the roof and went inside where I saw a pile of about twelve rolls of toilet
paper. I smiled at the ridiculous sight and figured that I may miss these so-called "glory days" of toilet papered
weekends. Oddly, the toilet papering didn’t bother me as much as it did in the past. Maybe it's gotten so routine that it's
become numbing and pointless. I guess that after you've been humiliated and abused for so long you really don't feel
anything anymore. The mysterious thing about tonight was that I didn’t hear anyone outside. “They” came early, too –
a 8 o’ clock. I did feel slightly nervous for the remains hours of the night. I went downstairs to watch parts of
Goodfellas, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Pump Up the Volume, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I needed the
escapism. It was the only way for me to survive. It was a pleasant night – alone. I feel content with my situation these
days. I don’t always have to go out or act up to other people’s standards. I can be myself for the first time in my
intelligent life. “The future only looks brighter if I open my eyes,” I said to myself. And the truth has been spoken.
The “Glory” of High School
It’s an odd irony that for most people their glory days were in high school. They age, go on with their lives,
drink heavily, and look back lost and confused at those times as the best times of their lives. I had a miserable time in
high school, yet experienced somewhat better surroundings in college. I’m still striving for my glory days. That makes
me looking forward that the best is yet to come.
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High School Shelter
11-27-99: The movie “Election” showed teenagers in a way that had always been odd to me: how
cheerful and carefree most of them seem. Their naiveté was so charming. Their problems were so minor
and trivial: a pop quiz, what to wear in the morning, being “popular”. The real world hadn’t yet overwhelmed
them with marriage, divorce, kids, a job, and the pursuit of being “happy” and excited about being alive once
they thrill is gone. Somehow being in high school is like living in an inside world. The pressures of living a
LIFE don’t affect you until you graduate. Maybe that’s why some people decide to become teachers and
remain in school for as long as possible. (I’m sure part of me feels that way.)
The Curse of Prom
3-25-95: Prom is a major issue/ curse forced upon all juniors and seniors for no rightful reason. It's "magic" if
you're popular and beautiful. It's especially painful if you're not popular or have a girlfriend/ boyfriend. Who the hell
invented or inspired near-adult teenagers to dress like cheap Oscar nominee wannabes in the first place?!? Obviously,
prom was a small dance until someone popular decided to get the better grade by dressing up big time. Now everyone
whoever graduated brings up prom as if it was "the last fantasy night of their adolescence" until they met “the real
world”. Bull!! No real world is going to get in the way of my imagination! I know that I can do better than attending a
“prom”. I believe in myself more than any masquerade dance! I will transcend the limits of high school. I will make my
own make-believe worlds in the art I will make. My greatest of times are always ahead of me. Always.
The Cathartic Trauma of Prom
4-22-95: Joe called several times to inform me of our ever-changing prom evening plans. Around two o’
clock, Joe picked me up and took us to his house to wait for Mark and his van to arrive. Once Mark, his van, and Kevin
made it there, Joe mixed some liquor beverage bottle with two 2-liters of Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew. This certainly
felt like a guy-bonding moment for all of us. As we took to the road, we even watched parts of a disgusting Tanya
Harding wedding night “porno” sex video inside Mark’s van – which very much had everything in it (except, of course,
the kitchen sink). Still, it was pretty cool that we had a TV to watch in the van itself. We drove around for a while,
decided not to fit in our tuxedos until after supper, picked up Patty, ate a marvelous dinner at Lima’s Red Lobster, and
watched most of The Crow in Mark’s van VCR and TV monitor.
As time passed, I grew more nervous, anxious, and passively quiet. As we passed by St. Mary's, I kept
thinking that in an alternate reality we could have picked up my Beginning Karate classmate Allisha as my date for the
prom. I could have been with someone else. That would have really showed my classmates that I wasn't such a loner.
Then I would have been someone. I observed the shape-shifting clouds and streams of sunlight beaming through the
cloud pockets. Back in Coldwater, I got dressed up, twice, and made myself look… halfway handsome. Mom excitedly
took some pictures of me before Mark and Joe came back in their tuxes. We happened to pass by the promenade into
the old High School gym several times. Every time, I conquered a personal low for myself. I couldn't help but feel quite
jealous of all those couples.
Once we decided to finally park and enter prom, my fairy-tale prom night dance began… and faded into
lonely oblivion. I've skipped going to every Homecoming dance and last year's prom. So I figured I'd better go to my
senior prom just to fulfill that one last high school dance experience. If anything, curiousity led me there. I didn't want
to go through the rest of my life wishing I had gone. My other choice was being in my bedroom on this crucial high
school night while my friends were all there. I simply couldn't be that anti-social. I couldn't! By watching my beautiful
peers kiss, slow and fast dance, and hold each other’s date, I realized that attending dances stag was a ridiculously cruel
idea on my own single self – especially when I rented a tux along with it. I wore a façade the whole time. I tried to act
out my excitement of listening to the band play “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, “Black Hole Sun”, and “Aye Corona”. The
only thing that helped me get through the night was that Mark and Kevin were there stag as well. If anything, I wasn't
completely and utterly alone.
High school is all about who's with who so you have a certain elevated social status. And Prom merely
justifies that sick notion. No one really cares to notice this unless you yourself are single and lonely. No wonder I
despise it so much and desire more than anything to get the hell out of here through graduating!!! But even as I stood or
sat through the prom with my friends, I ended up acting stolid and misplaced for most of the time. I was an anomaly, a
glitch in the high school radar. Yet I wouldn’t have been here at prom if my friends weren't going as well. And I knew
the personal cost of not going since it would make me feel even more like a useless loner who abandons his own
friends. This was my last and only prom to actually go to and see with my own eyes what it was all about. Frankly, it's
just a hopped up high school dance where everyone dressed up for. It's nothing more. To some of my classmates, prom
was the high point of their lives. To me, it was just dress-up and a beautified ego trip.
As the hours passed by in an eternity, I observed everything around me at prom like an investigative writer.
Kevin was trying to fight off drunkenness. If I knew better and wasn’t so Catholic, I should have been the same
considering my mindset. Mark was almost as statue-like as I was. Kelly was a dressed-up beauty with a boyfriend
slow-dancing on the prom dance floor. So she did have a date. Ditto with Marie Ebbing. They were the two girls in my
grade that I had the best chance of going to prom with, and both were taken. During the slow dance songs, I sat by
myself at the left side of the dance floor in the stands and accepted my seclusion from “fun and teenage love”. My
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friends weren’t much help either as good company to be around. Joe was emotionlessly dancing with Patty for what
would be their last dance together. Meanwhile, Leugers was standing to the side “chaperoning” with other teachers. So
much for making myself look good in front of Leugers. I just looked like a solitary loner without a date. How
humiliating. Still, at one point, I got fed up of just standing around on the sidelines. I went up close to the stage along
with Gaerke’s friends to be next to the band. I also got my eardrums fused with vibrating sound waves from the
speakers and amps. I really enjoyed when the band performed Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit". It was the only
moment of prom that I thoroughly enjoyed and relished. They were playing our collective high school days out with a
bang. Yet the whole prom experience was bogus fun for all five of us. To make the mood worse was the slight
insensitivity of Joe when he told us he planned to officially dump Patty sometime after prom. Talk about bad timing.
Yet I can't control Joe or tell him what to do. His personal life is none of my business.
Alas, after we left prom weary and with our ears ringing, we headed to Joe’s to change. I lied on Joe’s bed
and listened to “Nirvana: In Utero” and other CDs while Kevin, Joe, and Mark played Super Nintendo. As I sat on my
back, I enjoyed relishing in Cobain’s angst. “All Apologies”, “Frances Farmer Will Take Her Revenge On Seattle”, and
“Dumb” felt like such emotional, empathetic company that I direly needed. For me, listening to that Nirvana album was
like breathing in pure oxygen after breathing in so much toxic fumes at prom. “How does it feel? How does it feel?”
Thankfully, after-prom was much, much better. In fact, it was sensationally better. And where was the afterprom get-together at? The Coldwater bowling alley. I shit you not. Once there at 2 a.m., I separated myself from my
friends, bowled with Bob V. and his girlfriend, Marie and her boyfriend, Veg, some other people – and Amy. I had
asked Amy to prom just last year, but she didn't accept. I bowled considerably well, which surprised Veg more than
me. I also got to watch Kelly and her boyfriend hold each other, witness Marie’s cigarette smoking, “alternative”
boyfriend, and take quick glances at Amy. I actually started to like Amy’s soft-spoken ways of handling herself.
Oddest of all, my friends and I went to Lori Hoying’s house and watched Arachnophobia along with a group
of her friends. Lori kept telling everyone how great Barry Manalow was. It was actually a pretty mellow atmosphere
there. Amy was even there. I wanted to stay longer – perhaps to show off my personality to my bowling crowd – but it
was 5 in the morning by then. Besides, I had to leave with them since I had work to do and my clothes was in Mark’s
van. After they dropped me off, I felt a loss of companionship and desired to spend more time at Lori’s house to meet
new friends and relationships. But – I never lived it. That reality never fully happened.
Overall, Prom was too traumatic for me. I learned and observed the dark side of loneliness by standing (or
sitting) by myself while my peers noticed my failure of bringing a date. I wanted desperately to strut in the promenade
last night and slow dance closely with a girlfriend. But that never got to happen. So what if it was all a horrible mistake
in going stag to my senior prom? The trauma of it all was grave and mighty. Yet it may just be the right stimulus to
make me start obsessively creating and writing more. I want to prove to my classmates that I was something more than
just a solitary redhead without a date to the prom who stood with his single friends on the sidelines of "the greatest
night of their high school lives". On the other hand, I certainly don’t want to learn how to line dance to show off my
dance skills like they did at one point during prom. That’s not my group or my scene to belong in. I want to influence
and manipulate people for the better. But Coldwater just isn't the right fit for me. It's time for me to move on….
The “romantic abyss” I reached tonight broke through some emotional barriers of seclusion and pity. I
wanted to get to know those people at Lori’s party. I relished in watching that Tanya Hardings porno VHS tape’s
ribbon get caught in the van VCR, which may ruin Joe for “smuggling” out the video from Starstruck Video in the first
place. I didn’t mind watching Kelly try to dance along with her friends. I shouted as equally loud as the music and
mumbled curses that no one could hear over the band’s amps.
It’s six o’ clock in the morning since I’ve been writing since Mark dropped me off. I really could use some
sleep now…. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
4-23-95: I woke up at the irregular hour of 2 p.m., took a shower, skipped shaving, and discovered that both
cars were gone. I was supposed to bring back my tux before 2:30 p.m. So I tried calling Mark to ask if he could drive
me over. He wasn’t properly dressed yet, unfortunately. So I had to bike over against the wind to the Mr. Shoppe while
holding onto the long plastic bag that contained my tux rental. I even had to walk past two mothers who were
conversing about how much their sons enjoyed themselves at prom – just like they did when they were that age. Ah, the
memories!! The clerk asked me how the dance went. I said, “All right” with an empty hesitation around my reply.
Jocks
3-5-02: After being around several of them throughout junior high and high school, I have rerealized that I hate jocks. They hurt with words. The Columbine psychos fought back with guns. It was
clearly in self-defense. Jocks are loud, annoying, extroverted in the worst ways, self-gratifying jokers with
cute, yet dim-witted girlfriends. They are the opposite of me and what I’ve tried to be in my life. They have no
real sensitivity, no introspection, and no imagination. They are the reason I don’t like or appreciate sports
anymore. They are the reason to not drink beer excessively or abuse alcohol. They are a nation of jokes,
excuse me, jocks - millions of them. They are not individuals. They are clones, drones, and the spoiled kids
of wealthy parents. They never got a heartbreak, so they grew up into assholes. (I wrote this with several
jocks and their girlfriends sitting behind me drunkenly heckling people as I waited with a friend for a
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Japanese drum performance to start at Epcot Center.)
Rednecks
7-10-04: For all the wonderful artists I’ve met down here in the Hocking Hills of southeastern Ohio and the
amazing scenery there is to take in around this region, I’ve also come to realize that there are also the rednecks you
have to put up with as well down here that bring down the whole area. Ann and I stopped briefly into Taco Bell for a
quick bite to eat to go. And my God, having to stand next to an undereducated redneck nineteen-year-old male for just
one minute was like being in hell. There are hundreds beautiful private homes and cabins in the Hocking Hills; but
there are also thousands of rundown, rusted, garbage-in-the-front-lawn-and-we-don’t-care trailer park homes. These are
the hillbillies and rednecks that I also grew up around in Coldwater, OH and went to school with. Their main pleasure
in life is how fast their beat-up car will go with a revved-up engine. Onto the bar with thee they go on each weekend
evening!! They’re got no other place to go. No place to go! It’s the seclusion and isolation of the hills and country that
do this to these poor people. There’s something restless and psychotic in them… and that’s what I fear. Some of them
are good people. But there are still others that make me want to hurt. I’ve spent my life trying so hard to be as different
as possible from them by educating myself. I rebel against their way of life.
Culturally Devoid Midwestern Small Town Life
8-5-05: I also realized with new eyes and old memories how rather racist (and/ or culturally insensitive)
certain rural white people still are. I thought we’d changed quite a bit in the past few decades. But after having hung
around my old small town friends, I realized that they rarely come in personal contact with diverse cultures and
foreigners. I’m so used to it from being in urban college settings like Columbus and Ft. Lauderdale for the past ten
years. I wasn’t used to hearing humor-intended, yet subtly cruel and insensitive racial slurs about Indian-Americans
who don’t speak “American” as easily as everyone else. I wasn’t used to being around cocky Caucasians who regard
“blacks”, Mexicans, homosexuals, or any type of outsider with a sense of contempt and ridicule. Coldwater, the small
town of 5,000 residents of mostly German Catholic and Protestant background, was an isolated community. In fact,
they practically live in a bubble universe called Mercer County. Everyone knew each other’s names, families, and
stories. Yet the downside of this is there is no diversity, eclectic cultures, or outside points-of-view. And that’s exactly
what keeps it so conservative and Republican. They’re all just set in their backwards ways. They drink their beer and
raise their children. They’re like “liberal” Amish in a way – isolated from the world and clannish. This is my adult
viewpoint of small towns in the Midwest. And I have grown so far, far away from it - physically, emotionally, and
mentally. I suppose being in this type of repressive, conservative society actually made me desperately want to expand
myself culturally and be free. I was rebelling from my small town Coldwater, Ohio upbringing and enslavement. And
I’d do anything and work endless hours to make sure I didn’t ever go back there permanently. After all, I’d severely
outgrown the place. And its immaturity offends me.
Small Town Gossip Freaks
7-30-08: I also have to admit my distaste for small town gossipers. Someone will hear some so-called “juicy”
news from someone. The next thing you know it’s like high on crack or something! Stuff that you just wouldn’t care
about in the city or the suburbs is treated like some kind of weird verbal gold. “Oh, Lucille stubbed her toe while taking
a walk yesterday evening!! Oh wow!” “Tom split his pants while genuflecting at the beginning of mass service. How
embarrassing!!!” These people have so little going on in their small town lifestyle that anything out of the ordinary
(which is where they live) sets them on fire. And on top of all this, some of them act like it’s a huge secret and tell in
hushed terms. Now the reason why I find this bizarre behavior to be so weird is that these very people are the ones who
literally “get off” on gossiping about people who act different, “odd”, or "weird" – when in fact they themselves are
acting incredibly weird themselves. On top of it all, gossiping so that you know everything about everyone in a small
town is just plain freakish. No one would act so intrusive to one’s own neighbors or relatives unless they were a child
molester! It’s an invasion of privacy. It’s no wonder I spend so much of my life growing up guarding my own privacy.
Vandalism
6-17-07: Dad informed me that my sister Lara had visited mom’s grave in Coldwater and noticed that there
was a chip missing in the gravestone. How did that happen? Was it vandalism? I mean, does some stupid fucked up
person who once got an “F” in my mother’s English class still hold such a fucked up grudge that he’d actually go to a
cemetery, get drunk, and damage the hard granite tombstone of their “hated” high school teacher?!? I mean, she’s been
retired for 12 years now! And she’s been deceased for 11 years! Let it fucking go, you dumb asses!!! It makes me want
to castrate whoever did it. There is like no sensitivity at all. It’s like they want the “last word” or something. My family
moved out of Coldwater, yet some of their old students still want to find a way to get back at their teachers. Alcohol
and boredom in a small town will make people do these kinds of things. They’ve got nothing else for them but to
antagonize others who are not rightfully at fault. It is why my family and I were harassed and teased so savagely while
growing up. I feel sorry those some of these dumb former students that can’t let go of their pasts because they’ve got no
future. But what I wish for those students to learn is this: “Know what it feels like to live in fear”, because that is what
they taught me while I grew up. I couldn’t get a good, comfortable night’s sleep without someone throwing eggs at our
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house, knocking on our front door and window, toilet papering our house, or crank-calling our phone. It was a weekly
lifestyle of harassment and public humiliation that never was resolved or ended. Those who did these things to my
family were never “caught”. Some of them think of these moments of “innocent” cruelty as their "glory days". But I
would like them to know what psychological effect they caused on “innocent bystanders” like myself. It is inexcusable.
It was wrong. It still is wrong. I “forgive” them, but they still need to learn their lesson… and perhaps some punishment
for what they did.
…Or maybe the missing chip on the gravestone was caused by the guy running the riding lawnmower. We'll
never know for sure. Who knows?!??
Telemarketers vs. Eric Homan
2-17-04: Telemarketers keep calling me every half hour – and it’s risking my sanity. Either I hear nobody on
the other line, or its some poor smuck pimping some product I would never want. And they keep calling me! And
calling me! It’s especially damning since I often get inspired, then hear the phone ring! It could be someone important
to me, but 95% of the time it’s these goddamn telemarketers! I’m starting to curse back at them, or play loud industrial
music back at them with the phone next to the speaker just to torture them back for wasting my time. They’ve turned
me into a sadist – and our government protects this harassment!?! Gee, we wouldn’t want to cut a million worthless
jobs, would we?! I’ll kill them if they don’t kill me first from the mental torture. I need my peace of mind. How dare
they continue to trouble me! It reminds me of my younger years when my parents’ and us kids would get crank calls
every so often by some arrogant students. It’s the same effect of troubling and harassing my mind… making me
emotionally unstable. So this unprovoked attack of telemarketers are also a nasty unconscious flashback experience.
Their harassment made me work that much harder on my artwork. I was fighting against the currents of technology. It
was just another difficulty I had to triumph over.
Women
I’ve often been considered “second-place” when it comes to winning a girl’s affection. It started way
back in the first grade when the girl I had such a crush on liked another cuter boy more than me. She still
liked me – but she liked him more. And in love, there is not second-place. You either get the girl or you don’t.
This case has continued happening to me throughout my adult life as well. As utterly frustrating this is to me
romantically and sexually, it also fuels my passion to work harder to impress the ladies. I would possess
myself with such obsessive emotion that would drive me for hours on end in order to do the very “best”
artwork I could possibly create. Just me making love to my love sick depression. Rejection becomes an
impetus to create the ultimate art piece. It’s a subconscious competition with the world for the prize of being
loved. Deep down, it’s that simple.
Yet, down the hard, crooked road of life I have found women who have accepted me, loved me,
and shared my life with me. And one even stuck around….
Mermaids
At a very early age as a young boy dreamer, I found myself with a near fetishistic adoration for mermaids.
My early childhood dreams featured a mermaid who I feel in love with. After that dream, I’ve been transfixed and
sexually attracted by them ever since. I mean, who doesn’t find mermaids to be gorgeous and mysterious creatures?!? I
thought they were the most irresistible humanoid beings on our world! It was basically a beautiful girl with the lower
half of her body in a fishtail body stocking. They lived under the sea, which I took as an escape from the despair above
ground. I wanted to live under the ocean with a mermaid girlfriend. I prayed to meet a mermaid so we could fall in love
and live happily ever after. There’s an innocence to mermaids as well. They have no genitalia, so they can’t really have
sex with a human anyways. Perhaps that’s also why I found them so lovely at such a young age before my hormones
kicked in. But what was bizarrely kinky about them was that the lower half of their body looked like the nude form of a
woman stuck together. She’s a godly being.
Peers - A Competition Between Friends
I recently received a newspaper picture cutout of two former Coldwater classmates of mine who
were going to be wed. The sight of old faces spurred memories of yearning for attention. It reminded me that
I still have bent-up hostilities with my past and a deep underlying need to impress my old classmates from
my hometown of Coldwater, Ohio. I still yearn to show them that I am someone not to be ignored or
degraded like I was while growing up. I grew up after I left my hometown. I became my own person instead
of an object of ridicule or mockery. I didn’t have an opportunity to shine in a town that didn’t celebrate or
appreciate art or eccentricity.
When I was young, I was obsessed over trying to accomplish some act of heroism or achievement
to gain a level of respect from my peers. I didn’t want to be a nobody that girls passed over for another guy. I
was willing and desperate to give my life for this duty. I wanted someone to rob a bank just so I could prove
myself by stopping the crime.
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We all want recognition and respect. It’s our obsession with celebrity that hangs over us like a
depression. We think we’re the winner, that we’re the best of them all. We each deserve the award. We’re all
legends in our own minds. We all want E.S.P. We all want to win the lottery. We all want to see a ghost. We
all want to be king or queen. We all want the perfect woman or man. We all want to write a masterpiece. We
all want to hit a homerun. We all want to be rich. We all want to save the world.
Maybe what we really need is nothing at all. Just some personal peace and harmony is all we need.
Being Different in Society - The Impetus To Dream
While growing up in the “seclusion” of a small town, I wasn’t so much “different” as I wanted to be
beyond different. My peers had already called me an outcast for the way I looked and acted, so I wanted the
skills, power, and talent to be impressively unusual. There’s no point to be what other people are not and not
be extraordinary. I obsessed about becoming a great dreamer, inventor, super hero, animator, magician,
writer, athlete, and artist. There had to be a payoff to all this isolation and pain. I had to impress them to
show them that I was indeed “different” and worthy of greater respect than what they gave me. It was
through their forced isolation of accepting me in their peer groups that altered and transformed me into a
most powerful dreamer. If I had simply been accepted, I wouldn’t have had the ambition to obsess and
dream. I had to be extremely patient with my abilities and wait for them to grow from a child of wonder and
whimsy into a man of dreams and drama. Being different gave me an attitude and a quest – to transcend
being different into being genius. It was the only way I knew to gain recognition, admiration, redemption,
satisfaction, and closure.
Struggling in Midwest Small Towns
When I was young, I was always struggling with the seeds of "genius" while in the confines of middle-class
small town conformity. I had no way of achieving my creative potential since I was constantly being bombarded with
academic school studies and responsibilities. There was no way I was able to live as a normal person when I had all
these fantastic creative concepts and visions in my head. I needed to release them, or I’d go mad. Instead, I grew up in a
town where sports and math scores were where you proved how good you were. I had to wait until I went to art school
to blossom as a good artist.
And yet during my high school years, I was so scared that I wouldn’t be able to leave my small hometown
that I’d get panic attacks. I mean I was Scared with a capital “S”. I had to be absolutely serious and dedicated about
leaving and making some sort of success for myself beyond a small town. That was how obsessed I was getting to
psychologically motivate myself to work as hard as I had to work in order to leave small town dead end existence. I
wasn’t planning on working in a machine factory or making babies starting at age 18. I had other aspirations far
removed from this wasteland of limited potential.
A Lack of Imagination - The Greatest Sin of Small Towns
11-4-10: The greatest sin of them all of growing up in a small town is that sheer lack of imagination of the
people that live there. They're complacent with the lives they lead. And they don't want them to change. Hence, their
almost revered conservatism. In a community of white people, seeing someone of color is beyond strange to them. I for
one grew up a redhead and oddly found myself to be a type of minority since 99% of everyone else were brown-haired
or blonde-haired. The people were either Catholic or Methodist. How's that for diversity? In fact, religion was sort of
their only form of "imagination" that they believed in. And sports were their "creativity". I suppose that makes drinking
lot of beer their "inspiration". I couldn't bound my life to such limiting pursuits. I wanted more out of life. I suppose
that made me a source of derision and scorn. Besides, why do anything different from what has been done before? Why
can't I just be "happy" with playing sports and going to church on Sundays for the rest of one's life? Simple. These
routine activities didn't have any color to them. They lacked imagination. They weren't unique or special. And after
several years, they simply were boring. So I had to move on and never look back. (Maybe once or twice just for
nostalgic reasons, but I've never regretted leaving.) It saved me.
And yet, those who live in peace and quiet in small towns do not realize the destructive nature of what they
do. I wonder if they are truly "whole people". They may feel that way because of being heavily religious. But
spiritually and emotionally? They insulate themselves in a small town world cocoon away from the rest of the world.
They don't believe in art or imagination or creativity because they cause emotions and passion and intelligence. And
small town people find these things strange and threatening. So they discredit them. They're rather watch a basketball
game or "Wheel of Fortune" on TV. God, forgive them for they do not know what they do. All I ask out of them is to at
least use a little more imagination in their lives to accept new ideas into their minds. Or else, how else will they grow?
The Rural Country Landscape
6-20-08: The rural country landscape eventually got too boring, and hence depressing for me. I wanted to go.
It reminded me of how chronically boring my hometown small town of Coldwater, Ohio was for me while growing up.
When I went back home after graduate school and being exposed to more exciting urban areas, I fell into a dark pit of
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despair from how dull and unexciting small towns were for me. It was like I was allergic to them or something. It’s no
wonder I was led to write and do creative things in order to save my sanity. You’re stuck in the middle of nowhere with
nothing to do!!! It can be like a prison. And that’s no good for the restless creative soul.
Small Town vs. The City Life
6-20-97: Now that I have lived in the city for two years, I can fully understand why a small town is a
healthier environment. With fewer people and less diversity, there is a common bond: a community. People can relate
to each other without the isolation the city has. No racial differences, no language differences (or the confusion of
dialects, accents, and slang), no poverty (or luxury), no crowding, no separation of religion, and no offensive
attitudes.... Yet, the utopian aspect of small town life has a paradox: nothing ever happens. What does one do to keep
oneself occupied? Sure, there is a community park with baseball diamonds, middle-class jobs, a swimming pool,
backyard gardens, lawnmowers, and bowling alleys. Yet how long can one with grander ambitions enjoy them until
they don't matter?
“Fun” Drinking Parties for Underage Teens
3-18-95: Regarding the drinking parties I keep hearing about at work from my custodian peers, they sound
like something I’d be too repulsed to be at. The sight of my underage classmates getting wasted on beer and alcohol to
make themselves look "mature" and "adult" while acting stupid is a gross contradiction. It’d be too ridiculous to take
part in. These are my classmates that I’ve grown up with, only to watch them act like idiots for the sake of having
“fun”. It’s just too much…. Too sad for words. It’s pathetic that they actually think what they’re doing is “cool”. Yet
there’s not much else that’s considered “fun” in the small town rural wasteland that is Mercer County. There’s just not
much else to do. And drinking is a form of being "rebellious" when you’re under 21. It’s a flirt with danger that you can
do with your friends. Yet it’s also a flirt with oblivion (or, at least, getting a serious beer belly at age 25). These peers
of mine, these middle-class and lower-class white kids, drink because they don’t know what’s before them after high
school is over. It’s the end of the road for them. They can’t see their future, so drinking is their momentary escape. It's
not all that different than what I do with daydreaming and fantasizing all the time by reading books, listening to music,
and watching movies all the time. Some of them know they’re stuck for life in a dead-end town. They know their life
isn’t going to be beyond this small town that surrounded by hundreds of miles of flat farm fields. Their self-esteem is in
danger and in crisis, so they hide it through a haze of Bud Light. So they pass out, puke, get their 17-year-old
girlfriends pregnant, drive drunk, and eventually crash. It’s a sad spectacle to hear about, let alone bear witness to
awake and sober. It’s like they’re all growing up way too fast. And I watch, learn, and listen from the sidelines… not
partaking in their “fun”. But still there’s a fun laugh in it all if you survive by skipping the party. It’s a dark theater of
the absurd, starring the young cast of your classmates that you've grown up with your entire life. But the show has to
end sooner or later. I'll be able to leave this freak show. They'll still be left on the empty stage.
My High School Custodian Work
I worked as a custodian during most of my high school years. It was the same old repetition five days a week.
First, I would sweep the staircases of a certain area of the school. Then I would go around unlocking over a dozen
classrooms, empty their trash baskets, and sweep with a large dust floor broom mop under each chair and table and
desk. Then I would clean the boys’ and girls’ restrooms, as well as the teacher’s personal restroom. This work would
usually take two hours to accomplish.
Custodian Work - My Personal Recipe To Become a Workaholic Dreamer
During my high school years, I worked at the school as a student custodian. Being in my
impressionable mid-to-late teens, I was ambitiously dreaming about waiting to leave my dead-end small
town for a more fulfilling life - making art! My monotonous cleaning duties didn’t require much creativity or
brain-power. Considering that I felt I had both, I lived every day feeling dislocated and incomplete. I was a
human robot, a warm strong young body doing manual labor. Because of the limited number of jobs in my
hometown, I was trapped in my job. It didn’t take long for me to become an obsessive workaholic in doing
creative art. I gave my everything to get ahead so I’d never do brainless labor again. I remember mopping
floors for an entire afternoon and finding myself in a total blank mental daze. I wasn’t really there - I was in a
vague daydream state. Sometimes I worked by myself or with other student workers, or had classic rock on
the radio to listen to. The music saved my sanity from the grueling redundancy of my job. I had a choice to
make while on that job: accept my work and stay as a custodian, or dream and work obsessively on art while
hoping that it’d take me somewhere better. I knew my dreams and imagination had such great potential –
and I couldn’t dare let that promise be wasted.
Working as a custodian made me feel how it felt to be a “working class hero”. Indeed, it was a
desperate lifestyle if you’re too sensitive for it. I couldn’t stay at that job for too long, or my mind would go
dead. It would be like a suicide job - the boredom would numb my feelings to death. Being sensitive of that
fact awakened such an urgency in me to work unbearably hard. I credit working as a custodian as the
reason why I work as hard in life. The manual hard labor work I did for several years as a custodian
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provoked the workaholic dreamer out of me so I never have to return to such a lifestyle. It would kill me if I
did. I sensed the doom and it forced me to dream. There was no turning back.
Factory Work
While I was in high school, I worked as a custodian doing laborious maintenance work for three years. And
in the film 8 Mile, it shows the monotonous repetitiveness of factory work. It’s especially harrowing to watch since it’s
Eminem, a creative and self-expressive artist, who is doing the actual work. I see myself in the future in that type of
future if I don’t do something fast. It’s enough to make you want to become an obsessive-compulsive workaholic
immediately. These types of job lifestyles are killers to one’s creative mindset. There is no freedom or joy to what you
do for a living. It scared me so much that I retreated into the recesses of my imagination and emotions that I enslaved
myself to work like crazy on my artwork in order that I never end up being stuck in those types of factory jobs. I’d die.
And I grew up in a small town where most of the men grew up to work in factory jobs. It scared me enough to want to
escape.
Video Store/ Library Education
When I was a senior in high school and was taking college classes as part of the post-secondary
program (1994-95), I would drive out to the Wright State University Lake Campus in between Celina and St.
Mary’s, Ohio. Since I made such a long drive, I decided to drive a few extra miles to St. Mary’s to a video
store, Video Connection, that had a much wider, diverse selection of videos than any other place in the rural
county I lived in - and for only 69 cents per tape, or three for $2 for two days. With such a movie deadline, I
would have to watch three movies a day so I could return them on time the following day when I drive out for
my classes. Yet it was through that video store that I gained my movie knowledge and education. And when
I wasn’t in my college classes, I would hang out at the Celina or St. Mary’s libraries to study and read old
issues of Rolling Stone for music and movie reviews. I discovered my role models and got my real education
that year in video stores and libraries.
Video Connection
9-22-94: After class, I drove back to St. Mary’s to Video Connection to drop off U2: Rattle and Hum. (On
the way over to Wright State in the morning, my mind was so perplexed and worried about being late. I forgot all about
yesterday’s experience of seeing that powerful documentary). I looked around that video store for half an hour in awe
from seeing so many hard-to-find movies I’ve been trying to see for quite a long time (… Say Anything, Brazil, Pink
Floyd: The Wall, Full Metal Jacket, etc). It was like I was in a Mecca of Movies! On the way home, I ate some Little
Debbie snacks that I had bought at a grocery store in St. Mary’s and listened to Martika’s “Toy Soldiers” on the radio
to my delight. What a crazy morning!
9-27-94: Since I had some extra time between classes, I drove over to my favorite video store in St. Mary’s,
dropped off that treasure of a movie Pink Floyd: The Wall. While at Video Connection, I again browsed around for
about half an hour, discovering dozens of cherished and heavily desired movie’s I’ve always wanted to view for some
time now (A Clockwork Orange, Imagine: John Lennon, Mean Streets, …Say Anything, and many, many others). I
wish I had the time to rent all those moving pictures of masterpiece movie art.
The Columbus Main Library
8-28-95: The really big euphoric discovery moment of elation of today was when I walked over to the
Columbus Library and realized how really awesome a big city library could be. I used to be so impressed with Dayton's
downtown library. At the Columbus Downtown Library, there were thousands of free videos, CD's, and books of all
types. Best of all, the library was only a 5-10 walk from the CCAD dorm. Suddenly, I'd found my Mecca in the heart of
Columbus that coincidentally neighbored CCAD. This was HUGE for me. I'd found my creative oxygen! I'd found my
gold at the end of the rainbow. And it was all for free for everyone to borrow and give back for others to enjoy. The
overwhelming nirvana of interest was absolute bliss for my introverted personality. I walked out of the library in a total
daze. Could this place really be real?!? I'm so used to my small, but quaint hometown library. This place was like the
Disneyworld of libraries!!!! And it was so close to me. And it was free! Free!!! My spirits rose immediately about how
I felt about living in the dorms and being a student at CCAD now more than ever. I needed movies to pass my time and
fuel my imagination. And this place had it all. I knew I'd be more than happy here for years to come now that I knew
that the library was so close by. I'd never be bored again. This was a huge deal for me. In a way, I'd found the fountain
of youth.
2-1-04: When I was in art school and living by myself in a one-bedroom apartment during the summer break
of 1996 when most of my friends had gone back home, I was stuck with myself and my solitude. Naturally, I became
afraid that I’d grow severely bored and lonely. So I took many a trip to the next-door Main Library where I discovered
an enormously vast foreign movie section. It suddenly dawned on me that I would never get bored with this collection
of hundreds of quality movies that I’ve never seen. After some time of frightening loneliness, discovering this movie
section was like finding El Dorado.
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Libraries as de facto Museums
Everyone should be able to see and experience art. I believe the library is a better museum than
most city museums. During my undergraduate art school years, I would spend hours each week at the
Columbus Main Library. It was a real, modern library. There were thousands of free items to check out. Here
was a temple of information: literature (novels, magazines, graphic novels), music (Mozart to Bob Dylan),
movies (DVD and video), CD-ROMs, and microfilm. Open to the public - free admission. The overwhelming
nirvana of interest was treasure for my personality. It became my new-found Mecca (or my very own
Caesar's Palace). I would wander the library for creative and personal research. It was like taking a two-hour
long vacation. The library was a predictably pleasant territory to please the escapist inside. The free movies
and music from the library have generously saved me from discouragement or boredom.
Whenever I am living, I deeply enjoy my visitations to the city’s Main Library. It is a place where I
feel a sense of peace and a wealth of imagination, information, and expression. The fact that their resources
are free to check out for a period of time is the beauty of its existence to society.
I recommend using the library as a resource for creativity and inspiration. Some of my students
have come up to me and asked to teach them how to be an artist. Sorry, but I couldn't bless them and
instantly grant them "art powers" and “soul”. But I can inform them where they can find great imagination,
creativity, emotions, depth, and great art. Such qualities are something you develop through the years
through the people you meet, the places one studies, and, most importantly, from each individual person
and how much they work at it. I can point them in the right direction - and the library is an ideal place to start.
And, of course, if you think about it, the Internet is one enormous library to be explored.
Libraries: A Great Place to Be
12-5-01: I deeply enjoy my visitations to the local Main Library. It is a place where I feel a sense of peace
while being immersed in a wealth of imagination, information, and expression. The fact that it’s all for free to check
out for a period of time is the beauty of its existence to society. Then for lunch, I got an Italian sausage and ate it by the
fountain outside the library in the 73 degree sunshine/ blue sky weather. It felt so good.
The Great Library: Into Unexplored Territory
7-6-96: During the summer of 1996, I've been going to the Columbus Main Library out of necessity to save
my sanity from being indoors too long on weekends without much social interaction. I'd wander the book aisles for six
hours sometimes, transfixed by the tens of thousands of extraordinary books in their collection. It made my old
hometown small town library appear to have had a fraction of a fraction of what the state capital's main library had. I'd
haunt the movie aisle especially, and some books really transfixed me and my secret, private, hidden desires and
dreams. I found books on monster movies that might involve women being eaten whole. I looked up movies like "Irma
Vep" that featured a stunning woman thief in a full black costume who reminded me of someone from a fantastic
dream that I had when I was a young boy. These were the things that gave my imagination a fever. I was researching
my obsessions and finding interesting information. I discovered these movies and imagined what fantastic scenes they
might have. It was unexplored territory that needed to explore and tame since my own fantasies were so drawn and
defined by such strange turn-ons.
My Library Mecca
8-26-02: Coming from a small town with limited artistic and creative resources, I really gained my
knowledge and experience from spending my undergraduate school years at the Columbus College of Art
and Design in downtown Columbus, Ohio. This school was my Mecca for creative growth. Yet it was at a
neighboring building that I gained my greatest additional creative resources. Only three blocks from the
dorm I lived in the first year, the Columbus Main Library proved to be a treasure chest of coveted movies,
music, and books – free for checkout! The wealth of knowledge, emotion, and imagination I got from there
was truly priceless. It was like getting a grant for $20,000 – since that was close to the amount of media I
checked out within the three years I was in Columbus. I used the library resources to fuel me while I worked
on my homework from my art school classes at CCAD. For someone with little money and huge ambitions,
the Columbus Main Library was a Godsend. And if movies are my “drugs”, then the library would be my
dealer. It’s no wonder why I visited there so often. You don’t have to pay for anything. You get all sorts of
uppers (comedies/ musicals) and downers (tragedies/ dramas). The fantasy and fiction is psychedelia. It’s
like having a utopian lifestyle.
Libraries: The Largest Book, Music, and Movie Collection I Could Ever Want
5-11-05: Looking through the movie and book collections at the Columbus downtown library used to be my
idea of big excitement for me when I was a student at CCAD. This morning, I decided to go back and relive that old
feeling and do it all again. I got more than I thought. This being the last week of school, my mind was restless and
anxious. I couldn’t concentrate on one individual selection because I didn’t know what I was looking for. I wasn’t even
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sure if I wanted to be there. I was loose and lost in my own delirious freedom. I wanted to live in the imaginary worlds
– and I got it in massive volumes. It was too much to take in. That thrilled me and frightened me. It was like my future
in a way – a confusing, cacophonous, crazy mess that leads who-knows-where. I felt like I was at the Crossroads of
Imagination while looking through the graphic novel section. Books on R. Crumb to Jeff Smith’s “Bone” blew me
away. I felt a thunder of introspection and extroverted awe conflicting electrically with one other. I shouldn’t be
reading all of this, but I love it all so much. I don’t know what to do with myself, so why not lose myself in fantasy to
help stimulate my imagination and artwork? It was a way out of my profound boredom. I didn’t want to stay too long
or else I’d be there for hours, like I did when I was an art student. The books and movies were my best friends back
then. I have to be careful of not allowing them to get too close to me again… or I’ll withdrawn too deeply within
myself. I felt a bit dizzy from the library experience. I had the keys to the Kingdom of Imagination where I could loan
out anything I wanted for free. It was too good to be true. Perhaps that was what excited me so much when I was a wee
student. I had the largest book, music, and movie collection I could ever want. And I’ve spent most of my life building
my own library of books, music, and movies to regain that rush I felt as a CCAD art student. I now have my own Eric
Homan Main Library of Creativity.
Like My Own Personal Library
12-19-02: To me, being at the library is like a child in a candy store – with all the candy being free for the
taking! There are just so many creative resources there for me to take advantage of. It’s sickening because I overindulge in it by taking out ten DVDs at a time and watch them all in three days. It’s become my own personal library. I
don’t have the money to buy or rent (for money) 10,000 DVDs – but I sure as hell can borrow them! It’s a passionate
filmmaker’s dream!
Using the Library to Expand Your Artistic Horizons
3-5-01: To my Special Topics students: Lastly, I wish to recommend using the downtown library as a
resource for creativity and inspiration. Just because they don't have the very latest Hollywood movies doesn't mean
they're uncool. Some of you have come up to me and asked to teach you how to be an artist. Sorry, I can't bless you and
grant you "art powers". Being creative is something you develop through the years through the people you meet, the
places you study, and, most importantly, from you and how much you work at it. I can point you in the right direction and the library is a place to start. Take a chance and rent (for free!) a movie that's older than a year. Give me a topic and
I will give you some recommendations that you might find inspiring to your work.
Libraries for Saving Money
2-8-04: I watch on average close to 300 movies per year, and the majority of them I get free on loan from the
local library. Now if I do the math that if I had rented these movies from Blockbuster for $3.50 per rental, that’s $1,050
spent in watching movies. But for me, that’s $1,050 I saved. Now think of this on a ten-year basis: I saved $10,050!!! If
and when I make a fortune in the latter part of my life, I’ll be giving back some money to the Columbus libraries.
Why I Love Libraries
6-10-06: I have had a romance with libraries that have lasted my entire life. There is no other place
that I feel more comfortable and at home than in a public or college library. Some people go to bars, sports
events, tea parties, whatever. I love libraries. There's nothing more enriching to my life than to be
surrounded by information, imagination, resources, words, facts, and dreams. It is a destination of
possibilities and frontiers. (And is it wrong to find certain librarians rather attractive? Maybe it's because I
find myself so safe with them as the masters of books and movies.)
Thoughts and Reflections on the Columbus Main Library
8-22-98: It was a real, hip, modern library. Here was a temple of information: literature (comics,
novels, magazines), music (Mozart to Bob Dylan), movies, CD-ROMs, and microfilm. Open to the public,
free admission.
The Internet
4-28-04: To me, the Internet is simply the world’s biggest library – uncensored, too. It takes my curiosity for
life to a whole new expansive infinity. It’s such a great resource for artists. It's the ultimate resource for anything I'd
ever want to look up - instantly.
Used CD Stores
1-12-01: After a crazy and emotionally-draining day of work, I stopped at the Sears Town All Books
and Records store and just stayed there and hung out for over an hour and a half. It was my retreat and
sanctuary. It was a place to get lost in amongst the dozens of aisles of books and used CDs. All the music
and books and magazines seduced me. The perfume of a cute twenty-something female tantalized my body
and imagination. One aisle smelled like a tourist’s hotel room. I read a Rolling Stone article on Eminem and
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his life story. He’s like the Kurt Cobain of hip hop. He’s my age, he expresses himself because of having a
shitty childhood, coming from a broken home, getting beat up by bullies who were just “having fun”, and from
working at minimum wage jobs. “When it’s like that, you learn to live day to day.” I also just want to be
noticed.
4-21-02: Initially, I would go to those used CD stores in Ft. Lauderdale to relieve the depression
and loneliness I was feeling so often. I wanted something to distract my mind. I don’t do drugs or alcohol, so
I bought music to nourish my creativity and emotions.
5-9-02: I made my last visits to my favorite used CD stores today. It was rather bittersweet to say goodbye to
these places that helped sustain me creatively and emotionally for so long. In every sense of the word, they were my
favorite hang-out places down here in South Florida. The music they provided me saved my life.
The Quiet in My Room
6-17-93: I remember back a month ago in English class when my teacher asked the class if anyone needs to
spend time alone (like in their room) just to get away from the hardships of life. I cowardly raised my hand half way,
but my teacher didn’t see my hand. Anyway, I feel that spending some good peaceful time in my room listening to
music really helps me feel calmer. Without having that silent time, living would be an unbearable pain. It’s nice to get
my head out of the fire and into a feather pillow every once and a while.
My Own Private Condo Asylum
5-2-04: I live in my own private condo asylum away from all the horrors and worries of the world. I keep my
doors shut and locked so I can stay comfortably inside. I keep the air-conditioning on so I won’t go mad from the
humidity. I live alone so the noise from other people doesn’t disturb my creative and emotional thoughts. It’s a paradise
of solitude: a place where I have the freedom to harvest dreams and feelings. Where other people are locked in their
own homes with their wives and children keeping them inside, I am with my dreams. I need a place to rest.
A Private Studio Workspace
I get the greatest amount of my creativity from being at home, alone and without distractions. Whatever
media I’m coming in contact with sparks a reaction from me that I immediately record in my journal log. I could be
watching what’s on TV (VH1, MTV2, Bravo, Comedy Central, Sci-Fi, CNN, Headline News, VH1 Classic, Trio,
Cartoon Network, TV Land), a movie on DVD, a good graphic novel, or listening to music and some intriguing idea
will come to me. Since I have such a defiant, individual personality, the images that I witness in mass communication
provoke powerful reactions out of me. This is how I work and create. This is the Creative Bliss of Being Home Alone
with Your Ideas, Emotions, Reactions, and Imagination. Out pours the art if I have the motivation and opportunity to
lay it all down.
Personally, I prefer to do the majority of my artwork in the privacy of my own home/ studio with
music playing so that I am away from any possible distraction. This is due to my dependency of remaining
focused on what I am expressing, which is often deeply personal, introspective, and creative. Being in a
controlled, private environment can inspire pure artistic creative thinking. I feel that one’s creative mode can
be best tapped into when one is completely relaxed in a comfortable environment. The work also needs to
feel like play. My artwork would seem rather bland if I was in the constant company of others during the
development of a work that dealt with personal subject matter - unless I was surrounded by fellow creative
artists who could empathize and contribute sensitive opinions. I usually wouldn’t be able to express myself
unless I am alone. Only then can I feel emotionally raw enough to express the heart and imagination of my
artwork. Any sort of distraction, be it a wife and kids, roommates, or neighbors, will break my focus. The
pleasure of remaining in this artistic stream of consciousness is so great that you never want to break that
connection.
I always try to set aside some quiet, private time to work on what interests me: my computer art,
watching movies, listening to music, reading books. Doing these things is crucial to advancing my creativity
and my art. A world without distractions is a place of heaven for an artist.
For the past eight years, what I’ve learned the most as a serious artist is that computer art takes
time to create... and good computer art takes even longer. It’s not as simple as drawing on paper anymore.
Computer art also takes massive dedication, energy, creativity, money, skill, and patience. Yet, in the end,
the rewards are personally and creatively gratifying.
11-30-03: How I adore these days off on the weekend where I’ve got an entire condo to myself. At last, a
place of peace and quiet where I can think, dream, play, fantasize, masturbate, and work. My condo is basically my
studio where I can be artistically productive. At last, I can work and breathe without DISTRACTIONS. The creative
mind needs a place to expand and explore. A noisy social home environment can be destructive, unless the people
surrounding you are also creative and helpful. Sometimes, I’ll start the day by watching a movie for half an hour, find
myself inspired, pause the movie, go downstairs and work for a half an hour to two hours, resume the movie for a
while, find myself inspired again, work on something different on the computer, surf the web, back to watching the
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DVD, look through some comics, work on the computer, and so on. This cycle of going from creative mediums to fuel
my mind with images, emotions, and ideas in a productive work environment allows me to get a tremendous amount of
work accomplished.
Nature or a Local Park
3-2-02: I was feeling bored and creatively empty with my life this Saturday evening, so I went on a
bike ride with my digital camera on stride. Upon my trek through Holiday Park during the dusk magic hour, I
came across several trees with pink-orange blossoms and abstract bark formations. As I started taking
photos, I noticed surrealistic designs and faces within the bark when I looked through the viewfinder of the
camera. I started capturing with a renewed intensity and creative vision. I was reminded that whenever I run
dry of ideas and imagination I could rely on the visuals of nature to provide. The ambiguous brilliance of
design that clouds and nature make were a source pool of fantasy in my eyes. I just needed to view it as
such through taking pictures, videotaping or sketching on paper of my visions. I may look crazy like an
eccentric artist possessed by creative fever – but I wouldn’t stop for the world! There was so much life that
so many others cannot see. I just had to capture it and express it. That's what an artist does, after all. It's
what makes us vital and important. And that's no bullshit. It actually takes a moment and a willing mindset to
see the living organic imagination surrounding us all. Sometimes it takes a creative person to show others
how to see. You have to be hungry, even desperate for it sometimes. And tonight I was in the right mindset.
(And no drugs either!! Or ever for that matter.) I must stress again that drugs are not a necessity to see
these incredible “visions”. A willingness to dream is. I’ve always considered taking drugs a form of “cheating”
when it comes to creating surrealistic art. Nature is all you need.
Mother Nature/ Mother Earth
5-4-03: I enjoy taking short strolls through parks by myself so I’m one alone with my friend nature. Mother
Earth has been my mistress ever since I can remember. I like to lay down on a still moist grassy hilltop and snuggle up
with her all around me. In May, a million dandelion pollen flowers tickle me in a spring-summer caress. It was as close
to Eden as I could get.
Healed by Nature
5-1-05: Reflections of a Late Sunday Morning (May 1st/ May Day): Something in me just requires to be in
nature when it gets so gorgeous outside. I take myself, my still digital camera, video camera, and my imagination to a
local park for some peace, quiet, innocence, sunbeam embraces, green scenery, and other natural colors of a spring
rainbow saturating the environment. God, I adore it! How it heals me inside! I found a bench in the park where I could
hear no street traffic or people. Just the breeze swaying the trees around me. I cannot deny that this seclusion gives me
one of the happiest sensations in life. But it is not necessarily solitude when I am on this level of spiritual
communication with Mother Nature. It reminds me of my trips as a child to the local park in my hometown of
Coldwater that was just blocks away from our home. It’s like walking through my past in the pathways of nostalgia.
All Natural Nature Orgasms
5-30-06: Nature is just too much to take in! My senses are going wild and my pores are wide open. It’s
extremely life-fulfilling and emotionally, spiritually, and psychically exhilarating. Even my orgasms were having
orgasms. It was all natural nature orgasms totally induced by being in nature.
Nature and Solitude - Yet Never Alone
11-8-09: It was Sunday morning and the weather was again a near-perfect late autumn day. It's not normally
quite this nice outside in the first week of November in Ohio, so I knew I needed to get outside into nature today. Lisa
was working at the hospital. Therefore, I took the initiative to go out by myself. I took a nostalgic choice by going to
the Park of Roses around 10:30 a.m. with my cameras in tow. It is worth mentioning that even though I went by myself,
I never felt alone. Being out and surrounded by nature is a deeply satisfying and spiritual feeling for me. The irony did
not escape me that I was here walking in nature when I normally would have been in church. This is where I find God
and Peace. There was still a few late autumn trees with a few leaves on them and some gorgeous crab apple trees in full
bloom with little red berries. I felt like I was having a nature walk through the autumn garden of Eden.
The National Parks
10-11-09: Some days I fantasize about quitting my job and just driving around the country… taking it all in.
It’s been my dream to tour America’s National Parks… and really spend some time with them. Don’t rush through
them. Take some time to breathe them all in. Discover America from coast to coast. I’d just use up half my saving
account with this trip. I’d stay in inexpensive cabins. I’d drive on roads that I didn’t know where they were going. I’d
find my inner spiritual and artistic freedom. I'd express myself by recording the whole trip and experience so others
could share the catharsis through nature that I felt.
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Yellowstone National Park
Scenic National Parks: Yellowstone: “Ignite the imagination”… “The America’s Serengeti”… “The otherworldly
landscape”… “It’s like walking on a giant volcano”… “This geyser park”… “America’s first National Park”… 2.2
million acre… “It’s violent past”… “Thermal features”… “People forget that they’re in a volcano”… “FOR THE
BENEFIT AND ENJOYMENT OF THE PEOPLE”… “A chorus of steam and toxic gases”… “In this dynamic
country”… “Morning Glory pool can burn your skin”… “Grand Prismatic pool”… “Bacteria that thrives at extreme
temperatures”… “Mud pots”… “Fountain Paint Pot”… “Castle geysers”… “Old Faithful is the superstar”… “Like a
giant pressure cooker”… “Steamboat geyser is the highest geyser”… “Geyser gaze”… “Part-architecture: an inn made
of volcanic rock”… “Firehole river”… “Swim at your own risk”… “You’ve never seen this environment before”…
“Yellowstone has 4,000 bison”… “They’re the icons of the West”… “Yellowstone has 200 lakes”… “Yellowstone
Lake is the largest high elevation lake in North America”… “It’s a volcanic terrain”… “Thermal wonders”…
“Kayaking past geysers”… “It’s just full of so much magic. I love the energy that’s here”… “It’s a wonderland in
winter”… “The park empties out in winter and you feel like one of the first explorers”… “Pristine beautiful rivers”…
“Everything is white! It makes you feel like you’re on Mars”… “The wolves stand out in a blanket of white”…
“Yellowstone in the winter is a magical place”… “Yellowstone’s Grand Canyon. It’s a sight to behold”… “There are
two Yellowstone: one from the road, and one from the back country”… “The multitude of waterways”… “Traveling by
stage coach through flat country”… “Roosevelt Lodge”… “The Yellowstone fires of 1988”… “1/3rd of the park laid
barren”… “In a complex land”… “Walking above the heat”… “Herds of wildlife roam”… “I’d never seen anything
like this”… “I had no idea it was going to be so beautiful”… “A place for people to contemplate the importance of the
wilderness.”
Grand Canyon National Park
Scenic National Parks: Grand Canyon: “Rocky peaks called temples. Some have exotic names like Osiris, Buddha, and
Zorro Master, named after Eastern deities and religions”… “This vertical park”… Phantom Ranch… An oasis at the
bottom of the Grand Canyon… “America’s most scenic treasure”… “If you just took one pillar from the Grand Canyon
and put it in the middle of Kansas, it alone would be a National Monument”… “A visceral ride on the Colorado
River”… “Beyond the beauty”… “Going through the Grand Canyon is like cheap therapy”… “The Grand Canyon is
like an inverted mountain”… “Revel in the views”… “The ancient ones”… “Gaze into the great abyss”… “A short hike
to a back country Shangri La”… “At this heaven on earth”… “At this seemingly endless Eden”… “Saving this supreme
sight”… “A sight every American should see”… “It’s like art come to life”… “Revel in the blue-green waters”…
“Stare in awe of it.”
Grand Teton National Park
Scenic National Parks: Grand Teton: “A place of extraordinary beauty”… “Grand Teton is a hiker’s paradise”…
“These scenic backdrops take your breath away. It’s like heaven”… “Breathing this great area”… “A paddler’s park”…
“The serenity can sweep to the soul”… “Rewarded with a striking reflection”… “Hidden Falls”… “Inspiration
Point”… “The Snake River”… “Powerful white water”… “Jackson Ridge Lodge”… “See the mountain range right
before your eyes”… “The warm glow of a Western sunset”… “The grand peaks of the Grand Teton mountains”… “The
Three Breasts”… “Called the Switzerland of America”… “The Grand towers above its neighbors”… “You get very
absorbed in the moment”… “Making fresh tracks on virgin powder”… “A mass meeting of downhill junkies”… “It’s
just so pure and natural”… “Park founders had the foresight to preserve a place of beauty”… “You can raft a raging
river”… “This reaction Mecca”… “It transforms from season to season”… “It awakes the spirit on a grand scale.”
Yosemite National Park
Yosemite National Park: This place is the closest to Eden on earth that I’ve ever experienced… A rainbow waterfall.
6-2-10: Today was one of those monumental vacations days because Steve and I encountered, enveloped,
caressed, and adored the heaven on earth known as Yosemite National Park. The first thing that hit me when we
entered the park was how it dwarfs all the other places we’ve stopped at and taken photographs and video at over the
past week around the Pacific American Northwest. Its mountains are just staggering and beyond comprehension in their
glory and majesty. Here is proof of the existence of God. It’s just that magnificent. This is the real Cathedral of the
Holy Spirit. This is the true House of God made out of stone and trees, rivers and animal life. It’s the greatest church
I’ve ever been in. And it truly is a place of God. I cannot deny it. I’m just glad to have found God on this trip. It really
made it worthwhile and worth the journey. (Or maybe I’m a little malnourished from eating meals later than I should.)
The first major sight we encountered were the raging rapids at the southwest corner of the park as you drive
in. I’ve seen some serious rapids up at Niagara Falls. Yet these rapids in Yosemite blew my mind. They were the most
violent, emotional water flow I’ve ever witnessed. They were like Class 11 rapids, and rapids only go up to Class 5. It
also shocked me to see them since Steve and I didn’t seem them the first time we went through Yosemite in August
2001. The other major new sights that weren’t around nine years ago in August were the vast number of flowing and
towering mountain waterfalls. We must have spotted over a dozen of them. There were so many because of all the ice
melting from on top of the mountains. So therefore the waterfalls were gushing with water since it’s late spring/ early
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summer. When we were last here, it was early August and the waterfalls weren’t as powerful or as plentiful. So we
were taken by surprise by the gigantic and numerous waterworks.
Back to Yosemite, we entered the grand cathedral of mountains with El Capitan and its various waterfalls
gushing down upon its wings. This really is one of my favorite places on earth to witness and behold. And as it turns
out, it’s a favorite spot of thousands of other tourists from America and around the world. I heard all sorts of different
languages from across Europe at every spot we stopped at to take pictures. We did witness several more spots that we
didn’t see before, like Yosemite Upper and Lower Falls. Once again, everything out here is BIG, just like the state of
California. It makes our state parks in Ohio look like sandboxes or a potted plant. Out here, it’s all GIANT. It really
stirs the emotions.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
5-8-09: Quote from an article on Great Smoky Mountains National Park: "This is the inner sanctum
of the universe as far as I'm concerned," he says during a recent visit. "Remember that the first idea for the
park came from a doctor, not a politician, who said we need a place in southern Appalachia for restoration of
mind, body and soul. … If the movement had not come to save the mountains, the impact on the ecology
would have been disastrous."
Yellow Springs, Ohio
5-12-00: This Friday, I found myself in blissful Yellow Springs, Ohio, my idealized small town full of
alternative art teens and college students, a new age book store and art house movie theater, a comic book
store and coffee house, even a traditional "Dairyland" ice cream joint and small town park. Lorna and I went
to a main street tavern where we ordered some beers and spaghetti. I was in my Eden. In that small town
tavern they played The Cure, Pink Floyd, Janis Joplin, and Pearl Jam. Even the people inside were teens
dressed in black and colored hair. One girl with black hair and a Marilyn Manson T-shirt gave me "the look"
for two eternal seconds. It was a moment where we both felt a curious attraction to each other. I haven't felt
that sort of stranger's affection in years. It was beautiful. I was so infatuated with Yellow Springs that I
suddenly found myself taking pictures that I wished had been in my hometown when I was growing up.
Lorna and I even went hiking at the neighboring Clifton Gorge. It was the best day of my still-lasting
vacation. After all those days in Coldwater where I mostly found alienation from the community, I found my
true home and people in Yellow Springs, Oh-Hi-Oh.
1-3-02: This is something I’ve been looking for to find for the past four years: “There is something about
Antioch College in Yellow Springs -- Is it the sense of community? The sense of finding kindred spirits? Folk
Dancing on Friday? The challenge of trying to study, to work, to travel around the world? Trying to live up to the
famous Horace Mann dictum? The beer at the Tavern? “Ha Ha Pizza”? The Saturday Night movie? All of the above?
None of the above?” I want to belong in an artist community where people of common creative backgrounds gather
together to socialize and converse. I simply don’t have that environment down here in South Florida. I want to be
sociable, but I simply don’t have the opportunity. Then people accuse me of being anti-social! I need to be set free!!
Strangely, I got my wish.
Yellow Springs, Rod Serling's alma mater, (population 4,600) is 18 miles from Dayton and 60 miles from
both Cincinnati and the state capital of Columbus. The village of Yellow Springs is not a typical small country town; it
is a vital intellectual and cultural community that provides diverse activities, participatory arts organizations, and
political and social groups. Yellow Springs residents include professionals and artists who are socially concerned,
politically active, and immensely interested in the arts.
Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH is a private, independent liberal arts college that blends practical
work experience with classroom learning and participatory community governance. Antioch's mission is to empower its
students through an understanding of the force of knowledge and its use in action.
The Aurora Borealis
The aurora is caused by electrically charged particles, electrons in particular, that are blown from the sun and
guided down to earth by earth's magnetic field. The glow we see is caused by these electrons slamming into the
uppermost fringes of our atmosphere.
The aurora borealis has fascinated, and often terrified, humans for thousands of years. The people
of the north who saw the aurora frequently developed many legends and stories about it, while those who
lived further south and rarely saw the aurora thought it was a supernatural omen of war or destruction.
Nature has been putting on one of her finest displays in the last few days. The Aurora Borealis (better known
as the Northern Lights or St Elmo's Fire) has been visible over most of the Highlands of Scotland, but clearly as this
picture shows, Caithness got the best view. The aurora is an electrical atmospheric phenomenon usually of streamers of
light in the sky above the northern magnetic pole.
The Northern Lights are formed when particles from the sun collide with atoms above the Earth's
atmosphere. The particles are propelled toward earth at speeds of around 1 million mph by "coronal mass ejections"
from the sun's surface. The particles are then drawn to the magnetic field of Earth's northern and southern poles. They
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appear as a blue, green, purple or red haze in the sky depending on whether they combine with oxygen or nitrogen
atoms, and at which altitude these collisions occur.
The Northern Lights were given their name by Pierre Gassendi in 1621, combining the name of the Roman goddess
Aurora and the Greek word for the north wind, Boreas.
Thunderstorms
5-18-04: I truly enjoy the thunderstorms of May. The rumble of thunder and the flashes of lightning mirror
my emotional landscape.
6-17-12: It was all yellow-tinted outside around 9:15 p.m. because the sun was setting, but there was an
enormous storm cell brewing just southwest of us. I got some terrific pictures of the whole multi-colored atmospheric
disturbance. It was both violent and beautiful. I looked at the radar after taking this picture. A heavy thunderstorm popup occurred just south in Upper Arlington/ OSU campus area. So that's what I was seeing and witnessing. And if you
look closely, you can see God's face in the cloud formation.
Gray Midwestern Skies
9-10-07: Melancholy atmospheric mood music plays in the background through the gray Ohio winter
countryside. This is not an art drug video. Those gray skies force me to fantasize something better to replace them. The
gray depression inspires me to dream, the make up a better world for myself. This is the new “sunshine”. Rays of
imagination beam down upon the dim world. It is a magic spring within the gray of winter.
The Universe
Outer space symbolizes our collective imagination. Gazing up at the stars, pondering on life
elsewhere, questioning what else is out there. Mars - a frigid red desert planet with a temperature of 100
degrees below zero. We all dream of Mars. Exploring the underground oceans of Europa… Venus - a billion
year old relic… the dry, green valleys of Antarctica…. We reach out for it as it symbolizes a place where our
dreams are.
The Sun
4-23-08: We need to stop and be more appreciative of the sun and not take it for granted so much. It’s there
every day to provide life for us to live on this planet. Yet we rarely think about how important it is for us. Without it,
we’d shrivel up and die.
Being Underwater
When I’m swimming underwater with my snorkel and mask on, I feel with one with the aqua world. I’ve
removed myself from the outside world and entered a new, more pure universe that I’ve rarely ever seen! That’s the
excitement and joy of snorkeling. I’m gone. I’m one with the mermaids and fish, the coral and the starfish.
Roller Coasters
5-21-03: I think I am attracted to roller coasters and other exciting amusement park rides for their nearly
suicidal, death-defying thrill-rush. It’s like this is going to be the moment you die by going at this outrageous speeds
and doing ludicrous spins and loops – only you don’t. The ride stops, you get off, and can’t quite figure out how you’re
still alive.
I think the purpose of roller coaster amusement parks are to make you feel young again. Once you’re past 21
and entered the real world, it’s crucially important to resurrect your youth back out of you through an exhilarated
scream!
Sledding
2-17-07: Lisa and I did another first together this afternoon: we went sledding. While we were waiting for my
car to be worked on for the coolant to be flushed, Lisa drove us over to the nearby Upper Arlington Thompson Park
library for some Star Trek: Fan Collective: Q and Star Trek: Fan Collective: Klingon DVDs. This was the park where
the neighborhood kids were going to sledding since there was a fairly good hill there to descend from. We happened to
noticed a green sled in the trash dumpster that was thrown out because it was cracked. Yet it was not broken enough to
not ride again!! So I fished it out, to Lisa’s relative disapproval, and we went up a hill that wasn’t being occupied and
Lisa went down first. One thing I didn’t know about Lisa was that she was certainly game for sledding. She loved it!
Once we had a sledding path made, it was easier for each of us to descend down. Instantly we were transported back to
being kids again and we both loved that we could share in the experience. Sure, it was bitterly cold and it was wickedly
difficult walking in the uneven icy snow. Yet it was exhilarating all around. We were grown adults back in the rapture
of being kids again! That old hyperventilation of sledding down a hill at an unused-to speed and velocity can produce
quite the wild grin on one’s face. You can’t believe you just did what you did… and you can’t believe how silly fun it
was. Of course, it’s not quite as much fun as it was as a child. But it was certainly closer to how I’ve felt like a kid in
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quite a while.
Classrooms
Being “stuck in a school lecture classroom actually provokes you to daydream and come up with such
fantastic ideas and doodles. The boredom of being trapped in a classroom forced my mind to escape into my
imagination. My mind would just drift away into fun, hilarious concepts and images. My brain wants to keep working,
so my creativity kicks in. To this day, boring lectures grant me wonderful daydreams!
Taco Bell Is Fast Food Heaven
8-22-09: The greatest and also the most affordable eating out restaurant to be found in this great land of
America has to be… Taco Bell. I’ve been in love with this place since I was a young boy. I loved their crunchy tacos,
bean burritos, and hot sauce and haven’t stopped ordering them since I was a little kid. I usually get Taco Bell at least
once a week. It’s like a controlled addiction for me.
Halloween
10-24-08: Halloween is a celebration of the imagination. Let’s be silly and have fun by dressing up and
scaring ourselves in a good way. That’s what is so special and enduring about this holiday. It transports you back to
being a kid again. And I really don't see the harm in doing this just one evening in an entire year. Some adults act so
scared of being young again. Don't they realize that this is partly the reason why they enjoy having children so much?
They get to relive their precious childhoods and innocence that they'd once known.
The Halloween Transformation
10-31-03: For anyone who loves seeing people dress up in costumes and masks as if they were comic books
characters, Halloween is the greatest day of the year. And that’s not just in terms of witnessing normal society turned
into ghouls. It’s experiencing people in different bodies, personalities, and mindsets. I got to put on “Mr. Burns” from
“The Simpsons” and walked around in a totally different skin, personality, posture, mannerisms, and voice. It was a
multiple personality patient wet dream day. For an artist like myself who loves being someone besides myself, this was
a cathartic release. I get to hide behind a mask (like Batman) and people treat you totally differently. I’m anonymous,
and also popular because I’m new. Girls raved aloud about me while looking me up and down (not bad for a character
who is supposed to be extremely old)! A cute blonde Photo major chick dressed up like a Hooters girl (one of the male
population’s favorite wet dreams) mentioned that she loved who I was and exclaimed aloud that I was the “best”! I love
witnessing the acquaintances I know suddenly put on costumes and become someone new… transformed. It’s like
being born again, but into a fantasy world!!! Day in and day out, life goes on without much change… except for
Halloween! It’s sexy, it’s suspenseful, it’s insanity, it's silly. It's everything I love and know all wrapped up into one
neat little day. It’s the only day where we get to make the world an asylum and it’s okay.
Halloween: A Living Comic Book Holiday
10-29-09: I really liked the “kinky” aspect of Halloween as well. It’s the closest our society gets to looking
and feeling like a living comic book. It’s also worth mentioning that women dress in tights and other sexy costumes
more on that special day than any other time during the year. And there’s an innocent, childlike quality about dressing
up. They are becoming more of who they normally are. There’s a transformation in progress here. Hence, it's the comic
book holiday.
South Florida as an Open Asylum
7-3-01: I am convinced that South Florida is actually one large tropical asylum geographically
walled in by the Everglades and the Atlantic Ocean. Just go out on the roads and you will discover millions
of lunatics out raging on the interstates like they were amusement park rides or the Daytona 500. So many
races, ages, and religions in one area - all neurotic and manic depressive – all on some range of drugs
(Prosaic to cocaine) ready to burst from the tropical heat. It's a giant pressure cooker steamed with humidity
and sharks.
Tate’s Comics
6-16-01: So I unbelievably blissed out in the fantasy world today. I drove out to Tate’s Comics
again and rented nine videos for two days from a quirky, pretty female clerk. Where else could I rent out cult
films like Fritz the Cat, Flesh Gordon, a fan-made Spider-Man movie, the Star Wars characters guesting on
“The Muppet Show”, and other rare letter-boxed unrated movies?! It was sort of like an underground bootleg
video rental store that also sold comic books. I loaded up on alcohol and food for the weekend for myself
and my fantasy world. I kept thinking about that female brunette comic book store clerk. Of course, every
single, lonely, sexually repressed, perverted, outcast male who goes to that comic book store flirts with her
hopping for a date. I’m a cynical exception and contradiction because I liked her, too. I wonder if she’s the
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only girl who even talks to them. She showed them kindness and attention.
All those subversive cult videos and mixed drinks I had later withdrew me from reality long enough
to work in a subconscious state of mind on my writing. I had escaped from the demands and predicaments
of real life. There was just fantasy and its real world counterpart, art. There was no loneliness. It was
wonderful. Yet I knew that leaving this blissful state of mind would be an extremely painful withdrawal
process. So I made sure to enjoy it while it lasted.
The Laughing Ogre
5-6-06: Since it was free Comic Book Day, I wanted to go to The Laughing Ogre comic book store this
morning. I went free comic book shopping. I had assumed that I'd be at the store for only 5-10 minutes. I was halted in
my tracks when I noticed that they had a MASSIVE 80% off sale on their back issue overstock!! I couldn’t believe it.
This was some sort of dream come true. I had plenty of money to spend and all the discounted comics in the world to
choose from for my own personal collection. Suddenly, my entire day’s schedule was dedicated to this out-of-the-blue
super sale. I ended up going through 80 long boxes of comics for over six hours for a grand total of $453. Without this
sale, the regular price would have been $2,255.50!!! My prize purchase of the day to myself was finally purchasing
"The Sandman #8", the first appearance of Death. It was originally marked for $22, and I got it for only $5! This was a
dream sale event. I thanked my lucky stars that I didn’t have any obligations or meetings to go to today. Only a single
man would have been this lucky to be able to drop everything and commit to going through all those comic book boxes.
During the Free Comic Book Day festivities, one guy dressed up as Superman, Wolverine, and then Batman
for the kids. How cool was it for a kid to get Wolverine's autograph?! Seriously! I loved it when a small boy innocently
asked in wonderment to the owner: "Since it's Free Comic Book Day, does that mean everything in the store is free? In
a way, from the boy's point of view, the title "Free Comic Book Day" does sound that way (though it's only a select
dozen or so books that are put out by publishers as "free"). I noticed the couples that came to the store and how lucky
those guys were to have a woman who loves comics too. I observed at the people that came into the store as I was
there. Yes, there were lots of geeky grown men there. And it unnerved me a bit to be one of them.
I did pause and wonder: “Does it make one a geek to like and live for comics?” I passionately enjoy the
creativity and the perversity of comics. That's my thing. But what if sports were considered geeky? Isn't tailgating an
accepted form of geekiness? Some guys were balding like me. Others were overweight and appeared to have to
mingled with the outside world not all that much. Some were well-dressed and looked intelligent. Others looked like
they still lived with their mothers in the basement and couldn't spend more than ten dollars. I overheard some ten-yearold boys complaining that they didn't have enough money to buy a few books in the sale-priced back stock bins. I
remember being that way. How amusing and fantastic that there I was in the here and now spending $453 like it wasn't
too big a deal.
“The Laughing Homan”
4-8-07: There’s a new secret and exclusive comic book store/ library in Columbus, Ohio called “The
Laughing Homan”. It’s in my basement, which features over fifty thousand comic books and over a thousand of
graphic novels. It’s not related to the sister Columbus, Ohio store, “The Laughing Ogre”. Mine is more a private library
where trusted patrons can loan out certain books and comics for free. And it's been several decades in the making.
In the Ball Park
2-9-07: Tomorrow: comics for 25 cents galore! But I still don’t put my expectations out of scale with what I
really might find, which will probably not be too much. We’ll just have to see together, Future.
2-10-07: I felt a surprising amount of personal freedom and confidence this Saturday as I took yet another trip
down to Lancaster for their 25 cent comic book sale that goes on every three months. Like times before, I made sure to
get there before they opened at 10:30 a.m. and waited fifteen minutes until they opened their doors early so I could be
one of the first ones in to get first picks through their collection. And I did get quite a bit for the $77 I spent, which
would for 308 comics. It was perhaps the most pleasant time I’d had going through the thousands of boxes of comics
since I listened to my mp3 player to Kraftwerk, Love & Rockets, Nine Inch Nails, and The Pixies. With music masking
out the annoying redneck presence of some sad-ass backwards locals, the time went by like a breeze. I ended up
finishing through the twenty “new” boxes of comics by 2 p.m., which was only 3¼ hours of looking through. That left
me with enough energy to keep going on for the rest of the day. It’s the times when I’d be looking for over 8 hours
straight that I’d be in wildly fatigued shape, physically and mentally. But all in all, it was a good time today.
In the Ball Park Comic Book Sale Madness!
8-17-08: Instead of resting from a week’s worth of traveling and the crazy SIGGRAPH convention, I took off
right away for Lancaster for the In the Ball Park 25-cent comic book sale. I woke up at 10 a.m. since I didn’t make it to
sleep until 2 a.m. with me still being on Pacific Time. What made this sale different was that they had 120 new boxes of
comics out for the pickings. Normally, they’ll have around 20 to 30. But 120!?!! I was looking through box after box
from noon until 6:20 p.m. without barely a break. It was insanity in the fever pitch of finding the best comics in there
before the dozens of other collectors there might pull them. Too bad I wasn’t at the store yesterday when the sale first
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began. I probably missed out on hundreds of great issues. Yet I also had to be thankful for the fact that I had 6 ½ hours
today to even go to the sale. Some husbands/ fathers wouldn’t even get an hour. The ironic thing was I only made it
through half the boxes that were for sale. So I accepted that I would have to go back down on Wednesday, probably
after the all-faculty meeting at CCAD. I overheard a comic book store owner talk about the 3 ½ feet of flooding they
had in their store and they lost over 100 boxes. Russ, the soft-spoken owner of In the Ball Park, confessed that he also
lost 100 boxes last year to severe water damage, some comic books that were worth $75 each. But of course, his store’s
insurance covered the damages.
In the Ball Park Comic Book Sale Madness! : Part 2
8-20-08: After 2 p.m. I departed back down to Lancaster for “Part Two” of going through 40 more
comic book boxes of 25-cent comics. I got over 300 more books on my “obsessive” quest for creativity,
imagination, and women in tights and spandex. It makes me wonder what reaches I will go to in order to
live in imaginary worlds where it is “normal” for super women to run around in skintight costumes. It is the
world I prefer to a certain extent. After five straight hours of searching, I was getting extremely burnt-out.
Enough is enough. Though I was pleased with what I found, I regretted not making it through all the boxes,
which meant I’d have to drive back down yet again to finish up the remaining 40 some boxes. I used to get
such a kick out of finding treasured comic at a great bargain price. Yet this is insane because there are
simply too many bargains to go through. It’s like finding a diamond, and then finding 2,000 more
diamonds. It’s ultimately overwhelming. I told the store owner rather eccentrically that it’s like he’s giving
me too much potent heroin – this is simply too many books to go through. It’s too much eye candy to take
in. “I’m beaten.” So this is what happens when your dream burns you out.
Maverick's Sports Cards-Comics
3-19-07: Then we stopped off at Maverick's Sports Cards-Comics comic book store so I could pick up some
more comic book bags since they had them cheap there. At the back of the store, I found out to my shock that their
back issue inventory was having an incredible super sale. Over two dozen boxes of Marvel and DC comics were 25
cents each. And an additional dozen boxes of independent books were only 10 cents each. I had to ask my dad to go off
shopping for a while so I could look for a couple of hours. After he got back, I was still searching through those long
boxes. So he went back to the car and took a nap. In the end, I got 120 independent comics for only $12!!! Normally, it
would have cost me $700 for them with the prices that were originally on them!! I also got about $60 worth of the 25cent DC and Marvel books. My mind was a blur from looking through so many titles and seeing if I had them on my
comic book collection list. And my body was exhausted from crouching over looking through tens of thousands of
comic books. So what was it that kept me going? The thrill of the bargain is one element. But I also admittedly love
finding fantasy images and stories of young women in skintight spandex costumes. Yes, it’s a turn-on. Comics are just
fireworks for the imagination, pure and simple. Now I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me sorting through them all.
Packrat Comics
7-19-09: Speaking of “my crowd” of comic book fans, I overheard something about comic book parties
happening in Hilliard, Ohio through the owners of Packrat Comics. They were even planning a Halloween bash with
some of their customers dressing up as zombies. They even had parties where they invited Sean McKevener (writer of
“Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane”) and Darryl Banks (penciler of “Green Lantern”) to come along. I miss that sort of
comic book community feel. This underground league of comic book fans was what was sorely missing from my
“Comic Book Culture” documentary. I needed more points of view of the comic book world from fans and industry
professionals.
7-21-09: This Tuesday, I journeyed over to Hilliard to Packrat Comics to check out their 100+ long boxes of
comics that they had recently acquired from buying going-out comic book stores for their back issues. Each book was a
$1, and I had a $10 off 50 books coupon with me. From 11:18 a.m. – 2:30 p.m., I burrowed and burned my way
through all those boxes in that humid underground comic book basement liar. I have to admit that I actually had 90% of
the books they had there. So it was sort of frustrating to go through there and get excited, then disappointed when I
checked my comic book list that I already had that book. Most of the books were out of order, which made the
experience of going through the boxes both maddening, yet exciting. You never knew what you might find. All in all, I
got 62 books, not bad… and I didn’t spent “too much” money either. Yet the labor of flipping through that many long
boxes was very tiring on the body and mind. It’s actually a lot of work pulling in and out dozens of those long boxes
under those tables. And flipping through my list to see if I had a certain book hundreds of times can make my eyes very
weary.
Half Price Books
11-5-07: I spontaneously decided to stop by Half Price Books on Bethel on the way home and found nearly
$50 worth of new comics priced for just a buck each. Many of them were newer books selling for that stupid inflated
$3.99 cover price. I must admit how much I adore having that store only minutes away from me. It had been a major
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source saving money on my passionate comic-buying needs for creativity and for sexy women in skintight spandex
costumes.
Mid-Ohio Comic Con
11-26-05: Dare I say I have a great, fun day? I did, I did, I did. It probably took me by surprise to a certain
degree since I wasn’t exactly planning on going. I hadn’t made up my mind until just a few days before the convention.
And by the fourth hour I was there, I had spent so much money and found so many comics that I literally ran out of
cash. I spent $160, then the $120 in my emergency wallet in the trunk of my car. I even used an extra emergency roll of
quarters (totally $7.50) give the glove compartment in my car for some last hour purchases. There were so many other
items there I wanted to get, but I simply ran out of money. They didn’t accept credit cards, so I was stuck broke for the
first time since I was 20! I never expected to find so much! I think and feel that this was the best comic con I’ve ever
been to.
From 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., I looked for some great deals at various stands on some fantastic books that I’ve
been looking for, especially the “Ultimate” books. There were just so many!! There were some notable comic book
celebrities (fan favorite and legendary comic book writer Peter David) and sci-fi movie icons (Margret Kidder/ “Lois
Lane”). It was nice to be among so many with similar interests in what is essentially a underground subculture. I also
noticed how many of us there were middle-aged and bald(ing). The Comic Con is really a balding convention for men
to gather and feel collectively as one. And it’s a Halloween celebration where it’s okay and “normal” to dress up in a
costume. It’s so much fun to see people in costumes from the books and movies we all enjoy! Where else do you find
several Star Wars Stormtroopers hanging around a hallway? For a seven foot tall Darth Vader? Or girls wearing their
hair in the buns like Princess Leia did in “Star Wars”? You could even hear John Williams’ main theme to “Star Wars”
playing in an aisle in one of the convention halls. Perhaps that singular piece of music is the national anthem for our
legion of geekdom.
Manic Depression Ecstasy at the Mid-Ohio Comic Con
12-1-02: There is a definite change in my comic book/ CD collecting – and that is that I now have enough
money and financial security to buy a lot. Today at the 2002 Mid-Ohio Comic Con, I bought some 300 comics for
around $140. Some were only $1, 50 cents, or 33 cents apiece. I indulged in bargains when I find them. I was also on a
quest to reconnect with my childhood – only now as an adult did I have the money and the opportunity to buy the
comics I wanted so badly when I was a teen. I obsessively twisted and leaned my body to reach underneath tables to get
to the back of dozens of long boxes filled with mixed up comics. I hadn’t put my body into such contorted positions in
years. It was that kind of quest… a crusade to find creativity and imagination. It was that important to me. I never knew
what I’d find next!
Who are these people? I observed around me… It’s Halloween everywhere!
Then there was a period where I was overwhelmed by everything and all. There were too many people. It
wasn’t just a comic book convention; it was a convention of outcasts united over fantasy, sci-fi art, scantily clad
women in spandex, “Star Wars”, “Star Trek”, collectible toys, and a cultish devotion to obscure movies. I got sick from
smelling dozens of body odors coming from different people who walked by. I’ve always had a “body odor” problem –
so their presence forced me to question if the people around me were just like me… outcasts, nerds, geeks, punks,
eccentrics, sensitive people, artists…. I had always wanted to be special… different. I believed that I was an outsider in
an outsider world, undercover looking for good fantasy at a bargain price. Eventually, I realized that in the end I was
one of them. I attended a question and answer seminar with Jeff Smith (“Bone”) and Sergio Aragones (“Mad”
magazine) that proved oddly pleasing since I was surrounded in an audience full of seasoned comic book writers and
artists. Most of them do comics out of a love for the medium and work for relatively little. As inspiriting as it was to
see Jeff Smith, a Columbus native, make it big in the comic book business, I stopped and realized that he was one of
the very few who made it. In the “Meet-the-Artist” section of the convention, I witnessed dozens of tables and booths
with comic book artists sitting behind them with no one coming up to them. They were all left unknown and obscure, in
the shadow of more prominently known (and possibly more talented) artists. It was devastating to see since it reminded
me of my own artistic place in the world. No one knows who Eric Homan is in the art or movie world. I’m a nobody. I
can keep being patient and tell myself that I just need to keep working hard… but I’m dying here. I’ve had enough of
people. It was too crowded. Deep inside, I felt like an artist peer with Jeff Smith, but he’s a comic book celebrity. And
I’m just another fan.
Buckeye Comic Con
3-5-06: Today was my first trip to the Buckeye Comic Con at the Buckeye Hall of Fame Café on Olentangy
Blvd., only fifteen minutes away from me. This time I was prepared with enough cash so that I wouldn’t run out. For
only $3 admission, this smaller scale comic book convention brought out the die-hards and general comic book fans
alike. I must have spent $250 on various newer titles that were set out for only $1! Considering that their price tag was
on average $3 and I didn’t have to pay tax, it was a pretty sweet deal, which I took full advantage of for the entire time
the convention was going on (10 a.m. to 4 p.m.). I had a big breakfast so I could eat a late-late lunch. I did notice that
most of the older guys there were balding or overweight, which made me feel a bit bewildered to be one of them even
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though I didn’t mean to be. I buy good comics for their creativity, imagination, stories, characters, and the occasional
hot superhero woman in a skintight costume.
Gem City Comic Con
4-2-06: Obviously, I was feeling rather mixed about going to the Gem City Comic Con when it made me feel
like the comic book loving outcast artist that I truly am. Collecting comics is seen as a “loser” subculture that doesn’t
get much respect, but has such a passionately intense following. And it’s that passion that keeps me coming back. That
and all the bargain comics up for grabs if you’ve got the cash for it. So from 9:45 a.m. to 4:15 p.m., I flipped through
dozens upon dozens of boxes of comics for only $1, 2 for a $1, or 3 for a $1. I was mainly filling holes in my collection
and getting some great Alan Moore and Garth Ennis books as well. One vender inquired aloud that I was the kind of
collector who gets books for their stories rather than just trying to make a buck and resell like many collectors. I was
running on endorphins with my obsessive bargain hunting initiative. I can’t help it. I get such a rush from finding so
many great deals, and I never know what I’m going to find. There was so many other fans and collectors there that you
have to act fast or else it’ll be too late. I didn’t even eat lunch until after 4:45 p.m. The weather had warmed up and it
was certainly feeling more spring-like outside. My mood was ridiculously mixed with being single again and having
found hundreds of new books to go through. Still, it was exhausting activity and my body paid quite a price for it. Once
I got home and unpacked, my mind and strength collapsed.
The Stuff I Hold Onto (Movies, Comics, Books, and CDs)
7-6-10: Lisa got all upset with me for picking out ten of the DVDs her mother was going to sell at the garage
sale Lisa's having on Saturday. I was going to pay for them. Lisa just doesn't like that I keep accumulating more "stuff"
where we don't have any more room to put. One: we do have the room since we're in a four-bedroom house. Two: the
DVDs I took were mostly 3D and 2D animated films that I could use for school or when we have kids. Three: the
DVDs were all family movies. She's dead-right that I don't want to get rid of my stuff. The only things I get rid of are
the clothes that don’t fit me anymore. And clothes offer me very little personal attraction to them. Lisa just can't
understand why I "hold on to movies, comics, books, and CDs". She can't figure out that I have a personal attachment
to these things that help stimulate my sense of creativity. They're essential to how I build up my life with memories in
the form of physical objects. In fact, I went through a period where I got rid of a lot of my old things, toys and CDs and
movies… only to repurchase them five to ten years later due to them striking a heavy nostalgic zone in my emotions. I
am also reminded of when my parents made me get rid of my Kenner Star Wars toy space ships because "they were
taking up too much space". They sold them in a garage sale, Millennium Falcon and all. Thankfully, I got to keep my
original Star Wars figures. I later repurchased most of the space ships, for about ten to twenty times how much they
were sold for at my parent's garage sale.
Big Fun
1-10-09: Later in Cleveland, Ohio, we shopped on Coventry Street that had a wild 80’s nostalgia/ toy store
called Big Fun. It was a huge 80’s toy flashback with a shockingly large variety of all sorts of He-Man and the Masters
of the Universe, Kenner Star Wars figures, G.I. Joe action figures, comic books, Transformers (including the little car
ones I once had), and Garbage Pail Kids. It was an ideal store for “kids” in their thirties with expendable incomes to
(re)purchase the toys from their youth. I even bought two Star Wars bounty hunter figures that I always wished I had
when I was little. Now at 32, I’ve got them. Entering that place made me feel like I had ridden a time machine into an
80’s toy store! I wanted to hang out there for hours longer. I mean, even Big Fun had their ceiling airbrushed with
murals of Super Mario Bros. and Spider-Man. There was a wild, artistic, fanboy flavor there that you can’t find too
often. Big Fun even had a guy in a magician tux showing customers magic tricks for a price. How often do you see
that? Remember when kids were in awe of magic rather than video games? Remember awe and wonder? At least it was
alive and well on one street in Cleveland.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
1-10-09: Today was our grand venture to Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We got to the Rock Hall
Museum around 10:30 a.m. and there was hardly nobody there yet probably due to the bad icy roads outside. This was
my third trip there (my first in 1998, and second in 2002), yet this trip I especially liked since I had more museums to
compare it to and more music experiences to appreciate more of the incredibly collections they had. It was more like
the Ripley’s Odditoriums that I had ever imagined with its own rock music orientated displays of odds and ends of rock
history from John Lennon’s glasses to Neil Young’s Buffalo Springfield fringe jacket to Tina Turner’s miniskirt to a
broken and smashed to pieces Clash guitar. It was like a gathering place of used rock memorabilia. Look! There’s Pink
Floyd’s “The Wall” with an English school master made up of sexually suggestive parts! There’s the metal face statues
from Pink Floyd’s “The Division Bell” album cover! There’s the hanging fur covered car stage prop from U2’s Zoo TV
tour! There’s John Lennon’s Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band uniform. What I became quite aware of was how
many costumes that had to be designed and made up for these performers. It’s all theater or comic book character
costumes! Some of their outfits were even torn up and damaged to fit with the character they were playing (a Bowie
thing). After learning some of the substance abuse history of musicians, I was surprised that they didn’t have a section
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dedicated to all the cocaine, heroin, and booze that were taken to create much of the music in that rock hall! I was
pretty into what they had there, even a few R. Crumb sketches of Janis Joplin they had on display. Like a said, there
were so many little things there of interest with different songs playing every twenty feet. It was like walking through a
sonic space of music history.
Used Music Stores and Album Cover Artwork
2-2-10: I love going to music stores and just browsing around. To me, it’s like going to a far more accessible
art gallery. For one thing, I adore looking at CD album cover artwork. It speaks to me much more than 99% of what’s
in art galleries in Columbus’ trendy Short North area. And the artwork packaging is just a hint of what magic is inside
with the music itself. That’s where the real treasure and beauty lies. I love walking into those used music stores and not
knowing what I’ll find and how it will inspire me days later when I get a chance to listen to these albums. It’s a deeply
fulfilling experience. Like today at Used Kids Records store, I noticed a fellow music collection who had a vast music
collection listed in a notebook. It was like seeing a reflection of myself.
Heaven and the Afterlife
1-4-02: The concept of heaven and the afterlife dearly intrigues me. Is heaven a subconscious
fantasy world you get to eternally live in? Kinda makes me look forward to dying. After all, people often say
that death is just the beginning. And this physical "reality" that we're in is just a temporary stage until the
next act.
Hot Showers and Baths
2-23-05: Have you ever taken a hot shower and never wanted for it to end? I felt that way this evening. I
could have stayed in the warm womb of water washing away the day’s pain and troubles. It took courage and bravery
to turn off the faucet and get out of the steam and streams of heat. I’d rather stay into that liquid world of no problems
and physical pleasure. Taking that hot shower or having a warm bath are as close as us humans get to going back to the
womb as we can get.
Summer Vacation Breaks
5-19-08: It’s May 19th now and I have to admit freely that I love having the summer off. It’s so refreshing and
relaxing. I sometimes take an hour-long afternoon nap when my eyes get sleepy from reading comics in a comfortable,
soft easy chair. I adore being able to sleep in – just that extra forty-five minutes every morning is a Godsend. I’m not
expected to be anywhere or do anything. I have no deadlines or people I have to talk to. My stress level has gone way
down and I haven’t had a headache all week. Now this is a summer vacation.
Taking a Walk
9-10-10: Lisa, Don, and I went for walking around Antrim Park this lovely early autumn evening.
As I walked around, I couldn't help but think about how normal of an activity taking a walk is. There is
nothing extraordinary or artistically ambitious about it. Going for a walk is all about getting out with other
people and exercising. It's quite literally life-fulfilling. And it gets me back to nature.
City Barbecue
10-19-10: I officially think that City Barbecue is my favorite restaurant in Columbus. It's the combination of
the tangy, flavorful sauces and their incredible side dishes (like greens w/ pork) that make their brisket come to life. We
went there this evening with Tom, who also loves the place as much as I do, which makes the whole eating experience
that much better. And where else can you eat one of the best meals of your month for under $10? And sometimes, I
have enough leftovers for another meal. It's such a great place. And we've got a City Barbecue just five minutes away
from us.
Religion, Media, and Stuff
Music, movies, and books are my emotional and creative catharsis… "a relief of tension and
anxiety by bringing repressed feelings and fears to consciousness". From there, I apply what I had
discovered about the world and myself to my artwork and my self.
Art and Religion
I wish to sincerely express my views and opinions about my perplexity with religion. I find it odd that
movies and music offer more spiritual and emotional advice than going to church. I am acutely aware of how
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much art, movies, and music influence me. I found role models in Bob Dylan, Björk, Bono, John Lennon,
Vincent van Gogh, Salvador Dali, Tim Burton. I agree to a certain extent that my generation and I have been
"brainwashed" by the media, movies, music, television, and the Internet. But there is good "brainwashing"
and bad "brainwashing" - and it takes sensitivity, intelligence, and empathy to comprehend which from
which. As much garbage as there is in today's media, there are still examples of fine art that has something
spiritual, sincere, and passionate to express. I learned and felt more from Martin Scorsese's film The Last
Temptation of Christ than any time I've read the bible. I believe the difference lies in the emotional and
personal execution of the Gospel material. The ideas and emotions that well-written movies and songs
express matter to me more. To an artist, a movie about Vincent van Gogh like in Lust for Life is the
Eucharist, the sermon, the Gospel, the Blood and the Spirit. I quote Vincent van Gogh as played by Kirk
Douglas in this movie: "I'm not an atheist. I do believe in God. It's just that some people serve God through
the pulpit, others through a painting."
Because there are so many religions, I do not wish to designate myself to one. Call it "Ignorance is
Bliss" if you wish, I'm happier without religion causing conflicting issues in my mind. Yet I've learned about
each faith and remain with an open mind of each. It's the best way to empathize with someone and not feel
a separation from them with the label of one's creed (be it Catholic, Methodist, Jew, atheist, Muslim,
Buddhist...). I know it's a bit eccentric, but it suits me fine. There is no certainty to any of our beliefs. There
may not even be a God. But there is still Faith. The people I've found to be my best friends are those who
are self-expressive and free-thinking as well as with sensitivity and kindness.
Please understand that I am not knocking religion or those who embrace religion. I recognize the
positive aspects of going to a church, synagogue, or mosque to find a sense of peace and meaning to one's
life. In turn, I create art for the very same purpose. Art and religion can be one in the same. It doesn't matter
where you practice and preach: be it through a pulpit, canvas, Internet, or television set.
Can you empathize with these points? I do not believe I am completely right… nor completely
wrong either. It may be a difference in being left-brained or right brained, conservative and liberal. I don't
know.
Now here is a simple song I wish to sing in a church for once instead of the boring stuff they always
make you sing. It's a ballad that we as a world can certainly empathize with:
"Imagine" by John Lennon
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one.
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one.
I Am and Am Not All Religions
2-17-07: No religion means no separation. That is why I choose to be and not be all religions: I am and am
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not Catholic. I am and am not Protestant. I am and am not Jewish. I am and am not Muslim. I am and am not Buddhist.
I am and am not Atheist.
Catholic Mass - It Doesn't Spiritually Fill Me Up Anymore
8-18-07: Then my fiancée Lisa and I traveled fifteen minutes to go to Saturday mass at 4 p.m. It was the first
time I went to a service at St. Elizabeth, the church Lisa and I are to be wed at. I went for Lisa because she’s been
going more frequently. I still didn’t fully enjoy myself at the Catholic mass service since there’s little there that truly
interests me spiritually. Once again, I have to acknowledge that “The Last Temptation of Christ” is a far more direct,
honest, and ground-breaking spiritual and emotional experience than any church service I’ve ever experienced. It’s
taking the Gospels and making them into an artful movie-going experience. Whereas going to mass doesn’t offer
anything truly original or different to me. It just feels like repetition; therefore, I find it tedious and exceedingly yawninducing. I feel bad about that, but I can’t help how it makes me react. Boredom is boredom. There really isn’t anything
there for me. The only part about the mass service that amused me was when I snickered when the pastor said “Jesusfire”. And I gave Lisa “peace” three times when everyone offers each other a handshake.
The New Evangelists, Prophets, and Icons
These Movies, Musicians, and People: The Last Temptation of Christ, 2001: A Space Odyssey,
Lust for Life, American Beauty, My Dinner With Andre, Fearless, Dogma, Wings of Desire, The Beatles, Bob
Dylan, Neil Young, Bob Marley, John Lennon, Johnny Cash, U2, Björk, Johnny Rotten, Al Green, Tupac
Shakur. -Witness the Evolution from Religious Icons to Pop Culture Icons (Note the advent of emotion,
humor, charisma, attitude, and imagination in the imagery).
Science Fiction
The news reported today that there are 70 sextillion
(70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) stars in the known universe. This brings up
the fascinating assumption that we are clearly not alone in the universe. This
also makes science fiction to be one of the most important and prophetic
sources of future knowledge around. We need to take science fiction novels and
movies more seriously as science fact. They're bound to be real soon enough.
It's only a matter of time until we are contacted. Star Trek: First Contact is
an example of our near and inevitable future. We should prepare ourselves for
an alien encounter and for our sense of being to be completely altered,
starting with our sense of religion or belief in a "higher being". The Bible
itself may be called in serious question to the degree that parts of it might
be a total mythological exaggeration. Other great science fiction examples of
our near reality are: The Day the Earth Stood Still, the Star Trek movies,
Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Star Wars movies, 2001: A Space
Odyssey, E.T., and Starman.
TV and Saturday Morning Cartoons
When I was young and stubborn, I was infatuated with TV. After sitting in a chair for over six
straight hours of Saturday morning cartoons, my parents would turn off the tube and say, “That’s enough”. In
rebellion, I would continue watching the blank TV set dreaming up in defiance my own personal fantasy
programs.
To my nostalgic delight, I came across “Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends” one Saturday morning on one
of the family cable stations. It re-awoke dormant feelings inside that wished to reconnect with my childhood. (I used to
have a crush on Firestar. I wanted us to fall in love because she was so beautiful, and looked so hot in that yellow
costume of hers. Also, she was a bit of an outcast because people considered her a freak for having such bizarre
powers, which she didn’t quite know how to control when she first developed them during her adolescence.) I was in
awe of watching my past replay before my eyes. From the ages of four to ten, I used to be obsessed with watching
Saturday morning cartoon shows. They were what I looked forward to the most through the week. It was the ultimate
imagination experience. I’d lose myself and escape from the world in those shows. I didn’t have to worry about getting
picked on and all the other pressures I faced every week at school. Because I was so addicted to these animated shows,
my mother remarked prolifically, “Eric, you live in your own fantasy world”. It was a place for me to develop my
imagination.
Fortune Cookies
Never underestimate the added imaginative message to fortune cookies by adding the words “…in bed” at the
end of it. Here are some examples:
Fortune Cookie Says: “Ideas are like children; there are none so wonderful as your own… in bed.”
Fortune Cookie Says: “Accept the next proposition you hear… in bed.”
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Fortune Cookie Says: “Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food… in bed.”
Fortune Cookie Says: “Adventure can be a real happiness… in bed.”
Fortune Says: “You make people realize that there exist other beauties in the world… in bed.”
Fortune States: “A chance meeting opens new doors to success and friendship… in bed.”
Eric’s Fortune States: “You have a potential urge and the ability for accomplishment… in bed.”
My Fortune States: “Your emotional nature is strong and sensitive… in bed.”
Your Fortune States: “Some men dream of fortunes, others dream of cookies… in bed.”
Fortune’s Fortune States: “It is much easier to be critical than to be correct… in bed.”
Fortune States: “It’s time for you to explore all those new interests… in bed.”
Fortune Says: “Good health will be yours for a long time… in bed.”
Fortune Reveals: “Your dearest wish will come true… in bed.”
Fortune Cookie Say: “Your mentality is alert, practical and analytical in bed.”
Fortune Cookie Say: “Avert misunderstanding by calm, poise and balance in bed.”
Fortune Cookie Say: “You never hesitate to tackle the most difficult problems... in bed.”
Fortune Cookie Say: “Versatility is one of your outstanding traits... in bed.”
Fortune Cookie Say: “Sing and rejoice, fortune is smiling on you... in bed.”
Fortune cookie say: “Pleasant surroundings and happy time await you… in bed.”
Fortune cookie say: “You are kind-hearted, hospitable, cheerful, and well liked… in bed.”
Water
2-5-04: One of my favorite things in life is gulping down a cold glass of water after eating a hot meal. It’s
such a simple thing, but it feels so good. Water is the simplest nourishment of life. WE all need it in order to survive.
It's also a large part of our bodies. We are part water.
Bloodgood Japanese Maple
5-6-06: I ventured over to the nearby Park of Roses for a nice stroll since the weather was so cool and sunny
in early May. I wrote this after taking pictures of a favorite tree:
"I love this Bloodgood Japanese Maple tree. I talk to it as its leaves sing to me in red bathed in blue sky and
white soft cloud. This sacred tree is my soulmate friend. It fills me up until my life is whole again. It is one of a kind in
the heart of Ohio. I am one of the trees, in love with its uniqueness, diversity, beauty, and vibrant color. These words
are my "I love you" to you, my Bloodgood Japanese Maple. Grow on and on and on…."
The “Mad Libs” Books
I think the “Mad Libs” books are one of the greatest tools for creating surrealistic phrases and creations. You
fill in an anonymous noun or verb into an existing sentence before you know what the sentence is. What comes out are
surrealistic stories. Mad Libs surrealistic word creations: convertible grape… Space President in her Apple Shuttle
through brave space… I practiced jumping for two years… Expert decadents… They took 14,002 orbits around the
beach boy… An orange dentist… Pinched in the God… Stylish farts… Betty Ford III… Ronald Reagan IVX… Slime
on the Rocks drink… Do you have a peppy imagination?… Mars IV… Tall green eyes… Collecting cats… Hollywood
tree… Jesus 2001.
Artist Biographies
2-19-07: I enormously enjoy reading these artist biographies, like this one on Steve Spielberg, on their lives
because I can for once reflect on how a successful movie director’s life would have been like, the pratfalls of the
industry, and how to succeed. Spielberg simply won the lottery in movie success. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t have
some near career-ruining moments like 1941… and Jaws, which he lucked out with it working out so well.
The Onion
www.theonion.com continues to grill society with harsh truths set at a burning humorous pitch.
"DAY JOB OFFICIALLY BECOMES JOB": "HILLSBORO, OR-Another human dream was crushed by the
uncompromising forces of reality Monday, when the restaurant day job of 29-year-old former aspiring
cartoonist Mark Seversen officially became his actual job. "After four years of washing dishes to support my
drawing projects, I've made the transition to washing dishes to support myself," Seversen told reporters
after punching out at the end of his shift at Tres Café. "Let's face it, this is it. This is my job. I'll never forget
that moment when I transformed from an aspiring underground cartoonist into a non-aspiring restaurant
worker. In 1999, Seversen was hired as a kitchen crewmember at Tres Café. Later that year, he began to
self-publish his monthly photocopied mini-comic Dishdog Days, in which he chronicled the daily trials of an
underemployed college dropout who works at a restaurant while pursuing his dream of cartooning. 'While I
was at work, I'd think about what I wanted to draw," Seversen said. "But once I got home, I just wanted to
watch television.' In spite of the initial moment of melancholic catatonia, Seversen said he was relieved that
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the transition from day job to real job was complete. "Seversen has just made the most important decision
of a non-artist's life," said Gregory Gund, author of Aw, Who'm I Kidding Here? and Learning To Let Go Of
The Things That Sustain You."
Bike Rides
4-23-01: I became a new person from riding a friend’s bicycle through the neighboring Holiday Park
during the evening magic hour. It was like taking a bike ride through my past. I was in awe for I was riding
through what seemed like the hometown of my past: adults and children playing soccer, baseball,
basketball, and softball. It was like my hometown reincarnated a few blocks away from where I live in Ft.
Lauderdale. Yet instead of a Caucasian, white-bread town out and about an hour before sunset, people from
every race were out at play. Hispanics were playing football, African-Americans were playing basketball, and
white middle-class boys were playing baseball as their parents watched. And I was passing through all of
this. I was active, not passive, in a world where I was interacting with people instead of computers and art.
Most of all, I was enjoying myself. At times, I felt like Tom Hank’s character in Big when he goes back to the
neighborhood where he grew up in and reflects bitter-sweetly with a sad smile. I was ready to bike with a girl
every evening after work. It was possible.
4-26-01: I biked to the ocean this evening to escape the anxieties in my head. The experience was
quite therapeutic.
VH1 Classic
4-13-02: I took a risk and decided to compulsively order VH1 Classic after I got home from
teaching. I had read about this channel in “Entertainment Weekly” at Borders this week and found myself
extremely curious. What came on was a dream come true: music videos from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s!!! I
flipped out and got over-excited. All the great music I love listening to, but MTV and VH1 rarely ever show
was being shown here. Electric Light Orchestra music videos?! What a concept! What’s on next!!? Bob
Dylan Unplugged “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”!!! The Psychedelic Furs’ “Love My Way”!!? R.E.M.’s
“Stand”!!? This channel was like a cathartic treasure chest from the past I missed out on since my family
didn't have cable when I was growing up. I can’t wait to see what’s on next. I may not be able to leave my
house for the rest of the weekend?! All this for $5 extra each month!? And I get a 70’s cartoon channel with
“Super Friends”. I feel like my dream of having cable when I was a child has finally come completely true. I
feel like I’m living in a fantasy memory. VH1 Classic was playing early 80’s videos that I had never seen
before!! Hall and Oates! Level 42 “Something About You”!!
One thing I’ve noticed about older music videos is how experimental they are with animation and
video compositing. It’s a free-form medium. I also realized today that several songs from the 60’s, 70’s, and
80’s were later made into music videos.
A Car
6-14-02: One of the revelations from reading my April ’94 journals was that having a car meant freedom. A
car meant thinking beyond having a job four blocks away, or having the guts to ask a girl out and have someplace to
take her away. It was my vehicle outlet to get out of a small town.
Theremin
Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey: Playing music through the electronic air with one’s own hands - that spooky, 1950s
sci-fi sound.
Soundtrack Pro
11-9-05: Soundtrack Pro, the sound loop editing package, may just be the most fun sound-editing program
ever made (so far). You can mix thousands of sound bit loop recordings of various instruments and hundreds of genres
together within minutes!! It's the ultimate hybrid of styles and sounds. Japanese bagpipes? Electronic beat symphony
strings with designer bass and cowbell? Alien ambient blues? Space age acoustic guitar with big drum beats? It's like
World Music from another distant world of the imagination. It's music creativity pushed to its extremes by sampling
other types of music together into one.
Google Earth
7-28-05: www.googleearth.com - now here is a website that allows you to view the earth from satellite
photos that have been stitched together. Remarkably, you can simply type in your address and it will zoon in on your
home from outer space!! It’s like descending interactively from outside the atmosphere like a meteorite and aiming
directly over your neighborhood. It’s totally unreal how you can find an aerial view of pretty much any address you
type in. It’s basically mapquest.com on a more detailed photo-realistic scale.
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10-31-05: Google Earth – my new favorite free computer software toy. I downloaded it for free at
www.earth.google.com and I haven’t stopped smiling since. This is the latest in amazing satellite photo technology.
Someone has photographed the earth with high definition cameras in 2003 and created a digital map of the earth. You
can type in any address and zoom into any location, city, or county on earth and see it from a “Superman” P.O.V.!! It’s
the next best, safest thing to flying or being God!! For example, you can type in your own address and a virtual camera
will fly from outside the earth’s atmosphere and end up right over your address!!! It’s crazy. There are a few exceptions
though: you need a good Internet connection to view it properly. Also, the most high definition photographed areas are
major cities (New York City, Chicago, Columbus) or popular areas of interest (Eiffel Tower, Grand Canyon, Vatican
City, Mount St. Helens). Sorry, Dayton, OH, you’re only so-so high definition photographed. But zooming in on a
specific area is only partially cool until you get to another awesome control: you can tilt your camera view to see 3-D
virtual environments. So once you zoom in on a location (i.e. New York City), you can then tilt your camera to see 3-D
skyscrapers and then move your camera through the city in the air like a helicopter or comic book superhero!!!!! And
it’s all in photo-realistic! It’s the ultimate in 3D interactive fly-throughs. You can take a FREE virtual vacation to the
Grand Canyon and fly into its canyons like a bird. There’s not much need anymore for paying for a $500 an hour
helicopter ride after seeing this!! The only safety issue is how mind-blowing it is! Hopefully my enthusiasm is evident
and will be infectious. Take the trip now! It’s like God-voyeur vision extraordinaire!!! The more I played around, the
more daring and adventurous I got. I dashed over to the former Republican Palace in Baghdad, Iraq, followed by a safe
fly-around the danger zone city. Landmarks are highlighted by titles next to their location so you can find areas easily.
What a fantastic virtual journey right at home across the earth.
youtube.com
3-1-06: Today's big discovery was a website called www.youtube.com, which I read about in the latest issue
of Entertainment Weekly. It was like a portal to all the most obscure, rare, and had to find video clips ever recorded,
and some you never knew existed. Say you're a David Bowie fanatic... there's a ridiculously weird duet with him and
Cher from 1975 doing a "Young Americans". This could be the scariest thing you will ever see in your life. Type in
"The Beatles" under Search, you can watch bootleg clips of the never-officially released on DVD "Let It Be" 1970
movie!!! I'm a major Neil Young fan and found dozens of never seen music videos he did in the 80s. On top of that, I
found several terrific live performances that were only broadcast once when they were first on TV on a specific local
television station. This website is like finding a holy grail of lost music media. It's overwhelming and a blessing and
blissful and crazy all at the same time. There's just too much to see...! The notorious Star Wars Holiday Special from
1978 that George Lucas refuses to release... the rarely seen original “unhappy” ending to the film version of “Little
Shop of Horrors”... everything.
10-24-07: Isn’t watching youtube.com like living an enhanced life? You can watch all those rare past U2
concerts that you had never dreamed of ever getting a chance of seeing. There’s “Desire” from Yankee Stadium in New
York City in 1993. This was never available before. I can tune into the web and download this experience into my
memory banks/ hard drive. It’s complete with all the emotional highs and thrills. I’ve just gotten U2 uploaded into my
lifetime. It’s the ultimate in fake memory augmentation. You too can go anywhere that is now available on the world
wide wonder.
www.ebaumsworld.com
1-9-06: Not sure if you've ever visited this website. My students seem to check it out rather often. The crank
calls are hysterical, as are the soundboards that go along with them. There's also some great jackass video clips of
people doing completely stupid stuff under "shocking videos".
VHS
1-6-08: I really enjoyed watching some old movies on the VHS tape format. It was how I remember loving
the movies when I was a teenager. Every video store I spent so many hours hanging out in was stocked with VHS
movies… and I just about read every single one. I was that obsessed and interested in movies. Now that DVDs (and
now High Def DVDs, ugh) have taken over, I really miss the format.
Writers/ Artists/ Critics
-Edgar Allen Poe
Edger Allen Poe's poems captivated his emotions in a lust for imagination and fantasy. He knew
that he would have to write his own poetry and words. It was his creative/ romantic way of saving himself, as
well as impress his love.
“Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?” –Edgar Allen
Poe.
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-Stephen King
Stephen King once worked as a college janitor. He was also a teacher, and only wrote occasionally in his
spare time. But he never fully believed his work would get picked up or become popular enough to continue doing fulltime.
Carrie, an immensely personal movie, by myself. I’ve had grueling trouble with viewing Carrie in the past
because it concerns a shy outcast/ scapegoat teenage girl who has to deal with her cruel high school classmates. Then
after she finally gets a first chance for romance at the prom, stupid teenagers drop pig blood all over Carrie. Her
telekinesis powers are like Phoenix’s in the X-Men. Carrie, to me, is an X-Man outcast in high school.
Carrie: “The ultimate revenge tale for anyone who remembers high school as a time of rejection and ridicule”…
“Wanting to be respected by your peers”… “Only at the end when they really humiliate her does she coldly use her
powers”… “We are all very sorry about this incident”… A sheltered high school girl with great powers of her own…
“Did any one of you ever stop to think that Carrie White has feelings?”… Embarrassed because a boy asked her to the
prom. But is it a trick?… “I got to get along with people better”… “I don’t want to be funny to every person. I want to
be normal”… “He’s a nice boy, momma!”… “Everybody knows that dad ran away with another woman, momma.”
Stephen King’s The Stand: “Season’s gonna fear the reaper!”... Nearly everyone in the world got the Super
Flu... “Jesus wept!”... “I can hear! I can talk!”... Martial Law has been declared over the globe. The hospitals
are filled beyond capacity... “All the girls who used to laugh at the way I walked”... Classic 80’s song (Hey
Now, Hey Now, “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House) played over the emotions of teenagers during
the end of humanity... “Someone burnt down the entire city of Des Moines?”... Ghosts mowing lawns.
-J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings: “Frodo! Do not tempt me!”… An animated storybook… Dark riders in the storm… “This
waiting is horrible!”… “There’s no point groping in the dark!”
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: Will Gollum get an Academy Award nomination, the first
for a fully computer generated actor to receive such a recognition… “Old Toby. The finest weed in the
Southfarthing”… “Life force”… “Mushrooms!”… “Into the Wild”.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: Special Extended Edition: “Hobbits are known for being
fond of eating food, brewing ale, and smoking pipe-weed”… “But I think in his heart, Frodo is still in love with
the woods, the fields, the little rivers”… The trees grow stars instead of leaves.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: “This is a dream”… The trees scream!… “There are dead faces in
the water”… “The forest is full of memory… and anger”… “Fading trees”… Gollum: the Great Method
Actor… “The Ents go to war!!”… “Many of these trees were my friends”… One thing we learned from this
movie: DON’T MESS WITH THE TREES!!!
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: Special Extended Edition: On J.R.R. Tolkien: “He wasn’t writing for
an audience. He was writing for himself”… “You get the sense that he was making it all up as he went
along”… “No one had ever attempted to tell a story in non-linear fashion. None of the professionals had ever
done anything like this. Sometimes inspired amateurs know something”… Gollum’s voice was created from
the inspiration of the actor’s cat having something stuck in its throat! Eureka!… “I bet they thought I looked
like some guy who just walked out of a fetish club with this bizarre outfit on in white tights”… This is
otherworldly cinema… A middle-aged man who is actually 87 years old… “Then it is a good dream”… “It was
a dream, nothing more.” –“I don’t believe you”… “We’re under attack!!!”… “For death and glory”… Viggo had
affairs with one of the bearded lady riders of Rohan and with a horse… Don’t forget inserting in the “Human
Factor” so that the audience will care about what is going on.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: Here ends the great trilogy journey. I’ve been there and back
again. The heroic screams of “FIGHT!!” still wail in my mind and ripple in my emotions. Upon getting up to
leave the Arena Grand Theater after nearly four hours before a giant screen, I was speechless and
overwhelmed by spectacle, imagination, and emotion. It blew me away to the point where engaging in
conversation afterwards with my movie going buddies seemed false and premature. Didn’t they just witness
the same fantasy movie epic as I?!? How can they question to each other if the other “liked” and “enjoyed”
it? Isn’t that irrelevant to even ask?! There were scenes where I exclaimed out, “JESUS!!!!” upon seeing
such scenes of carnage that I’ve never gazed before! “King” is a marvel of mass entertainment. Rarely have
I been in a movie theater and you don’t hear a single breath when the movie goes silent for ten seconds.
That’s how much respect the packed audience had for this movie experience. This was also one of the
greatest uses of computer generated effects/ animation ever exposed to the movie world. Yet, this is still a
character driven drama. Even in death lies adventure. And so when the movie ended, I could sense a huge
glowing smile on my face. This tale had ended, and a new one was about to begin.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: “In my future, you saw life. You saw my son”… “Nothing is
certain”… “Light the beacons!”… “There was just a fool’s hope”… “Fight for your lives!!”… The Riders of
Rohan have arrived!! 6,000 warriors charge into battle on horseback!… The attack of the green ghoul warrior
dead!!… “My eyes darken” as he dies away… Eagles vs. dragons… “One last adventure.”
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The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: Special Expanded DVD Edition: “I don’t know what’s going to
happen”… “There are no more stars”… “It is but a shadow and a thought that you love. I cannot give you what you
seek”… “Don’t leave me here alone”… A flaming red evil eye… The joyful suicide ship. Sail off into the sun with a
smile on your face… Rings extras: “All writers pour into their work elements of themselves… “He had a fear that no
one was going to read his work.”
-C. S. Lewis
Shadowlands: C. S. Lewis: “A gateway to an imaginary world”… “Books are safe. You can’t get hurt by
books”... “Pain is good. Suffering is necessary”… Confirmed bachelors… “This is always such a trying time
of the year”… “Friendship is a kind of love”… “We almost made it”… To know that things are finite, we will
live a happier, more productive life by taking advantage of the time that we have and living more in the
moment.
-Mark Twain/ Samuel Clemens
Mark Twain – A Film Directed by Ken Burns: “I believe God created man because He was disappointed in the
monkey”… “He was considered the funniest man on the planet”… “A genius of words”… “Art could be created from
the American language”… “He idealized the American language”… “He wrote constantly”… “The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn”… “Mark Twain told the truth”… “He was always reinventing himself. Always restless. Full of
contradictions”… “I am not an American. I am the American”… “I could see no promise in him”… “His chronic
financial failures forced him to start over five times in a dozen years”… “He remembered that he never saw his father
laugh”… “His mother delighted in hearing tall tales”… “He was the only independent person in the whole community.
And because of this, he was always happy”… “Aunt Hannah, who was rumored to be a 1,000 years old. These were
towering personalities”… “Those slaves had the saddest faces he ever saw”… “Lure him into a world of words and
ideas”… “He read everything he could find”… “Hannibal seemed to confining”… “He set off down the river to make a
name for himself. It was the beginning of a lifetime of wandering”… “An old dream was reawakened”… “To be a
steamboat man”… “Mark Twain = Safe Water”… “Painted by the sun”… A brother and a sister both died when he was
young… “I am left an old man before my time”… His brother was burned terribly in a steamboat accident. He later
died. “Sam blamed himself”… “It was the biggest sorrow of his youth”… “His way through is sorrow was humor”…
“There is no laughter in heaven”… “Our boat was so slow. We raced with islands”… “He stored up memories of
places, scenes, and people”… “He was a noticer”… “This fascination with noticing”… “I ‘retired’ from the Rebel
Army in ‘61”… “A man’s front yard on top of his house”… “Admiring the endless open spaces”… “Ham and eggs and
scenery. These are happiness”… “Jackass rabbits”… “He gave up mining”… “A whole new newspaper art form”…
“Mark Twain always lived on the edge, between light and dark, between safe and dangerous”… “He was quietly let go
from the newspaper”… “The Golden Era”… “I slunk away from faces that were familiar”… “I felt more despicable
than the worms”… “I was entirely penniless”… He was suicidal… “His Jumping Frog story got him his very first good
review”… “Turning his articles into lectures”… “The thought of failing before a live audience terrified him”…
“Contemplating his impending failure”… “Little by little, my fright melted away and I began to talk”… “Mesmerized
by his powers of description”… “He was an unintentional genius of the stage”… “He had a draw. Pauses”… “He
understand the pause… the tension”… “Twain saw it all”… “He wished to turn his dispatches into a book”… “She was
slowly, but surely falling in love with him”… “I am so happy I want to scalp somebody”… “The People’s Author”…
“He could not believe his luck”… “Their babies died young. Twain blamed himself”… “She felt cold towards God”…
“Horrible things happen”… “He had a dark, depressive streak”… “This was balancing element to his personality that
needed to be humorous and entertaining. It gave depth to his work”… “The library was the heart of the house”…
“When he was home, he expected everything to revolve around him”… “Twain had his problems, his passions, his
frustrations”… “His distance from his children. It was a complex relationship to be sure”… “The horrors of slavery and
families told apart”… “It has no humor in it”… “He was discovering new ways of looking at the world”… "Imagine
the luxury of it!"… "A man in the happiest years of his life surrounded by the people he loved in a place where he
could have a free range of his imagination"… "He spent each day in splendid isolation"… "A rain of reminiscences"…
"Out of his flood of memories, a new book emerged"… "'Tom Sawyer' is the Norman Rockwell of what we think our
boyhoods were"… "Twain's past seemed to be an inexhaustible source of inspiration for him"… "That time was the
most productive of his entire life"… "It's prose was pure"… "He was looking at the horrible failure of freeing the
slave"… "Huckleberry Finn would be his masterpiece"… "He made a black man into a human being"… "The tragic
comedy of life"… "It's the great moral awakening for white Americans"… "20 years ago, he had contemplated suicide
in California. Now everything was going his way"… "I am frightened by the proportions of my prosperity"… "We're
all nuts. We're all a little foolish. Aren't we funny animals?"… "His masterpiece, Huckleberry Finn, a cunningly
subversive attack on slavery and racism"… "Missouri morals and Connecticut culture"… "Sam Clemens would lose
everything and everyone close to him"… "I am God's fool"… "He was read by everyday folks"… "A Connecticut
Yankee"… "Clemens wished for his daughters to be little girls forever, overlooking his sometimes unpredictable
behavior"… "It's my swan song"… "He intended to write only for his amusement from now on"… "He considered
himself an inventor"… "It's because there's an excess of imagination in writers"… "He's hopeless as a businessman.
None of his investments paid off"… "By 1890, Clemens had lost all of his wife's inheritance"… "Travel has no longer
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any charm for me. I have seen all the foreign countries that I want to see, except heaven and hell"… "He grew into debt
for $200,000"… "Business failure means disgrace"… "'Funny', that's all people see of him"… "60 years old and
bankrupt"… "We have broken his pride"… "The strain of his bankruptcy"… "What a bitter world it is"… "Suzie's
death was the cumulating blow. It was the grief that trumped all other grieves in his life. It was the final collapse in his
faith in a benevolent God"… "This was the death nail to the life they once treasured dearly as a family"… "Work
became Twain's solace"… "This wasn't someone who was just trying to entertain you. This was someone who was
trying to keep from killing himself"… "He was a life force"… "All of the ghosts of his childhood in Hannibal had
returned. He had had his final catharsis. He was putting his boyhood to rest at last"… "As he played on the piano,
Libby slipped away"… "Our life is wrecked. I have no plans"… "She was the glue. She kept everyone together"…
"The happy family laid in ruins"… "He felt so alone"… "There is no God and no universe. There is only empty
space"… "He was angry at a Christian God"… "His writings turned dark"… "He talks with Satan"… "The obscurity of
human beliefs"… "The Mysterious Stranger"… "He didn't want the writings to be released until well after his death"…
"He struggled with a despair that was profound. I think he was a depressed person"… "It's all futile. We cannot know
why we are all here. Life makes very little sense in the long run"… "He was so extraordinarily lonely"… "A museum
of his memories"… "I am only human, although I regret it"… "He came in and out with Hailey's Comet"… "All the
World Is Weeping for Mark Twain"… "The Lincoln of our literature"… "A poetry of laughter"… "A laughter born of
the human experience that is almost too much for a human to endure."
The Adventures of Mark Twain: “I became a writer. I haven’t worked a day since”… Claymation is like
watching a fluid, tangible animated painting. It resembles oil paint; computer animation resembles plastic…
“We’re going to watch and learn”… “Naked people have little or no influence in society”… “It all started at the
world’s first birthday party! God, the artist of the universe”… “I’ve got friends in heaven and hell”… “I have
come to like Sundays”… “A + E”… Give the Great Sphinx a nose job… Back to Eden.
-Dorothy Parker
I was watching a documentary on Dorothy Parker and found myself deep with empathy for her
sorrow... “Suffering as a stimulus for writing... The personal pain (of feelings and love).”
-Virginia Woolf
“The Mind and Times of Virginia Woolf”: “She must have thought that it’s such great fun to be mad. You get such
wonderful ideas. Better than you do when you’re sane. But it wasn’t fun for her or anyone else that was close to her”…
“She did a great job of capturing the instability of the mind”… “It was her intense curiosity that made her a novelist”…
“She believed that during WWII, she fell into a depression because being a writer during wartime was meaningless”…
“Her diaries are what we will most value her for. They are a texture to them - a richness of observation”… “She
believed in keeping a diary every day. Even if one believes that nothing interesting happens, something interesting does
happen every day.”
-Sylvia Plath
Sylvia: All true artists have a wall of rejection letters… A poet and a published poet… “He is… different”… “How is
he going to support you?”… To try to kill yourself so you can be a real artist… “The subject is you. Write about
you”… “There’s no secret to it. You just write”… “Your poems are so beautiful – they’re frightening… haunting”… “I
see you!”… “The truth comes to me. The truth loves me”… “And I felt like God spoke through me”… “I have fallen a
long way”… “All I want is blackness and silence.”
-Oscar Wilde
Wilde: Oscar Wilde dejected by being exposed of “perversity”: also see the Woody Allen story and the
Michael Jackson biographies for similar lives.
-William Blake
"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite." -William Blake.
-W.B. Yeats
"The end of art is peace. And the pursuit of art is like the pursuit of religion in the intense preoccupation it
demands." -W.B. Yeats.
-Ed Skellings
4-4-00: I realized something this late afternoon as I was working. Ed Skellings built the Center up
as a research center and later as a graduate program for computer arts. I took for granted that Ed is doing
this for the students, and less for himself. I wouldn’t have a Master of Fine Arts if it weren’t for Ed and his
dream. (I thanked him tomorrow with all sincerity which he was appreciative of. I did know inside that he also
made the Center into a graduate degree program because the state was getting rid of state-funded research
facilities. But still there is a dream in the program.)
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11-14-01: Ed can recite any one of the thousands of poems he’s written and others have written by heart,
verse-by-verse, stanza-by-stanza. It was like he was possessed by the art of poetry. It’s unforgettable to him. I’m truly
amazed to witness his gift.
-Truman Capote
Infamous: “Answered Prayers”… “You know how hard it is for me to modify myself”… “When you’re tiny, you have
to be tough”… “He’s an enigma”… “We have an ‘understanding’ that one of us is not around to sexually satisfy the
other, we are allowed to fulfill ourselves with others. I hardly ever wonder, but he does”… There’s a sincere duality to
his persona. He’ll be someone’s best friend, but the next day happily gossip away his “best friend’s” secrets to another
friend of his. He’ll emotionally break down and retell the suicide of his beloved mother if it will help the killer tell his
story of killing three innocent people. He’s conscious of what he’s doing, but there’s a desperate side to it as well. He
can be manipulative and not be trusted, but you can’t help but love him for being so different and rejected in his life
and physical presence… “You have the soul of an artist. Artists have the power through their imagination to escape the
real world and create a better one”… “We really connected, didn’t we”… “He said he loved me, and he always has”…
“I can alchemize what wounds me into art”… “Friend Capote”… “Writers die a little every time they write. It just goes
to show how much they gave.”
Capote: “He couldn’t bear to be alone with his thoughts. It was too painful”… “I can sense him. He’s desperately
lonely. Crazy”… “We’re on suicide watch”… “Pretend to have fun”… “I frankly don’t see what all the fuss is about.”
-Jack Kerouac
On the Road with Jack Kerouac: “The economic hardships that followed would force the already shy and
introverted Jack Kerouac to retreat even further into his own fantasy world... Temporary madness and
confusion... Overwhelmed by restlessness and rebellion, he moved out... Poured out his frustration... Each
novel was an act of desperation... Poetry is the language of a state in crisis.” He is me.
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to tlak, mad to be
saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but
burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…” –Jack
Kerouac, On the Road.
-Allen Ginsberg
The great Beat poets that can make one’s mind expand through the rhythms and wisdoms of his
words.
-William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs: Commissioner of Sewers: “When did I stop exposing myself in public?”...Poetry aimed
to trance the viewer right-brained.
William S. Burroughs: Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales: An audacious sonic reading by Burroughs set to lullabies and
jams.
Naked Lunch, featuring another fantastic Judy Davis performance, worked sensationally on hypnotizing my
mind. I was transported elsewhere. The hallucinations, weird creatures, and the warped homosexual themes flex-flipped
out my subconscious mind to a delirious well after the movie was over. I and time moved slower than usual.
Naked Lunch: “Exterminate all rational thought”… “I gave up writing when I was ten – too dangerous.” –“Only if
someone reads what you write, and we haven’t had that problem!”… Shooting up bug powder… “It’s a Kafka high.
You feel like a bug”… “I thought you were finished with doing weird stuff.” –“I thought I was too, but I guess I I’m
not”… A giant cockroach that talks out of an asshole on its back… A typewriter bug… “The leaves will always be
perverts”… “I’m dying of lonelyness. I can’t connect with anyone. I seem to be addicted to something that doesn’t
even exist”… “Joan was a centipede”… “New Orleans is a dead museum”… “It’s time to discuss your philosophy of
drug use as it relates to artistic endeavor”… “His asshole could talk… farting out the words”… Being buggered from
behind by a giant mutant bug in a giant parrot cage in someone’s North African bedroom… Bleeding dried up corn on
the cob… Typewriters cumming with ideas… “Mugwump jism can’t be beat”… I’m so glad I didn’t watch this movie
with company over because I stopped the movie over twenty time to jot down notes whenever I got inspired to write.
The movie put me on a different state of mind. I was free of distractions that allowed the words to pour out of me like
sporadic hallucinations. I started the movie at 9 a.m. I didn’t finish it until 2 p.m. A 115 minute long movie took five
hour to get through.
-Charles Bukowski
Bukowski: Born Into This: Charles Bukowski: “He used to tell me that if your parents are beginning to like your work,
it’s getting bad! If the cops are around, something good must be happening. Your work has to be alive. ‘Drink, Write,
and Fuck’ – that was his advice”… “There was an electricity in the air. This was a Bukowski event”… “Liquor is like a
symphony or a classical song”… “I never had a woman until I was twenty-four. I wasn’t a pretty looking guy. I had no
money. I never went to the high school ball. I was an outcast”… “He was looking for that golden sentence”…
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“Something about looking at a woman’s legs makes you want to dream”… “Neither of us really cared about anything,
and that made us very free”… “Poetry didn’t pay anything. But it was a passionate, pleasurable form where I could
scream a little bit. I needed to scream a little bit”… “He was appalled by Mickey Mouse. He’s say, ‘That three-fingered
son-of-a-bitch has no fucking soul!’”… “He wanted enough money to get his own little cave to work in”… “The
Outsider”… He had an old girlfriend with a white beard… He worked at the United States Post Office for many
years… This documentary on a raw poet is like inhaling creativity. It gets you high on being dangerous again. On
taking risks. On not doing what everything tells you to do… “Not being able to create art, they will not be able to
understand art”… “Notes of a Dirty Old Man”… “I’m a suicide case anyhow”… “He was the voice of the common
people. He wrote about the dark corners of places that no one wanted to go”… “Once he gained some notoriety, women
started to come to him”… “When he could finally write about his childhood, it was a cathartic experience”… “I give
Linda a lot of credit for sticking with him and saving his life”… “He would be baiting her to get her angry and get a
fight going”… “He went after girls that were slightly damaged”… “He dealt with dying by making art out of it”…
“Blowing My Hero”… “He felt the sun gave him life energy”… “Because of his intense childhood, he was in pain all
the time”… “He empathized with people going through dark periods of their life”… “He was very aware of the
falseness of human beings”… “He was so sensitive to other people”… “His sensitivity was profound. His awareness of
the suffering of sentient beings”… “Don’t try”… “His work is plain spoken truth”… “He had no social skills outside
his circle of friends”… “He viewed the liquor that he would drink before a poetry reading to be the blood of a
coward”… “From being beaten as a child, he understood the power of pain”… “An innovator has some rough edges,
like van Gogh or Mozart”… “He was about honesty and telling the truth”… “He was full of contradictions.”
-Hunter S. Thompson
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: “He lost that Gonzo edge”… “Creatively, he had written all his
great stuff. He hadn’t been productive in four to five years”… “Make no mistake about it. We are at war now”…
“That’s when the strange music starts”… “The edge is still out there”… “He was a reporter with a wild imagination. He
filtered ‘reality” through this ‘Gonzo’”… “He was going to be dead at 30 anyways. So he was living on borrowed
time”… “He had two extremes in him that he lived with constantly”… “He always felt a bit like the outsider”… “He
was an agonized human being”… “He wanted to smash the windows of the rich”… “The Hell’s Angels were like
Genghis Khan on an iron horse”… “The gangbang was surrealistically horrifying”… “It was a mad, mad scene”…
“Their mystique became so thin that it became transparent”… “What that Hell’s Angels book did do was make him
realize that there was a market in the freak circus of the 60s”… “Coming to grips with my gun problem”… “Wild boar
hunting with a sub-machine gun”… “They’re saying that the gun is the ultimate cure for what ails us: the American
Way”… “He wants to ride out the death of the American Dream”… “I left the 1968 Democratic Convention in a state
of hysterical angst”… “The only thing against him is that he’s a visionary. He wants too pure of a world”… He ran for
sheriff of Aspen, Colorado!... Dope-smoking police… “He had the passion to move people”… “Gonzo was born when
the evil came out of me in the drawings”… “‘Raoul Duke’ and ‘Dr. Gonzo’ were Hunter’s covers”… “He was high all
the time… pushing the limits of consciousness”… “Hunter had to have some type of running crisis in order to animate
him and get him going”… “He had a view of the ridiculousness of it all”… “I am sick and tired of old men sitting in
air-conditioned rooms in Washington thinking up wars for young men to die in”… “He liked that that George
McGovern was honest, and for that, he was a loser”… “I said there was a rumor in Milwaukee that he was addicted to
this drug, which was true. I started the rumor in Milwaukee”… “Nobody wrote this kind of stuff”… “He loved to shock
the squares”… “He almost had the attributes of an action hero”… “The nightmare we’re in today (Bush) was like the
nightmare we were in back then (Nixon)”… “We as a nation have no qualms about killing anyone that makes us
uncomfortable”… “He understood the darkness to the American Spirit”… “The inventor of Gonzo Journalism”…
“Why can’t writers be like rock and roll stars?”… “His greatest ability was his anonymity”… “Then came a period
where he just lost it”… “Eventually he didn’t go out at all”… “His marriage was falling apart”… “His first big failure
was the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ with Muhammad Ali where he failed to write up about his assignment”… “He became
a prisoner of his own fame”… “He talked about suicide all the time throughout his life and relationships”… “He didn’t
get angry about the Bush election, he got depressed”… “He flamed out too quickly because of how he lived his life.”
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: Non-fiction fiction reality… A reptile orgy in a Las Vegas bar… “We’re hired
geeks”… It’s a mind-bending trip trek into mental confusion and hilarious offensiveness under unrestraint. Opps? Help
me, I think I’m flying again… This is a movie that demands that you be on its twisted wavelength, or this will surly be
a bum trippppp… “Dogs fucked the Pope. No fault of mine”… “We’re in the vortex of the American Dream”… “Look,
there’s two women fucking a polar bear”… “That girl really fell in love with me. Eye contact”… “Learn to enjoy
losing”… Hunter S. Thompson used an alter ego while on a trip as Raoul Duke!… “I desperately needed peace, rest,
sanctuary”… “I feel a powerful lust for red salmon”… “Six hairy tits growing on your back”… Holy bleeding Jesus!
It’s over.
Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride: “He was the cherry on the cake”… “He was a mad, crazy poet”… “I’d feel really
trapped in this life if I didn’t know I could commit suicide at any moment”… “I was the Billy the Kid of Louisville,
Kentucky”… “He never liked to be alone. He liked to be around people”… “There was a blurring of what was real and
what was imagination”… “He’s going to tell you the truth, but he’s going to do it in his own way”… “Nixon was
Hunter’s villain”… “He believed that journalists needed to be shaken up”… “He went by Raoul Duke because he
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thought he’d get fired for writing such a drug-induced account”… “It is the most accurate, least factual book about the
’72 campaign”… “He was an action figure for the underground”… “He was part Bozo the Clown and part
philosopher”… Hunter’s writing is like imaginative journal writing… “He was a man of excess”… “It was not unusual
for him to order everything on the menu”… “Football season is over… The fun is over”… “His legacy will be a sane
man in a mad world.”
Breakfast with Hunter: "Hundreds of hippies and freaks have escaped into the Rocky Mountains of Aspen, Colorado
away from the American system"… "At the Freak Party Headquarters"… "I should be dead. That way we could sell a
lot more trouble of this book. It would be a lot less trouble for everybody"… "I believed I had to be a writer because I
wasn't good at anything else"… "The problem is that you published a novel with drawings"… Wow. Hunter S.
Thompson as asshole supreme to director Alex Cox!... And he goes off driving while drinking. It's one thing to put
himself in harm's way. It's another when he puts others in harm's way… "I was really depressed in '72"… "This is a
bitch of a book"… "I have caused some pain and some injuries"… "He really lived."
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: Wonderful rants of psycho wisdom: “As your attorney, I advise you to...”...
“Look! There two women fucking a polar bear”... “No, calm down... learn to enjoy losing”... “It would be one
of those hellishly intense introspective nightmares”... Did you know that Surrealism Cinema is this funny?!...
A movie book as sanctuary asylum.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: “It is not about drugs. It is drugs.”
Where the Buffalo Roam: Watch one’s thoughts ramble out without suppressing oneself. The movie was a
psychological drug - therefore, no substance drugs were needed to be taken. Star rating of worth: “****”...
“Like piranhas with guns!”… “Don’t get weird on me now!”
-Philip K. Dick
“Remembering Philip K. Dick”: He had extreme agoraphobia… He didn’t make much money until the end of his life…
No one respected the science fiction genre. They considered it a lower form of literature… “He wanted to be a real
writer, like Mailer. And to have such aspirations are to make yourself unhappy”… “I have never heard any good news
come out of Hollywood.”
Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut: One of my lasting personal favorite movies from my high school days:
imagine being created for the sole intention of sex: “The fourth skin-job is Pris, a basic pleasure model”... a
future where the owls and animals are artificial... The thought-provoking irony that he was a replicant created
to kill replicants... “How can one not know what one is?”... “I designed your eyes”... She had used memories
implanted in her body that she thought she were truly hers. How devastating... “My friends are toys. I make
them”... A photograph image that reveals another photograph image deep inside it behind a corner... the
replicants are like children, being truly alive for only four years. They’re deeply empathetic in that sense...
“The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long. And you have burned so very brightly”... “Revel in
your time”... Midget gangs roaming the streets of L. A.... Pris looks just like one of J. R.’s toys... “All those
moments will be lost like tears in rain.”
Remember, the more I wrote about a movie, the more stimulated I was to pause its flow and record
what it inspired in my mind.
Blade Runner: Extreme close-up of an eye…. A world of flying cars…. Clown faced city dwellers… He’s a replicant
and he doesn’t even know about it. He’s even a blade runner who hunts blade runner… “They feared they might
develop their own emotional responses”… “Is this to be an empathy test?”… Flickering lights… Film noir cigarette
smoke… Light rays and fog lights… “You’re Nexus! I designed your eyes”… Memory implants… “It must get lonely
here.” –“Not really. I make my friends. I’m a genetic designer”… Infinite photographs…. Los Angeles as an Asian
city… “Are you for real?”… L.A. as the ultimate surreal cultural melting pot… “Wake up. Time to die”… “I dreamt
music”… A strange light in their eyes… They love passionately because they don’t have much time left to live…
“We’re stupid and we’ll die”… Ostrich wearing a bowtie… “There’s some of me in you”… “I think therefore I am”…
White skin, black fingernails… There’s not much time for them to live… “Got a brainstorm, did we?”… “It’s not an
easy thing to meet your maker? Can the maker repair what he makes?”… “You’re the prodical son. You’re quite the
prize”… “I’ve done questionable things.” –“Extraordinary things!”…. Other worldly sounds and languages… A
decaying apartment complex with heavenly beams of light… “Not yet!”… “That’s the spirit!”…. Wide-eyed Roy
Batty…. Controlling the sound design: ADR for dialogue to be more prominent… “I guess you’re though, huh?” –
“Finished.”
Blade Runner – The Director's Cut: The experience.
Blade Runner – The Director’s Cut. Ridley Scott directed the movie (which was in gorgeous letterbox) and really
showed off his creative vision. Vangelis’ music was mesmerizing. I’m definitely getting the soundtrack now. Blade
Runner is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. It was the ultimate experience. Rutger Hauer’s performance as a
desperate and powerful leader of a group of renegade replicants and the psychological glow of the movie left its own
influence on me.
Notes from Counterfeit Worlds: Philip K. Dick on Film by Brian J. Robb: "So began a habit which
he would maintain for the rest of his life: playing classical music records while writing. His rejection slips
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were defiantly and proudly taped to the walls. Even the return of seventeen manuscripts, all rejected in one
single day, failed to knock the confidence of the would-be author"… "But his paranoia, extreme loneliness
and depression returned, resulting in a half-hearted suicide attempt in March 1972"… "It was as though
Dick had finally fulfilled his own legend: the mad SF author who'd conjured such bizarre novels as Ubik
and A Scanner Darkly had finally cracked, going mad himself and experiencing the plight of many of his
characters. Perhaps the whole thing was a form of extreme research or role-playing for his next novel?"…
"Aliens, who have no music but communicate through colour"… "My physical stamina is nothing like it
used to be… I can still write well, but the cost"… "Fancher had decided to move in a more commercial
direction, believing this was the only way he'd get anything produced"… "Dick's obsession with Victoria
Principle was part of his 'dark-haired girl' syndrome, where he would fall in love with women he felt
reflected the image he had in his head of his long-dead twin sister, Jane. Most of his wives, and several
actresses upon whom Dick fixated whenever movie possibilities arose, filled his criteria"… The Annotated
Blade Runner Screenplays… "It was, however, the nascent mediums of home video and cable TV which
really saved Blade Runner"… "What Hollywood found were thirty-six novels and over 150 short stories
packed with brain-warping ideas, any one of which could form the basis of a high octane action thriller
given a respectable edge by actually featuring complex philosophical ideas at its core"… "The fact that
Hollywood titans like Cruise and Spielberg were attracted to Dick's ideas was enough to guarantee that his
remaining fiction would be heavily minded by idea-starved studios, writers and directors out to create
entertainment that is smarter than the average summer blockbuster."
-Jules Verne
Futurist: work includes: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Mysterious
Island, and Around the World in Eighty Days.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Seaweed cigars... Harvesting an undersea farm... The Nautilus cruised
safely beneath a tempest.
Around the World in Eighty Days delightfully entertained me with an adventurous quest and enchanting
music.
-H. G. Wells
Futurist: work includes: The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, Things To Come, and The Time
Machine.
The Time Machine (1960): Using a time machine as a war device of knowing how to surprise the enemy...
Watching changes like flowers bloom and welt that used to take hours occurred in seconds... Everyone in
the future is born as an adult blonde... “Don’t stand there like fattened cattle!”
H.G. Wells' breakthrough imagination of The Time Machine translated
provocatively as a "Twilight Zone-like" affecting movie. Freely children
grazing as cattle for the working-class Morlocks seemed insane to my
understanding. Though time travel was explained convincingly enough to my
imagination, I believed that its revealing possibilities could have gone wildly
further.
The Invisible Man rampaged and invented chaos with the imagination and emotions
of the vulnerable public.
-L. Frank Baum
Magic Cloak of Oz: Fascinating cross between reality and non-reality to have someone in a theater-like
donkey costume existing as a donkey in a child-invented world along with human beings and animals.
-Louis Carroll
Dreamchild: Louis Carroll's inspiration for “Alice In Wonderland” happened to be a deeply repressed
affection for a particular little girl named Alice. The author's terribly lonely stare at Alice was immensely
obsessive, yet never vulgar. Alice's affection toward Louis was always subtle: a thankful smile, a small kiss
on his cheek, or silly laughter.
-Carl Sagan
Contact: Sensitive messages from a solar system not ours... “Ten Commandments or a Billion
Commandments” - I really don’t know how many there are... Images from an eight-year-old dream witnessed
in reality in this movie - sunny day on an island, just off the coast, with a white futuristic high-rise structure on
it.
Contact: “At Sunday school, I kept asking all these annoying questions like ‘So where did Mrs. Cain come
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from?’ After a while, they called up my dad and asked him not to bring me anymore.”... “What do these
diagrams mean?” -”Moses with a few billion new commandments...” ...Tell me, does an ant believe in God?
It doesn’t have to... “I need proof in the existence of God. -”Did you love your dad?” “...Yes.” -”Proof.”
Emotion - primarily love - is God...
-Stephen Hawking
A Brief History of Time: Stephen Hawkings proposed: “Who created God?”
A Brief History of Time: An interesting documentary about the unlimits of the universe, black holes, and wheel chairs
with vocoder speech boxes.
"Einstein was wrong when he said, 'God does not play dice'. Consideration of black holes suggests, not only
does God play dice, but that He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen." -Stephen
Hawking.
-Frank Warren/ PostSecret
Notes from PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions From Ordinary Lives, compiled by Frank Warren: “’You
are invited to anonymously contribute a secret to a group art project. Your secret can be a regret, fear, betrayal, desire,
confession or childhood humiliation. Reveal anything – as long as it is true and you have never shared it with anyone
before. Be brief. Be legible. Be creative’”… “For a community art project”… “It had grown into a global phenomenon,
exposing our individual aspirations, fantasies, and frailties – our common humanity”… “This extraordinary collection
brings together the most powerful, personal, and beautifully intimate secrets, and brilliantly illuminates that human
emotions can be unique and universal at the same time”… “The psychological and healing aspects of art”… “A taboo
thought”… “Four years ago Frank experienced an emotional crisis in his life”… “Healing through art”… “SelfCommunication”… “Also from this universal level comes direct access to healing and personal transformation”…
“There is no separation of the arts from spirituality or healing”… “By participating in PostSecret, we all are invited into
that collective level to become artist – free to explore and share private aspects of ourselves creatively, both through
writing and through the alternative language of visual art”… “The project also invites us into the collective level to heal
ourselves, healing that has several characteristics similar to psychotherapy. For example, the prominent themes in
PostSecret mirror some of the reasons people are drawn to psychotherapy: seeking relief from suffering; sharing painful
experiences (especially concerning difficulties in relationships or feelings of isolation); expressing shame and anxiety
about aspects of self that are difficult to face; and admitting one’s impulses, fears, and fantasies. Although many of the
secrets are about psychological pain, the grist for the mill in psychotherapy, others are hopeful, optimistic, or even
humorous. Hope and humor are certainly important aspects of the psychotherapeutic process as well”… “A journey
into our depths, perhaps into the unconscious mind”… “The goal is to bring experience to conscious awareness and to
express what is deepest inside and not have it be the end of the world”… “This exercise gives us the potential and the
opportunity for self-reflection, for self-acceptance, for increased understanding about the self, and for healing and
personal growth”… “In PostSecret, art and healing are one”… “I am still struggling with what I’ve become”… “After
reading one particular PostSecret, I was reminded of a childhood humiliation”… “We all have secrets: fears, regrets,
hopes, beliefs, fantasies, betrayals, humiliations. We may not always recognize them but they are part of us – like the
dreams we can’t always recall in the morning light”… “I don’t think I’m interesting enough to have a secret”… “When
I’m alone I see myself as beautiful. It’s when I’m around others that I feel so ugly and flawed”… “I’m jealous of her
baby”… “Thinking about being with him is more exciting than actually being with him”… “I believe I will accomplish
something truly great in this lifetime. I am going to be 53 tomorrow”… “I’m terrified of not existing”… “When I’m
mad at my husband, I put boogers in his soup”… “Finding God is proving difficult”… “Sometimes after dark my
friends and I strip down to our bras and panties and run around our local park, swing on the swings and feel so free”…
“I am a peaceful person who happens to be filled with violent rage”… “I considered pressing statutory rape charges just
so he’d regret breaking my heart. But then he’d never want me back”… “My parents are related”… “Income from
teaching creative writing: $32, 654. Income from writing creatively: $0.00”… “I hate people who ‘reply to all’ on
emails”… “I make up fantasy stories because my real life SUCKS. And now my fantasy life is starting to SUCK,
too”… (Braille): “God is the only one who loves me. No one else on earth does”… “I’m in love with a comic book
character (Nightcrawler) – because it won’t get me in trouble – and real men have been too painful”… “My parents
think I’m checking my e-mail when I’m reading online erotica”… “I know where I am put… I’m lost”… “Sometimes
when I’m having sex with my wife, I’m thinking of my mom”… “I pulled a muscle in my neck while masturbating. I
couldn’t move my head for 3 days. (I told my husband it was from moving furniture)”… “I masturbate to pictures of
Civil War soldiers”… “I think that ads for lingerie are sexier than porn, magazines, and cheaper”… “I’ve always
suspected my father molested me, as well”… “I actually enjoy being an outcast”… “I wish I were a popular idiot
instead of a lonely genius”… “No one can turn me on more than my Eighth grade boyfriend did”… “I hated my
childhood”… “Suicidal soldier”… “I know it really stinks, but I like the smell of my own poop”… “I fear I have an
undiagnosed mental illness”… “I wanted the plane to crash so I wouldn’t have to miss him anymore”… “I FEEL”…
“Sometimes I think my fiancé isn’t THE ONE”… “I am a Southern Baptist Pastor’s Wife. No one knows that I do not
believe in God”… “I was seven years old the first time I attempted suicide”… “Sometimes when I do Chinese takeout,
I order for 2 people so I won’t look like a fat, lonely loser. Then I eat it all”… “I want to die… a hero”… “This jackass
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at my school died. I’m kind of happy that I don’t have to see him anymore”… “I love to pee when I’m swimming”…
“My secret hobby: Collecting porno pics”… “I wish I would have left the mask ON”… “I need to change”… “I know
that sending in a stupid postcard to share a secret with a bunch of strangers won’t do a damn thing to change the daily
loneliness and unhappiness in my life. And I sent this anyway”… “What’s your secret?”
Notes from My Secret: A PostSecret Book, compiled by Frank Warren: "But the secrets that arrive from
young people usually stand out; their passions run deeper, their loneliness feels more desolate, their joy is expansive.
Their postcards reveal a hidden landscape and sound as though they come from brave explorers finding their way
through a wilderness"… "A teacher in Chicago told me that she displayed a 'Veil of Secrets' at her school - a patchwork
of more than three hundred postcards she collected from students. 'It got students talking and caused people to feel
more connected.' She went on to tell me that it exasperated certain administrators, who removed it and declared, What
state standards could possibly support such gratuitous and sophomoric impulses? (I went to high school in Illinois. I
wish I had been lucky enough to have been in her class.)"… "For some reasons, I know I will die young… and it scares
me a little bit"… "My dreams are bigger than this small apartment"… "I believe in my childhood Dreams"… "I wish I
had just one talent"… "Today, I masturbated in the Ladies' Room"… "I've watched my bipolar sister become a zombie
on her meds. I'm bipolar too, but I'm not seeking treatment. I like the highs and lows….."… "I want to have sex with a
piano"… "I don't feel entirely alone when I go through the postcards on your website, or rather, I still feel alone, but I
feel like there are a lot more people alone with me"… "My mom puts a star on the calendar for every day I haven't cut
myself. I don't deserve 5 of those stars"… "I forgive the man who raped me"… "I want to talk to somebody because
they care, not because it's their job"… "I can't wait till I prove them all wrong"… "This was supposed to help me feel
less anxious and sad. Now I feel nothing at all"… "If you feel like you are going insane, and you are trapped in a
dysfunctional environment, You Are Not Crazy"… "Deep down I've always believed I am meant for something really
big… Now I'm just waiting"… "I can only love her when she leaves me"… "I sleep to escape"… "Sometimes I wish I
was better at faking it"… "And let me tell you…. There is nothing more invigorating or life-affirming than shredding
old suicide notes"… "Fuck the odds"… "I saw your secret… and I love you anyway"… "My heart is an idiot"… "I am
afraid that the only thing I like to do (art), won't take me anywhere. I hope I am wrong"… "Sometimes… I miss
God"… "I was molested for most of my childhood. Sometimes I like it. I will always hate myself for that"… "If I died
no one would noticed"… "I am afraid to live a Christian life because I might miss out on all the fun"… "I will always
be the weird quiet girl"… "I don’t' remember when jumping on the bed stopped being fun… but I dream of returning to
such carefree days"… "My husband would rather jack-off than have sex"… "I orgasm when I swim laps. (Only once
and usually around the 400 meter mark)"… "I don't believe that 'perfect families' exist… They all fuck you up…"…
"Even though it will ruin all of my future plans, I am trying to get pregnant so that he can't leave me"… "If I had a time
machine, I would not kill Hitler or meet Jesus. I would take you to the movies"… "Surprise! Adolescence is not an
exciting adventure. It's actually very boring… and lonelier than you could ever imagine"… "I accidentally stumbled
across my dad's porn stash… And it turns out that he has a fetish"… "When I was fourteen I tried to commit suicide
with a razor, then with pills. Now that I am thirty I understand that my teenage problems were resolvable. I would have
missed out on things like being a parent, my nephews, getting my first tattoo, learning to ride a motorcycle and falling
in love. Even though I will have these scars on my arms for life I am glad I didn't die"… "When I was a kid, I thought I
was special. Now I'm not so sure"… "I steal photographs from my Grandma… because I find it hard to see things from
her point of view"… "I hope to never forget"… "With these PostSecret postcards, I was being let into somebody's soul
and sharing with them whatever emotion they invested into creating the card."
Notes from A Lifetime of Secrets by Frank Warren: “They were more than confessions”… “Some people told
me they recognized a hidden part of themselves on a stranger’s postcard. Others shared personal experiences of how
talking about a painful secret had helped heal a lifelong relationship”… “My father broke the silence by asking me, ‘Do
you want to know my secret?’ He bravely recounted a traumatic childhood experience. When he finished, we had a true
talk that gave me a richer understanding of my father and recast our relationship”… “I am the product of adultery”…
“I’ve put off telling my mother that I’m depressed and need help… ‘cause I’m afraid she’d be angry I’m not the perfect
daughter she thinks I am”… “I am very afraid that this is the climax of my life”… “Sometimes, life is really
ridiculously repetitive”… “I want someone, anyone, to look at my secrets and feel something”… “It’s weird…
forgetting what you look like”… “I’m so scared that growing up means dying a little inside”… “The biggest reason I
want to be teacher is because I miss my childhood”… “I am quitting my job in two weeks. I don’t have another job
lined up. I am feeling awesome and terrified. This is my rebirth!”… “The most important thing I realized lately is that
painful breakups, unrequited love, shitty jobs and the like help us to BUILD CHARACTER and that no matter how bad
it feels, we are much better off because of it”… “I’m a nerd and proud”… “I write home telling everyone what a great
time I’ve having… Secretly I’ve never felt so ALONE in my life”… “I’ve masturbated since I was a little girl. I’m OK
with this now, but sometimes worry that it keeps me from having meaningful relationships, were all the orgasms worth
it?”… “Our nation is spoiled, corrupt, & ignorant… but I would die to protect it”… “I can’t decide if I’ve stayed in the
same job for ten years because of loyalty, stupidity, laziness, or fear”… “I am almost 40. I have average hair, an
average body and average looks. As a result, I am invisible. No one ever notices me. Every time I go shopping, I steal
something. A pack of gum or a $50 bottle of perfume. If I’m buying something, you can be assured that I’ve taken
something of higher value. I don’t even try to be sneaky about it. I just pick what I want, put it in my pocket, and walk
on. Because I am invisible, nobody sees me or what I take. I live in fear that I will be caught. And that I won’t”… “I
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wish I could help those who send in their secrets. I want to make all the pain go away for them. I am your friend even if
you never meet me”… “I aborted the baby you never knew about. Sometimes I want to tell you. But I doubt you would
care”… “I pray to a God that I don’t think exists”… “I’m 44 years old. I’m my own therapist”… “I fear the loss of my
imagination”… “I will die alone and happy”… www.postsecret.com.
Notes from PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God: “The only reason I didn’t kill myself in high
school was because my art teacher cared!”… “I’m afraid there will be nothing outstanding or interesting to say about
me in my obituary”… “I had my dream wedding with the wrong person”… Finding kindred sensitive souls… “Nature
and Writing are my true therapies. They make me want to live”… “There better be sex in heaven”… “I’m afraid I’m
not going to make it into heaven because I masturbate (a lot)”… “Without it, I am immobilized by anxiety. With it, I
am immobilized by apathy!”… “I masturbate to photos of us when we were happy”… “I only pray to God when I’m in
extreme pain”… “If Jesus happens to be gay, I will still follow and love him”… “Caring for cancer patients has stopped
my suicidal ideations”… “The problem with my kind of loneliness is that other people don’t seem to cure it”… “Free to
travel, I roamed the country”… “Today I realized I am allowed to be HAPPY”… “Please don’t kill yourself tonight”…
“Call me. Dad died”… “Today is the day I stop masturbating”… “You are invited to anonymously contribute a secret
to a group art project. Your secret can be a regret, fear, betrayal, desire, confession or childhood humiliation. Reveal
anything – as long as it is true and you have never shared it with anyone before”… “My first soft porn was the JC
Penny catalog”… “I like turbulence on planes. It reminds me that I can still die”… “I spent my childhood wished I was
an adult and now I spend my adulthood wishing I was a child”… “I’m a Christian but I’m afraid to learn too much
about God because I’m afraid it won’t make sense and I’ll stop believing.”
Notes from The Secret Lives of Men and Women: A PostSecret Book, compiled by Frank Warren: “Courage
is more important than training or technique in creating meaningful art”… “I’m the one who has ben photo-editing your
head onto the bodies of porn stars and submitting them to adult websites”… “I continue to be surprised by the many
unfulfilled adults I have met who grew-up in privilege. And by the large number of people I have known who suffered
difficult lonely childhoods but late, unexpectedly, found happiness and love”… “I am a 40 year old child”… “When I
was a kid I promised myself I would never fight in front of my own children”… “I hate it when people say prayer
works because it didn’t when I was begging God to save my baby’s life”… “I faked a miscarriage… twice”… “I gave
up my dream because of one bad teacher”… “Some of the secrets make me think: ‘WOW! I’m not alone”… “I am a
respected staff member of the school where I work. Nobody there knows that I have pierced nipples”… “I am starting
to think that my so-called existential crisis is just my personality”… “She Said No”… “When I was 16 I had an
abortion. When I was 33 I had a miscarriage. I think God was punishing me”… “My family’s secret ingredient is
almond extract”… “I have both a wife and a girlfriend and I have never been lonelier!!!”… “I am addicted to Internet
Porn”… “I want life to be simple and easy… again”… “I’m wasting my life”… “Every year on June 4th I slow dance
alone to the same song… while pretending to hold the baby I miscarried”… “I can only write poetry when I feel sad
and alone… I haven’t written a poem in over two years”… “I love and hate being alone”… “Dear soulmate, I don’t
know who you are, where you live, or what you look like. But I pray for you every nite, & I ask God to point you in my
direction”… “Winters pass.”
-Film Critics
“The mass audience tends to seek escapist entertainment: Movies are a way of forgetting their
troubles. Film critics must endure a constant barrage of such pictures in their daily line of work. Hence, they
tend to get bored with anything that treads the tried (and tired) and true. What they seek in movies is
something unusual, challenging, and daring.” -From the book “Understanding Movies”.
-Pauline Kael
I’ve encountered some great film criticism throughout my life in study of movies. But I’ve never
come across someone as insightful as this woman. Upon discovering her book For Keeps at the local
library, I became captivated to how perceptive her comments and deductions were. She even criticized films
I personally adored. Still, her thoughts were valid and challenging. She dug deep into cinema with a passion
that was addictive to read.
"I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the
place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision
wherever it takes him." –Pauline Kael.
-Roger Ebert
He was the first movie critic I started to seriously read for his film criticism and film theory in his
movie reviews. I read through his "Home Movie Companion" book when I was a senior in high school. I
credit it for opening my mind for what to look for in movies and what makes a movie good. I enormously liked
his writing, being as visual as it was.
From Roger Ebert's Video Companion: "Comedy is, after all, a release of
tension." This explains why I laugh so much.
2-16-10: Roger Ebert is dying in increments, and he is aware of it.
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I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear, he writes
in a journal entry titled "Go Gently into That Good Night." I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the
approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for
is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can't say it wasn't interesting. My lifetime's
memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir
of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.
There has been no death-row conversion. He has not found God. He has been beaten in some ways. But his other senses
have picked up since he lost his sense of taste. He has tuned better into life. Some things aren't as important as they
once were; some things are more important than ever. He has built for himself a new kind of universe. Roger Ebert is
no mystic, but he knows things we don't know.
I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier,
and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a
crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no
matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived
long enough to find it out.
-Harry Knowles/ "Ain't It Cool News" website
Notes from "Ain't It Cool?" by Harry Knowles: "Pauline Kael once said something to the effect that
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas are a couple of young filmmakers who, while having the best intentions
in the world, have destroyed the movies forever. Except that it wasn't spectacle or extravaganza or special
effects or the pure visceral thrill ride of movies like Jaws or Close Encounters of the Third Kind that wrecked
the movies - or continually threatens to do so. And it wasn't the big money moving in afterward, although that
was part of it. It was the crowding out of everything else. It was the hobbling of character and the
streamlining of plot; it was action beats and pure sensation and perpetual climax with nothing to hang it on.
So that, regardless of the changes in locale or motivation or stakes or the source of jeopardy, to a certain
degree, every movie was now the same movie.
-Clifford Irving
The Hoax: “Your first book sold poorly.” And his second book wasn’t going to be published because a prominent
magazine gave it a terrible review… To write a false autobiography of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes – and
convince many of Hughes’ closest advisors no less!!!… “I am the spokesman for the lunatic hermit!”… “It’s
sensitive”… “The lying is giving me a headache”… “Who are you now? General Patton?”… “You will have a shit
storm rain down on you!”… “He wants us to bring down Nixon!”… “Taking down a corrupt president”… “How
Howard Hughes bought Richard Nixon”… “You’re not important, Clifford Irving”… “This is so beyond the bounds of
the imagination.”
-Hieronymus Bosch
One day, I discovered the art of Renaissance painter Hieronymus Bosch. It was such a shock to
th
discover actual Surrealism in the 15 Century centuries before it became an art movement! “The Garden of
Earthy Delights” featured such disturbing visionary fantasy that no one had ever graphically recorded before.
It was unseen imagination! He was Salvador Dali, the Brothers Grimm, David Lynch, and Terry Gilliam all in
one.
-Norman Rockwell
I fully discovered this artist’s power in how he could capture an ordinary moment and tell a story
through painted details and dozens of individual expressions of people’s faces. Rockwell’s images tended to
dwell into the innocence of America and traditional values of yesteryear. I found a great beauty in how he
could portray the positive, sentimental side of life over and over again in new, fresh ways. His characters
were ordinary people with normal jobs; yet he made them all seem iconic and real at the same moment.
These were photograph-like painting capturing that special moment that we can’t freeze in time to notice and
appreciate its humor, wonderment, expressions, grace, and quirkiness. I’m attracted to his voyeuristic view
of a nostalgic world where children were still innocent, cute, said their prayers at night, mischievous, yet still
obedient to their parents. Rockwell created an idealized America that seems like a surreal fantasy world to
me now.
Norman Rockwell: Painting America: “He created a mythical, wonderful land of childhood innocence and
exuberance”… “He painted the American dreams better than any other artist”… “All he had was his ability to draw”…
“He did have a lonely childhood”… “I paint life as I would like it to be”… “Exploring the dreams of youth”…
“American idealism”… “He lived and breathed his work. He was a workaholic”… “They were portraits of America
and Americans without cynicism”… “He was a storyteller”… “He really did feel that he was good.”
-Vincent van Gogh/ Lust for Life
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My personal notes on Vincent van Gogh that I’ve taken throughout the years from movies, books,
and his diary:
I suppose I do want to be the next van Gogh... an artist expressing his vision of what he feels no
matter the criticism... it’s Romanticism in my mind of emotional forms.
Personally, Kirk Douglas' portrayal of Vincent Van Gogh in the movie Lust For Life became the
(role) model for my emotions.
Lust for Life: “He had disastrous love affairs”... “He reads long and obscure sermons”... “I’ll do anything! Use
me... use me!!”... “I’m going to live like a true Christian!”... “You’ve become an idler!” -”There are two different
types of idlers. How easy it would be to simply choose to be lazy. But I want nothing but to work. But I can’t
because I’m in a cage of shame, self-doubt, and failure!”... “It’s so good to be home and at peace for a
time”... “God didn’t mean people to mourn forever”... “We can’t stand to see you suffering, Vincent”...
“Blessed is the man who has found his work and a woman to love”... “I want children”... (Here is a movie
where I could very well quote the entire screenplay because I relate so deeply to it)... “Take care of yourself,
Vincent!”... “People would call us sinners. Yet is it a sin to love? To need love?”... “I want to make things that
move and touch people”... How long until his woman becomes impatience with his artistic ambitions?... “It
was wrong to be with her from the beginning”... “You’re not the only one who’s lonely, Vincent”... Gauguin:
“When you get as old as I do, you measure what is worth your time. Anything else that hampers your ability
to work you cut off. And then you spend the rest of your life questioning if it was worth it”... “Maybe with the
change he will find himself” -”Or will he find more loneliness?”... A painting so vibrant and hot - it sweats...
“Whole days go by without me talking to anyone”... Continuity error: a blond van Gogh?... “He must be so
alone down there”... “If I could just sell one painting, that would help”... They’re both impatient, passionate,
competitive, and self-absorbed - a massively glorious mismatch!... “You paint too fast!”... “I release my
internal violence before it can affect me”... “I’m tired of being cooped up in here”... “I don’t know what I’m
doing or why I even came!!”... “So much of life is wasted in loneliness”... “I know all about loneliness. Only I
don’t whine about it”... “It would appear that painting is beneficial if not necessary for Vincent’s well-being”...
The greatest comfort of this movie is that it shows loneliness through the portrait of a brilliant artist. The fact
that the viewer can recognize that they’re not alone is a great, therapeutic comfort. Vincent becomes a hero
to the outsiders of the world. He triumphed even though he suffered long.
Lust For Life: “How could you call my sermon poor!? I spent all week on it.”
“I feel that Lust For Life is an autobiography of my own life - just in a different time period.” I am
consciously aware of Vincent’s end. Very aware.
I’ve been watching Lust For Life revealingly retell in introspective and passionate details the life of
Vincent van Gogh, and discovering so much to empathize with his emotional struggles. This movie became
more than a passive movie experience for catharsis arrived through my empathy for his struggles. I believe I
can accomplish this more so through making art interactive as well as cathartic. Vincent’s astonishment and
enthusiasm with discovering the Impressionist movement was like my experience with computer art. To be
so frustrated with the art I was working with and to find a whole new light! “Is it really art?” Vincent also
moved from home to home, leaving lover, family, and friends for a new start. Theo wondered: “Will he find
himself... or more loneliness?”
Vincent: “I will not ignore or avoid emotions”... “I must have my work to forget myself or an inexpressible
melancholy will crush me”... “A fire inside me that I can not quench, but I must keep ablaze”... “To express
sincere human feeling”... “I know well that healing comes, if one is brave, from within through profound
resonation to suffering and death - through the surrender of your own self-will and your self-love. ...But it is
of no use to me. I love to paint. To see people and things that make our life... artificial.” -Quotes from the
letters of Vincent Van Gogh.
Vincent: The Life and Death of Vincent van Gogh: Vincent writes: “Dear Theo:”… “We only pass through the earth.
We only pass through life”… “I walked alone”… “I recall all our childhood memories”… “Do not mind to be
eccentric. It is good to love flowers and fur trees!”… “Our aim must be to find a steady profession to which we can
devote ourselves entirely”… “I must become a clergyman with something to say that is right and has use in this
world”… “I think someone only gets some peace once they have accomplished something”… “I will try to fight the
good fight”… “What is the use of a beautiful body?”… “Always learning and observing”… “I could come back with
something to say that was really worth hearing. I saw this with all humility, and yet with confidence”… “There are
many beautiful graves, evergreens, roses, and forget-me-nots”… “How rich art is! If only one could remember what
one has seen! One is never without food for thought or truly lonely. Never alone”… “Often I draw far into the night”…
“Like everyone else, I look for the need of family and friendship, of affection, a friendly intercourse”… “How could I
be of any use to anybody?”… “The miners have deep melancholy eyes”… “The only thing to do is to hide oneself”…
“When I was around the surrounding of works of art, I had a violent passion for them reaching the highest pitch of
enthusiasm. And I’m not sorry about it”… “I am often homesick for the land of pictures”… “For more than five years I
have been without employment”… “Do our inner thoughts ever show outwardly?”… “I think that everything good and
beautiful comes from God”… “Love’s a friend, a wife, whatever you like”… “Sometimes I draw sketches even beyond
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my will”… “My drawings have changed… What seemed impossible before now seems possible now”… “A deep love
has grown in my heart for our cousin Kay”… “She said she could never return my feelings”… “Love is something so
positive, so strong, so real that it is impossible to take back that feeling. Life has become very dear to me. And I am
very glad that I love. My life and my love are one. Should I accept her “No! Never! Never!” or just give up?”… “That
inexpressible moment of anguish”… “I want to go through the joys and sorrows of domestic life in order to paint from
my own experiences”… “Why don’t my drawings sell?! For once I would like to make some money to pay for a train
ticket to visit that ‘No! Never, never!’ Without her, I am nothing! I need a woman. I cannot – I will not – live without
love!! I am a man and a man with passions”… “That woman was very good to me, very kind. When you wake up no
alone in the morning with a fellow creature beside you, it makes the world seem so much more friendly”… “It gives me
a feeling of satisfaction that I have gone so far that I cannot go back”… “There is safety in the midst of danger. What
would life be if we did not attempt anything?”… “If I could only express what I feel”… “Misery would force her back
in her old ways”… “We don’t pay any attention to what people say”… “She knows what poverty is. So do I”… “My
life or death depends on your help”… “Then I felt a love died within me. A void – an infinite void – came in instead”…
“My God, why have thou forsaken me!”… “There is no God!”… “What is worse: danger or the fear of danger?”… “I
want to do drawings that touch some people. Something straight from my own heart”… “I want to express serious
sorrow. I want people to come away from my work, ‘He feels deeply. He feels tenderly’”… “What am I in most
people’s eyes? A non-entity? An eccentric and disagreeable man? Someone of no social standing and never will have
any. The lowest of the low? If this much is true, I want my work to show what it is like in the heart of such a
nobody”… “There is music inside me”… “I have some experiments in painting”… “Painting is such a joy to me!”… “I
no longer stand helplessly in front of nature”… “I found it difficult to get the depth of color”… “The glow and depth of
that rich color”… “Those figures are full of poetry!”… “I am glad I did not learn painting or else I would have passed
this by”… “The laws of color are utterly beautiful”… “Feel more faith in nature”… “My greatest desire is to make
beautiful things”… “I regret that the woman with whom I live with understands neither books nor art. In other cases, I
would call her stupid”… “Sometimes I cannot believe that I am 30 years old. I feel so much older”… “I see life as a
kind of sowing time, and the harvest is not here”… “The money I have gotten from you has been absolutely
indispensible since I have not found employment”… “I must start painting again. I can’t do without colors! A certain
frenzy and rage for work”… “If I fail, what is my loss mean?”… “I do not care to spare myself or emotions or
difficulties”… “I do not care if I live a longer or shorter time. I see it all from afar… like a dark shadow”… “With all
her damned faults, she will always be good in my eyes”… “The right thing to do would be to marry her. But she herself
makes it impossible. She is not good, and neither am I”… “I have worked and economized, yet I have not avoided
going into debt”… “I have been faithful to the woman, but I had to leave her”… “Leave me to my fate”… “How
handicapped I am to be here”… “I feel inexpressibly melancholy to be without my work to distract me. And I must
work!! I must forget myself in my work. Otherwise, it will crush me”… “I seek out this white light”… “One’s ability
to stay there is based upon one’s ability to stand the loneliness”… “Father does not know remorse like any other
creature. The good within father is wrongfully applied so that it acts like evil. The light within him is black and spread
darkness”… “From my heart of hearts”… “Our youth was gloomy and frustrating”… “It is dreary outside”… “Very
gloomy these dark winter days”… “I wrestle with nature in order to know her secret”… “I have no other wish than to
paint deep, deep in the country and paint rural life”… “Painting is a faith”… “To make pictures that rouse various
thoughts in those who think serious thoughts about art and life”… “I feel a power within me that I must develop. A fire
that I may not quench, but must keep ablaze, though I don’t know to what end it will lead me. I wouldn’t be surprised if
it is a gloomy one”… “What I am trying to do most is bring life into it”… “They have honestly earned their food”…
“‘The Potato Eaters’ is a real peasant picture. I know it is”… “One of the most beautiful things to do is to paint
darkness, which nevertheless has light in it”… “I see that a certain poverty will be in my future. But I shall be a
painter!”… “I firmly believe that with perseverance I shall win”… “‘Van Gawk’ is such a difficult name to pronounce.
Yet the whole world can pronounce ‘Vincent’ correctly”… “It is an attempt to come into contact with people”… “I
have had a difficult and harassed life, much care and sorrow… and no friends”… “I have lost more than ten teeth”…
“Painting has the secret of giving someone a second youth”… “I do not care if I hunger or am short of life”… “I want
to leave some sort of souvenir of some shape or form of paintings”… “I want to express sincere human feelings”… To
see van Gogh’s portrait paintings come to life!... “I have tried to render in intense color”… “And so I am struggling in
life and progress in art”… “My only anxiety is: How can I be of use in this world?”… “At times I feel old and
broken”… “One must have ambition in order to succeed”… “I will take off down south so I can be away from so many
painters around that disgust me as men”… “How does one become mediocre? By compromising and making
concessions, by always following public opinion”… “One must find a retreat in order to recuperate and get one’s poise
back”… “I may be going to the south of France, the land of blue tones and gay colors. I’m not an adventurer by choice,
but by fate”… “Will the artists see less troubled days?”… “I feel I was in Japan”… “It is my constant hope that I am
not working for myself alone”… “A new art of color”… “The dead will live!”… “I am up to my ears in work for the
trees are in blossom”… “I work in spite of the wind. It’s too lovely!”… “It may be more worthwhile to make children
than make pictures”… “There will be things here that I create that will last”… “We hope that in some other life we will
see something better than this”… “A man who dreams great dreams”… “I paint infinity”… “And the ‘nice people’ will
only see the exaggeration as caricature”… “Being all alone, I am suffering from this isolation”… “Piling it on,
exaggerating the color”… “You feel color differently”… “Color plays a very important part”… “Everyone will say I
work too fast! Don’t you believe a word of it! Is it not emotion, the very sincerity of one’s feeling for nature that draws
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us?! Sometimes I work so strongly that I am unaware that I am even working”… “There will be days when One must
strike while the iron is hot”… “Everything else was just dreams”… “The unlimited possibility of future existence”…
“Looking at the stars always makes me dream”… “We take death to reach a star”… “That is my right to paint”… “The
power to create… one is to create thought rather than children”… “I have found a brighter sun”… Classical music set
to van Gogh’s paintings. John Hurt’s voice as van Gogh’s… “If the storm within gets too be too loud, I take a glass too
much to stun myself. Now painting has become a distraction for myself”… “My concentration becomes more intense
and more sure”… “The more I think of it, there is nothing more artistic than to love people”… “The painter doesn’t say
anything”… “There is a light that I can only call yellow. How lovely yellow is!”… “I must be able to express my
personality in my work”… “I will not end up feeling lonesome in this house. Hope is breaking for me on the horizon.
That hope in intermittent flashes has sometimes comforted in my solitary life”… Van Gogh’s bedroom come to life…
“You have no idea how much it pleases me to have as such good company as Gauguin’s”… “Gauguin gives me the
courage to imagine things. And certainly things from the imagination take more a mysterious character. We talk a lot.
Our arguments are terribly electric”… “These difficulties are within ourselves”… Shadows and light flickers on a van
Gogh painting… “When I am ill”… “I will start on the orchids in bloom”… “To make funny of the great griefs of
life”… “I feel strange undercurrents of sadness I find difficult to define. My God, those anxieties!”… “The music of
the colors”… “I have no illusions about myself anymore. There are moments where I am twisted by enthusiasm,
madness, or prophecy”… “The effect of hysterical over-excitement”… “It is too beautiful for us to paint it… or even to
imagine it”… “I have come to see that madness is a disease much like any other”… “I am now trying to recover like a
man who meant to commit suicide”… “I feel a desire to renew myself, and that my paintings are like a cry of
anguish”… “I love to paint”… “At present, this horror of life is less acute”… “I have almost no desire to see my
friends”… “It does trouble me a lot to have done so many pictures and paintings without selling one of them”… “I am
always filled with remorse”… “I see in this reaper someone fighting like the devil to get to the end of his task. I see an
image of death. Yet there is nothing sad in this death. It goes its way in broad daylight with the sun flooding everything
with a light of pure gold!”… “It is all yellow”… “I am sending you my portrait. I hope that you will see that my face is
much calmer”… “I’ve tried to make it simple”… “It is basically true that a painter is a man that is too absorbed with
what his eyes sees, and is not sufficiently a master of the rest of his life”… “I am too overwhelmed with grief to face
publicity. Success is just about the worst thing that could happen”… “I have lived too hard a life to die from it. Or lose
the power to work. My surroundings here are beginning to weight on me more than I can say. I need air. I feel
overwhelmed with boredom and grief”… “What things I could have done here. I leave it with great grief”… “His
profession and faith still sustain him”… “We must count on Dr. Casua at all. For one thing, he is as sick as I am. When
a blind man leads another blind man, don’t they both fall into the ditch?”… “It is difficult to know oneself. I should like
to have a soul less unquiet than mine”… “I feel exhausted. So much for me”… “I feel this is the lot I had got and which
will not change. The prospects grow darker. I see no future at all”… “I generally try to be very cheerful. But my life is
threatened at the very root… and my steps are wavering”… “They are vast fields of wheat under troubled skies. I didn’t
have to go out of my way to express sadness… and extreme loneliness”… “My canvases will retain their calm even in
the catastrophe”… “In comparative crisis”… “My own work… I am risking my life for it”… “But what is the use!?”…
A film seen from Vincent’s point of view… “I wish I knew it”… Sunflowers on his coffin… 1853-1890.
Lust For Life: “Blessed is the man who has found his work and one woman to love”... “The clergy would call
us sinners. Is it a sin to love, Theo? To be in need of love? Not to be able to live without love?”... “I want to
see nature under a clearer sky”... “I’m working like a steam engine. Whole days go by without me speaking
to anyone. I have a power of color in me like I’ve never had before”... “Painting seems to be almost
necessary”... “The excesses of emotion”... “It’s impossible!”... “I want to go home.…”
Lust For Life: “But I must say what I feel. I’m not an atheist... I do believe in God - a God of Love. And I
believe that there are many ways to serve him... one man does it through a pulpit, another through a book or
a painting.”
Lust for Life: I loved Vincent Van Gogh for the euphoria and loneliness I shared with him - though we were
not always the same... "I want nothing but to work! Only I can't. I'm in a cage - a cage of shame, and selfdoubt, and failure! I'm alone. I'm frightened!" The immense yearning in his voice shivered into my emotions...
I'm dying from the same death Vincent suffered through his life: loneliness.
Lust for Life: Intensity + sensitivity = a brilliant portrait. To experience the movie was pure inspiration to be
sincere and undenying to my emotions.
Lust for Life: He strove to become an evangelist at the age of 25… I’ve actually done what van Gogh does in this film:
wonder around the countryside wildly looking for inspiration and beauty. In my case, I use a digital camera to capture
my canvases.
“Blessed is the man who knows his work” - Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life.
Judging between two cinematic portraits of Vincent van Gogh, Lust for Life is almost “romanticizes
insanity” in its interpretation of his life, while Vincent and Theo portrays him as strictly an insane genius in a
unromantized portrait.
Vincent and Theo: The intensity of watching a portrait of Van Gogh obsessed
into me. I pulsed with creative ideas and creative angst - I could conquer art
with my emotions. Until the inspiration waned away, the possession of his manic
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passion was like a present to my emotional being. Vincent painted a woman's
face and kissed her: making love to his art. Later, he painted his own face a
masterpiece. Was he more beautiful painted?
Vincent and Theo (The van Gogh Brothers): “I’m gonna be a painter”... A portrait of an enraged and mad
Vincent van Gogh, consumed by his artwork. A document of the madness of creativity... “I can’t live with my
family any more. They despise me”... “You better marry a rich wife. It’s the only hope for an artist”... “None of
my children have a father”... A pregnant prostitute moves in with him as his model and lover... “This is not
reality. This is his perception of reality”... Vincent painting his own body as a masterpiece... Artists are the
most passionate of lovers... “You wanted to change my life?!”... He eats his own oil paints... Enjoy being a
misfit and an outcast! It is the road to becoming and being a genius!!... Displaying paintings on the floor... “I
have my own tastes. I want to be my own man”... “Christ the sower, Christ the sun”... Painting in the midst of
a swarm of sunflowers and then violently destroying the image and canvas!!... Kurt Cobain as Vincent van
Gogh... Vincent’s fire-red hair... “I AM THE HOLY SPIRIT. I AM WHOLE IN SPIRIT”... A mad woman
painting women, giving them “self-portraits”... “I don’t see where he finds the time... all the letters he writes
and the paintings” -”Hard work”... “Letters are private things”... “Those who are not artists are the sick ones.
Working people are boring people”... “Would you like to paint me nude?”... Constant heartbreak... An
uncompromising artistic vision.
Artists live a life in a quicksand of sensitivity. Look at Michael Jackson, Kurt Cobain, Elvis Presley,
Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Vincent van Gogh....
Vincent: “How good it is to be eccentric... and I’m not sorry for it”... “The land of pictures”... “For more than
five years I have been without employment”... “I must forget myself in my work or else my sadness will
crush me”... “I have had a difficult and harassed life”... “My only anxiety is how can I be of use to this
world?”... “I am suffering a bit from this isolation”... “Success is about the worst thing that could happen to
me... I’ve lived too hard a life to die for it or lose the power to work.”
Van Gogh once wrote: “I must learn to paint what I feel - not what I see;
but what I feel about what I see."
Van Gogh was attracted to a woman who felt great sadness, but had a bland
personality.
Shortly after his death, someone discovered a few of his paintings and
used them as targets for his archery practice. Imagine an immensely emotional
work of art (which would later be worth millions) impaled with arrows?
Van Gogh once wrote in a letter about comparing himself to a bird in a cage. The bird that once longed to be
released into the stormy skies was now struggling against the elements. Freedom will turn to exposure and
independence to isolation. -I wrote that because I have felt it and empathized with its sentiments deeply.
"In September 1889, Vincent van Gogh painted a self-portrait to send his mother for her seventieth birthday.
In it, he presented himself as the clean shaven, young, and unworried man he used to be, not the harassed, disheveled
creature he had become."
Vincent: A Dutchman: “Yet the painter needs public reassurance of their respect and admiration for his
talent”... Theo van Gogh: Vincent’s economic support for most of his life. Wow! I could live in Yellow Springs
for a year and be economically supported by my father and my own savings! I could live as a creative artist
in an artistic community like Eddie has done in Hungary! I could have time off to live, make love, and create!
In a Brilliant Light: van Gogh in Arles: “His absolute individuality drove him on”... “Portraits bring out the best
in me”... To translate life through a rapturous imagination... “I feel at home in the laboring class”... An artist
who was entirely self-taught... He read a lot. “What Dickens does in words, I do in paint”... He was an honest
artist... Vincent felt most at home in country landscapes. Yet after two years, he got sick of it and had to
move on... “He was learning to be himself”... van Gogh’s Sunflowers paintings were like stained glass
windows in a church... Four Great Crises... I could do very well without God in my life or my paintings... If a
man decides to create thoughts instead of children in his life, he is still part of humanity.”
Van Gogh’s Van Goghs: He never stopped painting... “Yellow was van Gogh’s color”... “After two years in
Paris, Vincent was eager to escape to the bright sunlight of Arles”... To be a prolific artist... Colors playing off
of each other. Saturated chroma with contrasting blacks... A love affair with the countryside... If other artists
could come down, we could have an artist colony!... Gauguin: painting from memory, imagination, ideas, and
emotions... “With my extreme sadness and extreme loneliness, I am risking my own life for my art.” But I
know there is a reason... and that’s all right.
Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams: “Crows”: “Man is genius when he dreams”… “Why aren’t you painting?! To me, this
seems beyond belief!”… “If that natural beauty is there, I lose myself in it as if in a dream. But it’s so hard to hold it all
inside.” –“So what do you do?” –“I work, I slave, I drive myself like a locomotive”… “So little time for me to paint.
The sun, it compels me to paint. I can’t stand around talking to you”… Wandering through van Gogh painting country!
“Biography: Vincent van Gogh”: “When van Gogh lost his clergy position for his extreme methods of living, he lost all
his faith in organized religion. But he never lost his religion, his faith in God”. Still his failure plunged into depression.
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In his despair, he returned to his drawings – the one activity that gave him joy. There’s not much communication with
his family and there was a period of intense self-reflection”… “I am a man of passions capable of foolish things”… “I
am often homesick for the land of pictures”… “He fell in love with a 32 year old, pregnant, alcoholic prostitute. She
fell back into her old ways of selling her body and drinking too much. She also had her mood swings. After living with
her for nineteen turbulent months, he determined that he was better off alone”… “There was no enthusiasm for his
work when he showed it”… “Van Gogh and Gauguin were both rebels. They were both passionate about color and art.
And both were slightly eccentric which drew to attract them together”… “His teeth were crumbling, his stomach
bothered him”… “He was always on the end”… “He dreamed of forming a community of artists”… “There are dreary
days were there is no inspiration. So one must strike while the iron is still hot. To pain quickly with full emotional
charge”… “An artist’s life is one long martyrdom”… “I have always found it idiotic how painters always live alone.
You always lose by being isolated”… “Here was a full-fledged artist who had his own opinions who had done brilliant
work”… “Vincent grew worried that Paul would grow tired of him with both of them cramped inside a small room in
the yellow house. He has become disenchanted with me”… “When Gauguin told Vincent he was leaving, Gauguin had
murdered the dream of the painter’s studio in the south. Vincent couldn’t contain his distress”… “Vincent became
desperate to leave the asylum”… “My surroundings begin to weigh on me more than I can say. I need air. I feel
overwhelmed with boredom and grief. I am at the end of my patience. I can’t stand it anymore. I must make a change –
even a desperate one”… “Flooded with ideas, he never had enough time to paint all that he wanted”… “I have rested
my life in my work and it has cost me half my reason”… “I tried to kill myself, but I missed”… “Vincent did not want
to be saved. He said, ‘The sadness will last forever’.”
"In Search of…: Vincent van Gogh": "Theo wanted to prove that Vincent wasn't insane"… "He was born twice"… "He
considered himself a stranger on the earth"… "How could products of such beauty be the work of a deranged mind?"…
"He was well read and knew five languages"… "How could this man work so diligently, skillfully? How could he write
over 500 beautiful written letters to Theo so sensitive and full of enlightened insight if he were actually insane?"…
"What was the cause? Was it the intense loneliness?"… "Vincent dreamed of starting a community of artists"…
"Gauguin had deserted his wife and five children in favor of painting"… "To share his home, Vincent could not have
picked a more unsuitable partner"… "Vincent always the passionate seeker of truth"… "Gauguin baited Vincent"…
"Was it the agitation of the argument?"… "Why was he suffering such personal pain while his work was soaring?"… "I
have done no harm to anyone"… Suffering from epilepsy… "The idea of work as duty is coming back very strong"…
"A newspaper article praised Vincent as the leader of the Impressionists"… "I feel as if nature had spoken to me"…
"The damnable voices that beleaguered his brain"… "Why did he see death as a trip to a star?"… "Young Vincent visits
a grave that bears his own name"… "He lived his whole childhood with a ghost that bore his name"… "He was
impatient. And perhaps he had good reason. He had 70 days left to live. Did he know that? Was he in a race against
time?"… "On Sunday July 27th, Vincent was about to make a decision"… "He was a man with a physical problem that
led him to a desperate act"… "It seemed that he was determined to succeed in his own death. He said, 'I've been a
failure at so many things in my lifetime. I hope I haven't failed at this as well"… "And then he was gone"… "It's
amazing to think of how much Vincent accomplished."
Notes from “Lust for Life” by Irving Stone: “Red-headed fool!”… “His family would say he could never
succeed, that he was worthless and ungrateful, the black sheep of the Van Gogh family”… “Whatever you do, you will
do well. Ultimately you will express yourself and that expression will justify your life”… “I draw a bit in my spare time
for relaxation”… “He was tormented by his worries, What would happen to hi if Theo lost his job? Would he be
thrown out into the street like some vile beggar?”… “He had no money to buy liquor. He had no money to buy paints
and canvases. He could not ask Theo for anything at such a crucial moment. And he was deathly afraid that when he
had his seizure in July, he would do something insane, something to cause poor Theo even more worry and expense.
He tried working, but it was no good. He had painted everything he wanted to paint. He had said everything he wanted
to say. Nature no longer stirred him to a creative passion, and he knew that the best part of him was already dead”…
“But at the base of everything lay the overwhelming fear of what epilepsy would eventually do to him. Now he was
sane and rational; he could do with his life what he wished. But suppose his next attack should convert him into a
raving maniac. Suppose his brain should crack under the strain of the seizure. Suppose he became a hopeless, driveling
idiot. What would poor Theo do then? Lock him in an asylum for the lost ones?”… “He had labeled Vincent the black
sheep of the Van Gogh family”… “One cannot paint good-bye”… “His mind broke under the strain.”
“His rough strokes, his vibrant colors, were part of his special vision… one that saw the world through a lens
of madness. With each leap in brilliance on his canvas, however, he marked another step on his own agonizing journey
toward utter, final despair. He became solitary early on, as he searched for what he would do with is life… The world
he saw was visible only to him. He was a camera that looked through the lens of madness… Of more than 800 oil
paintings and 700 drawings, he’d sold only one, and he’d never had a show of his own.” –Notes on Vincent van Gogh
from “The Big Book of Weirdos”.
"I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream" -Vincent van Gogh.
-Paul Gauguin
“Biography: Paul Gauguin”: “Once he lost his job, Gauguin felt free to pursue his art fulltime”… “He was overconfident. After two years without an income, his savings had dwindled to nothing. And his wife was about to leave
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him from living on nothing”… “He had decided to put a type of self-love before all else. He made the decision to put
his art before everything. And once he’s made that decision, he remains true to it for the rest of his life. If people get
hurt, well people get hurt in the process”… “I have gradually hardened this sensitive heart of mine to keep up my
psychological fortitude”… “There are two temperaments in me: the sensitive man and the savage”… “He was broke
and desperately needed to sell his paintings. He was virtually ignored at the exhibition”… “I will take my paints and
reinvigorate myself on that deserted island away from “Man”. I shall live like a savage”… “Art is an abstraction”…
“He sought to attract the attention of Paris by painting exotic lands as well as pictures derived from memory and
imagination” … “He purchased several Tahitian concubines, even one that was thirteen years old”… “I am a savage in
spite of myself”… “He may have killed himself from an overdose of morphine – which is a painless way of killing
yourself because he was so miserable at that time from syphilis”… “I know I am a great artist because I have endured
such suffering.”
Paul Gauguin: The Savage Dream: “In search of solitude to practice his art and expand his imagination”... To
immerse oneself in virgin nature... Sleep is a metaphor for death, or for releasing ones dreams... Considered
himself an outcast among Western Society... Conflicting sides to his personality... Christ with Gauguin’s face
nailed to the cross... As with Vincent van Gogh, he was destined to be misunderstood... The imagination of a
lonely man has decorated his home with dreams... “’Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we
going?’ - ‘I have put in it, before dying, all my energy, such painful passion and terrible circumstances... I
wanted to kill myself’.”
-Jackson Pollock/ Pollock
Pollock: Inside the mind and creativity of Jackson Pollock... She fell in love for him just from seeing his
abstract artwork... “Are you experimenting with Surrealism? Is this a dream?”... “The source of art comes
from the unconscious”... “You have total artistic license”... He can hear the criticisms and comments... “He’s
original and ambitious, but it’s a bunch of mud and the titles are pretentious”... He suffered from extreme
depression and self-doubt... “Cathartic disintegration”... “How do you know when you are finished with a
painting?” -”How do you know when you are finished making love?”... “Is Picasso more important than your
family?”... Dedicated to my mother and father... “He was desperate for recognition, attention, and approval.
Yet it gave him no peace, no solace, no comfort. It filled his ego, but that didn’t last too long”... He cracked
art right open... “Painting takes time. You really have to be committed to it”... He was a very insecure
individual... His need to matter drove him to create art... A Rage... “His frustrations, his hopes, his dreams,
his demons, his doubts”... He was emotionally unequipped to deal with life. He hadn’t grown up yet. He was
still nine... They shared their ideas about art and their love for art... Watching this movie was like a selfdiscovery journey for myself.
From Roger Ebert’s movie review: “I first saw the movie at the Toronto Film Festival and a day later ran into
the painter Julian Schnabel. I mentioned Pollock’s suffering. “What happened to Jackson Pollock when he was
painting,” Schnabel said, “is, he was free.” That’s what Ed Harris communicates in the film. A man is miserable but he
is given a gift. The gift lifts his misery while he employs it. It brings joy to himself and others. It creates space he can
hide in, space he can breathe in, space he can escape to. He needs that space, and given his demons, painting is the only
way he can find it.
-Salvador Dali
His work opened up my mind and imagination to stuff outside the borders of typical still lifes and pretty
pictures that I’ve been taught how to do. He broke the edges right off of all our consciousness.
Un Chien Andalou: Surreal Depravity from Salvador Dali!
Salvador Dali Museum experience: Four-sided cross with four crucified people.
-Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein: A van Gogh painting with Roy Lichtenstein... Even this great artist worked as an assistant
professor during a period of his life.
-Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch: The "Anti-Christ" that never was... Trying to form a society
based upon love and feeling... Utter frankness of one's soul... Unrelated
information of history (the year of the invention of the machine gun, the birth
date of George Patton) is inserted for no reason except excessive knowledge...
False lives... "You demand more and more love from me - more than I can give to you."
-Marcel Duchamp
I learned so much from the Dada movement of Absurdism in art that it also seemed to mirror life in
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a way that other works didn’t quite incorporate. Duchamp was the fore-runner in this progressive movement
to deconstruct art, kill it, and rebirth it out as something else. This was surrealism taken one or one gazillion
steps forward.
-H.R. Giger
Giger’s Alien. Disturbing, yet wildly visionary, erotic mechanical organic creations.
-Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Moulin Rouge (1952): The story of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec… There is a spot in
Paris where the under-class go to die into the night. Drunk and distraught,
they stare blankly, motionless. Those who dance simply hold their companion as
they spin pointlessly in a circle... "We all have our escapes. Mother: her
prayers. You: your horses and falcons, and your dreams of an age that is no
more. And I: my [alcohol] (that eases the pain in my deformed legs and the
thoughts of my loneliness and "ugliness").
-Pablo Picasso
Picasso, the Impressionist.
“Colors are only symbols. Reality is to be found in luminance alone.” –Pablo Picasso.
"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." -Pablo Picasso.
“Everything you can imagine is real.” –Pablo Picasso.
"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once they grow up." -Pablo Picasso.
4-13-01: I invited Owen to accompany me to the Boca Raton Museum of Art for the Picasso exhibit
“Passion & Creation”. After the first ten images, I was overwhelmed by too much form, line, psyche,
sexuality, subconscious, and color. With so many women around, a cacophony of perfumes was on display
for my senses. It was like a subconscious museum of the scents.
Surviving Picasso: “She wasn’t very intelligent and he got bored with her”... What image was painted over
with the existing painting? (A horrible image of his mistress behind bars eating bread and water?)...
“Creativity comes from chaos.”
-Joan Miro
“Art class was like a religious ceremony for me. I would wash my hands carefully before touching
paper or pencils. The instruments of work were sacred objects to me.” -Joan Miro.
-Frida Kahlo
Frida: “If you’re a real painter you can’t live without painting. You paint until you die”… “It’s in the way he looks at
you. He sees beauty in your imperfections. It’s irresistible”… “Thank you for making me a happy man”… “I’m used to
pain”… “I’m like a jigsaw puzzle”… “Your paintings express what everybody feels: that they are alone, in pain”…
“All I can do is keep working.”
-Andy Warhol
Superstar: Andy Warhol - the "man" who was not hetero or homosexual, rather fame was his sexuality. Once art had
been envisioned, Andy decided to exploit it for its cheap beauty, art history importance, and profit potential. Andy
Warhol was outside of creating art - he was turning art into a joke and relished the humor behind the hue.
Warhol: I was totally inspired by Andy Warhol as a possible role model. He was a liberal and a confused,
repressed man in his own work, which was his pop life.
-Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams: Photographer: “I wanted a snapshot of the emotion.”
-Leonardo da Vinci
“Art is never finished, only abandoned.” –Leonardo da Vinci.
-Michelangelo
The Agony and the Ecstasy: Michelangelo’s struggle in painting the Sistine Chapel: “Look! Moses! Here in the
marble”… “He needs me as much as I need him”… “I was angry when I wrote that”… “You will correct the
clumsiness of my uncle’s architects. You will decorate the ceiling”… “If the wine is sour, throw it out!” So he
scratches out one of his ceiling paintings… “Don’t let your regard of him make a fool of him… You don’t keep your
secrets as good as you think”… Michelangelo sees the Sistine Chapel in the clouds… “I planned a ceiling. He plans a
miracle!”… “I was working and I forgot!”… “There was no room in me for love. Maybe there never was”… “Because
I am different!”… “I’ve seen him in one of his working fevers”… “You should know your enemies”… “You’ll destroy
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him!”… “I won’t deny that I have a sort of love for him”… “The cure for his illness is work”… “As your pope, I
cannot retreat or negotiate”… “We as artists must find a patron… or a pope to pay for our affairs”… “We are harlots,
always peddling beauty at the doorsteps of the mighty”… “You will always be an artist. You have no choice”… “Even
if it means swallowing that mighty pride of yours”… Raphael who copied Michelangelo’s style… “Sometimes it
appears that God seems to be deaf”… “Now it is finished and I am content”… “I still feel that painting is not my
trade.”
-Joel-Peter Witkin
He is one of the master image makers of the macabre and disturbing. When I was first exposed to his work in
art school, it scared me terrifically. Yet I was also enchanted by it the way I would be by Grimm’s Adult Fairy Tales. I
loved the forbidden horror to the imagery. They were obscene surrealism! There was something beautiful and
unsettling about his work. I wanted to look away, but stare some more!
Joel-Peter Witkin’s photography is a mixture of “Faces of Death”, chicks with dicks, scratched imagery, dead
people, beheaded bodies, more penises, aborted fetuses, S & M fetishists wearing black masks with religious imagery,
mutilated pets, grossly obese men and women, dead naked children, crucified monkeys, torture porn, XXX fist fucks,
bestiality, more chicks with dicks in masks, and multilated human limbs and body parts – all gorgeously and beautifully
photographed in a classical style in black and white.
“When people see my work, there is no “gray area” of response. What they experience is either love or hate.
People who hate what I make hate me, too. They must think I am a demon or some kind of evil sorcerer. Those who
understand what I do appreciate the determination, love, and courage it takes to find wonder and beauty in people who
are considered by society to be damaged, unclean, dysfunctional, or wretched.
My art is the way I perceive and define life. It is sacred work, since what I make are my prayers. These works
are the measure of my character, the transfiguration of love and desire, and, finally, the quality of my soul. With this
work, I am judged by myself, by my contemporaries, and finally, by God. My life and work are inseparable. It is all I
have. It is all I need.” –Joel-Peter Witkin, 1990.
-Jean-Michel Basquiat
Basquiat: "Samo's Day Old Soup - $5.10"... The art dealer was aroused by his art!... The tormented,
euphoric lifestyle of an artist... "I think about you a lot"... it made me realize that I also have a limited # of
friends, one or three. My main friend and lover is my artwork - it is what I communicate through the most. I
make love through the colors, ideas, concepts, designs, and imagination. Perhaps, that makes me unique,
but also, quite occasionally, very lonely and introverted. Along with my art I have the music that I listen to
and the movies I watch.
-Annie Leibowitz
Annie Leibowitz: Photographer: “I fell into that ‘You have to be in a lot of pain in order to be working’ way of
thinking.”
-Banksy
-Thierry Guetta/ Mr. Brainwash/ MBW
Exit Through The Gift Shop: "Paranoid Pictures"… A Banksy film… "Tonight, the streets are art/ ours"… Guerilla
graffiti artist extraordinaire… "He never went anywhere without a video camera"… "Videotaping is like a drug - an
obsession!"… "I couldn't do anything without capturing. Keep filming, keep filming"… Putting your art out on the
public streets and in society so people can see it… "Street artists who had to make their mark by any means
necessary"… "The biggest counter-cultural movement since punk"… "It's my passion"… "I was starting to see a
gallery that was outside"… "I liked the danger. It made me feel good"… "Thierry had accidentally found a focus"…
"We needed someone who knew how to use a camera"… "It's great that we had someone getting this stuff on tape"…
"The question arose: 'What was Thierry filming for?'"… "I am going to make a street art documentary"… "In his new
role of documentary filmmaker"… "Terrorist" artists… "I didn't know if he was passionate and a bit crazy. But I
respect passion"… "BORING!"… "I'm proud to be an art terrorist"… The baby Jesus strapped with dynamite across
His chest while being held by Mother Mary… "Banksy is a fucking sell out"… Thousands of videotapes of recorded
moments, many of which were not even labeled!... "I lost my mother when I was eleven years old"… "Missing such an
important event stayed with him. He felt increasingly compelled to record the events of the people around him"… "I
would make those moments live forever"… "Art of War"… Part practical jokester… "The notoriously secretive
artist"… "I'm in a legal gray area"… "He was a legend, like a Robin Hood"… "Thierry struggled to keep himself
entertained after the high of his scoop with Banksy"… "I like to be free"… "I was like an addict"… Guantánamo Bay
protest installation piece Disneyland … A movie that actually has a sense of danger to it. Remember when making art
was considered dangerous rather than safe?... "Controversy, celebrity, and the painted elephant turned the show into an
event"… Decaying versions of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe… "Street art had become a white hot commodity"…
"Art collectors" had to have a Banksy… "I think he's a genius"… "Everything was becoming crazy"… "It's not about
the money or the hype"… "He had to transform the thousands of hours of tape into the documentary he had been
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promising"… "Life Remote Control"… "ummmm… There was a point where I realized that Thierry may not be a
filmmaker. But actually a person with mental problems who just happened to have a camera. It was an hour and a half
of unwatchable, nightmare trailers like someone with a short attention span with a remote control flipping through a
cable box of 900 channels"… "He set out to create his own alter ego"… "The whole movement of art is all about
brainwashing"… "He started to plan the next phase of his artistic career"… His alter ego: "MBW: Mr. Brainwash"…
"His debut show: 'Life Is Beautiful'"… " Amusement Park/ Art"… "Can you build me a monster made out of TVs?"…
"I'm a nobody"… "Build the hype"… "That one? $24,000. This one? $30,000. How much is it? $18,000"… "A riot of
themes and styles"… "Art fans"… "He has 20 helpers"… "Street Art and Pop Art together"… Is this movie actually a
parody of L.A. art hipsters?... "Frankly, he's just kind of retarded"… "His art does look like everyone else's"… "His
real success would be told through dollars and cents. He sold over a million dollars of 'art'"… "A lot of suckers buying
into his show"… "Maybe he's a genius. Maybe he just got lucky. It may also mean that art is a bit of a joke"…
"Everyone should make art"… If it seems as if Banksy is making fun of Guetta, he mostly holds a mirror up to hipsters
who'll fall for anything deemed cool (like this film).
-Henry Darger
In the Realms of the Unreal: Henry Darger, an elderly recluse, spent his childhood in Illinois's asylum for feebleminded children and his adulthood working as a janitor. He lived a quiet, nearly solitary existence, but his imaginary
life was exciting, colorful and sexually provocative. When he died in Chicago in 1973, his landlady discovered in his
room 300 paintings, some over 10 feet long, and a 15,000-page illustrated novel (The Realms of the Unreal), which
told the epic story of the virtuous Vivian Girls leading a child slave revolt against the evil Glandelinians. This haunting
portrait of Henry Darger, a reclusive janitor by day and a visionary artist by night, could be an alternate portrait of my
own recluse artist role… The ultimate outsider… Henry Darger spent his life working as a janitor in Catholic hospitals,
living alone in a rented room on Chicago's north side, attending Mass up to five times a day, and writing a picaresque
tale in 15 massive volumes, composed of 145 handwritten pages and 5,084 single-spaced typed pages, and titled The
Story of the Vivian Girls, in what is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm,
Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion. To accompany this enormous literary production, Darger also created several
hundred large-scale illustrations--pencil on paper drawings painted over with watercolor and occasional additions of
collage--that relate the story: On an unnamed planet, of which Earth is a moon, the good Christian nation of Anniennia
wars with the Glandelinians, who practice child enslavement. The heroines are the seven Vivian sisters, Abbiennian
princesses, who, after many battles, fires, tempests, and lurid torture, succeed in forcing the Glandelinians to give up
their barbarous ways. The Disasters of War offers an affordable introduction to Darger's astonishing outsider oeuvre. It
explains the technique, diligence, and creativity of the works, illustrates details, and features a conversation between
the Darger estate holder and the Kunstwerke's curator. A selection of 12 previously unpublished excerpts from The
Realms of the Unreal and from Darger's diary explore the artist's favorite topics: thunderstorms and atrocities… “He
was an innocent kind of man. In a way, he was a child”… “He never thought he was turning it into art”… “His
knowledge of sex was limited”… “His world by day was only a few blocks. His work by night was a growing
universe”… “Not many people noticed him”… “He lived in a world of his own. He lived in a world by himself”… “My
life at the asylum was like a sort of heaven. You might say I was a fool to run away from heaven”… “His life was
really not that interesting. He led a boring life.” I can certainly relate to that. Live a seemingly dull life with an
extraordinarily rich imagination… “He was very alone. He didn’t want to get too close to people. Henry was afraid of
people. He only had conversations with himself”… Little girls with penises… “The abuses of his life turned him off to
the world”… “Reality and unreality got very mixed up”… “Weather journals”… “When you don’t have a family, a
radio, or television, see what you can achieve?!”… “Upon retirement, he spent his unwelcome free time writing in his
journal and working on his autobiography”… After watching this documentary, I am convinced that I could easily
make a documentary on my own “great artistic outsider” life, artwork, writings, and imagination. We’re kindred spirits
of sorts… “I wish to be young always”… “The moment he left his world (his apartment), his life was gone”… “He had
a very sad personal life… a lonely one. But his inner life was richer than any other person’s.”
-Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright: A Film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick: "Beethoven was a great architect"… "Every spirit builds
itself a house"… "Build therefore your own world"… "Reinventing the world"... "Showing his countrymen new ways
to build their homes and see the world around them"… "He was at the mercy of his emotions"… "He broke all the rules
in his work and his life"… "He suffered terrible personal tragedy"… "He was 200% alive"… "So what if he made up a
few details in his autobiography"… "His mother believed he was predestined to be a great man"… "He developed a
love of nature"… "Their own spiritual use of nature"… "His restlessness"… "He felt distinctly different from his
classmates"… "He was eager to get away from his family's troubles"… "Order Out of Chaos"… "Form must follow
function"… "His wife's parents disapproved of his because he was too poor"… "At first, he lived within his means"…
"Wright's houses were horizontal rather than vertical because of the flat Midwest landscape"… "Transformative
architecture. It would make people different to inhabit that space"… "It was an essay in the third dimension"… "His
buildings would always cost more than their original estimates"… "He loved living on the edge. Being in debt"… "He
was a man who never grew up"… "His greatest strengths and weaknesses were from his childishness"… "If he is sane,
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he is dangerous"… "I attend the greatest of all churches: nature"… "He felt he wasn't getting the recognition he
deserved"… "He hadn't had a major commission"… "He and Kitty were growing apart"… "He grew to resent how
much attention she gave to his children"… "He didn't really like being a father"… "He was never a real father"…
"Their affair began"… "Wright didn't care that people knew. He was captivated with his new life"… "She was all for
him in a way that Kitty was no longer. Kitty was too involved with her six children to pay much attention to Wright"…
"Wright deserted his wife and kids with nothing but bills to pay"… "He did exactly what his father had done to his own
mother and him when he was young"… "I went out into the unknown to test faith in freedom"… "In the history of soulmating"… "He drank in all the architectural history he could"… "He constructed the idea of himself as a superior
being. He was a creative artist. Therefore outside the bounds of conventional morality"… "He had to have a refuge"…
"This was a sanctuary for him. A meeting of the spirit and the soul. Of nature and human beings coming together"…
"Organic architecture"… "He lived in the now. He didn't look back"… "He did his best to ignore the gossip"… "He
tried to restore his relationship with his children"… His lover and her children were murdered… "In his grief"… "I
think she would have stabilized him"… "He consoled himself the only way he knew how: by consuming himself in his
work"… "He liked living on the edge"… "Architecture was as much construction as it was art"… "His hotel in Japan
was one of the only buildings that survived a great earthquake"… "She was infatuated with Wright"… "It was a
doomed relationship from the beginning"… "Drawing inspiration from ancient Mayan architecture"… "He got
inspiration from many different sources and combined them all together"… "He estranged himself from his son for a
while"… "There was another woman"… "He said he was only guilty of having ideas in a democracy"… "Few
corporations would take chances on the notorious Frank Lloyd Wright"… "People considered him a has-been in his
fifties"… "He was now penniless"… "It was a terrible time"… "Nobody was interested in his concepts anymore"… "It
was the most desperate moment of his life"… "Times had changed"… "The excesses of his ego"… "He wore many
disguises"… "His long, turbulent career seemed to be at an end. Wealthy clients no longer knocked at his studio
door"… "Younger architects considered him a has-been"… "He stubbornly refused to admit defeat"… "His
autobiography was his way to sell himself to the public"… "There was intellectual excitement there"… "The new
architecture was about using glass and metal"… To Wright, architecture is a spiritual thing"… He was competing with
younger architects… Falling Water: "Wright drew it all in less than three hours before his client arrived"… "He had
these great dreams"… "What a release of bent-up energy"… "Instead of an office building, he built a palace, a
temple!"… Lilly pads on the ceiling that diffuse the light… "He had his problems and failings. Roofs that leak"…
"Aspiring to something greater"… "At 70, he was reborn"… "I can't get them (the ideas) out fast enough"… "He was
haunted by certain shapes all his life"… "I am immortal and I will be immortal."
Graphic Novel/ Comic Book/ Cartoon Writers and Artists
Considering that I grew up on reading comic books, I must credit many comic book writers and
artists as the architects to building my imagination. In my opinion, comics are the most underrated source
and resource of creativity being made in the past century. The following are the major ones, but I’d like to
mention a few others who didn’t quite make the list though I grew to appreciate and adore just as much: Rick
Veitch, Dave Sim, Stephen Bissette, John Totleben, Ted McKeever, Chris Bachalo, Jack Kirby, Bob Kane,
John Romita Jr., Dave Gibbons, Geof Darrow, Jill Thompson, Jeph Loeb, Robert Kirkman, Erik Larson, and
so many others…. These writers and artists are like superheroes in themselves. That is why I aspired to be
like them as an artist/ writer in my own creative right.
-Alan Moore/ “Swamp Thing”, “V for Vendetta”, “Watchmen”, “Miracleman”
Just to let you know, my reader, Alan Moore is perhaps my all time favorite writer. And
coincidentally, he’s happens to write comics books. If I have to look for a creative role model that sparked
my imagination the most when I was a lonely teenager with no direction, it was Alan Moore. Through his
work on books as “Swamp Thing”, “Watchmen”, “V for Vendetta”, and others, I realized how exciting and
explosive words and images could be. One descriptive line that he wrote in an early issue of “Swamp Thing”
blew me away with its wildly descriptive personification of nature: “Clouds like plugs of bloodied cotton wool
dabbing uselessly at the slashed wrists of the sky”. God, I love how over-the-top wacko out wow that it! He is
my comic book writer super hero. His creativity showed me to light to my own. It opened up my mind to new
types of visual thinking.
“Alan Moore’s work connects on both an intellectual and emotional level, in a way that’s unmatched in
today’s comics”… “The universe that surrounds Alan is the same universe that you and I also inhabit, but we just don’t
see the details that he sees. We don’t hear the resonant chords he hears. We overlook the connections he makes us
aware of”… “And Alan was there, watching , listening, absorbing, and, no doubt, just imagining….” -From an
introduction by Dave Gibbons to Across the Universe: The DC Universe Stories of Alan Moore.
Notes from “Alan Moore’s Writing For Comics”: “Where ideas actually
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originate from is seemingly a major preoccupation for most people interested in
learning how to write comics and is probably the single question that creative
people get asked most often. Personally, I’d probably say that ideas seem to
germinate at a point of cross-fertilization between one’s artistic influences
and one’s own experience. Studying the work of other people will provide useful
pointers as to how to formulate an idea, but the initial raw impetus comes from
inside the writer or creator themselves, influenced by their opinions, their
prejudices, by all the things that have happened to them and by all the all
elements in their lives that go toward making them the sort of person that they
are. It becomes a matter of tuning your perceptions to notice little quirks of
circumstance that might otherwise slip by unnoticed, studying your own behavior
and the behavior of people and events surrounding you, until you feel you have
developed a coherent angle upon life and reality, at least one which relates to
a perspective upon events that will suggest original and individual story
ideas. My point is that you can’t teach people to have insights and ideas. You
just have to get your head pointing a certain way in regard to how you view
life, and you’ll find that the ideas then occur spontaneously with hardly any
prompting at all”… “If you’re going to spend a lot of time preparing a
communication, it would perhaps be an advantage to at least spend a little
considering the person to whom it is addressed… In my opinion, the best way to
handle the problem of who one’s audience is would be to let the material find
its own level and its own audience. If the work has enough central integrity
this will almost certainly happen, given time”… “You might also notice that
people change their personality depending on whom they are talking to. They
have a different voice in conversations with their parents from the voice that
they use when addressing their workmates. They vary their attitude and their
mood hour by hour. Often they will do things that seem completely out of
character. Simple and unremarkable observations such as these help to gear the
creative mind toward a more complete understanding of characterization than can
be afforded by any snappy little generalizations”… “The idea behind the story
was to examine the concept of escapism and fantasy dreamworlds, including happy
times in the past that we look back on and idealize. It was a story, if you
like, for the people I’ve encountered who are fixated upon some point in the
past where things could have gone differently or who are equally obsessed with
some hypothetical point in the future where certain circumstances will have
come to pass and they can finally be ‘happy’. People who say, ‘If only I hadn’t
married that man or that woman. If only I’d stayed in college, left college
earlier, settled down, gone off to see the world, go that job I turned down…’
or who say, ‘When the mortgage is paid off, then I can enjoy myself. When I’m
promoted and I get more money, then I can have a good time. When the divorce
comes through, when the kids are grown up, when I finally manage to get my
novel published….’”… “If your ambition is to be a writer, a creator, then know
that creativity is an ongoing and progressive phenomenon and that stasis and
stagnation is sure death of it. If you wish to be a creator, then be assured
that the actual problem lies in avoiding an easily recognized style. Just
because you can do a particular thing well doesn’t mean that you have to do it
incessantly”… “Easy creative decisions, easy thing, approaches that will make
the demands of writing for a living easier to bear: all these things can be
fatal to the creative instinct, or at very least, less than fully nourishing.
Attempt thing that you are not sure that you can accomplish: if you’re certain
that you can do a thing, this means that there is little to no point in
actually doing it”… “It is much more exciting and thus creatively energizing if
you are attempting something where you are uncertain of its outcome, where you
don’t know if it will work or not”… “Work without a safety net”… “In this
scenario, having garnered a considerable reputation or level of acclaim, one
becomes paralyzed by the dreadful thought of losing it all by doing something…
undignified. Uncool. This is a trap. Reputation is a trap that will turn you
into a lifeless marble bust of yourself before you’re even dead. And then of
course there is Reputation’s immortal big brother, Posterity, worrying about
which has driven better women and men than you into the asylum”… ”Take risks.
Fear nothing, especially failure.”
Discovering Alan Moore and Swamp Thing: The first time I came across Alan Moore was when
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I was in the sixth grade and I borrowed the Saga of the Swamp Thing” trade paperback. What I witnessed within those
pages scared me. This was the first “Mature Readers” comic book I ever looked through, which left me feeling scared
in a Catholic guilt sort of way. This was no funny book with the typical superheroes I’d ever experienced before. The
imagery was disturbing and brilliant. I didn’t ever read the entire book because it frightened me so much (I was only
eleven, mind you). Yet two years later, I obsessed over this mere comic book that could scare me so, and purchased the
book off my friend. After the first issue/ chapter, I knew this was the best comic book I’d ever come across.
“Will Eisner was immensely influenced by Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. Orson Welles, in turn, had
been very much influenced by techniques that were straight out of a comic book. For example, you have the
silhouette of a house on a hill, with a voice over narrative that takes the place of a caption. There's always
been this feedback between comics and films... I think for my own sanity and emotional balance... Fame
does all sorts of unpleasant things to people. It tends to, in many cases, warp them. It doesn't necessarily
make them happier… Some of my stories sometimes show naiveté, political naiveté or emotional naiveté,
but at least it was an honest naiveté.” -Excerpts from an interview with Alan Moore.
Alan Moore's “Miracleman #9”, the mature, beautiful childbirth issue,
blessed creative narrative onto me.
Trace moments of creative awe from reading the "articles" from “Watchmen”
graced me. Alan Moore's brilliance resurrected my suppressed belief that there
was nothing left to write. He took my silly fantasies about reality with
costumed heroes and applied the psychological spice of why people would put on
tights in the first place. With the creation of "Superman" in the funny pages,
I could understand how people would be appealed to the dynamic absurdity of
actually becoming a spandex fantasy character. It's Halloween as a career move.
“Miracleman” continued inside my hours with Alan Moore's creative
conceptual writing and John Tobeten's visual extravagance.
Re-reading “V for Vendetta” was necessary to fill the afternoon as well
as influence my creative writing.
I read some fascinating interviews with Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Frank
Miller, and more. Quite inspiring to read that Alan read and believed in comics
because of the creativity, the sense of awe they expressed in their literary
and visual imagery (“Krypton's volcanoes spew molten gold”).
“I think one reason I’m very interested in comics is that basically, it’s an unexplored medium. Most of the
other media have been explored thoroughly. Film has had its Citizen Kane, and literature has had its War and Peace.
That is not to say there won’t be other great works in those media, or that they are not worth exploring, but comics are
relatively unexplored. There have been some notable works, but probably, we have yet to produce the first great comic
novel. That excites me as an artist - the sense that you can actually make a difference in comics because you are there
on the ground floor… I’m not interested in writing for films; not because I don’t think films have a lot of potential, but
because of the way that the industry is et up. I recognized that any screenplay that I wrote would probably be handed to
other writers to do rewrites, because Hollywood tends to work on the assumption that if a thing has been written once,
it is good, and if it has been written twice, it is very good, and if it is written three times, then it isi excellent. By the end
of the day, what is going to appear on the screen is only going to have a coincidental resemblance to the script that the
writer originally put down. In comics, I have complete control, other than the input of my artists, which is always
respected and valued. Every full stop and comma that I put down on that script is going to end up in the finished comic,
and it just seems foolish to relinquish any of that control just because of the financial inducements of Hollywood. The
money has always been very welcome, but at the same time, that has never been the prime motive. The prime motive is
to have fun creatively.” –Alan Moore in a Wizard magazine interview.
“I don’t want to be the celebrity, the center of attention. Sometimes I find myself quite boring, believe it or
not, and I don’t want to dwell upon myself every single second of the day. I’d rather my work maintain my only
profile. It doesn’t really matter to readers whether I exist or not, now does it? It’s only the work”… “I see this as kind
of showing off a bit by writing five comic book titles at once. ‘Hey, let’s show off and dazzle the readers.’ I don’t
indulge myself that often, so what the hell”… “To me, magic has an awful lot to do with creativity, and creativity has
an awful lot to do with magic. So if I wanted to find out more about creativity, I’d have to take that last step over the
boundary of the rational”… “I’d had a conversation with the god Mercury. During the experience, you believe you are
actually talking to a god. Who’s to say if you are, or if you’re not? I’ve tried to keep an open mind about it. I tell
myself, ‘On one level, this is a hallucination. This is an element of my own personality, some subconscious element of
myself.’ On the other hand, I also have to allow that this might be something completely beyond my personality, a
higher entity. I mean, if it barks like a god and smells like a god, it’s probably a god. [Laughs]”. –Alan Moore in a
Wizard magazine interview.
“Well, the way I’ve approached this is that I look at the things that are my inspiration, which are things like
the work of Will Eisner, the work of Harvey Kurtzman, stuff like that. Now if I want to copy Harvey Kurtzman, or EC
Comics, then I have to follow their formula and end up with people saying “Good Lord (chock)!”. The thing to copy is
their relentless sense of adventure, the way that they wanted to do something different. So if you want to be like the,
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don’t do something like them, do something different like they did. That’s the thing to copy – their basic approach to
creative work, not their content or their style. These were people who thought ‘We want something different. We want
something that’s never been seen before.’ That’s the element you should try to live up to, rather than just regurgitating
all of their basic clichés”… “When I came to DC, Swamp Thing was a book that was selling 17,000; it was on the verge
of cancellation. They have it to me, not because they necessarily trusted my talents that much, but they weren’t risking
much by giving me Swamp Thing. Vice versa. I couldn’t ruin Swamp Thing because it was already ruined, at least in
terms of sales, so I gave it a go. They didn’t tell me ‘write this Len Wein,’ or ‘write this like Chris Claremont.’ They
just said ‘Do what you want. See what you can do with it.’ The result, given that freedom and working with people like
Steve Bissette and John Totleben and Rick Veitch, I think we were able to do some stuff that was really interesting.”…
“When we were doing Swamp Thing, we had an awful lot of blackness in there, but we also did stories like “Pop” and
“Rites of Spring,” the love story, and things like that, which are some of my favorites. We tired to temper the dark
edges of the story with a genuine celebration of life and what was good about it. To me, that’s the only way to do a
horror comic; otherwise, people become dull and calloused and numbed to the horror. The human mind can only take
so much horror. If it’s refreshed occasionally, then you give it a chance for the scar tissue to heal over so that you can
inflict sharp new pain [laughter] with your next story. But you’ve go tot have that balance.” –Alan Moore in a Hero
magazine interview.
“The thing that impresses you about that story is that when the real world and the concerns of the real world
impinge upon the artificial world of the superhero, then you sometimes get some quite funny, poignant or interesting
things happing. Kurtzman did it for humorous effect, but the possibility struck me that by turning the screw the other
way, it could have all sorts of effects. I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to take some charming old superhero and apply
the real world to him?”… “I’ve had letters from people who got terribly hurt and offended that I could betray them by
doing an issue of Spawn, and basically… I like that. I was getting a bit bored with this image of me as this terribly
serious comic book icon. It’s been real fun doing these Image comics, just doing stories that are meant as entertainment.
And I think I’ve managed to offend a lot of people who have an image of me as some sort of pristine champion of the
difficult, the obscure and the alternative. I’ve got an awful lot of faith in alternative comics, but that not all I do. I like
to have fun too.” –Alan Moore in a Wizard magazine interview.
“Hopefully, it will encourage people to open up their sexual ideas and realize they are not wrong, they are not
perverted, and they are not alone. I hate the idea of people sitting there having perfectly ordinary thoughts and
daydreams and thinking that they are the only people who have thoughts like that – thinking that they are tragic, lonely,
repulsive monsters… One of the main things that we wanted to do with LOST GIRLS -- one of the reasons why we
wanted to do erotica or pornography or call it what you will that was art -- is because there is a very big difference
between the effect of genuine art and the effect of pornography, as it stands. When we see a work of genuine art, it
makes us feel less alone. We see something captured in that sculpture or that piece of music or that painting or that
book -- it expresses something that, up until then, only we had perceived. We see something like an echo -- something
that confirms to us that, yes, our way of seeing things is not wrong. There are other people who have seen things that
way, too, and they’ve just expressed it better than we could… We’re all quite lonely. If art has a real function, then
surely part of it must be as a way of communicating mind-to-mind, often in ways that language alone can’t manage. A
piece of music can say things that words couldn’t. A genuine piece of art -- we hear it or we see it -- it makes us feel
less alone.” –From an Alan Moore interview on his book “Lost Girls”.
Notes from an Alan Moore interview: “But these days, everybody wants to be famous, and think all too often,
you’ll see somebody who has maybe written one good book, made one good film, produced one good record, one good
comic book. And all of a sudden, everyone’s telling him that he’s a genius, and he probably thinks, “Well, yes, I am. I
always thought that I was sort of special, and, yeah, that’s probably because I was a genius.” He’ll launch himself out
onto the billows of fame, and he’ll be washed up in the tabloid press six months later, when his bloated, heroin-sodden
carcass bobs up to a beach somewhere. Fame does all sorts of unpleasant things to people. It tends to, in many cases,
warp them. It doesn’t necessarily make them happier. It’s nothing that I’m very interested in”… “When I was 40, I
decided to become a magician, for various reasons. Most people get to 40 and have a midlife crisis, and that’s just
boring. They bore their friends by going around saying, “What’s it all about? What’s the point?” I thought it might be
at least more entertaining to go spectacularly mad and start worshiping a snake and declaring myself to be a magician.
It’s been immense fun. And, more than fun, it’s been illuminating. It certainly seems to have given me a lot of energy
in my work”… “All I would be urging people to do in Promethea is to use whatever system they happen to feel
comfortable with, whether that be Christianity, or paganism, or Hinduism, or anything else, to explore the kind of rich
world that I think all of us have inside of us.”
England Their England: Monsters, Maniacs and Moore: Comics writer Alan Moore discusses his career and work
including Miracleman, Watchmen, Halo Jones and Swamp Thing as well as the creative process, politics
and the environment… This is the most animated, youthful, delightful, political, and energetic Alan Moore that I’ve
never seen before. It even has Alan Moore sitting in an empty theater critiquing and questioning Alan Moore in the
spotlight on the theater stage… “Don’t you think you have the slightest touch of a Messiah Complex?”… “It’s healthy
if people disagree with me. I don’t want everybody to agree with me. I just want people to think!”… “I’m trying to
make complex ideas accessible to ordinary people”… “I had a pretty rich fantasy life”… “While in school, there were
always three or four people who were better than me… at writing, at drawing. Now they are working in shoe
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factories”… “Some people have been upset that I show the reality of war in comic books”… “If tolerance and any
sensitivity of any kind is labeled loony or subversive, then I would be quite proud to be labeled subversive”… “You
have to invest a degree of intensity of feeling to your work”… “Death is the only thing that gives life its sweetness.”
The Mindscape of Alan Moore: “I found myself surrounded by a monochrome world with limited opportunities. The
only window out of that restricted world was the tales of mythology that I would read, or the bright 4-coloured
superhero stories. Adventures of people who had no restrictions. People who could fly over the house tops, people who
could become invisible. This was a very important key, to a very important door. It opened vistas of the imagination
with which I was eventually able to transcend and escape the limitations of my origins”… “Comics were a staple of
working class existence”… “A tremendous blow to my already insufferably huge ego”… “Quitting my day job and
starting my life as a writer was a tremendous risk, it was a fool’s leap, a shot in the dark. But anything of any value in
our lives whether that be a career, a work of art, a relationship, will always start with such a leap”… “Most dystopian
science fiction is not actually about the future, it is about the times in which it was written”… “I realized that I was
becoming a celebrity, which was nothing I’d ever expected, given that a comic writer was the most obscure profession
in the world when I’d actually entered the job”… “The thing is there is no manual for how to cope with fame, so you’ll
get some otherwise likable young person who has done one good comic book, one good film, one good record, who is
suddenly told that they are a genius and who believes it and who runs out sort of laughing and splashing into the
billows of celebrity and whose heroine sodden corpse is washed up a few weeks later in the shallows of the tabloid”…
“Celebrities tend to burn out quite quickly. And I really didn’t feel I wanted to be part of that world and so withdrew to
the relative obscurity of Northampton”… “On my fortieth birthday rather than merely bore my friends by having
anything as mundane as a midlife crisis I decided it might actually be more interesting to actually terrify them by going
completely mad and declaring myself a magician”… “Their magic box of television”… “I believe that art and magic to
be interchangeable”… “The book led to me thinking seriously about the possibilities of erotica”… “Energy that should
be going into something honest like fucking is instead diverted into something appalling like killing”… “There is a
brain-penis-blood ratio that tends to get in the way when writing intelligent pornography”… “If you want truly unique
ideas if you’re an artist or an inventor or somebody who deals in unique and fresh ideas then you will have to plunge
right into the undergrowth, into the depths of idea space in order to find those ideas that have never been spotted
before”… “I believe that the world is a construction of ideas”… “We are reaching a boiling point. I believe that our
culture is turning into steam.”
V For Vendetta: "We were told to remember the idea, not the man... because the man can fail"... "The only verdict is
vengeance!"... Illustrated comic book frames translated to photo-real film frames... Creative terrorism of blowing up
Parliament as scored to "The Overture of 1812". It brings to mind if 9/11 would have been more entertaining if such
music had been played with fireworks being set off... "Add "The Overture of 1812" to the blacklist. I never want to
hear that piece of music again"... Charismatic terrorist comic book anti-heroes... "There is something wrong with this
country"... "Words have a power"... "There are those responsible, and they will be held accountable"... "He promised
you peace. All he asked back from you was your silent, obedient consent"... An apartment with walls of books... Baby,
you've met your fantasy soul mate!... "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid
of their people"... "Blowing up a building as a symbol can change the world"... "She's lying"... "Violence can be used
for good"... "I wish I wasn't afraid all of the time"... A bishop that loves young girls... "I love the confession game!"...
"It's hard to believe that behind this wrinkled, well-fed exterior there lies a dangerous killing machine with a fetish for
foxy masks"... "What if the worst attack on our soil wasn't the work of religious extremists, but the work of our own
government?".... An autobiography written on toilet paper... "I remember how different became dangerous"... "FOR
YOUR PROTECTION"... "So now you have no fear anymore. You're completely free"... "Artists use lies to tell the
truth"... "What was done to me created me"... "And they created a monster"... Using media to spread fear and terror
throughout the land... "V" is obsessed with Errol Flynn movies... "The whole city has gone mad!"... A revolution
without dancing is a revolution without having"... "Behind this mask, there is an idea"... "I fell in love with you, Evy."
12-3-93: I read “Swamp Thing #50”. Talk about an excellent story! Alan Moore has finally produced a
moment that I had been waiting so long to read. Swamp Thing peacefully enters the “evil” darkness and it asked
“Swampy” what evil is? He answered by saying he didn’t know for sure. He’s seen evil before, but can’t explain it.
There’s more to it, I assure you. It's just that the scene was played out unbelievably well done. Thank you, Alan Moore.
You’ve made my day (if not my life).
12-8-93: I just finished reading “Swamp Thing #55”, which continuously makes me (the reader) think
specifically about life. Alan Moore is just too damn brilliant for his own good. I’ve never read so many thoughtprovoking comics since I began reading “The Sandman”. Not bad for a “funny book”, huh. Alan does a superb job of
mixing fantasy, horror, and numerous imaginary planes. After reading one single issue by Alan Moore, I began to
wonder about my life; what I’ve done, what I can do. So many questions arise from Alan’s intelligent words of wisdom
like what will happen to me once I die and why are we here? So many questions unanswered, which will perhaps go
unanswered since some were never meant to be answered or questioned.
"I'm going to disappear for a couple of years, at least… who knows? Maybe forever. I'm going to concentrate
on things that don't have to make money, where it doesn't matter to me if nobody buys them… where I can just do what
exactly I want to do." -Alan Moore.
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-Neil Gaiman/ “The Sandman”, “Miracleman”
Taken from a “Hero” magazine interview with Neil Gaiman: Interviewer: “One last question: What made you
want to write comics, and what made you think that you could?” –Neil: “Arrogance [laughs] It’s got to be arrogance; I
can’t think of anything else, looking back on it. But it’s also something I wanted to do ever since I was a tiny kid. I was
a voracious reader and I could never understand why comics were of any less merit or importance than any other way
of writing. I think the thing that keeps me with comics is there’s still so much to be done. There’s still this huge
unplowed filed, this huge unexplored wilderness, and as long as I can keep doing new things and coming up with the
new things. I will. Whereas there are lots of good novels out there; there are a few good movies out there. People have
been writing great poems for years, but there aren’t a lot of good comics. I like trying to write them.”
Alas, “The Sandman”, one of my favorite comic book series, has concluded
in its 75th issue, their best and most rewarding issue - of my humble opinion
of dreaming and creativity. The question of what the worth of creativity shall
be for the dreamer's life? Simple people prefer the sly flirt of comedies to
the provoking fuck of tragedies. Will Shakespeare and I also feature a kinship
of creative frustration: writing is often "artifices using pretty words"; we the writer - will have part of us in our character, life has no tale or plot "We meet [too many] people once, and never see them again"; eventually, grand
boredom occurs for passing by the qualities of "genius"; admiring hurt because
it enhances the emotions - which can tenderly manipulated in creative uses.
On “The Sandman” and Neil Gaiman: “It was my monthly book. I was going to have fun, I was
going to experiment”... We are composed of dream-stuff, and are universal and eternal... “My goal wasn’t to
be a crowd pleaser”... Weirdly rich fantasy lives... “I don’t want to be me. Thank you for making me special,
but I don’t want to be special. I just want it to stop. Can you make me normal again?”
More on “The Sandman”: If there are Order and Chaos gods, then there are Surrealism and
Expressionism gods... Neil Gaiman grew up Jewish in the Church of England school that made him feel like
an outsider: “Growing up in contrasting cultures provides a solid foundation for becoming an artist, because
it creates a distancing affection that prevents you from accepting things, that forces you to look at everything
with fresh eyes”... “His madness keeps him sane”... “I wanted her to grow up. It was time to break Rose’s
heart”... Raw emotions and raw dreams... “Your dreams serve you.”
2-20-01: Feeling emotionally down and artistically out, I lied down on my bed and started reading
“The Sandman Companion” - which ended up revealing Neil Gaiman’s writing secrets. He happens to be
extremely well read and uses his literary knowledge into hybrid stories involving his own characters. The
revelation here is he borrows. He wasn’t just making everything up! He was being inspired... just as I was
from reading “The Sandman”. “A box of comics is a box of dreams.”
Notes from “The Sandman: King of Dreams”: “He has been starved of dreams”… “Morpheus must intuit that
what he is doing is self-destructive”… “The nightmare evocation of childhood cruelties”… “Everybody gets hurt.”
Like Neil Gaiman wrote: “Sometimes when you fall, you fly.”
-Dave McKean/ “The Sandman”
One of the main artists whose digital art influenced me during my teenage years was Dave
McKean. His work mixed digital and photograph illustrations. His execution of digital blurring of foreground
and background elements (freeform blurring) offered that dreamish feel I’ve always sought. The viewer’s
sense depth of field gets thrown out the window of consciousness. His liberal use of warping and decorating
text with hand-written elements expressed character and a personal style. His ambiguous dream imagery
suggested shadows, mystery, sensuality, nightmares, and subconsciousness. His color scheme could be
muted to black and white, or glowing with saturated colors – all depending on how content. McKean’s
Photoshop layered images mixed simplistic drawings and sketches, finely detailed photographs,
expressionistic paintings, and decorative writing creating hybrid iconic dreamscapes.
My “Cages” notes: Stones that hum and make music… The fear of freedom… “the lines look how I
feel.” So do the colors and words… “Two and two make fish kind of day that doesn’t make sense”… Mrs.
What… “He was bored shitless. He hated this stupid little life. He needed change”… “I’m just trying to record
the things that are important to me now”… I like your drawing. It had a sensitive quality”… My life is public
property. I miss my secrets” –writer… “I miss being lonely. I miss being alone”…. A psychopathic God…
“You can go back to your hysterical church”… “Offer your purity to that idiot god you’ve invented”…
“Because I upset a lot of people… because what I said might be true”… “I felt a real palpable feeling of déjà
vu”… “Old Testament God”… “Creativity. That’s your god”… “Each one of these people creates their own
god… I’m her god… I’m a figment. I don’t really exist”… “Well. I came here to work. To paint. To get away
from family and friends… to think things through… and work.”
-Chris Claremont/ “The Uncanny X-Men”
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“What can be said about Chris Claremont, the Steven Spielberg of modern comic books?”… “He’s always
been called a writer of women”… “The response got much more extreme. But people got passionately involved in the
book. They cared about it. They loved it or they hated it, but everybody talked about it. Everybody was aware of it.
And to my mind that’s what we are in large measure there to do. Books that people care about, that get them excited
and interested, and willing to come back next month to see what happens. A book that someone likes is a book that
someone can put down and walk away from. And that’s fatal in any publishing form. The rationale for changing
Storm’s hair, as much as anything else, was to continue the theme of suspense, of the unexpected. You should not know
what is going to happen next month, you should never take a book for granted. You want to keep the reader guessing,
because in and out of that guessing comes next month’s purchase.” -From an “Amazing Heroes” Chris Claremont
interview.
5-26-06: (Written before seeing X-Men: The Last Stand): I have to admit that the X-Men have
been part of my life since I was 14 when I started picking up back issues of Uncanny X-Men from the late
70s through to the early 90s. This was during the incredible reign of one of my favorite writers, Chris
Claremont, who wrote the book for a whopping 15 years. He put his soul, imagination, heart, sensitivity,
and most innermost thoughts into those books. The thought balloons he wrote revealed each character’s
most private thoughts and emotions. I loved how he exposed that hidden vulnerable side to those outcast
mutant characters. It made them feel extra real even with their extraordinary super powers. And what
appealed me as a teenage outcast artist to them was that the X-Men were outcasts in themselves from a
society didn't understand them. They had mutant powers to express; I had creativity, emotions, and
imagination to express. In a way, we were both superheroes with covert powers that we both kept hidden
from the world. What Chris Claremont did so well was write thought balloons of what the characters were
secretly feeling inside. It showed their fears, flaws, dreams, loves, and demons in a way that conventional
comic books never expressed before. He broke new ground in giving superheroes souls. They were just
trying to make it in the world just like everybody else. Reading and sharing their lives and experiences was
something that got me through those painful junior and high school years. The X-Men eventually got
dumbed down as an action book under other writers’ hands when Claremont left the title in 1991. But those
key issues he wrote were like magic to me. The X-Men were like friends of sorts, kindred spirits I admired
and wanted to be part of. The twelve issue "Dark Phoenix" saga from the early 80s was a key story arch
that subtly showed the transformation of how ultimate power can destroy someone as nice and pure as Jean
Grey. Claremont revealed the extra layers of darkness to her character that other comic book writers never
dared to explore, especially the emotional and the sexual sides. The story even ended with her suicide for
God's sake. The animated version from the 90s that translated this story was cliff notes worthy only with a
sanitized kids cartoon medium. Still, it was exciting to see your favorite characters and stories "coming to
life" in an animated form.
Which brings me to the excitement of seeing the X-Men made real as a live action movie. True
fans like myself know that I'm going to be seeing only a "cliff notes" version of stories that would take
twelve hours to tell rather than under rushed two hours. Still, there's that massive rush of excitement to see
characters "alive" in front of you on a massively large screen in surround sound. It makes all one's senses
go crazy in an imagination buzz of seeing characters you'd only imagined inside your head from reading
about them on 2-dimensional paper appear in 3-D and lifelike!! Stan Lee might have helped create the XMen and has gotten cameo appearances in all the new Marvel movies that have been translated to the big
screen over the past few years, but where is Chris Claremont's massive credit for creating the soul of these
characters, not to mention the movie writers rewriting his stories for the movies without giving him screen
credit?!?! Thankfully, this latest X-Men movie gives Claremont a 1.37 second screen cameo before Stan
Lee's cameo. Still, if I directed the movie Claremont would get an opening title credit next to the title of the
movie!
Chris Claremont uses flashes of personal honesty in his comic book work that continues to astonish
and impress me. He’s one of the few comic book writers who allows the reader to read what each character
is privately thinking through thought balloons.
I have always had an interesting empathy for the X-Men. Mutants powers usually manifest during
puberty. So I often imagine myself as a mutant with the secret power of great imagination. Because I use
this gift to make self-expressive art, I feel like an outcast. Most people don’t understand what my work is
about, which leaves me feeling lonely and alienated. As a result of being an artist, I feel like my inner fantasy
universe and emotions are a curse. It is these repressed emotions that leave me burning inside and keep
me fighting the great battle... existence.
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I identified heavily with the superhero outcast mutants from the pages of Chris Claremont’s run on
“The Uncanny X-Men” for their super human abilities and their emotional conflicts. They were looked upon
as heroes and villains because they were so different. They saved the world, but were never respected for it.
They were always turmoil in their lives, whether physically, mentally, or emotionally.
Reading Chris Claremont’s “The Uncanny X-Men” was like being involved in an underground cult of
mutants and outcasts with extraordinary powers and lives. I wanted so dearly to be part of it… and I was.
They were superheroes who feel that their special powers are more of a curse than a gift. That’s similar to
how some artists feel about their own talent and the harrowing emotions that it brings. Being different and
special forever separates apart them from the rest of humanity.
Maybe this isn't important to many, but I really relished reading a couple of old Chris Claremont/ John Byrne
“Uncanny X-Men” back issues. I've rarely ever read such a marvelous comic book series with actual emotional
interaction between the mutant/ "outcast" characters.
4-5-09: Today, Sunday, was the 2009 Gem City Comic Con held at Wright State University’s
Student Union in Dayton, Ohio. Instead, I drove down early this morning so I’d make it there a half an hour
early to get in line and get first dibs on as many great buys as possible. And I did quite well. Ironically, the
first two stands I went to I barely got much at all. Yet it was the third where I struck gold, leaving with 180
comics for only $150 (they had a special of 60 comics for $50). After spending the first three hours on
recent $1 comics, I then spent an hour and a half on the 50 cent books where I got $50 worth. Not bad at all
for newer books that were originally $3 to $4.
Then at 2:30 p.m., I attended in the upper rows the Chris Claremont session that was moderated by
an enthusiastic and very well-read Uncanny X-Men fan who was an African-American in his twenties.
Chris was a bit more loosened up for this “smaller” event, which made him quite a bit more engaging and
endearing. For the last hour and a half, I quickly went through eighteen 25-cent comic book boxes and got
$25 worth of books. The male Marvel Zombies had gathered in mass and sometimes the aisles were so tight
with fanboy (and a few fangirls) you had to squeeze to get through. I made a point to casually say hello to
Chris Sprouse and his wife since we’re from the same northwest side of Columbus. Then I got enough
nerve to go see Chris Claremont at his booth right at 5 p.m. when the line was gone to thank him in person
for what a great writer he has been. I gave him a copy of my “Comic Book Culture” DVD and told him a
little of what it was about. He laughed a bit and smiled when I told him it was about how comics inspire
creativity. He’s too much of a veteran of the comic book industry to know “better”. I guess it takes an
“innocent” like me to fully appreciate it from afar. I also mentioned how he was a master of the
introspective “thought balloon” during his run on the “Uncanny X-Men”, especially his run with John
Romita Jr. It was actually rather difficult to meet one of your idols because they’ve got a lifetime of writing
experience and I’m just a gushing, stuttering “fanboy”. It’s hard to keep my composure and talk to him on a
“normal” level. And it’s hard to not sound too much like every other gushing fan. At least I tried. I doubt
he’ll watch the DVD, but I’m glad I gave it to him. Overall, it was a very good Gem City Comic Con, and
it was very well attended. In fact, I got more at this convention every year than I usually do at any other
one. It’s really that good.
-John Byrne/ “Fantastic Four”, “Alpha Flight”, “The Sensational She-Hulk”, “Next Men”
-Frank Miller/ “Daredevil”, “The Dark Knight Returns”, “Sin City”, “Batman: Year One”, “300”
Along with Alan Moore, Frank Miller was one of the great innovative comic book writers who made
a big splash in the comic book world in the 1980’s.
I read a written “speech” by Mr. Frank Miller, the creator of “Sin City”, “Hard Boiled”, and many other
comic book masterpieces, concerning comic book censorship. He was very against the idea of censorship without
regard. Through reading his argument, I had to disagree with a few of his remarks. He thought a rating system was a
horrible idea. Well, if I had watched Taxi Driver or One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest at a younger or highly unstable
time in my life, I probably might have ended up very screwed and fucked up. Certain kinds of entertainment have its
negative effect on our minds. We do need to be careful.
“Sin City”: written and drawn by a comic book legend, Frank Miller, he seductively lures you into the life of
a man framed for the murder of a woman he loves. The book is in stark contrasts of black and white, which makes the
mood of the story seem darker and more sinister.
“Comics have always been desperately important to me. As a refuge. As inspiration. As a vehicle for my
fantasies. As a career.” –From a Frank Miller speech at a Diamond Comics Seminar.
-Stan Lee/ “Spider-Man”, “Hulk”, “X-Men”, “Thor”, “Captain America”, “Fantastic Four”, etc. (The
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Marvel Superhero Characters)
With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story: Stanley Martin Lieber became Stan Lee. Stan-ley to Stan Lee… "Rascally Roy
Thomas. Jolly Jack Kirby"… "The Comics Code stifled creativity"… "Before you quit and leave writing comics
forever, write a comic book the way you want to write. Get it out of your system"… "Fairy tales for adults"… "Stan's
superheroes were dealing with angst, self-torment, anguish"… "What makes Stan happy is peace and quiet… and his
computer"… Readers could identify with the characters like Peter Parker… "Spider-Man is Stan"… "King of the
Comic Books"… "Comic can be something more than just something for young children"… "I'm doing what I've
always wanted to do! I'm having fun! Don’t punish me by making me retire."
When I was in junior high, one of my school assignments was to write to someone you respect or
are inspired by (a state senator, an actor, a musician, a baseball player) and if you get a reply back you got
extra credit. So I thought and thought about whom I would most want to write to. I was at the height of my
comic book collecting I ended up deciding on Stan Lee, the amazing, incredible, invincible, uncanny creator
of some of my favorite comic book characters, like Spider-Man, The Hulk, Iron Man, and the X-Men. A few
weeks after I sent out my letter, I got a reply (actually from the Marvel Comics office of Stan Lee)! They sent
me several photocopied biographies and news clippings from different magazines that were featured about
him. It was simply touching and exhilarating to even get a reply back. Stan “The Man” Lee created and wrote
so many astonishing and lasting super heroes that filled up my days with such fantasy, emotion, and vision.
He was one of the lights in my imagination early on in my creative life. The more I learned about him and his
career, the more I respected him. “I never wrote for kids – I wrote for me!” he once said. Yet he didn’t do it all
by himself; he had the help of some of the most talented artists of their time – Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and
others. But in the end, it was Stan Lee brought mature themes and adult issues to his comic book
characters. As a result, comics grew up from being “just for kids”. Grown-ups could read them and
appreciate their writing and imagination as well.
“Comic books are like a storyboard for a movie. The only thing you don’t have is the motion and the sound.”
–Stan Lee.
-Jack Kirby/ “Fantastic Four”, “Hulk”, “X-Men”, “Thor”, “Captain America”, etc. (The Marvel
Superhero Characters)
“And another round of applause – let’s make this an even bigger one, I want the walls to shake this time – for
the greatest artists in the history of comics, Mr. Jack Kirby. The walls had to shake for Jack. Just like they would have
on one of his pages. An age passes with Jack Kirby. Now, comics folks, we’re all fond of naming “ages” of comics. I
call this age the Jack Kirby Age of Comics. By saying this I mean no disrespect to the outstanding works of Stan Lee
and Steve Ditko and many others. We are in their debt as well. But it was Jack Kirby who defined the style and method
of every comic artist who followed him. There is before Kirby, and after Kirby. One age does not resemble the next.” –
From a Frank Miller speech at a Diamond Comics Seminar.
-Will Eisner/ "The Spirit"
“Comics and movies, apples and oranges. True, both use pictures, primarily, to tell the story. But comics are
not ‘movies on paper.’ I once thought they were, until I had a several –hour argument in Atlanta, many years ago, with
comics master Will Eisner. Will won the argument, which should surprise nobody. He taught me that comics are a form
of literature, not a sorry second to movies. Following Eisner’s advice has made my work better. Comics artists should
study our art form for what it can do, rather than how it can poorly imitate film.” –Comments by Frank Miller.
-Scott McCloud/ “Understanding Comics”, "Creating Comics", “Zot!”
Re-reading Understanding Comics during work, I realized how sensitive and thoughtful Scott
McCloud was when addressing a ridiculed and stereotyped medium.
I'm afraid - in the horror of now - that Understanding Comics had some disturbingly provocative
questions to "Why do I want to express my ideas?" and "Why am I doing this?" (i.e. writing these words).
What makes me believe that I can express dreams better than someone else? Am I looking at just the
"surface" of art instead of understanding it? (Van Gogh's thick paint looks powerful - could I do that).
2-11-04: Notes and impressions from Scott McCloud’s OSU lecture at the Wexner Center for the Arts: He is,
quite possibly, the best visiting artist speaker I have ever seen. Mainly, this is because he was the most literate and
relevant to my interests and me. He’s a theorist, futurist, teacher, and multi-media presenter… Space = Time… Moving
through space is moving through time… Drunk on the possibilities of comics… The design challenge of comics on the
Internet… Sequential art is comics… Finding the shape of a visual narrative and thinking of how to use it on “infinite
canvas”… Theory is giving way to reality… Support superior creative endeavors online… Looping animation, visuals,
and sound create a continuous motion… Using space by altering the amplitude of the panels… There is no waste of
paper in digital art… Comics are a minority art form. It’s a medium that is different and unique of all other creative art
forms… Storytelling mediums are a way for people to escape. People want to lose themselves.
I did stay after the question and answer finale of his presentation to get both of his books signed. I even found
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the courage to express sincerely how profound his books have been upon my life as an artist. “I read “Understanding
Comics” every year. I especially enjoy the chapter on the six stages of being an artist. Thank you very much for your
books!” And I shook his hand with a firm handshake and a smile and departed. He was the kind of guy I felt I could
actually have a real conversation with as an artist peer to artist peer, rather than as comic book writer/ artist god to fanboy geek enthusiast. He’s an online comic book futurist/ theorist as I am a digital art futurist/ theorist. We’re both
speaking on the same higher plane of thought. I’m actually quite comfortable and confident with emailing him my own
thoughts and writings (and possibly my own interactive art work). I’d be able to have something to say that is
worthwhile of being said to someone I feel could give me real enthusiastic feedback from, which is something I’ve
been craving for years for.
Notes from Making Comics by Scott McCloud: Tom Richner and I both recently purchased Scott McCloud’s
latest book, “Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels”, which could have easily
been titled, “Making Storyboards and Layouts”, or “Understanding Film Structure”. This is an illustrated book in a
graphic novel format that is as much about storytelling and film theory as it is about making comics. It’s all the same
basic rules of assembling images in sequence and creating a coherent information flow that make visual sense to a
viewer. It’s “Writing with Pictures”. What (camera) angle to choose, how to frame your shot, how to pace your shots,
when to use a close-up or a wide angle…. It’s practically everything we go over in Time-Based Media Design and
Video I all rolled into one easy to read book that’s written with pictures and text that's ideal for right-brained, visualminded people and artists. McCloud also wrote the incredible “Understanding Comics” in 1993. This new book goes
into much more depth in the process and creation of sequential images. I love it. And he’ll probably be speaking at the
Wexner Center this coming spring.
4-4-07: The main thing I did today was go to the Scott McCloud presentation on “Making Comics” at the
Wexner Center. I drove over with Tom Richner and James Whitworth since they didn’t know where to go for the event.
And it was a pretty neat event since various local comic book professionals were in the audience, including Jeff Smith
of “Bone” fame. It was a packed presentation, too, with several people turned away because there were no seat left ten
minutes before the presentation started.
I took the following notes: “Visual literacy from early grades at school… “Maus” was a comic book with the
urgency of a diary… A dance between words and pictures… Comics as a paper vaudeville… What I feel passionate
about comics… Z axis comics.”
-Mark Waid/ "Kingdom Come"
3-31-12: I’ve got a nagging feeling that digital comics will slowly take over in the years to come. Or as Mark
Waid said in an interview, “I’m not a big fan of motion comics. Anytime you introduce movement, limited animation,
voices or sound effects into the mix, it’s not comics anymore, it’s just limited animation. The key is making sure, like
with a print comics, the reader maintains control over how he views the story at all times, the pace and how he
processes the information. In that way reading a comic is a very personal experience. I didn’t want to compromise
that.”
-Grant Morrison/ “Animal Man”, “Doom Patrol”, “The Invisibles”
Notes from Supergods by Grant Morrison: “The superheroes laughed at the Atom Bomb”… “Superman,
however, was a Faster, Stronger, Better Idea”… “Superman is so indefatigable a production of the human
imagination”… “As a result, stories got smarter, artwork became more sophisticated”… “Alcoholic perverts or suicidal
depressives”… “We tell our children they’re trapped like rats on a doomed, bankrupt, gangster-haunted planet with
dwindling resources, with nothing to look forward to but rising sea levels and imminent mass extinctions, then raise a
disapproving eyebrow when, in response, they dress in black, cut themselves with razors, starve themselves, gorge
themselves, or kill one another”… “They came to save us from the existential abyss, but first they had to find a way
into our collective imagination”… “It was a kind of animation but slowed down into a sequence of freeze-frames that
required the reader to fill in the gaps between pictures”… Siegel and Shuster sols the rights of Superman for only
$130… “Like so many artists, musicians, and entertainers, they were creating a product to sell”… “But these were
exactly the kind of damaged sex kittens who prowled regularly into playboy Bruce Wayne’s anything-goes world. The
bad girls of Batman”… “In his turn, Captain Marvel spawned his own imitator, the British Marvelman”… “Marston
coupled his ideas with an unorthodox lifestyle: his wife, Elizabeth, was also a psychologist, and is credited with having
suggested a superhero character of Wonder Woman… They shared a mutual lover, a student of Marston’s named Olive
Byrne, said to be the physical model for the original Wonder Woman”… “Marston’s prose swooned over detailed
accounts of Amazonian chase and capture rituals in which some girls were ‘eaten’ by the others”… “When Marston
died of cancer in 1947, the erotic charge left the Wonder Woman strip, and sales declined, ever to recover. Without the
originality and energy that Marston’s obsessions brought to the stories, Wonder Woman was an exotic bloom starved of
rare nutrients. Once the lush, pervy undercurrents were purged, the character foundered”… “The Gay Ghost”… “This
was the first explosion of the rainbow”… “Barbarella would fuck her way across the cosmos with the untroubled gaze
of a wide-eyed debutante. She was played by Jane Fonda in the camp 1968 movie version, a film that was, I have to
admit, responsible for my own feverish sexual awakening and retains a fond place in my imagination”… “Batman
inhabits a subterranean secret lair, dresses in badass black leather, enjoys the company of a small boy in tights, and has
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no steady girlfriend. Perhaps there remains to be written the great gay Batman story”… “Clearly these stories were
written by perverts with an intent to pervert the young. They were entirely successful”… “There was the sense that the
young Bruce Wayne, who died emotionally along with his parents in Crime Alley, had finally met a friend with whom
to share his strange, exciting secret life. The emotionally stunted Batman found a perfect pal in the ten-year-old
orphaned acrobat”… “’Batman Becomes Bat-Baby’, it was an anything-goes atmosphere”… “And so Lee, with nothing
to lose, gave it a go and in the process founded an empire”… “I was obsessed with space, astronauts, constellations,
UFOs – anything in the sky”… “The idea of infinite worlds, each with its own history and its own superheroes, was
intoxicating and gave DC an even more expansive canvas”… “And in place of time, comic-book universes offer
something called ‘continuity”… “There is already technology that allowed people to drive remote-controlled cars with
their minds. What’s to stop someone becoming Auto-Man, the Human Car?”… “In so many ways, we’re already
superhuman”… “Superhero science has taught me this: Entire universes fit comfortably inside our skulls”… “These
creative people would sustain the likes of Spider-Man, dripping blood and sweat into the kin to give their lives to
him”… “The wealth of new and provocative ideas in OMAC would be staggering if this was any artist other than Jack
Kirby”… “Stan Lee’s own tortured teenage soul”… “Stories had no real beginning or end”… “As the Beatles gave
sound a visual dimension, Thomas brought sound to the comic page”… “They were 3-D Sensurround comic books”…
“Starlin’s existential heroes”… “Wonder Woman’s outsider sexuality”… “So these thoughtful and informed comics
were powerful ammunition for me, as they were for all the other earnest teenage fans so captivated by the imaginary
universes of Marvel and DC that they’d lingered there past the age of twelve and become trapped like Lost Boys”…
“Like the astronauts who’d found God in orbit (in 2001)”… “With nothing normal to do in the evenings after school, I
cooled my fevered imagination in in the pages of fantasy novels and superhero comics”… “That made him even cooler,
a martyr to his art”… “Gerber brought the same unique sensibility to the comic The Defenders, which teamed a group
of Marvel’s loner heroes”… “It’s deadpan surrealism with the humor of comedian Andy Kaufman. Plots involved a
self-improvement cult in clown masks called the Bozos”… “Living to drawn and drawing to live”… “Photographer
Bob Carlos Clarke’s fetish girls were punk. Comics were punk”… “I was eighteen and still hadn’t kissed a girl, but
perhaps I had potential. I knew I had a lot to say”… “Ugly kids, shy kids, weird kids: It was okay to be different. In
fact, it was mandatory”… “I still had no girlfriend, but I was learning how to make my fantasies into reality, and that
was a start”… “But the shine was off, Comics and superheroes were boring. I was a sci-fi punk. Fuck you”… “The
world of X-Men was far from plausible, but Claremont cannily grounded his wide-open imagination in the engrossing
and convincing emotional lives of his cast”… “The mutant X-Men could be adolescents, or gay or black or Irish. They
could stand for any minority, represent the feelings of every outsider, and Claremont knew it”… “But there were other
people just like me, all over the country, looking for an outlet for their anger and their creativity and finding comics”…
“If you think that Kryptonian supersperm would naturally be capable of fertilizing anything, including cats, dogs,
cattle, horses, and winsome squid – in which case we’d have a lot more to worry about than just undying
spermatozoa”… “And another thing: Does Superman go to the bathroom? If so, what the hell does his shit look
like?”… “Moran eventually committed a kind of suicide by saying ‘Kimota!’”… “His stainless-steel Olympus across a
world redeemed into wonder, where the fantasies of the comic books had become the stuff of everyday like in a
permanent, orgasmic Silver Age”… “Supersex”… “I was drawn back to comics”… “We provided a lifesaving
transfusion of nihilistic humor and wild invention”… “Evolve or die”… “We are Seymour, reading the journal, joining
the story right here where, as we’d been reminded the first time, ‘The end is nigh.’”… “And where the chance
discovery of Rorschach’s crazed journal undid the perfect plan of the perfect man”… “See if I could simulate the
style”… “My experiments on Animal Man were described by critics as ‘metafiction,’ or fiction about fiction”… “I
explained to my character how the people who wrote his life needed drama and shock and violence to make his story
interesting. The implication was that our own lives might also be ‘written’ to entertain or instruct an audience in a
perpendicular direction we could never point to”… “’I can see you!’ It was the violated superhero finally confronting
the voyeuristic reader”… “I wanted nothing less than first contact with fictional reality”… “I was drifting closer to
what could only be termed a kind of psychedelic hyperreality”… “I’d type in strings of nonsense words, which the
computer would dutifully correct to the nearest equivalent, giving my dream horrors dialogue exchanges like this:
‘DEFEATING BREADFRUIT IN ADUMBRATE.’ ‘CRASHLAND FOR AWARD PRIMATE.’ ‘YUCCA OR
PRIORITY?’ ‘LEMUR NEVER HIBERNATE’”… “As a hunched defensive loner relaxed into his own skin, got laid,
got a haircut, chilled out, and began to dance with cute girls. The brief age of art superheroes had arrived”… “I decided
I would plant my flag in the world of dreams, automatic writing, visions, and magic”… “I would shave my head before
male pattern baldness could ruin my Beatles cut and be my own naked self”… “What would happen if all those macho
men superheroes came out of the goddamn closet?”… “We felt different, we felt like pioneers”… “US comics’
response was devastating when it came and effectively ended the art school phase of mainstream superhero comics”…
“I’d-do-it-for-free fans turned pro; This was a medium where outsider artists could work out their kinds on a regular
basis, in public, and make big money in the process”… “Superman could become Sureme in Liefeld’s hands, or Mr.
Majestic in Jim Lee’s. Lee’s Wonder Woman was a warior nun named Zealot; Liefeld’s was a princess named
Glory”… “Image had identified and then supplied a huge, new market: bored teenage boys growing up with The
Terminator, PlayStation, and Mega Drive who wanted no-nonsense action heroes in the Arnold Schwarzenegger-Bruce
Willis style”… “Liefeld’s enthusiastic, arrogant amateurism enflamed a generation of young artists. If Rob could get
away with his barely original characters, his blizzard of crosshatched lines, the heroic legs that tapered to tiny
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screwdriver feet, and the multitudinous array of new muscles he’d invented for the human forearm alone, anyone could
do it. He was mocked, but his style was his own”… “The Image heroes killed: readily and without mercy”… “It was
cocaine comics”… “My own personality seemed crudely fashioned, and often ill-fitting. I was thoroughly sick of
chronic vague depression”… “I’d already made my mind up to accept complete surrender to a process of
transformation, an ego-dissolving ordeal that I felt sure would give me new things to write about, new things to say,
and a new way to see the world”… “The world felt intensely awake and alive, as if I’d somehow learned to dance with
it a little”… “It was hard to believe that people were paying me for what I soon came to realize was something close to
self-therapy. I could assume only that my problems and doubts, my hopes and dreams, were shared by many others
who could relate to the way I was framing them as fiction”… “This is what you wanted. The secret of the universe”…
“Frank Quitely was able to draw anything from memory and imagination”… “Like the sliver blobs who’d brought me
there”… “I was now able to ‘see’ 5-D perspective”… “There would always be writes, telling the same basic stories
over and over”… “Television talks about the ‘fourth wall’ of the set as being the screen itself. If so, this was a glimpse
beyond the fifth wall of our shared reality”… “I was haunted, inspired, possessed”… “This sounded even better than 5D angels”… “As you might imagine, it was hard to sustain this level of controlled breakdown while running a business.
My cometary rise was equaled by a fall; a plunge into dissolution. The more perverse and inhuman the enemies of the
Invisibles became, the sicker I got. By the time I realized I’d become semifictional, it was too late to defend myself”…
“All of it went into the comics. Every breakthrough, every breakdown, became art and dollars. My diary had become
my story”… “It felt like some extended art installation was finally over”… “Still, I was single, newly confident, and
wealthy. I was a globe-trotting freelance writer who specialized in a kind of neosurrealism that allowed me to get away
with pretty much anything. I already had an articulate, enthusiastic readership”… “I’d minded childhood nightmares
and adolescent lonely nights. I was writing The Invisibles, which satisfied my desire to create the kind of progressive
highbrow action-philosophy sex comics I loved most, and I wanted to remind prospective employers that I could still
do something more mainstream”… “By 1995, the epic battle was against reader apathy”… “Issue no. 1 of the
relaunched Justice League of America in 1987 had depicted its characters from an overhead perspective, giving the
reader an elevated position that allowed us to look down on a newly humanized and relatable group of individuals. At
my request, Howard Porter drew our first cover shot of the JLA from below, endowing them with the majesty of
towering statues on Mount Olympus, putting readers at the level of children gazing up at adults. JLA was a superhero
title kids could read to feel grown-up and adults could read to feel young again”… “Reconnected readers to wonder”…
“Meteoric streaks, distant explosions, and rainbows”… “Alex Ross was perfect for a generation losing its strength to
dream”… “All the usual pundits and pessimists predicting yet again the death of comics”… “Clark returned to his
framing roots as a superfarmer”… “Batman agreed to be the child’s godfather – all in plainclothes. It was a farewell not
to superheroes but to costumes and to posturing, and to the never-ending Dreamtime that recycled their stories with no
hope of lasting change”… “I loved to listen over and over again to HAL 9000’s death scene from the soundtrack of
2001: A Space Odyssey”… “For twenty-first-century comics as they tried to emulate the look and feel of $200 million
movies, even copying filmic narrative structures”… “I knew the Justice League of America was suddenly obsolete
(with The Authority). This was the future, and it was time to move on”… “I was taken to see The Matrix by my new
friends and saw what seemed to me my own combination of ideas enacted on the screen: fetish clothes, bald heads,
kung fu, and magic, witnessing the Gnostic invasion of the Hollywood mainstream”… “Mark Millar truly loved
superheroes, and we got on immediately, sharing a surreal and gruesome sense of humor”… “What Ellis had begun and
Millar had completed was to make the Justice League and Avengers look out of date and out of touch. The threats in
The Authority were enormous: insane tyrants commanding armies of genetically modified suicide supermen”… “An
omnipotent pedophile sadist who caused the sky to rain dead pets and abortions”… “Millar played it all for laughs”…
“The Authority was castrated, reduced to a pallid shadow of its confrontational, hip, and cheeky glory”… “Re-created
the world with one simple product: a battery that never ran out”… "On one side were 'dark' or Gothic offerings like
Sam Raimi's manically inventive, pulp-infused Darknman, The Crow, and Todd McFarlane's disappointing Spawn,
which failed to capture the Marilyn Manson goblin screech of the comic book. On the other side were bloated Dick
Tracy-style living cartoons and period pieces with no discernible audience, such as The Rocketeer, The Shadow, and
The Phantom, or interesting awkward oddities such as 1999's Mystery Men"… "Old versus new. Tradition versus
tomorrow"… "Immediately, the sexual tension that had given the 'Lois and Clark' stories their edge just bled out, and
the audience evaporated"… "Catwoman, who like Burton's Batman took her inspiration from punk and bondage
clothing, with a shiny vinyl catsuit"… "When Burton left Gotham to pursue his personal visions"… "Schwarzenegger's
Mr. Freeze was a lumbering, sleepwalking cliché emitter"… "I can think of no more potent image of this union of real
and imaginary than the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. How many times had we
seen those towers fall? How many times had this soul-wrenching vision been rehearsed in our imaginations, and
repeated in our fictions, almost as if we were willing it to happen, and dreaming of the day? From the moment the
towers were completed in 1973, they became a target for a sequence of imaginary demolitions. King Kong was the first
to climb them… They'd been smashed by tidal waves, blasted by aliens, shattered by meteor strikes, and pulverized by
rogue asteroids. The terrible fall of the World Trade Center towers on September 11 had the curious inevitability of an
answered prayer or the successful result of a black magic ritual. Adding to the aura of the uncanny surrounding that day
was its aftermath were the creepy clairvoyant comic books published in the weeks and months prior to September 11,
all of them haunted by eerie images of planes and ruined towers. Garth Ennis's Punisher depicted a hijacked 747 on a
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suicide dive into twin silos. Adventures of Superman no. 596, a book written by Joe Casey several months earlier but
published on September 12, began with a scene showing Lex Luthor's twin LexTowers in the aftermath of an alien
attack. It mirrored, almost exactly, the photographs on the front pages of the same day's newspapers. So accurately did
the pictures match that DC made the book returnable in the event of an inadvertent offense"… "September 11 was the
biggest challenge yet to the relevance of superhero comics"… "Next to policemen, firemen, doctors, nurses, and
selfless civilians, the superheroes were silly, impotent daydreams, and for the moment, they seemed to falter, aghast.
They hadn't been prepared for this and had nothing useful to offer"… "Bendis came from the independent comics scene
and, influenced by playwright David Mamet rather than Stan Lee, he made alarmingly convincing dialogue the focus of
his style and broke the rules of comic-book storytelling"… "They were final proof that even death, despair, and
loneliness could be commodified and repackaged as an overpriced Hot Topic satchel"… "The emphasis veered away
from escapist comic fantasy, nostalgia, and surrealism toward social critique, satire, and filmic vérité wrapped in the
flag of shameless patriotism and the rise of the badass-motherfucker hero"… "Superheroes were big business as geek
dreams became movies, TV, and games"… "We (humans) hated them (mutants) for the same reason we secretly hated
our children: because they were here to replace us"… "Mutant musicians releasing records that could be heard only on
infra- or ultrasonic frequencies, art that used colors only mutant eyes could see"… "Then, shortly into the project, came
the artistic reverberations of 9/11"… "The geeks were in the spotlight now, proudly accepting a derogatory label that
directly compared them to degraded freak-show acts. Bullied young men with asthma and shy, bitter virgins with adultonset diabetes could now gang up like the playground toughs they secretly wanted to be and anonymously abuse the
threaten professional writers and actors with family commitments and bills to pay"… "Storybook surrealism"…
"Nevertheless, I'd become fascinated by the power and the existence of the evil-has-won narrative and resolved to
explore it further in a major DC universe crossover event"… "Voluminous Goth girls, victims of some unspeakable
abuse"… "Suffice it to say that San Diego, as we call it, is the world's largest pop media culture marketplace fringe
madness festival"… "Transform into a science fiction/ horror/ sex simulation of Oz"… "The people who connected
with my stories were the sort of people I hoped would enjoy them, and I got on with pretty much all of them. I didn't
find them creepy, or nerdy, or geeky, or whatever the marketing labels became"… "Wanted began its journey as a
proposal for DC's Secret Society of Super-Villains title, and every character was a variant of a DC stalwart, so the Joker
became the diabolical Mister Rictus. Clayface was reborn as Shit-Head, Two-Face was Johnny Two-Dicks"… "The
comic book was just a pitch now, a stepping-stone to celluloid validation"… "One image will be branded into my brain
folds forever: of the formerly breezy Sue Dibny sobbing in her husband's wraparound arms on the reflective floor of the
Justice League satellite headquarters - a beloved childhood locus of excitement and opportunity - with the arse ripped
out of her tights after what looked like forced back-door entry by Doctor Light"… "For the Dibnys, the Silver Age was
well and truly over. The death of dreams was becoming a defining myth of post-Trade Towers America"… "The men
who watched superporn where girls poured steaming sulfuric acid over perfect, invulnerable breasts"… "Batman &
Robin - an acid-tinged modernization of the sixties TV show as if directed by David Lynch"… "Had the bref, angry,
sex-mad, and individuality adolescence of superhero comics come to a close at last? Comics were no longer come lastchance hotel for fantasy-prone mavericks who found other entertainment outlets too tame or too restrictive for their
visions. They were now a respectable stepping-stone to Hollywood and big money"… "Sexy waling dead through a
bombed-out city"… "We love our superheroes because they refuse dto give p on us. We can analyze them out of
existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we
wish we could be. They are a powerful living idea"… "Superheroes inspired my creativity."
The Invisibles: #8(Volume 1): Grant Morrison is a mastermind of ideas…The head of John the Baptist sings “Right
Round Baby”… “We’re coming upon a world that looks like Auschwitz”… “Smart Drinks”… “I want to feel my heart
beating again. I want to sweat”… “We’re going to dance ourselves dizzy”… “Our little daughter lies dead. Work is all
that consoles me”… “I cannot stop talking to the future. I have so much I must say to the unborn, suffering multitudes.
I know where utopia lies. It is here. Where is the love, beauty, and truth we seek but in our mind? The golden country,
forever new? The home of all hearts, untouched by time and pain? Here. Waiting for us to grow up and recognize it and
come home”… “Don’t worry about me. I feel quite at home in all this bloody chaos”… “Weird shit goes on all the
time”… “Our shadows will rule the earth.”
“It’s not real.” -Crazy Jane from “Doom Patrol #63”.
During the year of 1999, I purchased for a discount price the entire back issue run of “Doom Patrol”
and “Animal Man” that were written by a British writer called Grant Morrison. What lied within those pages
astonished me intellectually, emotionally, and imaginatively. This was some of the best disturbing fantasy
writing I’ve ever come across. He single-handedly resurrected my interest and faith in the creative medium
of comic books again. Within my hands was the clearest potential for this visual and literary medium.
“Along the way, Morrison tosses out some of his trademark wild ideas, allowing them to settle into the plot
with minimal exposition. Concepts like “meganthropes” and the “yoctosphere” percolate in the reader’s mind,
stimulating the imagination.” –From an Internet review of “All-Star Superman”, written by Grant Morrison.
-Warren Ellis/ “Transmetropolitan”, “The Authority”, “The Planetary”
Brilliant funnybook writer and novelist Warren Ellis (“The Authority,” “Global Frequency,”
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“Planetary,” “Astonishing X-Men,” “Ignition City,” “Mek,” “Red,” “Reload,” “Iron Man: Extremis,”
“newuniversal,” “Ultimate Fantastic Four,” “Ultimate Galactus,” “Ocean,” “Orbiter,” “Jack Cross,”
“Ministry of Space,” “Fell,” “Gravel,” “Dark Blue,” “Scars,” “Wolfskin,” “Blackgas,” “FreakAngels,” “No
Hero”).
“I love the way science sounds. I love the ideas for their art. There’s a crazy beauty about a theory of
dimensional structure that assembles itself into a snowflake, or the idea that reality is a two-dimensional plane of
information and the 3-D universe is a hologrammatic side-effect. And that’s how I write science fiction. I use the sound
of the ideas and then make it all up.” –Warren Ellis.
“Explosive storytelling and provocative politics.” –Entertainment Weekly.
“Hot Comic-Book Writer: Ellis’ writing has a depth that’s rare in comic books and a worldview that’s grim
but oddly tender.” –Rolling Stone.
“Warren Ellis is writing our lives and you’d better listen.” –Grant Morrison.
“Ellis both subverts and elevates.” –Joss Whedon.
“Warren Ellis can be fierce about a multitude of things, yet one suspects he is fiercest when it comes to his
demands upon himself.” –Alan Moore.
-Peter Milligan/ “Shade, the Changing Man”
4-24-05: I finished reading the entire run of Shade, The Changing Man by writer Peter Milligan. It was like
harvesting an idea farm. I took pages of notes and quotes from the series and possible references of inspiration for my
expanding imagination.
Today is all about reading “Shade, the Changing Man”: “I’m all lived out”... “Too sensitive, too
dreamy, too impulsive, too bad”... “The Night of the Insane Sky”... Orange dolphins... “Shade, I’ve been
thinking... I think we should go our own ways. I mean, there’s so much working against us. It’s been fun and
that but there’s too much history. And I don’t want to get serious yet. You’ve got your work fighting the
madness and I’ve got to find out what my life’s all about... I can only do that on my own. I’ll keep in touch.
Maybe when I’ve worked a few things out of my system we can try again... take care, darling”... “It’s wearing
me down, this worrying about her”... Farting sheep... In modern day, Billy the Kid works at an electronics
store... “Such emotive language!”... “I love you but I’m not sure if I want to be with you”... “I want to go to a
bar and be anonymous”... “The stillness was what I needed”... “They get along so well together... and I’ve
nothing to say”... “What am I? Part dream, part person?”... “All we have, all we are, are cliches”... “I think I’ll
make love to the earth, as a little thank you, and offer her my copious seed” (planting semen in the ground)...
“What is a personality anyway? A bunch of reactions, memories, genetic characteristics, tics and patterns
and predictable responses. Ah, the hell with it. Personalities are overrated anyway. I’ve spent too long
worrying about my life. I want to live a little”... “You’re just scared of deep emotion. And I don’t blame you”...
“I’m a little mystery queen. Even when I’m about to die I like to sound interesting and special”... “I am living
art”... Just because a man’s in touch with his sensitive side doesn’t mean he’s homosexual.”
-Mark Millar/ “The Authority”
The Authority #20: This is Mark Millar letting his imagination go off wild and uncensored with impossibly powerful
superheroes and super-villains: “Ever wonder what Nat King Cole sounds like at the force of ten Hiroshimas?”… “The
worst he can do now is d-create the universe from the Big Band to the end of time”… “The hour you granted him can
be stretched to infinity once his brain adjusts to the fifteen new senses he’s just acquired”… “Did you know, for
example, that the young doctor was capable fo movement beyond three dimensional space? Imagine fighting someone
ehow could shoot you as you emerged from your mother’s womb or hold a pillow over your face in a retirement home
as you traded blows. Worse still, imagine the local doctor, back when you were in high school, giving you a funny
feeling you’d carry around for the rest of your natural life. Hello again, Miss Angela Spica of Class 48. Remember
me?”… “I can turn back time and get them just as easily as I can turn these raindrops into mummy’s secret abortions.”
And so he turns raindrops into black, ugly discarded aborted fetuses falling from the sky! It’s comic book surrealism at
its finest and most twisted. “Turn the moon into a skull. The earth into a tumor. Make the sky rain pillar-box red until
every drop of blood was squeezed from God’s infected veins—”… “There’s nothing funnier than people dying
knowing that they’ve accomplished absolutely nothing.”
"Millar to Direct Superhero Movie": But this is one of several big surprises planned for next year and you'll
hear a bit more about this in February when we start to release details. What is it? Who is it about? Well, that's all a
secret for now, but I learned a lot from Kick-Ass and love having the same creative freedom I have with comics when I
work in cinema. I never want to be a studio bitch and go in there pitching for them to love me. The closest I came to
this was a couple of calls regarding Superman, but pretty much none of my plans ever revealed as I didn't like the idea
of anyone nicking them.
Similarly, I don't like the idea of asking for funding and justifying scenes with the money-men so I'm doing
what Matthew Vaughn did with Kick-Ass and just making it outside the system with private investors. The financing is
all secured and the movie stands or falls on how good I can make it, doing what Matthew did and just selling it once
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completed.
As you can imagine, I couldn't be more excited. More as it happens, but this might just beat out War Heroes
and American Jesus as my follow-ups to the Wanted and Kick-Ass movies. Have two other pictures about to go into
development (and Wanted and Kick-Ass 2, of course), but I think you need to scare the Hell out of yourself every once
in a while and something totally new like directing should do the trick.
-Garth Ennis/ “Preacher”, “Hellblazer”, “The Punisher”
11-22-98: I read vulgar, exciting fire today. I noticed myself falling in it. I was exposed,
surrounded, overwhelmed, and manipulated to some much evil, hatred, nihilism, alcoholism, pot, stupidity,
cruelty, hero’s profanity, massacre, child abuse, gore, lust, exhilaration, vacant religious beliefs, fun guns,
horny demons, parental anger, I can go on and on. It was life devoid of love. Just a cold, cynical humor to
sprinkle it with vacant joy. I shouldn’t have been exposed to all this! It’s become a plague with a “****” rating and a year-long blockbuster, an internationally accepted drug. We’re all vulnerable and contagious to the
profanity, sex, violence, anger - and the list of pain and pleasure keeps building as we grow older. I reacted
because it was hurting me. Desensitizing me. Taking over me. It was “Preacher”.
5-21-99: I am now convinced that “Preacher” is one of the greats in comic book literature art. I read
its fifth trade paperback collection this evening and felt several reactions: the characters developed, the
ideas were original, the plot was building... then there was the in-your-face violence, shocking/ gross-out
obscenity, old Western movie lore, oral sex scenes, “God” that quit his job, main characters who openly take
drugs for “soul -searching”, a vampire best buddy, an “arse-faced” rock superstar... It’s all too amazing; it’s
all too much. Imagination is becoming impending, almost engulfing to my senses so hungry for something to
impress me, to fall in love with, to masturbate to, to inspire to. Here is a book of visual art and word balloons
that I would have to give two grades to: ***1/2 stars and *1/2 stars. It is half grandiose, half trash. It’s like
love and sex. Which one is more appealing? Which one is more beautiful? Which one is more “dirty”? In the
meantime, I loved it while being repelled by what I was being exposed to. This book belittled me with its
originality, offended me, complicated me. It made me reexamine my artwork and myself. That is where the
art comes in. Not in the book... but in me. Catharsis.
-Ed Brubaker/ “Catwoman”, “Daredevil”, “Captain America”
Another major comic book writing talent to be reckoned with.
“I like this CATWOMAN. I like her a lot. She looks great. She’s a charmer, and she’s just nuts
enough to make sense. She brings her own perverse justice to Gotham’s streets. Brubaker’s got the chops.
This is one damn fine comic book.” –Frank Miller.
"Creating a story that's exactly what you want it to be, and having it printed around the world a few months
later… That's the beauty of comics." -Ed Brubaker.
-Brian K. Vaughan/ “Y: The Last Man”
Another major comic book writing talent to be reckoned with.
"New comic series don't have fans, they have families, small groups of diverse people who band together to
help keep alive some weird thing that matters only to them. So to those of you who finished this issue and think you
might want more space helicopters and naked robots in your future… welcome to the tribe." -Brian K. Vaughan about
his new series Saga.
-Robert Kirkman/ “The Walking Dead”, “Invincible”
-Erik Larsen/ “Savage Dragon”
“Recently, while away from home for several months, I returned to find I had been robbed. They took almost
everything, but most dear to me they took my collection of comics. I had spent my entire life on them and they were
gone. The time, the effort, the love, the money, all gone, In addition, the many long boxes full of comics they also
contained notebooks, and art pads full of my writing and art, concepts and ideas. I was crushed and back to at square
one. Everything I had a passion for and loved, worked so hard for was gone in a blink. You see, I desire to some day
write comics. My laptop has some material on it but I prefer to write by hand. Archaic, yes, but more therapeutic, I feel.
Thousands, literally, of pages of writing just gone and my collection also.
To me, this was going to be the end of my journey. Perhaps comics and I were not meant to be. I should just
stop reading, stop writing and forget my dream. But then I remembered Erik Larsen. And how so many years ago he
had a house fire and lose everything. You did not quit. You did not give up. You moved on and still became successful
in your field. You published your dream character and still get to do exactly what you love every month. Giving up is
easy, finding a reason to carry on can be hard but its more satisfying in the end.
So, Mr. Larsen, thank you. Because of you I’ve started over. I have one long box with a few books in it and
soon it will be full and I will have to buy a second and so on and so on and so on. It’s a fresh start. I’ve also done my
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best to piece together old notes of my own ideas that I recall, but also have developed more new stories and will
continue to pursue my passion. Whether I ever make it or not, who knows? But I’ll always know I tried and didn’t give
up, even when I felt like I couldn’t go on. I even self published a novella recently, so I’m making some progress. It’s a
start and I hope to make that jump to comics soon!
Thank you, again, for your inspiration and I hope to see Savage Dragon on the shelf for years to come!” From the letters page from Savage Dragon #174.
-Glenn Fabry/ “Preacher”, “Hellblazer”
Glenn Fabry’s “Preacher” covers are like Norman Rockwell’s “Saturday Evening Post” magazine covers
through a very disturbing, twisted mirror.
-Brian Bolland/ “The Killing Joke”
The Norman Rockwell of eccentric, quirky comic book covers. See issues of “Animal Man”, “Wonder
Woman”, “The Invisibles”, and “Doom Patrol”.
-Frank Frazetta
Frank Frazetta: Painting with Fire: “I consider myself to be a creative artist… not just a fantasy illustrator. I work
purely from my imagination. No swipes. No photographs. I stress good composition and design that borders on the
abstract in spite of the subject matter”… Dynamic and dramatic images… “He painted with a primal urgency”… “We
inspired one another to do better”… “His work transcends the fantasy genre”… “All I need is fuel for the fire to get
working”… “I can’t help it. I seem things in a manner that others don’t”… “He does very voluptuous, beautiful
women… He paints women with big butts. But there’s muscle behind there”… “He went through depression… He had
nothing more to prove”… “I’d say the grandchildren keep him alive”… “His work is like food for the soul”… “His
work has been hugely influential on Hollywood. George Lucas has bought several of his paintings”… “An artist is
nothing without an audience”… “He was working in a style that was laughed at and frowned upon by the fine arts
community… But he made his own niche for himself.”
Fire and Ice: The “animation” is mainly panning over drawings or just tracing over live-action actors! I do like the
painted environments in which the characters live within. It’s like living inside a Frank Frazetta painting!... “My son
speaks more with his heart than with his head. But he speaks for all of us!”
-Simon Bisley/ “Doom Patrol”/ “Lobo”
See brilliantly twisted artwork from issues of Lobo and Lobo’s Back limited series, Batman/ Judge Dredd:
Judgment on Gotham, and cover art for Doom Patrol.
-Peter David/ “The Incredible Hulk”, “Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man”
During his time on “The Incredible Hulk”, writer Peter David would take conventional superhero
storylines (fantasy mixed with action and pathos) and insert his own personal brand of wit and humor to
them. The result was an enormously satisfying read.
The greatest awakening influence came to me through a comic book – “The
Incredible Hulk #377”. Bruce Banner's personality was explained so
realistically by Peter David's writing skill. Banner was a reflection of my own
repressed ego that defies me emotion at times of despair and blinds my way to
love. I gave myself the diversions of imagination, writing, movies, and
(ironically) comics to keep myself sane and alive: "safe". Also Banner never
drank because he wanted to always be in control. And how I will be able to
succeed in living will be to explode my rage, anger, and other repressed quakes
to shake up for once. I actually learned from the shock of reading my
imaginative, comic book alter-ego with time and deepest thought.
-Jeff Smith/ “Bone”
Jeff Smith is someone I admire because he’s a Midwest writer/ artist from Columbus, OH who’s made it
without sacrificing his artistic integrity to L.A. His Bone comic book has such great charm, wit, imagination, character
development, excitement, mystery, craft, romance, and humor! It’s unlike a lot of what’s out there in comic book land.
It’s not your average stock-and-trade superhero. It’s a bit like “Peanuts” mated with “Lord of the Rings” crossbred with
Mickey Mouse. It’s a wildly fun hybrid to read. And what crazy innocence that runs through the primary characters.
Fone Bone, who doesn’t even have any discernable genitalia, has a massive crush on the lovely teenage forest girl,
Thorn. It’s just so wonderful to share part of their world (loosely based on Hocking Hills in southeastern Ohio).
11-21-02: Jeff Smith, creator/ artist/ writer of the comic book “Bone” who lives in German Village, came to
give a talk in the animation classroom this afternoon. Having been a fan of his work for years, I couldn’t help from
smirking to myself like a giddy six-year old boy from being in the presence of an idol. Yet after a while, I realized that
he was just like any of us artists in the room. He was an ordinary guy wearing casual clothes with artistic and creative
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talents and a down-to-earth personality. I remained thrilled to be there in that room as a peer.
-Brian Michael Bendis/ “Ultimate Spider-Man”, “Daredevil”, “Powers”, “New Avengers”
Before Ultimate Spider-Man and a gig on Daredevil, the writer (and sometimes artist) toiled through the
1990s as an accomplished indy creator of crime fiction comics. Through publishers Caliber and later Image, Bendis
wrote acclaimed crime fiction. Alas, his success didn’t pay the bills. Surviving on nothing more than Ramen Noodles,
Bendis did his comics on the side while working as s comic store clerk, drawing caricatures at parties or cartooning for
the Cleveland Plains Dealer.
1-24-06: “Over the years, Bendis tipped over conventional storytelling with one piece of advice the writer
says he’d love to give every writer in comics – “Get scared.” Brian says, ‘Write yourself into a hole that you’re terrified
you can’t get out of, do that, and then find the way out,’ and if you know Brian, he says stuff like that with a glint in his
eyes, almost insane.”
“Joe Quesada suggested a handful of writers who took cracks at it and didn’t do very well,” says Jemas. “out
of desperation he said, ‘Well, there’s this one guy from Cleveland, who hardly anybody’s ever heard of, but he’s a very
talented writer – all I have to show you is a book about a serial killer.” –Taken from various “Wizard” interviews.
From the Powers #7 letter column: “I just wanted to say thank you for making comics better than anyone
would ever have dreamed they would be. As an aspiring artist/ writer myself you are one of the greatest inspirations.
OK I’m done kissing ass. Peace out Brian.” –“I’ve never dreamt about comics. I did dream once that Belinda Carlisle
and Jane Weidlan from the Go-Go’s were taking turns with my…. Wait, what was the question?”
From the Powers #11 letter column: “Dear Brian Michael Bendis: I think a full head of hair is a negative for
any comic writer. I call it the Balding Wrier Theory. If you look at Wizard’s Top Ten Writers list it’s a balding frenzy.
What do you say we take a look at some cats that are Hasselhof Challenged? Jeph Loeb… great writer. Christ
Claremont (pre Soveirn Seven) great writer. Peter David…. Good writer. That J. Michael St-Straz-Stray-whatever the
hell his name is, he’s okay. Erik Larsen… well, with the stuff he’s been writing lately he may be growing his hair back.
But you get my point, balding for a comic writer is a positive thing.”
From a transcript of a question-and-answer portion of Brian Michael Bendis’s panel at the MidOhio Con 2001: “Question: As a writer, do you think the industry has too much of one thing?” –Bendis:
“It’s the same with movies. Every time you buy a movie ticket, you cast a vote to get 10 more movies like
that next year. When you say you’re going to see The Flintstones, you guarantee that there will be 10 more
bad cartoon movies next year.
It’s the same thing with comics. You guys go, ‘What the hell, I’m going to buy a big-breasted
sword book.’ Well, that means you’re going to get 1 more next year. The people in comics try to deliver to
people what they think they want. They just go for the trends.
With comics, recently, they’re being writer-focused, which I’ve never seen before. When I was
first breaking into comics, it was all artists – it was Image and the double-age spreads. Like every page had
to have a giant image on it with a little panel at the top and bottom to do the storytelling. Me and [David]
Mack would sit there and go, ‘Oh, when is this going to be over?’ It was cheesy and over-rendered and
boring, and it just went on and on and on.
Over the last couple of years, the names you hear – Azzarello and Jenkins and Rucka – you’re
hearing writers’ names. It’s very cool to be part of that because comics are about ideas now, not about
images. Based on that alone, you’re a lot less shallow of a medium.
I actually feel that there’s so much of everything and that everyone’s working so hard to be at the
top of their game that I’m not bitching for the first time ever, ‘When are these cheesy books to stop?’ The
crossovers seem to be coming down, and those are gone.
It’s a good time. Comics always seem to do really well creatively when no one’s paying attention,
like when the sales are down so there’s no money involved, and it’s like, ‘Go do whatever you want.’ So
everyone gets to go nuts.”
“Having done a little TV and movie work every once in a while, I can tell you that the Hollywood dream is a
lie and that comics is the one truly spectacular creative medium. I wrote something for Hollywood that made me really
happy and if it doesn’t get made, and it probably won’t, I don’t know if more than twenty people will ever see it.” –
Brian Michael Bendis on Hollywood vs. Comic Books and audience vs. creativity.
“I try with everything have to write something I think doesn’t suck, it never gets more complicated to me
than that. I sit with the script for months coming back to it and asking myself full out, would I buy this? If the answer is
yes, I hand it in, if not, in the drawer it goes.” –Brian Michael Bendis.
Excerpts from a conversation between Powers creative team, writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Mike
Oeming: BB: Torso was selling 2200 copies”… BB: “I was literally starving to death, with no money. And everyone
kept telling me how I was going to breakout”… MO: “I was still working part time in security at the time till issue four
or five”… BB: “That surprises a lot of people that Mike drew the first three issues of Powers in a security booth”…
BB: “Woody Allen always said to write what you can’t say in real life. So there is always a character speaking the way
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I’d like to speak but clearly cannot without being slapped in real life”… “Retro Girl was based on the death of Janis
Joplin. I read Pearl: The Obsessions and Passions of Janis Joplin, the biography and was very moved by it”… MO:
“That whole story arc was built for me cause it’s built on the idea of a girl who swallowed a superhero’s cum and
getting powers for fifteen minutes”… “For visual references there wasn’t any specific television shows or if we’d talk
about TV shows early on, Homicide was definitely up there, but I think it was more about films that relate to the storytelling not specific scenes. I think one of the biggest films for us was Taxi Driver. The storyboards in the special edition
DVD and the slow paced storytelling was a big thing for Brian and I and just for the noir feeling was these old
detective flicks like the T-Men and a couple other ones by John Alton. The film is the most black and white noir-ish
film that there ever was.” BB: “John says, ‘Don’t be afraid of the black, be afraid of the white’ and I got chills”… MO:
“Pete had some trouble figuring out the color scheme. Brian referenced the scenes in Mexico from the movie Traffic.”
BB: “I’m in love with the work of our great cinematographers and Vittorio Storano, his work had a lot to do with the
coloring for Powers and they were very specific and thankfully we’ve had very talented people able to accomplish
this.” MO: Colors, and how they affect mood of a scene”… BB: “Coloring, lettering, font choices and font placement,
can affect or adversely pro-affect a person’s enjoyment of a story. That’s another reason why I get so involved, is
because I know most people can’t tell the difference where the writing, the art, and the coloring begins and ends, nor
should they. And it’s up to us to make sure that it’s a complete experience.”
“I looked outside of comics for my influence. My influences are mostly cinematographers. My film noir style
is that of John Alton, who invented film noir cinematography when he was on T-Men and if you watch the movie
Visions of Light, you’ll see about ten minutes dedicated to his work. That movie profoundly rocked my world. It did,
just under my skin, fucked up my shit, because I was on that road, without knowing some of the things that I
discovered in that documentary, and then went and found out about. And, so John Alton and Janusz Kaminski and all
these cinematographers, they’re telling stories, with pictures. And I thought writers should look outside comics for their
writing, artists should look outside of maybe even art or painting or whatever as their things, at cinematographers.
Not solely, and I know that the art of moviemaking is not the same as comics making, but there is a visual
language of storytelling with images that was very intoxicating to me, and still is. And most of my notes to artists are
shots from movies or ideas from movies where I say, ‘You know that shot from NO Country For Old Men, or that shot
from Close Encounters.” –Brian Michael Bendis.
"But with that… I am now officially convention retired. I will see you all online. My decision to retire from
conventions has nothing to do with you and my feelings towards you, it's just that - like the Beatles - I've just gotten too
big to tour. :-) No, actually I took a long look at what my goals are and they all have to do with family and writing. So I
will be staying home and doing those things. Conventions for a professional can become quite a trap. You can literally
be anywhere in the world every weekend and before you know it you haven't created enough new things. And while
those convention experiences are truly magnificent, at the end of the day, making comics is the goal. But I'm online all
day long… so if you need me you will be able to find me." -Brian Michael Bendis in early 2012.
-Paul Chadwick/ “Concrete”
Concrete #2: “Stars in the sky, stars in the sea – what a joy to be alive in such a world! And there’s Maureen on
deck….”… “Boy, that doesn’t look good, does it?” –“Cumulo-nimbus. A storm”… “A silhouette lacking a rudder and
part of the keel… which means they can’t sail it… which means they’re still marooned… which means they could
die… john, Larry… and Maureen”… “Oooh… Life’s sweet mysteries”… “The close quarters may have made me act in
ways… I wouldn’t have ordinarily acted. You know?”… “Sometiems I wish I could have been in the raft – the water
got kind of lonely”… One of the great miracles of Paul Chadwick’s “Concrete” books is the inclusion of the sweet
presence of Maureen. Multiple male characters have heavy crushes on her loveliness, and they rarely are able to fully
act upon them to her. Both Concrete and Larry, Concrete’s aid, fancy her quite heavily. Chadwick also explores issues
of loneliness and isolation that are uniquely perceptive and sensitive. How would you feel if you were transplanted into
an alien body made out of stone, but still had the mind and emotions of the human male you once were? You gain all
these incredible abilities, yet you lose your human body that would allow you to make love to a woman. With a body of
stone, you are now isolated and forever imprisoned in a body of rock. You have no sex organs, yet still feel the
hormones you were born and grew up with. This book takes a keen look at these feelings and repressed urges.
Chadwick is also immensely sensitive to the environmental world around him and the magic that lies underneath its
surface. Whether it be on land or sea, he uses this book as an exploration device and self-expression for his most fertile
musings on the wonderment of our dear planet Earth. He shows us through a sensitive super-being with incredible sight
what we might have missed. His writing is more reverie than recordings. He is the dream-catcher. He sees and
experiences the world as if he has been born again, except with his old adult mind and feelings. Only his alien body is
new and so full of possibilities of doing something extraordinary.
“So many elements of “Concrete” came from my life. I think this helped it overcome its deficiencies
in writing and art to achieve a sort of clunky charm. It seemed personal, unpolished, exuberant”… “After
those ten issues of and number of “Dark Horse Presents” short stories, I felt drained. It was also a time when
many things were offered to me. With some regret I realized I lost focus and substantial momentum – and
good will among readers”… “I’ve slowly come to appreciate that a comics writer-artist is my position, and the
time to produce is a rare freedom and opportunity. So I’m free. Free! To devote all my energies wrestling
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with my own self-doubt, sloth, perfectionism, fear, artistic shortcomings, desire for approval, distractibility,
and disorganization. In short, Paradise”… “Nobody travels to the extremes of human character without great
suffering. In fact, nobody changes much at all without it. Looking at my own life, I find I’ve made major
changes only in a state of desperate unhappiness. It’s a larger application of the athlete’s conditioning credo:
no pain, no gain”… “As I recall, Dazzler had originally been conceived as a film vehicle for Bo Derek”… “One
foot’s planted in our world, the real world, devoid (except for Concrete himself) of fantastical trappings; and
the other foot’s in Concrete’s mental life, which is full of the fantastic”… “What motivates Concrete is what
most of us are after. He has to make a living. He wants to be liked. He wants to do a little good – but he’s not
‘heard the calling’ for any particular cause. In early outings, he pursued childhood dreams of outdoor
adventures: climbing Everest, swimming the Atlantic.” -Paul Chadwick.
“When Concrete is praised, it’s usually for that personal quality. Concrete is more a thinker than an actor; his
fears of displeasing people, of doing the wrong thing, of failing, all make him the most equivocal character in comics.
The internal life of this pathetic, smart, oversensitive, rock-coated giant is what’s entertaining about the series. I’ve also
drawn on my own life for story material. Write what you know, they say (and draw it, too).
“Orson Welles once said a movie studio is the best model railroad a boy could wish for. Maybe so for that
Olympian egotist; fighting the battles to get the right image and sound on screen, shot by shot, are beyond me. For me,
the best toy is an 11 x 17 piece of Bristol board and a soft pencil.” -Paul Chadwick.
“And this collection of Concrete stories proves the point. The tales herein are less high-powered rock ‘em
sock em’ drama than meditations on our world – on our devastated ecology, on art, loneliness, and the casual caprice of
fate – all filtered through the sensibilities of Concrete, whose grotesque condition at once distances him from the world
of men (and more importantly for Concrete, women) while perversely bringing him closer to hidden world in the sky,
the earth, and the sea.
Concrete’s exquisite torment is the emotional core of these stories, and the great miracle of this book is that
his torment doesn’t have the whine of self-pity. More often than not, Concrete overcomes what others might perceive
as adversity to take joy from his condition. And so, stories that in other hands might sink into despair become
celebrations of the wonder of intellectual curiosity and the fulfillment of dreams.” –From an introduction by Mark
Verheiden from Concrete: Short Stories 1990-1995.
-Mike Mignola/ “Hellboy”
Hellboy: Eating rotten eggs are a delicacy for Abe… A true comic book movie that actually doesn’t compromise its
vision and characters for the movie format. This one actually works. I was highly impressed. It fulfilled my dreams of
transitioning terrifically quirky comic books to a wider audience through a Hollywood-produced, big-budget film. Even
the characters were great and imaginative. The character of Liz came from a psychological ward because she has
difficulty controlling her blue flame powers. Her anguished emotions literally exert fire. And wouldn’t you know it,
Hellboy is in love with her. He’s a “freak” like her, and he’s fire proof as well.
Hellboy: “He likes that way – the whole lonely hero thing.”
-Eric Powell/ "The Goon"
"We need to create an environment where the best new idea, well executed, could be the top-selling book where we're not putting all of this industry's efforts to survive into a rehash of a rehash." -Eric Powell, creator-writerartist of The Goon.
-Bill Sienkiewicz
Stray Toasters by Bill Sienkiewicz: …the disturbed third cousin of Dave McKean. Bill’s a mix of media from his
deepest subconscious and most twisted emotions. He combines sketches, painting, ink splatters, collage, photography,
and text into an Expressionist madness of sequential art … “Have you ever thought of getting some therapy for
yourself?”… Crows with razor sharp teeth… “Psychopoetry”… Toast with red paint jam… “Oven of a bitch”…
“‘Cooking with Physics’ with your hostess, Ellen Einstein”… “We’re going to make a favorite of mine, black hole
devil’s food and time continuum cake”… “Be with us next time when I‘ll be making a white dwarf testa soufflé, with
religious repression of sexuality thrown in for spice, and hope the whole thing won’t collapse in upon itself”… “It was
silly of me to worry”… Green nosebleed… Postcards from Hell… Man in a blender costume… “Our dreams are
symbols.”
-Todd McFarlane/ “Spawn”
Todd McFarlane: The Devil You Know: Running down his dream… “He’s a really normal guy with a disturbing and
wondrous imagination. Everyone has a dark side. He can just express it and market it”… He lived in a trailer park…
“Talk about surreal”… “He has this drive in him to succeed.”
-Craig Thompson/ “Blankets”
“Craig Thompson weaves an engaging story by laying everything out in the open so that you can’t help but
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be sucked in. From the shocking abuse he incurred at the hands of a malicious babysitter to his covert abandonment of
his parents’ devout religious faith, he leaves no page of his personal life unturned – even at eh risk of igniting a few
bridges. “My siblings loved [Blankets], but my parents were initially enraged by my decision to make aspects of our
private life public,” reveals Thompson. “It definitely inspired discussions that we avoided for a long time, but it was
good to get that stuff out on the table”… “One of the fears with autobiography, or with something so insular and selffocused, is that people won’t be able to relate to it because it is so egocentric, says Thompson of his experience
constructing the autographical epic. “It’s been really refreshing to find out that a lot of people are identifying with it.” –
Concerning Thompson’s graphic novel “Blankets”.
-Brian Wood/ “DMZ”, “DEMO”
DEMO #4: Stand Strong: “When you’re 18 years old, there are not a whole lot of options that exist for you. You can
easily get locked into boring routines, bad patterns, shitty jobs, family obligations and stagnant relationship. And I
think if I hadn’t had the inheritance cash in hand and the burning desire to go to art school, I would have stayed there
working low-pay maintenance jobs and growing old with the same kids I screwed around with in study hall. This is
neither good nor bad. It’s just a reality. For those locked into it, you can either let it drag you down and turn you into
someone you don’t want to be, or you can be proud of that reality as something that defines who you truly are, and
stand strong.”
DEMO #8: Mixtape: From the letters page: “The characters of DEMO are “superheroes” of the M. Night
Shyamalan mold – they’re real people in real lives who find they have powers. Instead of a costume,
headquarters, and glory, their powers cause confusion, alienation, and fear from a world that doesn’t
understand them. By keeping them in “our” world, rather than setting their stories in a comic book fantasy
land, Wood’s characters ring with a trueness that’s instantly identifiable. This it’s “Oh look, Kitty’s pissed
at Professor X again, ho-hum,” this is “I’ve felt that way, I’ve been that scared, I’ve felt that alone.”
Somewhere in the pages of each issue to date, there’s an emotional gut punch, just waiting to be thrown.”
-Moebius
Moebius' fantasy graphic novels prepared me for the imagination needed to
save me from the colorless rain and the sincerity of my desperate existence.
Moebius 5: The Gardens of Aedena: Moebius is one of my favorite science fiction writer/ artists. I love how
he takes the reader to a new planet or dimension of the imagination. The amazing thing about Moebius’ artwork and
storytelling is how he can transport the reader to these other worlds that actually resemble our own and have the
protagonists react to it as if it were an alien world. They see grass and call it “carpet”. They see apples and can’t tell if
they should eat them. They’re hungry enough to taste anything – even the grass. It’s a way for the reader to see the
world through wondrous eyes. That is the magic of his art… “At the time, I was in an environment that was creatively
extremely favorable. First, I was feeling the kind of inner exaltation that you often experience when you embark on a
new project. Second, when you’re in a foreign country for the first time, your creativity is always boosted, you could
say, virginized”… “I did these stories by drawing a series of little sketches, like a very rough storyboard, on a notepad.
It was quite a thrill, because when I started, I never knew what was going to happen”… “I had more strange dreams last
night, but I can’t seem to remember them”… “Atan! It’s fabulous! This new life has transformed us! Don’t you feel a
stirring inside? Let’s make love! Now!”
Moebius 9: Stel: Moebius’ Aedena Cycle is, in like fashion, an ever-growing dream, carefully assembled
from the daily fragments of the artist’s life and soul… “I’m getting sleepy. Maybe I’ll get an inspiration in my dreams.”
2-4-94: I’m reading a few stories from Moebius 6 and for an instant I felt ashamed and embarrassed for
buying such a "graphic novel" since some episodes contained harsh language and graphic nudity. Yet then I thought
about my average day and how much vulgarity I experienced every second. I’m surrounded by vulgarity all the time at
school. Sex is everywhere and no one even blushes when it is mentioned. So why do these pictures cause such a strain
of worry in me? Did I grow up too Catholic and conservative?! Perhaps because the words and images are always
there, for as long as ruin and disaster come. Words are powerful. They create emotions, imagination, and ideas that are
just as infinite. I still adore Moebius' work. It's incredible stuff.
2-6-94: Tonight I was reading Moebius 1, which packs enough imagination to energize a dead mind. All sorts
of writing ideas surfaced in my mind while reading that ingenious graphic novel. The book was worth every dollar I
paid for it. I even got my prewriting ideas written down.
3-10-12: News of the Surreal (for Real): "French comic book artist, designer Moebius dies." Moebius was a
legend, and a huge influence on me as a teenager as I discovered more international graphic novels. He was one of the
most brilliant, creative, and imaginative artists I've ever seen. Harry Knowles: "I first became aware of MOEBIUS as I
read STARLOG voraciously absorbing every detail about the making of Ridley Scott's ALIEN. Along with Ralph
McQuarrie, MOEBIUS was my fave childhood conceptual artist. When TRON came about... I was... blown completely
away. By that time, I was already reading HEAVY METAL MAGAZINE - I'd seen HEAVY METAL about a dozen
times at the drive-in with my parents. The TAARNA sequence just screaming Jean Giraud aka Moebius. We know his
work cinematically on films like WILLOW, MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, THE ABYSS, THE FIFTH ELEMENT
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and we can see his influences upon countless other films."
-Katsuhiro Otomo/ “Akira”
Akira: A sensitive child’s reaction to brutal violence causes the world to explode. Anger and other emotions as a
mutant super power!… “It was a dream that I had…. So many people, so many will die!”… Explosions detonate
throughout the city from fanatical terrorists… Tetsuo, who was teased all too often as a kid, develops great psychic
powers that he cannot entirely control because of his unstable mind… “Now do you understand how it feels to be little
and helpless!?!”… An epic fight in an Olympic stadium… “Are these all your dreams and memories, Tetsuo?”
Akira: Stylized kinetic comic book animation… Features one of the great otherworldly soundtracks I’ve ever heard.
The drums make you feel exhilarated and charged with wonder and awe… Terrorist explosions in city skyscrapers?
This could be neo-New York. “The city will crumble. So many people will die”… “Their new powers is the next step
in human evolution”… Lord Akira the Enlightened… Malfunctioning space laser cannons destroying areas of the
city… A proton emotion collapse.
I privately watched Akira, an awesome Japanese animated film about Neo-Tokyo after WWIII. Though there
was a lack of deep emotion to the movie, the visual brilliance of the animated style was fantastic. Another plus was that
Akira was once a critically acclaimed comic book.
-Daniel Clowes/ “Eightball”, “Ghost World”, "Pussey"
Eightball #4: I read a comic book called “Eightball”, by Daniel Clowes, that has completely decimated all other
mainstream comic books in its wake. It’s more like an independent comic book call to arms that attacks with such vile
self-loathing of almost all things. It tears away all the scum in our society that we take for granted, like mass marketing,
bland music stuffed down our throats, formulaic “action” films, and consumerism gone crazy. “Dull, derivative,
watered-down ‘music’ that so many people exclaim, “How meaningful and sensitive!” and “How poetic, poignant and
touching!” Listen to this: “Just about anything that represents a personal, singular vision, whether high art or obscene
pornography like “Eightball”, has been effectively disenfranchised from the mainstream and removed from the
marketplace. Instead we have widely distributed, committee-manufactured, “marketable”, diluted gruel for the
masses!” This is truly a great book written with sympathy, empathy, love, and even hatred for rejects, losers, has-beens,
never-weres, and eccentrics. “With the increased “blanding” of movies, television, literature, music, etc. comics will
emerge as the preferred cultural interest of free-thinking intellectuals.” “Mainstream comics will fade out of existence
and be completely forgotten by all but a few obsessive pack-rat collector nuts…” (“These are my toilet paper tubes
from the 1940s. I also have an exhaustive collection of check stubs, airline schedules and Marvel comics.”) Here is a
writer/ artist who is fed up with life as it is and wants to rewrite it, attack it, dismantle it, destroy it, ridicule it, rape it,
and hug it… sometimes at the same time. It’s comic book equivalent of an atomic bomb for the brain.
Eightball #15: “Being on the road all the time I find myself longing for female companionship and I have to watch
what I say to the pretty ladies so I don’t’ appear too flirtatious”… “I would never admit it but I guess deep down I want
to be rich and famous and loved by all the beautiful women”… “I’m an expert on outsider art”… “All afternoon she sat
there staring and making small talk – asking me questions and stuff… It was good for my ego to have a smart young
lady taking such an interest in me but, to be honest, she made me a little nervous”… “I wondered why I picked a career
like drawing caricatures in the first place… I guess I must have known that the only way I’d ever make it as an artist
was to limit my audience to stupid people”… “What was I thinking with this diary? I honestly thought I was something
special.”
Wilson by Daniel Clowes: "Living the dream"… "Spiritual replenishment"… "I'm all alone. No mom, no dad, no
brother, no sister"… "Jesus H. Christ. I didn't know what I had until it was long gone. Maybe Pippi and I could have
had a family. Who the hell knows? I should've been more willing to compromise. I should've"… "The funny thing is, I
never gave a shit about having a family until recently. Never thought about kids, or a mortgage - none of it. It's always
been me, me, me. And now it's too late. I can't start having babies at my age. I should have thought about it 15, 20 years
ago. They should be heading off to college by now!"… "Maybe somewhere a wife and son are out there, waiting for
daddy to come home…" -"Nah, you're right. She prob'ly just got an abortion"… Watching cinema of skyscrapers
falling down for entertainment… "What makes you so sure it was yours?"… "I remember imagining being an adult and
thinking how great it would be. Total freedom, money, power, But you don't get how it is. When you're a kid there's all
this fu8ture, all this potential. But after a while, it dries up. I'm not going to be the president, or a baseball player… I'll
never have any real money… You have to start looking at things in a different way… It forces you to live in the
moment though. A hot shower; the crunching of leaves - shit like that becomes pretty important all of a sudden"… "I've
only had this one for a few weeks and already it's a ton of stress"… "I don't feel anything for her. I tried, but there's
nothing there." -"Hey, it talks!"… "Believe it or not, I actually used to kind-of fantasize about going to prison. It seems
like a good place to do some serious thinking. Maybe read some books, do some writing… collect your thoughts,
y'know?"… "An overdose? I knew it! I'm not laughing. It's horrible… horrible… I loved her so much…"… "What the
hell do I care? I’m all alone in the world"… "I've been in therapy for a long time"… "I don't want any more drama in
my life"… "I need to stop moping and count my blessings."
Pussey!: by Daniel Clowes: Possibly one of the grimmest graphic novels I've ever read. It's a lifetime's worth of hopes,
dreams, and failures in 54 desperate pages… "Do I need this one (this comic book issue)? Gotta check my list"…
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"Eventually the thrill wanted and I moved on to other interests"… "Old enough to indicate severe emotional problems
or mild mental retardation"… "I had to find some niche in an openly hostile marketplace. I started going to comic
conventions with the vain hope of 'promoting' my comic, but this only added to my complete and utter despair. In ten
years, I had grown from an alienated teen who found comfort in the childish familiarity of comic books, to an 'adult'
who was now, in turn, rejected by the very world in which he once found solace. You can't win!"… "During this period
of early disillusionment"… "While I became increasily frustrated with my own inability to escape the comfort zone of
perpetual adolescence, I began to regard my brethren as no worse than emotional invalids, struggling like everyone
else for some shred of happiness"… "I can say that the initial spark for many of the Pussey stories came from some
misplaced, low-grade desire for 'revenge'. Spending years in a rooms working on stuff that nobody likes in a debased
medium for no money can take its toll on your self-esteem"… "At a certain point, the world of comics changed, and I
no longer had to have any contact with the phantasy marketplace. However, through some unfathomable cultural
downgrade, the elves, ninjas, and super-champions of my youth have infiltrated and overtaken the world at large!"…
"Has our world become so terrifying that even the masses now seek assurance in what was once the sole province of
the socially unfit??"… "Comics… too often they're dismissed as SIMPLE-MINDED, IRRELEVANT PABLUM for
MENTAL DEFECTIVES"… "Though I can't help but wonder why it's so wrong to make a few bucks from exploiting
the repressed homosexual urges and castration fears of undeveloped adolescent minds (especially when they belong to
37 year-olds!)"… "To create modern myths for adults, or at least college students"… "Bloodmonger? He's like Conan
the Barbarian in space"… "You will struggle"… "There are NO VACATIONS in this business!"… "Comic books…
By their nature they are both our most INTIMATE and our most EXPRESSIVE art form. Comic books reflect a more
personal viewpoint than movies or television. Their subject matter is ESSENTIALLY LIMITLESS!"… "So! You're s
SNIVELING, LITTLE COWARD! EXCELLENT! That's a quality I admire in an artist!"… "Don't you get it, man?
You're ARTISTS! You gotta SUFFER!"… "The more you suffer, the better the art; the more copies we sell… Get
it?"… "I'm not interested in anything beyond my own insulated little world!"… "I-It was s'posed to be kinda like
'Batman' crossed with 'Star Trek'"… "PAYMENT? ARTISTS DON'T GET PAID! THAT'S NOT ART, THAT'S
PROSTITUTION!"… "THIS SUCKS! IT BENDS THE ENVELOPE OF MEANINGLESSNESS! This is
DERIVATIVE, MINDLESS TRITE, MUNDANE, CLICHÉ-RIDDEN SLOP!"… "The best way to get started is to
work directly from REAL LIFE. Try to do a story based on your own PERSONAL EXPERIENCE… something you
know about intimately"… "Pussey has a positive self-image!"… "C'MON! I need you! I want you to violate me in
every way imaginable!"… "Never actually been on a date"… He accidentally has a masturbation fantasy starring his
mother… "Doesn't it sometimes BOTHER you that you're so attracted to escapist fantasies involving lithe musclemen
in tight, revealing clothes? What's that all about?"… Desperate, overweight, and lonely fan-girls want him… This
world is filled with sweaty nerds… "Meanwhile, back in reality"… "The collector's most indispensable possession? His
checklist!"… "Seems like an awful lot of work… So when are you gonna sell 'em all and make your profit? -"When am
I WHAT?"… "Well… it seems to be very popular a-and my fiancée Nancy seems to think that I should get some
MONEY from it s-since I i-in-vented Mr. Powerful a-and-." -"I'm afraid that's impossible, Billy! You were PAID for
Mr. Powerful -- I don't recall any complaining when I wrote you that first check! You signed a contract!"… The
publishers strong-armed their comic book creators and swindled them out of millions of dollars when their creations
became huge moneymakers… "You don't like it then QUIT! I'll find a hundred guys who'd do it for EIGHT (dollars a
page)!"… "I was the dreamer if you will, he the technician who put those dreams on paper… I think you'll agree that
ours was a very successful marriage"… This is like the Stan Lee/ Jack Kirby conflict… and Stan Lee is the greedy,
over-praised jerk and devil… "Artists often hone their skills by copying master-drawings… Your Pussey's inspiration
this evening is long-time Belt-Boy artist Mort Grindstein"… "I've appropriated a lot of images from your comics in my
shit and I think you'd really dig it! I'm having an opening at the Snokehorn Gallery this Friday"… "Bring art to the
PEOPLE! Not some SNOOTY RICH FUCKERS!"… "By the way kid, you sold two more pieces! The $2,500 and
the $3,750. You should do more of the ones with the word balloons… those are moving!"… "Um… well, like why do
you do these big paintings instead of like drawing regular comics and making up characters and stuff?" -"'Cause by
doing this it's a fuckin' commentary on society and shit… It's like I make it into fine art!"… "Everything is art! If I put
it on that wall, it's art! And if it sells, it's good art!"… "It's a fucked-up thing, this art business… if the art
establishment says that paintings of toothpaste tubes are 'in' then suddenly you got a hundred guys painting pictures of
toothpaste tubes! That's why guys like you and me are outlaws in the art world! -ssuck- You don't fit into their fuckin'
categories!"… Those are mine, man! I'm a naïve artist! I base my work on the art of Methuselah Schunkman, a
retarded, hillbilly painter from the '30's… He was a REAL artist!"… "You're so quiet over there, Danny!"… "The
years pass, and while others engage in various childish pursuits, you hone the craft that will one day make you famous.
It is a struggle wrought with sacrifice and, sadly, a neglect of those subtle lessons of interaction that separate the
tortured artist from his people"… "Son, are you a homosexual?"… "Ew, he's one of those guys who's into Star Trek
and science fiction and comic books and stuff… Eww, it literally makes me physically ill when I think of people like
that!" -"In a way it's just so, so sad!"… "What a weird fuckin' dude that Pussey is…" -"He's the kind of dude who
might snap and kill a shitload of people someday!"… "Yeah, I heard he makes like half a million dollars for every
comic book now…" -"Are you sure he graduate with us? I don’t' remember him…" -"Me neither… Is he married?"…
"And though yours is a hard-won, self-determined success"… "And now is the time for reflection"… "First plucked
from the oblivion of painful adolescence to spearhead his blossoming team of young mythmakers!"… "It's a product
of Dan Pussey Studios… A lot of the production work is done on computers now. We're in the process of phasing out a
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certain amount of the hands-on--" -"You're swiping from me, Pussey!"… "And you still have to swipe from an old man
who never made one goddam penny in this business!"… "Sigh! Look Pussey, I'm sorry… You young kids are a
helluva lot smarter about business than we were, and that's all there is to it! I'm just a bitter, old failure! Hell, I'd be
willing to bet I swiped that pose from Roy Hoover in the first place!" -"Actually, I swiped it from another guy who
probably swiped it from you!" A whole comic book industry where each "creator" swipes the work from others. It's all
one giant recycled field of books… "Listen, Pussey… Dr. Infinity told me that he'd give me some work if I could learn
to imitate your style. How about helpin' me out here?"… "What's this? Has our hero taken a bride? It's Lisa Herrick,
former Homecoming queen of young Dan's graduating class! After high school, she married the co-captain of the
football team (who now runs a tire shop) but her heart was stolen away when she learned of dashing Daniel's megasuccess!"… "Sometimes she dressed up as Karate Kitten (from The Devastators) for special appearances and
conventions!"… "There goes the future of comics!"… "Well… I, of course, owe a lot to all the great artists of the old
days of comics, like Dan Pussey, who is still doing totally great stuff"… "I hate to be the one to say it, but as far as I'm
concerned, the whole damn comic industry is headed straight down the toilet! It's all just violence! Whatever
happened to a good story?!"… The price of his books start to go half-off… "Think of the comics field as a great
tapestry, Mr. Pussey. A tapestry with many weavers. Each man can weave, sew or embroider only so long before he
must pass on the needle… Ours is a tapestry of dreams, my friend, and you have woven a mighty share, but dreams
are the province of the young." -"…So that's it…? …It's all over?" -"Don’t' be ridiculous! There will always be work at
Infinity Comics for a man with your skills… We need an continuity editor on Undersea Elf Patrol right now, in fact"…
"I'm going to handle your case personally, Mrs. Pussey… In light of the humiliation you suffered during this
marriage, I think we're entitled to a lion's share of his assets"… The young artists taken over the older artists… "The
Twentieth Century! Those were the days of dial telephones, free TV, and, of course, comic books! Just ask grand-dad -I'll bet he had a whole stack of 'em under his bed! Hard to believe it now, but they were mighty popular for a good part
of the 1900's, and a lot of men made their living in the comic book field"… "Though these stories are but dim
memories, having faded from our thoughts like so much of the printed material from the Twentieth Century, the legend
of Dr. Infinity lives on! He was as adept at business as he was at spinning a yarn and he died a beloved millionaire. He
was both showman and poet: half P.T. Barnum, half Hans Christian Andersen and All American!"… "Daniel Pussey:
Respiratory failure. Worked in printing industry and telecommunications. No survivors"… "What would a grown man
want with such foolishness?"
Mr. Wonderful: “No, she looks far too wholesome and undamaged to have been set up with the likes of me.
Unless… Perhaps there’s some hidden flaw, or some awful personality quirk. Who am I kidding? She could
have leprosy, and I’d still be out of her league”… “Dear God, kill me now”… “What’s happened to our
civilization? When did it become okay for non-crazy people to babble their personal nonsense in public?”…
“I was married for 12 years, and then it ended, and since then I’ve been in a bit of a dry spell. Let’s just say
my wife had some issues with fidelity, and several of my friends were involved, and when it ended I had
neither wife nor friends”… “Six years without a date of any kind. I had given up all hope”… “It was sort of like
‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s,’ except in this version, Holly Goughtly is an unstable, crank-snorting sociopath. It
would up costing me $800, my grandmother’s earrings and a laptop, but such is the price of transformative
human events, I suppose”… “Already a broken man, and now this… What happened to me? I let so many
years slip away… It’s unbelievable how fast it goes… I can’t talk to people anymore. Too many years alone,
living in my own head. I’ve forgotten all the subtle nuances of human interaction”… “Each new generation
seems more and more alien to me. I don’t’ want to know about their various fads and technological
achievements. I don’t care to dwell on the signifiers of my increasing irrelevance”… “All I want is someone to
eat breakfast with on Sunday morning”… “My own personal apocalypse is of no significance at all, and I
don’t blame anyone but myself, and I will die, alone and forgotten”… “Most beautiful women turn so bitter
when the realities of aging set in. Hard to blame them. I suppose. It must be kind of awful”… “Aargh! I should
have memorized a list of conversation topics before the date. I’ve already used up my basic chitchat
material!”… “Here was a chance to cement our bond in mutual misery with my own unstoppable legacy of
romantic woe”… “I want her to know the real (me)”… “I’ve had my ups and downs”… “I’ll be the first to admit
that I can lose my temper on occasion, sometimes to an inappropriate degree. I’m not exactly sure what it is
about this particular fellow, but he seems to provoke in me a certain kneejerk negative response”… “Hey,
isn’t tonight ‘sex night’?”… “You let yourself be seduced by false hope, Marshall”… “I was pretending to be
all cute and bubbly, but my mind was racing with the most horrible thoughts”… “It’s kind of a relief, to be
honest. I don’t’ know if I could handle the pressure of a relationship with someone like that”… “Did I really
imagine I would ‘get lucky’ when she saw how neatly I stacked my disturbing heaps of pack-rat junk?”…
“Don’t you just think I’m a total mess?”
-Adrian Tomine/ “Optic Nerve”
Optic Nerve #3: “Convention tomorrow – should be interesting. There’s a couple artists I have to meet. It’ll be weird
talking to these people after reading their stuff so much”… “I guess I used to want people at school to ‘accept’ me or
whatever, but now, fuck it. My new plan is to just ignore all of them… I hate their obnoxiousness and stupidity just as
much as they hate my shyness and intelligence. I keep telling myself, not much longer to go, anyway. College will be
different. Can’t wait to be on my own, around people that know more than me for a change. Counting the days…”…
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“In the afternoon, I spot this sort of cute boy and follow him around at a safe distance. Okay, maybe he’s not really
cute, but there’s something about him. I decide he’s, like, the boy version of me. Actually, he reminds me of this guy
from school that asked me to go to Homecoming with him last year. I was so surprised when he asked, I started making
up all this crap on the spot”… “I think people are often rather numb these days, both as a reaction and an
adjustment”… “Do you have a girlfriend (or boyfriend, if that’s your thing)? Because it seems like you’re a bit
depressed or something. But I guess that’s what makes your comics so bitchin’. So, I guess you should stay single
because then if you were married, you might make your character all happy and it wouldn’t’ be fun anymore and no
one would like it. Right?”… “Sadness mixed with frustration, anger, confusion, depression… I could go on and on.”
Optic Nerve #4: “You shouldn’t have said that.” –“I can’t help it if that’s what I think. I’m just trying to be honest”…
“Generally, I was happiest when I was alone anyway”… “His sister, who was a few years older, was walking around in
a white bikini with her hair dripping wet. I filed the image away in my mind for later”… “I just wanted the Fourth of
July to be over. I wished it was a normal day”… “After a few minutes of small talk, Tara loses interest in her friends’
conversation and imagines the fascinating discussions taking place elsewhere in the bar”… “In particular, she regrets
ever confiding in him her erotic attachment to the scent of old books.”
Optic Nerve #5: “That’s why this is like every artist’s dream come true! She blew me off in high school, years later she
sees my book, and now she wants to get in touch with me… But the fact that she’s trying to contact me at all is
incredibly gratifying. It’s like the tables have turned. I’ve told you… lust and revenge are great motivators when it
comes to writing”… “Hey, you’ll have my sympathy when you have to go get a job like the rest of us”… “Martin spent
his high school and college years trying his best to be invisible. He wasn’t particularly attractive, and he lacked the selfconfidence and charm that might’ve compensated when it came to interacting with the opposite sex”… “I just… I can’t
relax around this much festivity”… “I mean, just the other day he said something like ‘You can’t complain until you get
a real job like the rest of us”… “That weekend, Martin opened his senior yearbook for the first time since graduation.
The photos instilled an uneasy, almost sick feeling in him, but he studied them intently. ‘God, you’re gorgeous’”… “It
was during those high school years that Martin began writing stories, mainly as a distraction from loneliness. Now he
wondered what course his life might’ve taken if things had gone differently with Samantha… if he’d even be a writer at
all. He was certain that somehow, his life would’ve veered off in a completely unknowable, perhaps happier
direction”… “So you pretty much always write about yourself, huh?”… “They say everybody has one great book in
them”… “You can’t keep using the fact that you never got over high school as an excuse for acting like an asshole!”
Optic Nerve #6: “Yeah, so I can meet a bunch of other desperate losers.” –“Well, things must not be miserable enough
if you’re still not willing to change, Hillary. Maybe you’ve just gotta hit rock bottom before you decide to try
anything”… “How do they just ‘turn it on’? It’s like, they walk in and they’re instantly laughing and dancing around. Is
it genuine or are they forcing themselves to act happy?”… “That fat cunt!”… “Saturday arrived eventually, and as I
prepared for my ‘date,’ I developed a sensation of both anxiety and excitement. I had a mild case of nausea, and I kept
getting what felt like hot flashes”… “I bet two and a half years without any physical contact would erode anyone’s
standards”… “I’m glad I caught you ‘cause I was … I felt like talking to someone”… “Do you want me to just leave
you alone? Because I…”… “Disgruntled phone operators? Fucked-up people with too much free time?”… “But I
mean, if it was just one shitty thing at a time, I could deal with it, but it’s like a… tornado. Like a… shitty tornado”…
“It’s just, like I said… I’m a mess and-.” -“Well, that’s okay. I have a thing for messes. That’s my type. Of course, it
helps that you’re so pretty”… “Or maybe it was just depression-induced sluttiness (probably), but right then, there was
nothing I wanted more than that kind of passion and abandon”… “…I mean, whenever I whine about not having a
girlfriend, the guys form work drag me out to clubs or bars, and the whole time I’m thinking ‘the kind of girl I’m
looking for wouldn’t be at a place like this’.”
Optic Nerve #9: “Because everyone knows it’s garbage, but they clap for it anyways because it was made by some
Chinese girl from Oakland!”… “I just hate that she has to take a conversation about some stupid movie and turn it into
a personal attack on me.” –“‘A personal attack’? God… I’m sure she was just responding to your charming
negativity”… “It was because I was a nerd with a bad personality and no social skills”… “I try to study, but all I can
think about are the incoming freshwomyn. That’s what they’re called. (Sigh) They’re so cute and naïve. My goal is to
at least make out with a hundred girls by the time I get my Ph. D”… “I’m still waiting for her to show up some day
with herpes all over her mouth’… “It might be too weird for you”… “Look… this stuff is just, you know… fantasy. It’s
supposed to be different from reality”… “It’s like you’re obsessed with the typical Western media beauty ideal, but
you’re settling for me”… Self-loathing comics… “God… I hate the way everyone in the bay area worships New York!
Trust me: it’s highly over-rated”… “Well, if you want her to, then you’re gonna have to be strategic. You can’t act all
pathetic and lonely and desperate.” –“But that my specialty!”
Optic Nerve #10: “I was just… overwhelmed! It was like a combination of, of… experimental music, performance art.”
–“Well, we’re taking the physicality of modern dance and improvisation of free jazz and infusing it with a punk
sensibility”… “That girl from the theater? Hell, Mr. Humbert!”… “If you hang out with her one more time and don’t
make a move, be prepared to be banished to ‘neutered Asian friend’ territory forever!”… “Oh, that’s one of my worksin-progress. I wake up every morning, go pee, and then take a picture. I’ve been doing it since January.” –“Are you
serious?” –“Well… yeah. Patterns start to emerge… like when I’m dehydrated, or when I get my period. It’ll be a huge
installation someday.” –“That’s pretty amazing”… “I’m just not really into kissing. You know… germs”… “You
brought me to a dyke party?”… “Oh, cheer up. Would you rather be getting blue-balled by the pee girl again?”… “Do
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you think we should, uh… I mean, can I give you a kiss…?”… “You’re a good kisser.” –“I know. I’m very orally
fixated”… “The eagle has landed”… “I need to talk to you.” –“Whenever someone says that, it means ‘I’m about to
really bum you out’”… “It’s a problem of mine. I’m not very good at being alone”… “Listen… you gotta come to New
York. You’re obviously about to kill yourself in that apartment.”
Optic Nerve #11: “Yeah, but at least you were horny for those other girls, so that made it easier”… “I just think it gets a
little… dicey when you start making moralistic generalizations based on your own wounded ego”… “I guess I didn’t
know that ‘taking some time off’ meant that you could lie to me and fuck around behind my back!”… “I should’ve
been more direct with you a long time ago, and I apologize for not doing that. But even at my most frustrated, I felt a
lot of sympathy for you. And that’s how you basically kept me trapped for the last two years”… “I think you also have
a problem with depression and anger management… weird self-hatred issues… and just relentless negativity. You’re
critical of everything, you have no career ambitions anymore, you have… what? One friend?”… “I can’t move 3,000
miles to be with someone I’m not having intercourse with.”
-Gary Larson/ “The Far Side”
I grew up faithfully reading Gary Larson’s surreally twisted comic strip “The Far Side”, not knowing
how deeply it would influence my creativity later on in life. He also found his ideas and humor through
viewing the world from an askew point-of-view. It was like reading a Salvador Dali painting in cartoon form.
Larson took every day occurrences and pointed out the weirdness within with a savage wit. He expressed a
demented commentary on our society, history, and way of life that I would later inspire me with my own
surrealistic expressions of the world. On a personal note, I thank Gary Larson for helping me get through my
teenager years with a view into “The Far Side” to give me humor therapy I could understand. I also wanted
to show my own unique perspective on life from an angle of humor laced with surrealism. Larson was also
another one of those artists who I read always wrote or sketched down an idea the moment it came to him.
I’ve followed his advice ever since and found the practice “art-saving”. His creativity also seemed sparked by
his misinterpreting reality and expressing what he sincerely misunderstood. I’ve also had a similar problem
throughout my life and used it to my advantage by making it into art.
-Gahan Wilson
Somewhere beyond the far side lies the work of this innovative cartoonist. It’s demented humor to
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the 11 degree. His work can be weird and wonderful, silly and surreal, playful and psychotic, grand and
grotesque. And, God, I love it so. What a delightful break from reality.
-Bill Watterson/ “Calvin and Hobbes”
3-20-95: Tonight I read more Calvin and Hobbes comics, which is easily the best “comic strip” I’ve ever
read. Where else can you read such serious issues about crummy school learning issues slanted with such a smart,
humorous edge? Calvin’s dementedly creative snowman sculpting are also brilliantly wonderful! Where else, might I
question, does an imaginative kid wake up his slumbering mother to ask, “Do you think love is nothing but a
biochemical reaction designed to make sure genes get passed on?!?” Love it.
Calvin and Hobbes showed me how I can use and express imagination to its brilliant effects.
While reading through the “Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book”, I realized how close this
mere comic strip was to fine art. It expressed issues in an intellectual, satirical, and always entertaining
execution. In short, it tried to honestly say something.
Is there anything more special than being transported into the mentality of a radical six year old and
his imaginary tiger?
Withdrawing in the brilliant imagination and humor of "Calvin and Hobbes", I discovered the fictional
characters as new role models of inspiration for me.
“The only way to learn how to write and draw is by writing and drawing … to persist in the face of continual
rejection requires a deep love of the work itself, and learning that lesson kept me from ever taking Calvin and Hobbes
for granted when the strip took off years later." -Bill Watterson, writer/ artist/ creator of "Calvin and Hobbes".
-Dr. Seuss/ The Cat in the Hat/ Oh, the Places You'll Go!
Adults and teachers are not bad people. It’s just that they smother the imagination rather than
mother it (to paraphrase Dr. Seuss).
Dr. Seuss's The 5000 Fingers of Dr._T delighted me in its vivid creations of fantasy.
-Matt Groening/ “Life Is Hell”/ “The Simpsons”
I read “Life Is Hell” at the impressionable age of 19-21 when I was an undergraduate art student
discovering the world, my art, and myself. It’s subversive honesty spoke directly and hilariously to me. It was
the most intellectual comic strip I’ve ever come across. There was just something about a bug-eyed bunny
that made my inner neurotic, depressive, creative side laugh out loud – hysterically and madly. Creator Matt
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Groening spoke to me with his “School Is Hell”, “Love Is Hell”, and “Work Is Hell” series. He is one of the
most unflinching, confessional artist/ cartoonists I’ve ever known. And he also created “The Simpsons”.
I follow Matt Groening's comic strip of neurotica, "Life In Hell", for exposing existential panic,
contemporary despair, and self-doubt (in the clever guise of simple cartoons). "Would you rather be smart and joyless
or stupid and happy?" Indeed.
While reading "Life Is Hell" in my soft, brown computer monitor chair, I
relished in the comics' insane humor and psychological insights. I also
pondered about how this day would be.
I've come to realize how much "The Simpsons" has affected my personality,
creativity, sensitivity, and humor. Quite disturbing to learn that "my"
creativity didn't come from me - it mostly came from watching TV. I had
believed that "Siskel & Ebert: The Movie" was originally my idea.. until I saw
it on a rerun of “The Simpsons” tonight and realized it wasn’t. Even the words
I speak and write are not my own. I learned this language - I did not invent
it.
“The Muppet Show” and “The Simpsons” both had a subversive, adult humor.
It actually happened. A cartoon show, "The Simpsons" addressed emotional
suppression of anger more directly than I've ever witnessed. One of the
characters, Ned Flanders, refused to let his rage be shown until he finally let
it out in an enormous out-burst. On Christmas Eve, I experienced the same kind
of suppression in which I nearly exploded with insane rage from holding back so
much pain.
I watched “two good reasons to live” – “The Simpsons” and “The Critic”.
“The Simpsons: Trick or Treehouse Halloween”: Zombie Shakespeare, zombie Einstein, and zombie George
Washington attacking you in the school hallway.
-Mike Judge/ “King of the Hill”, “Beavis and Butthead”
“King of the Hill: Season One”: This show is absolutely one of the best written, insightful TV shows on TV. And it’s a
cartoon. Maybe that’s what it takes in order for an audience to see people more plainly – abstract them into cartoonish
forms while retaining their realistic, humanistic qualities… Sex education Peggy Hill style… “I’m so depressed I can’t
even blink”… Why does she have such black tears?… “Sometimes you just don’t listen. It’s like you’ve got a problem
with concentration”… “You need a role model, Bobby. A hero”… “You look pretty.”
“King of the Hill”: In order to get into an art gallery, you have to spice up your background by making you insane or a
stupid hillbilly artist. You can’t sell your work if you’re “ordinary”. Ah, the hypocrisy of the art world.
-Trey Parker & Matt Stone/ “South Park”
“South Park”: They take serious recent issues (genetic cloning, assisted suicide, hunting, anti-Semitism,
religious holidays) and go to the most aggressive extreme without regret. The comedy it exerts is not just
shock value - it unravels the most disturbing qualities of our daily lives. It brilliantly and vulgarly expressive
especially when from a group of “innocent” children’s point-of-views to make it all more pointed and
shocking.
“South Park”: One of the very few shows that takes on serious, recent issues like Catholic priests that have sex with
server boys because that’s the only place they can find sex. The Holy Doctrine can’t be changed so that priests can have
sex with women. Leave it to this brilliant show to parody an insane situation and take it to the extreme. They even
achieved some hysterical sight gags like people “eating” their food by shoving it up their butt and excreting it out their
mouth in public. “It is time to change.”
“South Park”: Gloriously exploring the loop holes in the Catholic faith. This is intellectual stupidity… “So Jesus is
made out of crackers that we eat during Communion? Does that make us cannibals?”… If the handicapped cannot
confess their sins because they cannot talk, do they go straight to “hell” by default? How insane!?… “We were all born
with original sin”… “Instead of going from one relationship to the other, I’ve forgotten to be dependent on myself and
find the security of being by myself”… “Saddam, you’re an asshole.”
“South Park”: Revealing the perversities of modern life in the clever guise of crude cartoon animation.
“South Park”: Multi-colored tornado worm hole in outer space!... Black oceans... TO PLEDGE CALL: 1-800555-0396...”South Park” is such an excellent showcase of opinionated humor and satire. They take on an
issue in each episode (Christian missionaries in Africa) and attack their injustices from a liberal, independent
point of view. They have something to say and they’ll express it as offensively or vulgarly as possibly since
what they’re addressing is rather vulgar in itself. How dare missionaries manipulate lesser fortunate people
to believe in Christ! (The only problem with the show is that it is rather one-sided to make their points.)
Aliens have never heard of Jesus, so why should they care to be converted? They’re happy the way they are
without Christ or the Gospel in their lives. They won’t be burning in hellfire for not knowing Jesus!!
“South Park”: We should all go back to 3rd grade to those days of innocence before writing cursive, fractions, and
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biology tests ruined it all… “I could have done so much more with my life. I wasted it. I wasted it!”… Our turkeys are
stoned humanely… The tooth fairy does not exist. Our innocence is gone… “There’s no tooth fairy?! I suppose you’re
going to tell me now that there is not Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, or Jesus now! What is real anymore?”
“South Park”: Santa’s Fortress of Solitude… Jesus Christ – mercenary… Santa Claus getting his testicles electrocuted!
And this is a Christmas special!!
“South Park”: “We should all say our parents molestered us! Then all our parents would be taken away!” The adults are
gone! The children reign! Brilliant satire on our society’s hypocrisy!
“South Park”: It exposed the truth that women with larger breasts are treated “better” than women who are not as
large… “Friends are forever”… “My God, it’s true! Bebe’s boobs filled our brains with illusions”.
“South Park”: A community of friends and family have an “intervention” because one of the children is “different”.
Because he’s an individual or you live an “alternative” lifestyle, the people who “love” him want him to change.
“South Park”: “He’s even more miserable now since he’s gotten his dream and lost it!”... A fetus that grows
out of a woman’s face instead of from her belly.
“South Park”: Dialog from a pointlessly attitude-drenched naive teenage girl: “Ya, and my mom won’t even
let me smoke. It’s my body! I should be allowed to do whatever I want!” Why not put a gun to your head as
well? It’s your body. I dare you... “You’re sabotaging my creativity!”
“South Park: Starvin’ Marvin”: Rude, surreal, raw humor... They’ll put down poor families like their friend
Kenny’s and have glee in it. “His dad’s an alcoholic! At least mine isn’t!” On top of that, they’ve “adopted” a
starvin’ “Ethiopian” for a cool digital watch. Once they got “it”, he became a sort of neat bizarre possession!
It’s all horribly wrong, but the kids don’t care. They’re all in wide-eyed excitement for having such a cool
skinny pet! “South Park” is like a warped version of “Peanuts”… The town wants a non-offensive Christmas a compromised Christmas with no Santa, no Christmas trees, no baby Jesus, no mistletoe, no joy.
“South Park”: I think the brilliant aspect of “South Park” is in its extreme insensitivity. The town asylum is just
a fact of life. Carrying around a gun at a public event is overlooked while carrying a camera is forbidden.
Cheating on a test isn’t important; Kathie Lee Gifford is. A school play on how the town was formed is
banned for being too real in showing the children dressed as pioneers arriving a slaughtering the other
children costumed as Indians.
South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut: A town chorus of farters... Children in awe of the “harsh” language
they had picked up from watching a movie. What power and education!
“South Park”: About girls breaking up with you: “You’re just going to have to face facts. It’s over!”… “I’m really
happy that something could make me this sad. It makes me feel alive. It makes me feel human. I guess what I’m feeling
now is a beautiful sadness.” What amazing wisdom from a bunch of sophomoric kids.
South Park: Second Season: Regarding Matt Stone and Trey Parker: “They’ve gone from obscurity to total maximum
exposure through their show. Yet they’ve remained grounded”… Their animation studio and headquarters is in
Colorado, in a simpler life away from Hollywood… “We were always sell-outs. So we needed to get to Hollywood and
sell out immediately.”
-Charles M. Schulz/ “Peanuts”
Notes from Schulz and Peanuts by David Michaelis: He was born on Novermber 26, 1922… “Schulz
sometimes used Peanuts to allegorize and make sense of his secret life”… “One man’s expression of longing and
fear”… “These are all my lives (in the characters in my comic strip Peanuts)”… “In his work, indifference would be
the dominant response to love. When his characters attempt to love, they are met not just by rejection but by ongoing
cold, even brutal, indifference, manifested either as insensitivity or as deeply fatalistic acceptance”… “He had never
outgrown his childhood nickname, Sparky, or his awkwardness with girls. He knew nothing about the arts of love and
had never had a sweetheart - only distant crushes and movie dreams. His mother was the only female who matter. And
now she would never come back, would never know him as he grew older”… “To Sparky, always a picky eater, these
were ‘strange foods’”… “Dena prepared her son for the defeat that an indifferent world would impose on his
ambitions”… “Whenever he displayed aggressiveness, vitality, independence, spontaneity – those qualities that, in
other words, brought out his enterprising male spirit – Dena under cut him. She may have wanted, first and foremost, to
protect Sparky, lest those qualities destroy him”… “Charles Schulz was gripped by the lifelong fear of being a bore…
But it was he who had been bored; his uneducated relatives bored him, just as his parents’ semi-literacy frightened
him”… “That kid isn’t going to be worth five cents when he grows up. All he wants to do is scribble”… “Cartooning
gave him something that nothing else could: proof of his power”… “The prettier the girl, the more petrified he
became”… “Segar had created Popeye, a character whom people loved, not because he was a salty old sailor man with
anchors tattooed on his arms, but because Popeye summed up in a single quality what an American man had to be to
survive in the 1930s: a fighter”… “He had come into the army a virgin and would remain celibate, his code of conduct
uncorrupted by the surrounding culture of gross bravado”… “In Germany, Schulz knew full well that his unit was lined
up to storm the world’s most suicidally intransigent nation – Japan. It was, he later said, ‘one of the most dreaded
things’”… “But the atom bombs brought Japan to surrender, forever changing the course of his life and of all those
scheduled for Operation Coronet”… “A nothing young man from St. Paul”… “To be a cartoonist is to speak, not only
to draw”… “Pretty faces make me nervous”… “He wanted to get married”… “He was very moral. The idea of having
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sex outside of marriage was anathema to him. At the same time, he was probably a very sexual person”… “Shyness is
the overtly self-conscious thinking that you are the only person in the world; that how you look and what you do is of
any importance”… “Money, in any case, was the least of his concerns. He was unmarried, living with his father – Carl
paid the rent - and his expenses were relatively small”… “What Schulz felt about Frieda’s condition we do not know,
but he often puzzled over his own characters’ dwarflike proportions”… “Frieda had one magic quality that reached
deep into Peanuts: she was an adult in a child-shaped body… Frieda, present at the creation of Peanuts, helped to
forge Schulz’s greatest instrument: his characters’ union of constrained size with irreducible strength”… “Kids finally
sold. So I just kept on drawing kids”… “His baptism imparted a new sense of wholeness. His work improved; he was
conscious of a purpose and, as never before, of a sense of identity”… “Sparky took her on a date and he had found a
flaw in his princess”… “His hypersensitivity only made matters worse. Even at the best of times he had a genius for
being uncomfortable with others”… “Some people were uncomfortable with him because he was uncomfortable with
himself”… “He wanted to be liked by everyone”… “That’s the way it goes. Another rejection”… “He had made a
decision to serve Christ. He had this talent. He wanted his life to be significant. Perhaps this was a way”… “He
jokingly called himself the ‘world’s most unknown cartoonist’”… “Every day on every comics page, every cartoonist
had to fight for his share of attention”… “It came to him that the les he drew, the more he caught the eye. He would
‘fight back by using white space, for on a page jammed with comic strips, a small feature with lots of white space
attracted attention”… “Donna Johnson and her alone the role of Charles Schulz’s ‘first disappoint in love’ – the Little
Red-Haired Girl who continually left Charlie Brown an abandoned, lovesick calf”… “That the dismissive young lady
who had left Sparky Schulz to pull indecently profitable yearnings out of his would for half a century had received her
comeuppance as the ‘Red-Haired Girl who Missed Out on $30 Million a Year by Jilting ‘Peanuts’ Creator”… “You
never do get over your first love”… “I loved that little girl but her mother convinced her I would never amount to
anything”… “He never stopped insisting that the title Peanuts was ‘the worst title ever thought of for a comic strip’”…
“He was ready for marriage”… “On their first dates, Sparky found that, as with Judy, he could relax. Joyce did all the
talking. She had an acute sense of the ridiculous”… “He may not have aroused her passions as Bill Lewis had, but
neither was he running away from her, or running around with other women”… “I really loved Sparky, even though he
was homely”… “Charles Schulz did not need to be happy – he needed to be loved”… “He continually felt divided
between professional and domestic obligation”… “Charlie Brown reminded people, as no other cartoon character had,
of what it was to be vulnerable, to be small and alone in the universe, to be human – both little and big at the same
time”… “Before Lucy, Peanuts had been relatively quiet”… “Loneliness gave him his first lessons in the elations and
regrets of the artist; his mother’s early death and the world’s incapacity to notice his pain taught him the rest”… “To
his intense surprise, Peanuts showed signs of taking off”… “When Charlie Brown first confessed, ‘I don’t feel the way
I’m supposed to feel,’ he spoke for Eisenhower’s America, especially for that generation of solemn, cynical college
students, who read Charlie Brown’s utterances as existential statements about the human condition”… “Even in this
happy-ending nation, Schulz’s strip rarely ends happily”… “Many of the profession’s Old Guard of Cartooning could
not at first see Peanuts as anything but an oddity. It didn’t have any gags in it”… “He continually wrestled ‘with
something dark and unloving. Melancholy is the best word to describe it’”… “From his father, Sparky had learned that
building a business meant catering to the customer, one nickel at a time”… “First and foremost a professional, never an
artist only”… “The award was the happiest and the loneliest triumph of his life”… “Schulz presented himself to a
suddenly interested world as a ‘nothing young man from St. Paul’ who had ‘parlayed his own frustrations and
disappointments into wealth and fame’”… “All this might never have come to pass if Schulz hadn’t been such a
miserable failure”… “Fredric Wetham warned parents that comic books, ‘the marijuana of the nursery,’ would lead
their innocent children into a life of degradation and crime”… “This uneasiness at being away from home has been
diagnosed as a fear of being out of control”… “The Schulzes held a unique place in the congregation. ‘You might say
that God owns a one-tenth share of the comic strip ‘Peanuts’”… “Nobody liked it, but nobody would say anything:
nobody would cross Sparky, and that’s not good for a small church”… “Peanuts has gone public. The merchandisers
have moved in and converted what was once the private preserve of the cultural in-group into a firmly established,
national fad”… “Readers of his generation almost always thanked him for having ‘given us so many happy moments in
a worry-torn world’”… “Linus’s ability to raise clear, hard issues had become one of the sources of the strip’s power.
Linus’s conversations with Charlie Brown demonstrated that pain, voiced through humor as loneliness, disappointment,
rage, had a proper place in the daily culture of comics”… “Now began an era of Schulz’s life in which everything he
thought of was applied by other talents to successive media, from records to stage and screen and television, onward to
ever more goods and services. ‘It’s nice to be able to get double action from things’”… “Schulz loathed the hyena
hilarity of canned merriment and rightly judged that an audience would not have to be told when and where to laugh;
Mendelson countered that al comedy shows used such tracks”… “Christmas Time Is Here” elicited the unarticulated
emotions lying below the holiday’s joyful surface”… “The meaning behind the Christmas holiday was being lost. So
Sparky insisted that the season’s true meaning could be found in the Gospel according to St. Luke, and they agreed that
the show would somehow work in the Nativity story”… “Network broadcasting in the early 1960s was driven by a
single, impossible mission: to please everyone and offend no one”… “In the world of national entertainment was
concerned, religion – or, more exactly, religious differences – did not exist”… “I don’t’ think God wants to be
worshipped. I think the only pure worship of God is by loving one another”… “I find it very difficult to know how to
pray sometimes”… “He was not, as he understood the term, religious. Ceremony bored him”… “He identified a
‘frightening trend: people who regard Christianity and Americanism as being virtually the same thing”… “In the
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screening room at the network headquarters in New York, two CBS vice presidents watched the Charlie Brown
Christmas Special in silence. Neither of them laughed once. ‘Well, you gave it a good try. It seems a little flat. Too
slow, and the script is too innocent. The Bible thing scares me. The animation was crude, - couldn’t it be jazzed up a
bit? The voice talent was unprofessional – they should have used adults. The music didn’t fit – who ever heard of a jazz
score on an animated special? An d where were the laughs?’”… “His father’s funeral came and went; Charles never
showed up”… “His answer to his father’s death was to resume the daily routine of drawing his comic strip. The
methodical creation of six daily strips and a Sunday page oriented him, channeled his anxieties”… “Their minimally
ambitious social life”… “Sparky was a disciplinarian with the kids. He couldn’t cope with things that weren’t positive.
He didn’t like confrontation”… “At the marriage’s outset, Schulz had been Charlie Brown to Joyce’s Lucy, but as time
went on, he was even more Schroder, immersed in his art, aloof, withholding”… “For Schroeder, ambition trumps
dependence. If he turns out to be a first-class composer, the music will justify his isolation, and he will be able to hold
the whole world at bay. And there is no difference here; he knows he will be a great composer, as Sparky knew he had
it in him to be a great cartoonist”… “Unable to draw Schroder’s attention from the disciplines of art”… “He was deeply
ambivalent about his relationship with the reader. One the one hand, ‘I draw my comic strip for myself. I don’t do it to
bring joy to the world. That’s insane’; on the other, ‘I would be satisfied if they wrote on my tombstone, ‘He made
people happy.’ Either way, he knew that if he got too close to his audience, he would be destroyed”… “Repetition itself
gave him comfort. The process of going in every day, sequestering himself in the studio, and regaining contact with the
energy and force of his imagination made him feel real and alive”… “In his own transformation from ordinary citizen
to extraordinary cartoonist, he followed the Clark-Kent-to-Superman routine of freeing himself from his specs”…
“When I sit behind the drawing board I feel that I am in command”… “When sitting down to work, ‘he changes. He
becomes integrated, intense, concentrated. His right hand never makes a wasted motion”… “A professional cartoonist
has to have the ability to take a blank sheet of paper and out of absolutely nothing come up with an idea within five or
ten minutes. If you can’t deliberately do that, then you’re never going to make it. You just have to be able to do it cold
bloodedly”… “A woman friend who knew him then later reflected that he preferred to think of himself as unattractive
because if he were attractive, ‘maybe the girls would fall for him and then he’d be in a dangerous situation”… “He
worries all the time”… “Most of the cartoonists that I know are kind of depress, or they’re melancholy. I think a lot of
us are very melancholy. But from that feeling comes humor”… “Attacks of panic came more frequently now”…
“Happiness is sleeping in your own bed”… “29 Years of Being 8 Years Old” or “Don’t Grow Up”… “I don’t want to
go to a psychiatrist because it will take away my talent”… “The unprecedented success of Peanuts as a brand (with
gross earnings of $20 million by 1967, $50 million by 1969,, and $150 million by 1971)”… “I’m torn between being
the best artistically and being the Number One strip commercially”… “Snoopy’s stardom grew out of Schulz’s ability
to create an intimate bond by letting the reader in on the dog’s continual awakening to his most human thoughts. The
basis for this bond was trust”… “Snoopy’s fantasy universe”… “What would it be like to feel happy?”… “Try as he
might, Sparky could not elicit from Joyce the love he wanted, nor could he make her feel loved or desired”… “The real
reason they wanted to sell their house: ‘Sparky and I were not getting along’”… “Even my mother noted his complete
lack of tenderness. ‘The Germans are not an affectionate race’”… “He got a little better as he got older but not
much”… “Snoopy’s dream world more and more dominated the strip”… “Eternally lonesome man wondering whether
he had been loved”… “His limitations oppressed him, and he found himself newly demoralized in his old search for
true love, insight, understanding. Should he just stay home and settle for what little he got there – and what little he
gave – or did he dare to go out into the world, risking rejection and failure and hurt? And if he did find someone who
made him feel handsome and funny and understood, what then?”… “Sparky was big on anyone who stroked his ego,
especially cute young women”… “They concealed a lack of commonality. Sparky was not interested in – indeed, was
fearful of – two of Joyce’s passions: riding and travel. Joyce had never been a devotee of the comics”… “Janell would
never be quite sure how to explain their relationship. ‘We never had an affair but something much more touching. I
always called it an affair of the heart’”… “You want the fame and fortune, but not some of the things that go with it.
The only way he knew how to handle it was by withdrawing. He preferred to be incognito”… His oldest adopted
daughter had an abortion in Japan at age 18… “Joyce wanted a man – a romantic man, but Sparky was not the man she
wanted him to be”… “He consciously welcomed romantic agony as artistically useful. For people of his work capacity
– especially his capacity to harness doubt (especially self-doubt), anxiety, frustration, and the dark night of the soul –
misery is a strategy”… “Peggy Fleming was a ‘shy Bambi-like teenager’, combined with the green mini-dress and all
that it revealed as she twirled curvaceously on the flat cold whiteness. She was the American Girl Next Door, and she
gave men of Sparky’s generation an invitation for the first time outside the pages of Playboy magazine to look without
restriction at a young sportswoman’s legs, knees, thighs – ‘more thigh than any pre-sixties girl-watcher could ever have
hope to see in public’. Sparky was not alone in his crush”… “Tracey dreamed of marrying a professor, with summers
off to read and write together”… “Skating between two pretty girl. If I’m asleep, please don’t wake me”… “They loved
to tease each other”… “But the central trend of all this byplay was Tracey pulling Sparky out of a funk. She recognized
that he needed someone to buoy him up out of self-preoccupation and melancholy”… “He just needed somebody who
didn’t make him feel alone”… “He conducted the secret romance in the presence of the one person whom he already
trusted. Charlie Brown stood in for him in the unfolding private realm to which he had admitted Tracey. Now he
wanted to let that most faithful of his companions, the daily reader of Peanuts, into his new magic”… “I do not want to
be the woman who ruined the innocence of the Peanuts characters”… “He loved an ideal,” said Tracy, “I matched the
ideal”… “He was in love with her and, having revealed himself, hoped that she too would catch fire”… “He glossed
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over her stories, resuming his worshipful rhetoric”… “She had worried that he loved her – needed her – more than she
loved and needed him”… “He had no feeling for kids. He didn’t see the wonder they had”… “When Tracey was honest
with herself, she saw that she was living their affair in three dimensions and he was not”… “He sentimentalized her to
the point of invisibility. She later described them as ‘wonderful, romantic, flowery words’”… “Sparky, I can’t fulfill
that need you have for someone to be there holding your hand”… He communicated his secret life through his comic
strip… “’I wonder if it’s possible to be in love with two different girls at the same time.’ Two days later, Charlie Brown
discovers that ‘being in love with two different girls can make you do strange things’”… “He asked Tracey to marry
him. The intensity of his feelings – or his desperation – may be measured by another meeting he had arranged with
Donna Johnson Wold a month earlier… ‘Just talk to her and see if there was a spark in her eye’”… “She burst into
tears at how desperate – but how unimaginatively, out-of-touch desperate – he was to marry her. It was a pleas as much
as a proposal”… “She had no illusions about Sparky now. She adored him, but that was not enough. He raised
enormous conditions for being loved, and she knew that nothing that she could do would ever be enough – the
endlessness of longing in romance would turn into endlessness of demand once enclosed in marriage. In the end, his
nourishment would always come from his creation first, such nourishment as it was – because there he need not have,
would not have, real people as partners”… “But he still called Tracey several times (giving her an impression of
‘fishing’) and Donna also”… “Meredith, at a rebellious remove from family conventions, saw that Sparky had
emotionally starved Joyce: ‘The difference between Ed and my dad was that Ed stroked my mother emotionally; and
my dad had not learned that women need that first. How would he?’”… “Some of the best work he ever did was when
his own personal life was in turmoil. He would withdraw from that world and go into the other world and be more
creative than ever”… “’You and I have the same problem: we don’t fit in.’ They fitted with each other”… “We both
felt that we didn’t belong anywhere in our families”… “Lucy had been the strip’s channel to the adult word: a matron
brilliantly disguised as a little girl”… “In small but important ways, the central Peanuts characters had become rather
dull and adult”… “His ability to transmute raw joy and pain as well as unassimilable events and moods from his own
life into line”… “As Schulz spoke about his wives, Doolittle saw the transition from Joyce to Jeannie as ‘out of the
depressing fire and into an exciting, anxiety-producing frying pan’”… He was agoraphobic. “When his dread of travel
intensified to the point where he was ‘forced to give up many wonderful opportunities,’ he felt ashamed and strove, as
he put it, to be ‘more mature’”… “Peanuts was now so many things to so many people – an ‘ongoing parable of
contemporary American existence,’ a ‘distillation of modern childhood,’ a ‘comic opera,’ a ‘personal work,’ and at the
same time a ‘universal language’”… “Versatility is the key (to the Peanuts merchandising)”… “He read his rivals’
strips ‘the way all cartoonists do, looking to see if they won, if they beat everyone else that day’”… “Garfield let loose
the insecurities that lay behind Schulz’s competiveness”… “In 1977, as negotiations deadlocked, Payette made
clandestine arrangements for the veteran backup cartoonist Alfred J. Plastino to draw several months of Peanuts
Sunday strips and dailies against the day that Schulz refused to sing a new contract”… “Word of their existence
circulated for years at United Media, hovering between rumor and urban legend”… “Of all the themes of his life that
remained unresolved, none gave him greater personal difficulty or more long-lasting professional success than
loneliness – ‘aloneness’”… “It kept recurring, no matter how well loved he was, no matter how often he attempted a
fresh start”… “Sparky fell in love with every girl”… “Jeannie, who understood his need to have crushes quite often –
because they kept him young”… “Schulz used to be years ahead of other cartoonists. He did things we now take for
granted: reading the thoughts of an animal, for example”… “He was the first minimalist of the comics page”… “When
Charlie Francis Brown, after years of alternating alcoholism and sobriety, closeting his homosexuality, and other
struggles, succumbed to cancer, Sparky noted the date”… “But every friendship with a snowman is doomed”… “His
greatest accomplishment, he said, was ‘making the most out of what limited talent I have’”… “Drawing had been the
one area in which the son was free to play, to feel, to be a child, and to be creative; Peanuts had preserved that sacred
grove for fifty years. And now it was to be cut down”… “As the cancer broke him down, all restraint on his emotions
collapsed, too… Shining tears spilled down his face”… “Millions of fans felt that they were losing something precious
and personal”… “It is amazing that they think that what I do was that good. I just did the best I could do”… “He still
wanted to meet the kids who had bullied him face-to-face and get even”… “He had no control over his death. He didn’t
accept it graciously. He wasn’t ready”… “The strip had allowed him an illusion of eternity. Comics never end, no story
is ever finished, four more blank panels await the next installment. When finally he fell ill, the fantasy was irrevocably
broken, and he discovered that he was a creature of time, ordinary after all”… “Charles M. Schulz had died in his sleep
of complications of colon cancer, just hours before the final Peanuts strip appeared around the world. To the very end,
his life had been inseparable from his art. In the moment of ceasing to be a cartoonist, he ceased to be.”
“A Charlie Brown Christmas”: by Charles M. Schulz. I used to read “Peanuts” every day when I was eight through
eighteen years old. I’d always anxiously get the newspaper and flip to the Comics section to read my favorite,
“Peanuts”. It was part of my upbringing as a merciful dose of humor to help me through the day. I empathized with the
characters. I loved them like friends. The bittersweet hilarity that Schulz put into the comic strip literally got me
through the pain of school… There is such a melancholy mixed in with the innocence of the “Peanuts” characters
during Christmas. It’s comic strip pathos. Charlie Brown is always depressed. “I know no one likes me.” He was just an
sensitive victim who received the cruelty of his peers and of life in general. Meanwhile, Snoopy is always playing.
What a hilarious contrast the two of them were together… Psychiatric Help: 5 Cents… The Christmas festival dancing
children is the best dancing I’ve ever seen!! What crazy moves!
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-R. Crumb (Robert Crumb)/ Crumb
Notes from The R. Crumb Handbook: What I find so pleasurable about reading R. Crumb and Harvey Pekar’s
autobiographical graphic novels is it feels like my own brazenly honest and personal journal writings drawn out as a
comic book. It makes me realize the possibilities for my writings to become… “Part of becoming a collector was
religiously visiting secondhand stores like the Salvation Army”… “My vision of the world was very much influenced
by my older brother Charles, who lived mostly in the world of imagination and fantasy”… “All my natural
compulsions are perverted and twisted. Instead of going out and challenging myself against other males, all those
impulses are channeled into sex. That’s why I want to ravage big women: that’s how I get out all my aggressions, and
fortunately I’ve found lots of women who like that! Oh thank the gods! Thank the forces that rule our destinies!”…
“Howdy Doody was an alien being, and the way the puppets moved was bizarre and dreamlike. Clarabell Clown was
scary. My wife Aline tells of a ‘coming-of-age’ moment in her life when she was eight years old and got to be a guest
in the ‘Peanut Gallery’ on The Howdy Doody Show. She saw the world the adults were trying to present to children,
and the reality behind the scenes, were two different things, Buffalo Bob, the adult star of The Howdy Doody Show, off
camera, was mean and scowling, but, as soon as the camera was on, he was all smiles, “Hey kids! What time is it? It’s
Howdy Doody Time!” Everybody off camera was sleazy and stressed out. You had this uneasy feeling as a kid that
something was going on that they were not showing you – something that was ugly. Adults were hiding something
from us. And that’s such a fascinating thing, the adult interpretation of the kid’s world. A world artificially sweetened
for kids, full of things kids were supposed to like and want. We sat in front of the television on Saturday mornings and
looked at kids’ stuff. The shows tried to tell kids that life could b fun and exciting, but the unconscious message was
that he adult world is strange, twisted, perverse, threatening, sinister. I think my brother Charles was hyper sensitive to
this, and because his imagination was so active it was sometimes crippling for him”… “The style of those Our Gang
comedies was so charming that I started acting and talking like Jackie Cooper and Alfalfa. They had these cute kid,
artificial mannerisms. It must have been embarrassing for people to hear me talk like that. I made myself a kind of
Jackie Cooper hat by trimming down the brim on a kid’s cowboy hat. I walk around wearing that hat for a while”…
“All the media at that time presented an image of a happy consumer America. Family life with all modern
conveniences was pushed aggressively everywhere, creating a contradiction that was very stressful and very confusing.
The illusion was the opposite of the sordid reality of everyday life, with stressed parents fighting each other, and
worrying about paying the bills. There’s a fantasy world created by the media. When we actually try to live it, we don’t
know why it’s not working. The promise can never be fulfilled. It’s just a sales pitch”… “And here I am today,
excommunicated”… “You just can’t be too goddam sensitive in this world. I was too fucking s-e-n-s-i-t-i-v-e!”…
“Wayne Parker, a guy I knew in the tenth grade, bragged about how he had personally dragged two little black girls out
of the school by their hair. Wayne was a very popular guy. All the girls liked him. He had a beautiful girlfriend, the
magnificent Dolly Hensley. Oh, the injustice!”… “Charles could have become a psychopathic criminal, because he was
kind of going in that direction, but he was saved from that fate by his cultural interests. I, myself, was evolving into a
bitter social reject”… “Then my sexuality began to kick in. Oh my God, was that painful! I was consumed with lust. I
watched Sheena, Queen of the Jungle starring Irish McCalla on a hard-to-tune-in TV station I the summer of 1956. I
couldn’t wait to go to bed at night and fantasize about me and Sheena!”… “I dreamed of strong women. My sexuality
has been rather quirky ever since, in a state of arrested development, and it makes me want to have my way with big,
strong, powerful women. I don’t’ know why, I just do”… “My mother was completely crazy”… “I had no plans to go
to college and no prospects. I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do’… “At the age of twenty-one, I started
asking myself, ‘Is this it? Is this my life now, until I grow old, and retire? I go to work at American Greetings, have a
drink with the boys after work, go home to the wife, have an unsatisfying relationship, have a couple of kids, buy a
house in Garfield Heights… Oh my God… Is this my life?’ That’s why I ran away from home in January of 1967 to
join the hippies. That seemed like a much more exciting prospect. I became good at running away! That was one of my
main talents when I was young”… “In the Army of the Stoned”… “I was a young punk, I admit it. I was trying to run
away from my marriage, my job, and a value system that was, for me, unbearable”… “I returned to my job in the Hibrow department at American Greetings. Almost everybody who worked there was depressed and alcoholic”… “Dana
and I began experimenting with LSD, which was not yet illegal in 1965. I took LSD as a sort of substitute for
committing suicide”… “The Beat literature gave me an alternate point of view about living in America that we were
not getting from our parents, from school, from television, or Life magazine”… “When I was young, drawing comic
books had no sex appeal whatsoever. Any silly assed poetry attracted women more than drawing comics. There was
just nothing romantic about being a cartoonist. I knew a couple of well meaning girls who urged me to forget about
comics and pick up some paints and canvas and take up oil painting”… “I took some bad acid in November of 1965,
and the after effect left me crazy and helpless for six months. My mind would drift into a place that was very electrical
and crackly, filled with harsh, abrasive, low grade, cartoony, tawdry carnival visions”… “Most of my popular
characters all suddenly appeared in the drawings in my sketchbook in this period, every 1966. Amazing!”… “Dana was
eight months pregnant with our son, Jesse, and we were living on welfare”… “I was only twenty-five years old when
all this happened. It was a case of ‘too much too soon,’ I think”… “I didn’t want to turn into a greeting card artist for
the counter-culture! I didn’t want to do ‘shtick’ – the thing Lenny Bruce warned against. That’s when I started to let out
all my perverse sex fantasies”… “From 1968 to 1973 I worked like a dog! I did so many comics! Man, I was
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prolific!”… “As my fame grew, my work got darker and darker”… “It’s probably better not to have that kind of
success when you’re young. If it happens when you’re older, you’re likely to be better able to cope with it”…
“Bukowski had observed that successful artists and writers get spoiled by all the lavish attention, especially from rich
people, bourgeois people, and then they don’t have anything to say any more. They get bought off, basically. The last
thing I want to be is someone who is constantly being gawked at, and trotted out like some fucking celebrity. Horrible!
Sure, I always wanted to get recognition for my work, but I prefer to be the anonymous observer on the sidelines. I
never had any desire to be ‘America’s Best Loved Underground Cartoonist.’ That was supposed to be a joke, not my
life”… “The film industry is a filthy, rotten business, and I don’t want anything more to do with it”… “Before anybody
had heard of me, I used to wander aimlessly up and down a five block stretch of Haight Street, ogling all the beautiful
young hippie girls, full of self-pity. Then, in 1968, when Zap Comix came out, my life changed completely. I started
getting phone calls and people coming to the door wanting to get high with me. Oh, how my pathetic ego ate it p! I was
the center of a kind of attention I’d never experienced before. I found I had a lot less time on my hands. Practically
overnight I went from being ignored to being pestered all the time”… “All the people who work in the commercial
culture are part of a conspiracy against the average man to get his money. They are not concerned with what effect their
product might ultimately have, physically or spiritually”… “Industrial civilization figured out how to manufacture
popular culture and sell it back to the people. You have to marvel at the ingenuity of it! The problem is that the longer
this buying and selling goes on, the more hollow and bankrupt the culture becomes. It loses fertility, like worn out,
ravaged farmland”… “Ralph Bakshi, the director of the Fritz the Cat film, was a guy who really wanted to become the
hip Walt Disney. He really wanted to do this thing, make the first X-Rated, full-length animated cartoon. But when it
came down to vision and content, he just didn’t have any original ideas. As soon as he strayed away from my story,
Bakshi’s movie fell apart. Ultimately, he was just another one of those media jockeys trying to cash in on the hippy
culture without actually being a part of it”… “Aline and I saw American Splendor in New York, and she told me
afterward that if I was like the actor had portrayed me in the movie, she never would have married me. She hated his
rendition of me”… “Life has gotten altogether too complicated… I’m bogged down in a mire of economic
entanglements, legal obligations, business ties… endless bullshit! I never wanted a life like this… I wanted a simple,
down-to-earth existence… It’s my karma for wanting to be famous, I suppose…”… “And remember: It’s only lines on
paper, folk!!”… “The pleasure is ours, folks! We really like drawing dirty cartoons! It helps us get rid of pent-up
anxieties and repressions and all that kinda stuff… We hope you enjoy lookin’ at ‘em as much as we enjoy drawin’
em!!”… “Hey, me, I love it, but it’s way too negative and uncommercial! So, what else ya got?”… “Buck Henry, a
comedy writer and sometimes Saturday Night Live performer, gave us an audience of forty-five minutes and said he’d
read our script. WE dropped if off at his house in the Hollywood Hills. “Look guys,” Buck Henry said to us as we were
leaving, “Before you go I want to show you something!” He opened his garage door and in one corner were hundreds of
movie scripts thrown in a random heap about four feet high. “And that’s just the last few months,” he said. “Are any of
them any good?” I asked. “Hey, you wanna read some a’ them? Go ahead, take some!” he urged me. Terry and I called
him two days later. He had read our script”… “But I’m a slave to immortality. I wanted it from the very beginning. I
just didn’t know what I was getting myself into”… “All my life I’ve been a slave to that butt. Yes, the motion of a big,
round, human female butt while she’s walking has the same effect that the blossom has on the bee. To see is to desire!
It’s primal. It’s an animal reflex”… “The truth is, my sexuality is very quirky and eccentric. Out of all the women I’ve
been intimate with, only a few were truly exciting partners”… “When the circumstances are right, when the chemistry
works, then sex is the most profoundly thrilling experience imaginable. But, you can’t have that on a routine basis. At
least, I can’t. It’s just the nature of the game! Deprivation enhances the desired object – every desired object! If heaven
meant having everything you desired in life, whenever you wanted it, eventually it would become meaningless. And
then what? Where do you go from there? What do we really want? What is this yearning, this ‘fire in our bellies?’”…
“When my daughter Sophie was born in 1981, I changed. I became more conservative. I believe in law, order, stability!
You gotta have it for the protection of the children!”… “Dad, how do trees poop?”… “Vulture Goddess”… “He
yearned for a life of quiet study, high above this vail of tribulations and tears”… “Draw or die!”… R. Crumb’s
Depression Graph: “Parents fighting, first awareness of feeling depressed”… “Shock of puberty, social alienation,
sexual obsession”… “Late Adolescence: profound alienation, self-pity, thoughts of suicide”… “But these days we’re
locked into a process of compulsory innovation where every artist must be a rebel to get any sort of recognition. To be
merely at the top of your craft just isn’t enough”… “What people respond to more than anything else are stories.
Strong, simple narratives. It was through my brother Charles’ relentless criticism that I learned how to be a coherent
storyteller. Charles was a highly narrative conscious cartoonist, whereas I was more pictorial”… “It was very
intimidating for me. I always felt like such a second-rate artist compared to him”… “The best comics combine both
powerful images and strong narrative. Most cartoonists are stronger in one or the other. Many artists with technical
ability are good image makers, basically illustrators. Other artists have minimal art skills, but are good story tellers,
with an understanding of plot structure, character development and dialogue. It’s rare to find in one artist both of these
elements combined with equal strength. If you look at a comic page drawn by Jack Davis or at Wally Woods’ science
fiction stuff, who cares about the narrative? But the artwork is wonderful, a true pleasure to the eye. What technique!
With Charles Schulz or Jules Feiffer, it’s quite the opposite. The story’s great, but the artwork’s not much to look at. In
comics there’s always this dichotomy”… “Most cartoonists have about a ten year run of inspiration and creativity.
After that they begin to burn out from the relentlessness of churning out comics on a regular basis. They are totally
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locked into their contract, their standard of living, their family responsibilities. They’re forced to keep producing, like it
or not”… “I was lucky to be part of the ‘underground comix’ thing in which cartoonists were completely free to
express themselves. To function on those terms means putting everything out in the open – no need to hold anything
back – total liberation from censorship, including the inner censor! A lot of my satire is considered by some to be ‘too
hard.’ My ‘negro’ characters are not about black people, but are more about pushing these ‘uncool’ stereotypes in
readers’ faces, so suddenly they have to deal with a very tacky part of our human nature. Yeah, it’s tough. Maybe it’s
too much for the, I dunno. Even Kurtzman was shocked. Who did I think I was appealing to? I don’t know. I was just
being a punk, putting down on paper all these messy parts of the culture we internalize and keep quiet about. I admit
I’m occasionally embarrassed when I look at some of that work now”… “The fine art world and the commercial art
industry are both all about money. It’s hard to say which is more contemptible: the fine art world with its double talk
and pretensions to the cultural high ground, or the world of commercial art trying to sell to the largest mass market it
can reach. A serious artist really shouldn’t be too deeply involved in either of these worlds. It’s best to be on the fringe
of them. In general, if you want to be a success and make the big money, you have to play the game. It’s no different in
the fine art world, it’s just a slightly different game. Essentially, you’re marketing an illusion. It’s much easier to lie to
humans and trick them than to tell them the truth. They’d much rather be bamboozled than be told the truth, because
they way to trick them is to flatter them and tell them what they want to hear, to reinforce their existing illusions. They
don’t want to know the truth. Truth is a bring-down, a bummer, or it’s just too complicated, too much mental work to
grasp”… “Curators and gallery people are not oriented toward cartoons, comics, or commercial art. That world is quite
alien to them”… I think for the most part that museum people are buying into my work because of this critical
acclaim”… “If your statement is too straightforward, easily grasped, then it’s not ‘fine art,’ or what?”… “My
generation comes from a world that has been molded by crass TV programs, movies, comic books, popular music,
advertisements and commercials. My brain is a huge garbage dump of all this stuff and it is this, mainly, that my work
comes out of, for better or worse. I hope that whatever synthesis I make of all this crap contains something worthwhile,
that’s it’s something other than just more smarmy entertainment – or at least, that it’s genuinely high quality
entertainment. I also hope that perhaps it’s revealing of something, maybe. On the other hand, I want to avoid
becoming pretentious in the eagerness to give my work deep meanings!”… “The way I see it, we are all just so much
chopped liver. We have this great gift of human intelligence to help us pick our way through this treacherous tangle,
but unfortunately we don’t seem to value it very much. Most of us are not brought up in environments that encourage
us to appreciate and cultivate our intelligence. To me, human society appears mostly to be a living nightmare of
ignorant, depraved behavior. Were all depraved, me included. I can’t help it if my work reflects this sordid view of the
world. Also, I feel that I have to counteract all the lame, hero-worshipping crap that is dished out by the mass-media in
a never-ending deluge”… “The Litany of Hate: I’m such a negative person, and always have been. Was I born this
way? I don’t’ know. I am constantly disgusted by reality, horrified and afraid. I cling desperately to the few things that
give me some solace, that make me feel good. I hate most of humanity. Though I might be very fond of particular
individuals, humanity in general fills me with contempt and despair. I hate most of what passes for civilization. I hate
the modern world. For one thing there are just too goddamn many people”… “I despise modern popular music. Words
cannot express how much it gets on my nerves – the false, pretentious, smug assertiveness of it. I hate business, having
to deal with money. Money is one of the most hateful inventions of the human race… I hate the mass media, and how
passively people suck up to it. I hate having to get up in the morning and face another day of this insanity. I hate having
to eat, shit, maintain the body – I hate my body”… “How I hate the courting ritual! I was always repelled by my own
sex drive, which in my youth, never left me alone. I was constantly driven by frustrated desires to do bizarre and
unacceptable things with and to women. My soul was in constant conflict about it. I never was able to resolve it. Old
age is the only relief”… “I hate all the vacuous, false, banal conversation that goes on among people. Sometimes I feel
suffocated. I want to flee from it”… “As a matter of survival I’ve created this anti-hero alter-ego, a guy in an ill-fitting
suit – part humunculus and part clown. Yep, that’s me alright… I could never relate to heroes. I had no interest in
drawing heroic characters. It’s not my thing, man. I’m more inclined toward the sordid underbelly of life. I find it more
interesting to draw grotesque, lurid, or absurd pictures, and I especially enjoy depicting my fevered sexual obsessions.
Some people don’t like to see this perverse sexual stuff; ugly weird little guys doing bizarre, twisted things to beautiful
buxom women. This part of my work repels a lot of people. But as fate would have it, I became famous anyways. It’s a
curious thing. And then I got to live out my fantasies in real life! I was ‘lucky.’ As my fellow underground cartoonist,
Jay Lynch, once put it, ‘You get what you draw!”, and it is true. I’ve gotten everything I’ve ever drawn. The good and
the bad. It’s a kind of concentrated focus, I guess, that makes it work that way”… “My work has a strong negative
element. I have my own inner demons to deal with. Drawing is a way for me to articulate things inside myself that I
can’t otherwise grasp. What I don’t want to do, what I dread more than anything, is to leave a legacy of crap. I don’t
want my work to be tossed in the dustbin of history, and become more of the second rate, mediocre junk that future
connoisseurs will have to move out of the way so they can get at the good stuff”… “As a person, I was weak and
helpless in the real world. To be so narrowly focused is dangerous to one’s mental health and can kill you. If you have
no ability to ‘take care of business’ you might find that you’ll have trouble surviving in this world. It’s a jungle out
there! But, since I’d rather be dead than mediocre, my motto is: Every Drawing a Masterpiece!”
I mostly learned about this brilliantly disturbed artist from reading his collected graphic novels and
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from watching the documentary Crumb, which single-handedly articulates what drives an artist... his
obsessions, his depression, and his fantasies. It’s all there, naked and bare. The movie also offered Crumb
a chance to explain and explore the depths of his own work through his own personal narration. Here’s
some of his quotes: “When I was 17, I realized I wanted to be a great artist - that would be my revenge (on
everyone who teased me when I was in high school)”... “Crumb’s material comes out of a deep sense of the
absurdity of American life” (much like my own art)... “I’m sure Picasso masturbated to his own work”... “Not
everything is for everybody”... “Too much passion... too much animal. I went into seizures”... I’m taking a
great chance revealing myself through my art... life is absurd; therefore, comics are the perfect medium... “A
lot of anger, a lot of rage...”
Crumb: I was immersed by the Crumbs' world of obsessions, fantasies, anger, and cartoons. He has to draw
so he won't get depressed... Animalistic and passionate urges... He has to express himself no matter how
disturbing or horrific his work (which is his life) can be on others. Extraordinary.
From “The R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book”: “I abandoned the church in favor of intellectualism”...
“In my early teens, I’d been traumatized by my failed attempt to participate in the vicious world of teenagers.
I was just crushed. I retreated to my room. I stayed home and got more into my art. I felt so painfully isolated
that I vowed I would get revenge on the world by becoming a famous cartoonist! I was very determined”... “I
remember it well. I had been deeply depressed and didn’t know what I was going to do with my life”...
“Crumb was a pretty quiet, retiring guy... Then people started to like his artwork and Crumb started to come
out of his shell socially and started hanging around with a bohemian crowd”... “At first, being married was
nice, but after six months, I began to feel very restless, very trapped”... “I don’t want to be just an entertainer
- I want to tell the truth”... Amen.
Crumb and I are both obsessive music collectors. As I read through his retrospective book, I
listened to the sad, beautifully simple 20’s and 30’s black music off the Crumb soundtrack over and over.
Read that R. Crumb considered himself a "desperate, pathetic character" for marrying the first girl
that came along since he never thought anyone would. My empathy with Crumb... I've had enough girls
reject me for Loneliness to be spelled with a capital letter. I've been with enough angst of love to treasure
anyone who would love me back.
With the atmosphere of Frank Zappa playing, I ventured into the outrageous world of R. Crumb's
comic book imagination. He turned sex into something so perverted and graphic, yet the shock of reading
his work was creatively inspiring since he went to such extremes. I would never have imagined of an
overgrown baby with woman's breasts feeding on Mr. Natural's cum... A plumber who tries to commit suicide
by flushing himself down a toilet... A pervert hiding in a woman's vagina....
Read that R. Crumb considered himself a "desperate, pathetic character" for marrying the first girl that came
along since he never thought anyone would. My empathy with Crumb... I've had enough girls reject me for Loneliness
to be spelled with a capital letter. I've been with enough angst of love to treasure anyone who would love me back.
Crumb: Love that old-time soundtrack… Crumb sitting alone in his room listening to his old records… “Taking the
courage to take a chance”… “The only voice he had was his pen”… “My mother thought he was a retard when she first
met him. He wouldn’t talk at all to those he didn’t feel comfortable with”… “God, where are they now? Middle-age
housewives? God, what a thought!”… “Expressing their connection to eternity”… “So Charles, read any good books
lately?”… “(I re-read my books because) I do that because there’s nothing else to do”… These are guys are detached
from modern life. They’d rather live in comics, old music, or their own personal sex fantasy worlds. They are human
beings that don’t fit into the real world… “A clustered environment with his books”… “Charles was actually much
funnier and better than I was”… “My sexual desires are completely dead”… “I have this sexual attraction to cute
cartoon characters”… “I was a handsome chap in high school. But there was something wrong about my personality”…
“He was a dreamboat, but he was also a bully”… “I’m on heavy tranquilizers. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to stand
living here with mother”… “I was trying to be a normal teenager”… “I decided to reject conformity when society
rejected me”… “Girls didn’t want to pose for me. Of course, all of that changed once I became famous”… “Lusting,
depraved voice of society”… “He made it okay for me to have a butt”… “I don’t think so. I don’t’ believe in giving
autographs”… “France is only slightly less evil than America”… “These are my people”… “I just come down here to
draw people”… “Crumb, what’s the matter with you? Don’t you like girls? Grow your hair long so women will like
you”… “Stream of consciousness comic strips”… “This whole thing was a horror show. Yet to her she thought it was
cute”… “The underground comix would print anything”… “What he was doing was far more innovative of anything
we had even thought of”… “I started drawing the dark side of my mind”… “This is just Crumb producing
pornography. This is coming out of an arrested juvenile development”… Crumb’s drawings are all around him as he
walks down San Francisco… “Words fail me… pictures aren’t much better”… “A lot of rage, a lot of anger”… “Two
recluses living in the same house”… “This crazy country”… “I can’t exist in relation to other people”… “Someone
tried to give me an enema when I was younger”… He’s selling a suitcase of his sketchbook of notebooks for a house in
France… “You really hated women”… “I get into certain types of women’s legs”… “I can have an orgasm playing
with someone’s foot”… R. Crumb’s constant nervous, sad laughter… “Robert isn’t orientated much with regular sex.
He likes piggy-back rides”… “He says he masturbates to his own comics”… “I’m sure some artists do masturbate to
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their own work”… “He is endowed with one of the biggest penises in the world”… “Do you think I’m sadistic”… “he
used to act like he was passively the victim. Or he was the victim of circumstance”… “He was really trying to get away
with whatever he could get away with”… “I don’t think I’ve ever been in love”… “The only person I’ve been in love
with has been Sophie, my darling daughter”… Aline: “Nobody bought my book... They’re about me”… “Robert and I
looked like immigrants that just got off the boat”… “The importance of black”… “I inherited the cuteness factor by
working at American Greetings”… “Exaggerate the defiance in her face. What do you want to express in her face?”…
“This is the kind of guys that read my work: single rejected guys”… Using photo references to use as backgrounds of
his drawings… “In the 50’s, they wanted this dull lifestyle. It all had this creepy, grotesque feel to it”… “A smiling
disease… it’s a sign of deep depression”… “He had a hard-ass idea of life”… “All of his sons become weepy, nerdy
sons”… “I have this unconscious desire to being punished. I was brought up by a sadistic bully”… “My mother was an
amphetamine addict to keep her weight down. She used to act so crazy”… “My father stopped talking to me after he
saw what I was doing in the late 70’s”… “This is just too weird, this is too disturbing”… “She had a second smaller
brain in her butt”… “This is the part where I get really excited”… “Doing things with a headless woman”… “I think
it’s irresponsible about having dangerous sexual fantasies exposed to the public”… “He depicts his id in its purest
sense. He gets it out in his artwork”… “I would be more well loved if I didn’t let out all this darkness that’s within
me”… “I hope that revealing that truth about myself is helpful to other people”… “You’ve got to protect children from
certain harsh realities of life. Some things are not for everyone”… “I didn’t really know what I was doing in the late
60’s. It just freed me up inside”… “Nigger hearts just came into my mind”… Crumb with a disgusted, depressed,
mournful expression on his face… “I’m too scared to kill myself”… “I can’t live in it”… This movie is just a lot to
take in. It just keeps eating away at you. Too many harsh realities and disturbing aspects of life presented in two short
hours… “Van Gogh shooting himself in a corn field”… “Stylized van Gogh painting”… “It was like something was
released from deep inside of you”… “It was so violent for me that I had a fucking seizure!”… “He was pretty far gone
at this point”… “This was the end of his comic period”… “It got stranger and stranger”… “It had to do with his
increasing alienation of the world, his isolation”… This is a portrait of artistic insanity… “I definitely needed some
kind of external stimulation”… “You were particularly interested in Asian women”… “I started molesting women
when I was 18”… “It’s too much passion, too much animal”… “Her ass pops out like a ripe peach”… “I wanted to
bash your face in”… “He still has all this anger and resentment within him”… “I still have a certain degree of
narcissism”… “When one’s narcissism is wounded, you want to strike back at the person who wounded them”… Max
Crumb is a beggar on the street… “Remember mother I am under the influence of medication”… “I started taking
medication when I first tried committing suicide”… “Jesus Christ”… “Why not have a lobotomy?”… “Grim. It’s
grim”… “Charles had a sexual attraction on the boy who played Jim Hawkins in ‘Treasure Island’. I get this has caused
him a lot of torment in his life”… “Everything has to be black and white. Everything has to be old-fashioned!”… “The
old man can’t show affection”… “A Short History of America”… These are extremely dysfunctional human beings…
“Do you think those guys are going to be sensitive to my record collection? A bunch of jocks?”… “What do I care
about my family?”… “We’re probably Max’s closest human relationship in the world”… “I’ve had so many years of
my life wasted with the bullshit of these Hollywood people”… “It would always take the wind out of my sails”…
“Extremely separated from the rest of the world”... “Charles committed suicide a year after conducting interviews for
this film… For Charles"… I think what scared me the most when I first watched this movie as a young art student was
how these Crumb brothers could be a scary future version of myself if I didn't keep my depression in check. I was
going through a lot of angst and depression while as an art student and didn't fully know what I was going to do for my
future. Here were two Crumb brothers, Charles and Max, who didn't know either… and look what happened to them.
One became a crushingly sad recluse on medication living with his mother who eventually committed suicide. The
other became a talented artist - but also a sex offender and street bum. I was absolutely frightened and disturbed by
these portraits of creative people who loved comics. Yet they turned into grim, living distortions of humanity. They
didn't fit into the larger world around them because they enjoyed living in the little comic book fantasy worlds they had
created for themselves. I felt a great deal of empathy for them. And yet here they were living doomed lives. When I
first saw this movie, I was freaked out of my sometimes agoraphobic mind because I didn't want to end up like that. I
was on that course though. I was also this reclusive artist type who stayed indoors more than going outside. I took antidepressants to stay "sane". This movie felt like a portrait of the future me if I didn't wise up and mature out of my
borderline agoraphobic state. This was like witnessing my alternate reality self in this lost soul, this failed artist. I
sincerely felt some days that I was heading in that lost, scary direction. It's no wonder I found myself working
obsessively throughout my remaining days in art school.
Crumb: I was immersed by the Crumbs' world of obsessions, fantasies, anger, and cartoons... Sexually
aroused at four years old... He has to draw so he won't get depressed... Animalistic and passionate urges...
He has to express himself no matter how disturbing or horrific his work (which is his life) can be on others.
Crumb: “The only voice he had was his pen”… “Some people are attracted to retards or cripples”… “Where are these
girls I once had crushes on 30 years ago in high school? Middle-aged housewives? God, what a thought!”… “I’m
reading all these books again because there’s nothing else to do”…. “You admired me because I was so detached from
the human race”… “I’d be completely worthless if I wasn’t creating comics”… “There’s still a sibling rivalry between
us brothers. I still want Charles’ approval”… “I have no sexual desires any more”… The dreamboat bully… “You were
even more afraid of women than I was in high school”… “I felt cruelly misunderstood because I was so talented and
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sensitive”… “I didn’t have this pressure to be normal anymore”… Janis Joplin to R. Crumb: “What’s wrong, Robert?
Don’t you like women?”… “I said, “Fuck it” to fame and started doing the dark side of my work”… “An arrested
adolescent vision”… A collage of just watching and drawing people… “I’m a quiet, well-behaved citizen”… A
suitcase of sketchbooks to pay for a house in France… “He is endowed with one of the largest penis’ in the world”…
“That whole relationship was chaos”… Losers “R” Us… “Too much smiling was a sign of severe depression”… “Her
brain was in the butt”… “It’s an acknowledgment that these sexual fantasies actually do exist in Homo sapiens”… “He
depicts his id in its darkest nature”… “I would probably be more loved if I didn’t release my darkest truths about
myself. Yet I had to do it”… “Not everything is for children. Not everything is for everybody”… “The LSD liberated
me so I didn’t think about what my work was about”… “It’s a beautiful world”… I’d quote this entire movie… “She’s
in therapy now”… “Stylized van Gogh in raw nature”… “I had an artistic experience that was so extreme I had a
fuckin’ seizure”… “He was pretty far gone at that point”… “It had nothing to do with the outside world – his work was
all internal”… “I definitely needed some sort of external simulation”… “I started molesting women at age 18”… “The
medication is the only thing that’s getting me through all this”… “Why? Why not have a lobotomy?”… “He has a hard
time of receiving affection from the ‘old man’”… “I have no patience for Hollywood bullshit.”
Crumb: Single-handedly articulates what drives an artist... His obsessions, his depression, his fantasies. It’s
all here, naked and bare... “I have this sexual attraction to cartoon characters”... This movie offers the artist a
chance to explain and explore the depths of his own work through his own personal narration... “When I was
17, I realized I wanted to be a great artist - that would be my revenge (on everyone who teased me when I
was in high school)”... “Crumb’s material comes out of a deep sense of the absurdity of American life” (much
like my own art)... “I’m sure Picasso masturbated to his own work”... “Not everything is for everybody”... “Too
much passion... too much animal. I went into seizures.”
Crumb: I’m taking a great chance revealing myself through my art... “I couldn’t wait to go to bed to have fantasies of
myself with Sheena”... life is absurd; therefore, comics are the perfect medium... “A lot of anger, a lot of rage...”...A
dangerous sense of humor... all the characters died when the movie ended.
Crumb: Unused Scenes: "It's a very black view of the world"… "I considered committing suicide that summer of high
school"… "What great legs she had"… "This guy wrote to her that he planned to kill himself and wanted to know if she
wanted his skin for her office"… "Mad magazine completely changed my outlook"… R. Crumb massive archives and
collections of old magazines and records… "It was beautiful and ugly to me at the same time"… He laughs at all the
despair in the world. It's his coping mechanism… "Grim"… "I found an ideal place to commit suicide"… "I didn't like
what everyone else liked."
Confessions of Robert Crumb: This is the other "Crumb" documentary… "We're underground cartoonists"… "He turns
the comic strip into a confessional"… “Maybe there’s something with me”… “I didn’t turn out normal”… “Self-hatred
is a strong motivating force in my work, not to mention my sex drive”… “I like American women in top physical
condition”… “I’m telling the truth about myself, take it or leave it”… “Despite all the women’s lib, most women are
still are drawn to the powerful and dominant alpha male type”… “I remember getting beat up by a girl in the third
grade”… “All us kids were rejected by the army”… “I swear to God I’ll never get married”… “Tickling can produce
tears”… “We lost ourselves in comics”… “My sexual libido awoken with a demonic intensity”… “This forward pelvic
effect – ‘the bean effect’ = The Perfect Female Body”… “This round and muscular rear end. Marvelous!”… “In the 8th
grade, all I did all day was stare at girls’ legs”… “Self-pity”… “I got heavy into collecting stuff”… “I became obsessed
with the past”… “Modern America seemed bankrupt”… “I got more and more into old music. It seemed more raw and
authentic. It probably came about because I was social outcast”… “He confesses to secret sins in his dairy”… “At this
time, I was a lonely, maladjusted weirdo”… “Then I met a fat, alienated, lonely girl. And then the next thing I knew, I
was married”… “She was as desperate as I was. The only thing we had in common was our desperation”… “In 1966,
my head was just spinning with visions of electric, animated craziness. I managed to get some of it down on paper”…
“I was too uptight to be a full-on hippie”… “What I learned from S. Clay Wilson was the absolute freedom to draw
whatever comes into your mind”… “It was very cathartic to get all this craziness out of my subconscious”… “There
was all these women who found us interesting. It was a feast to a starving man”… “They felt that they were
underground cartoonist heroes”… “I found that the music business was far worse than the cartoonist business”… “I
spent most of my life being an non-entity. Suddenly, there were all these people who wanted to talk to me”… “I
became more cynical and nastier because so many people acted like they loved me so much. That’s when my work
became darker. Let’s see if they like me now!”… “Every subculture has its conventions”… “It’s all modern and
alienating”… “Yet somehow, I kept working and making”… “My wife and girlfriends squandered all my money”… “I
became regulated as just another guy from the 60s”… “I had a breakdown. I couldn’t cope with anything”… “I enjoy
doing all these cross-hatching lines”… “It was real exhausting after our baby was born. I was breast-feeding and
getting no sleep. I resented Robert”… “A documentary-style comic book”… “It’s hard to keep that kind of
concentration in the modern world”… “It’s just one damn thing after another”… “But I’ve settled down now. Learned
to accept my responsibilities, more or less”… “Yes, we have it good here.”
“I didn’t see Robert Crumb for twenty-five years until the night of the 1990 Academy Awards. The
Adventures of Baron Munchausen had been nominated for four awards and my wife, being one of the nominees,
dragged me along to the ceremony. We lost on all fronts, and while the other awards were being doled out, we escaped
to the bar. All the losers were there and, as I pushed my way through the tuxedoed crush, there stood Bob… wearing a
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baggy tux and porkpie hat, looking eternally out of place. Everybody had a drink in their hand. Bob had his sketchbook.
He was scratching away for some magazine – just like the last time I had seen him. It was as if nothing had changed in
all those years. But things had. He had a mustache.” –Terry Gilliam’s remembrances on R. Crumb.
“Crumb is filled with more neuroses than all the patients crowded in the waiting room of some high-priced
Fifth Avenue analyst. He’s a walking mental institution. In the movie Crumb you realize how close genius and selfdestruction really are, how madness and brilliance meet, touch, bond. Art is what brings back genius from the edge. In
the film, we saw Crumb’s brother suffer anxiety and madness unmitigated by the kind of coherent vision Crumb
employs in his brilliant comics. The demons pounded on both Crumb brothers, but only Robert was able to fight back
successfully with his pen.” –Comments by Al Goldstein on R. Crumb.
“I would say what made it so popular in those days was that it spoke for a lot of people’s visions that they
had inside their heads, about life and a lot of people who took LSD and got stoned a lot. A lot of times they would see
things in my cartoons that fit that vision, so it caught a lot of people’s imaginations and that’s wha tmade it popular.
Now it doesn’t quite gel with the popular imagination quite as much. It’s a little bit offbeat or something”… “I don’t
know that popularity and quality necessarily have anything to do with one another. In fact, I had problems back then
with popularity really going to my head and making me very self-conscious about my work and causing me a lot of
problems”… “I’ve allowed my own imagination to completely cut loose and express exactly what was inside of me.
That’s what I really like about my work”… “I love music. It’s probably actually a more passionate interest for me than
comics”… “One of my main reasons to go on living is I still think I haven’t done my best work”… “I had a grim family
household while growing up, but we kids could always retreat into the wonderful, wacky world of comic books”… “I
used to think I was the most miserable person on the face of the earth in my adolescence; thought about committing
suicide a lot. It was from an acute feeling of alienation”… “My art is the result of some overwhelming need to
compensate for social rejection. When I was in my teens, I used to walk around with this bitter feeling, thinking that
some day they’d all be sorry. I’d show them, I’d become a great artist and go down in history and the rest of these bums
will just die like dogs. That’s way my way of getting revenge on society, instead of becoming a criminal”… “My
brother is totally isolated, he just reads and writes in his room all day and never goes out”… “If you’re an outsider and
you’re perceptive, you can se the picture in broader perspective. Also, from the anger an hurt of being an outsider you
develop a critical view of things. There’s something wrong with it because it rejects you”… “This is what you were
brought up and raised to do: find yourself on e of these fucking jobs, get a nice house in the suburbs, have a family. ‘Is
that it? There’s got to be something else’”… “Everything got so crazy in my life. With the wife and the girlfriends and
the money and the craziness, I ground to a halt. Just too drained. Too much craziness around me. I had to deal with it
and I just hadn’t been dealing with it”… “Being famous can make you want to commit suicide”… “I think I really need
two weeks by myself, just alone. And I came back here and by the time Aline got back with Sophie I felt 1,000 percent
better. I spent two weeks of doing nothing but sitting in this fucking studio by myself”… “So I’m free to pursue my
own vision if I have the time to do it. If I don’t work for a few days, I start feeling miserable. And if that goes on for
weeks, I get suicidal. I start going crazy”… “The Catch-22 is that it’s hard to be a dreamer and an artist and then at the
same time be a tough guy who knows how to deal with aggressive business people and that stuff”… “Michaelangelo
does nothing for me. Nothing. All that graceful muscle tone does nothing for me. Brueghel just hits me where I live. I
remember when I first saw Mad, it was just a revelation because it reflected the world I was living in so well. It was
like this wacky, zany reflection, an exact reflection of the real world, with the seaminess and grunginess that the real
world has. The real world is not clean and sleek and perfect. It was my world, my time, and the place that I lived in – it
just hit me like a bolt”… “Music is such an immediate experience”… “Once you’ve lost ties with any indigenous
culture, it’s very hard to make good music, I think. Then it becomes contrived and professionalized and over-produced
and everything like that. You go to places where indigenous cultures are still going strong and you’ll hear little groups,
the most common peasants, do some absolutely beautiful music that’s deeply moving. It’s very simple, but they’re
putting so much of themselves into it without any contrivance or self-consciousness at all, or any attempt to get chartaction”… “The average person will say, ‘I can’t sing, I can’t do that.’ If they don’t sound like Bruce Springsteen, they
think they can’t do it. The professionalization has intimidated them from expressing anything themselves, so they just
live in a constant state of distraction, being fed entertainment, all from a professional source, which is set up to make a
lot of money for the people involved in it”… “Almost entirely autobiographical. Some of his best writing is in these
letters he writes to people. Real offhand, talking about his life. It’s so great, so rich. Since I’m part of the modern
American phenomenon myself, I’m attracted to autobiographical and diary writing much more than I am to novels or
fiction. There’s too much bullshit in those things”… “Artists who will actually allow their subconscious to have some
type of play in their work are rare”… “But there’s a certain keenness of concentration that I had when I was 19 through
25 that I don’t have any more. The complete, total focus on whatever it was I was doing, without distractions.
Complete, clear, no interference, no static of any kind coming through your mind. Part of it was not having any
responsibilities then. And now I’m 43 and life is really complicated. It has something to do with that. And it’s also a
physical thing”… “If I don’t drawn for a few days I get really depressed. Life becomes completely meaningless. I’m so
tied up with the drawing thing. I’m nothing if I’m not drawing. Art is my life”… “As you get older, just the
accumulation of your life becomes an inspiration. It’s therapy. Make sense of it all. Probe it and understand it”… “I
would judge and condemn work on whether it was interesting or boring, whether it was honest and truthful and real, orr
whether it was just somebody attempting to pander to some market they think is out there, or trying to imitate
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something they’ve seen”… “The honesty and the depth of perception of the subject is what makes the work good”…
“The more you can let that subconscious loose in your work, the more interesting it makes the work. One of the keys to
expressing yourself in your art is to try to break through self-restraint, to see if you can get past that socialized part of
your mind, the superego or whatever you call it”… “I know from my own work I have to let that stuff out, it can’t stay
inside of me: all the craziness, the sexual stuff, the hostility toward women, the anger toward authority. I’ve actually
worked a lot of that out of my system in my work. That’s what makes underground commix different from mainstream
comics: It’s more of an artistic motivation than commercial motivation. You’re taking this chance by doing something
more personal. It’s a very personal expression, my work and other interesting underground-comix work. It’s not that
entertaining to the masses, but maybe some people can get something out of it”… “Rape fantasy is like the second most
popular fantasy in adult sex. But women can’t go out and say, ‘I want to be raped.’ That’s a very complicated thing that
a lot of people don’t understand. You can’t expect women to applaud fantasies that show that. Although they may go
home and secretly masturbate thinking about it, they can’t publicly admit to that because it’s dangerous for them to do
so”… “That happened in my teens. I was a social outcast. I had no way of acting out my sexual energy as a teenager, so
I just developed this habitual fantasizing and masturbatory behavior pattern. I’m sure it’s very common. Millions of
men in America are like that. A lot of them read comic books”… -Notes from The Comics Journal Library: R. Crumb.
“The physical act of getting the time and the concentration and the clearing away of all the nonsense to sit
down and do it. That’s the hardest part of all. I have a backlog of ideas, encyclopedias of ideas. That’s never a
problem”… “I don’t think there’s a big market for cartoonists who are doing personal confessions and personal stories,
but I enjoy that kind of stuff. I like stuff where people get real personal and reveal themselves. I feel less lonely in the
world that way”… “I thought my perversions were weird – God, that guy is really out there. But it made me happy that
somebody is even more twisted and weird than me. Way more, he’s way out there”… “What do you mean, ‘elitist’?
What does that mean? That I should turn on the TV and watch Who’s the Boss? or what? I’m elitist because I choose
not to”… “I wallow plenty but it’s my own wallowing and I’m very smug and satisfied that I’ve chosen my own
defined little world that I wallow in. I think I have more fun because I’ve created it myself. It’s a much richer and
interesting world that I wallow in”… “There are a lot of critics who say, “God, it’s so creepy and depressing! Uggg…”
Three-quarters of the people in America come from a situation worse than this!” It’s not that different from things that
most people have some experience with; not everybody has some Ozzie and Harriet, Golden Boy, well-adjusted
background. Come on! But part of the thing is you just never see that on film. The reality, the sordidness of everyday
reality is rarely ever shown. People are so used to being spoon-fed some sugary nonsense about reality that always has
some fucking romantic happy-ending crap. But show them something real? Unadulterated reality: “Huhhhh! Oh my
God! How horrible!” Then a lot of critics use me or my family situation as a scapegoat: “Look at the weirdness of the
Crumb Family Circus!”… “That’s another thing the critics don’t like: To show bitterness. It’s unattractive, very
unattractive. I mean, to be what they call a nerd, to be a nerdy type of guy and then on top of that be angry and bitter is
extremely unattractive. As a nerd you’re supposed to compensate for your nerdiness by being at least comical and
entertaining ; the comic relief in life. You’re not supposed to be bitter and angry, wanting to go off in a corner an die or
something. Go walk off an end of a pier. People don’t want to see that… Jerks, bastards….” -Notes from The Comics
Journal Library: R. Crumb.
"The work in this book was all done when I was 26-27 years old - still a punk, but I already felt like I was an
old man… a veteran, a venerable elder of the thriving underground comix scene, the counter-culture revolutionary
youth movement scene… Fame was old hat… I was now used to the phone ringing every five minutes. The thrill was
gone. It was tiresome, having to listen to yet another fast-talking wheeler-dealer, having to talk to another journalist,
another fanboy. Man, I was old!"… "My wife Dana got herself a new boyfriend, Paul, who soon moved in with her in
the big house. So then we each had our own domain on the place. Hell, we were liberal, we were hip… the avant garde!
Why couldn't we all still live together in harmony, in an 'open' situation?"… "My girlfriend(s) would come up, stay for
a few days in the cabin… "I admit I was pretty much an irresponsible bum when it came to parental duties. Dana
carried most of the burden, by far. That had a lot to do with her anger towards me. I was off running around with hippy
floozies, while she got stuck with all the work"… "Still managed to be amazingly prolific in this period"… "I felt it was
my sole responsibility to keep these several little underground comix companies in business… Isn't that what they call
'co-dependency' now?"… "Plus, it was getting harder and harder to concentrate. There was always this crowd of people
hanging around, and the phone was always ringing. The pure, white-hot inspiration of '66-'67 was getting lost in the
shuffle… of well"… "I was seriously contemplating getting out of this business in the mid seventies. But then I'm
completely useless for any other kind of work. I have to draw comics or die!!"… "I enjoy the complete artistic freedom.
I've had my own way for so long now, I can't stand to be told what to draw. I really balk at doing any commercial job in
which I have to draw someone else's idea, or change something I did because some art director didn't like it… Man, I
hate that! I'm very spoiled… a real prima donna, that's me. In the 'underground' I draw exactly whatever th' hell I want
and they publish it, no questions asked. Who needs big time!? They can keep their filthy money!” –Notes from R.
Crumb’s introduction to The Complete Crumb Comics Vol. 7.
“I Remember the Sixties”: “And that reminds me of one of my fondest memories of the sixties: you could
always see a lot of leg everywhere you went! On the other hand maybe it wasn’t good because I was always sin a state
of frustrated excitement, being young and not too much in control of my emotions”… “I always got bored at rock
concerts. I’d leave feeling vaguely depressed”… “A lot of these middle-class ‘drop-outs’ began living in their own
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LSD-inspired fairy-tale land, like the girl on Haight Street who was known only as ‘Gingerbread Princess’. But it
couldn’t last… They were like helpless little lambs and the hungry wolves were moving in… By 1969 a demon called
paranoia stalked the Haight… The drugs got harder and people were carrying guns… Rip-offs, murderers, rape,
commercialization and other plagues descended on the neighborhood… it was a grim fuckin’ spectacle. It was around
1969 and ’70 that the big wheel was spinning too fast and people started flying apart in all directions. The ‘scene’ was
disintegrating rapidly! It wasn’t so ovious then that we were riding on the crest of a wave… We thought we’d never
come down!! But the wave finally crashed on the beach”… Zombies for Jesus… Naturally, I woke up on the fourth
day of this drug experience in the deepest, blackest pit of despair and emptiness… Wish I’d known then what I know
now about vitamins!!”… “I approached the centaurs… They all had perfect young, beautiful faces… Sweet and
innocent… Eternal seventeen-year-olds”… Woody Allen shtick.
“George ‘Murky’ Murkoid goes through life with only the feeblest notion of what he’s doing or why… His
feelings and desires are a constant source of bewilderment and confusion… To him life is anything but simple! …Been
watching this damn T.V. for hours… My eyeballs are falling out… Have a slight head-ache… All the shows are
terrible… The commercials are an abrasive on the nerves… Still I’m immobilized… Can’t move… Want to get up and
turn the stupid fucking thing off but… somehow my will is paralyzed… William Burroughs says we’re living in ‘the
ruins of a gutted planet….” Is there anything worth doing other than seeking after the pleasures of the flesh? But of
course it’s not that simple… Nothing’ sever that simple… I’ve been around long enough to know that you don’t take
your pleasures without paying the price, like it or not…. Call it ‘dues’, call it ‘karma’… same thing. Oh I’ve paid
dearly for every cheap thrill and I’d do it again probably… Christ I wish she’d get here already. This eternal waiting
makes me a nervous wreck!... I gotta work out some of this pent up tension… George, you monster… I know this is
nutty but I can’t stop myself… I’m such a fool…” -From The Complete Crumb Comics Vol. 14.
“Uncle Bob’s Mid-Life Crisis”: “I don’t know… I don’t feel much like getting up… Don’t care if I never get
up… A thing like this is guaranteed to make someone like me so acutely self-conscious that I’ll never be able to draw
another cartoon as long as I live!!... Well that’s just fine but who’s gonna support this family then? I’m perfectly
willing to go out and find a job and you can stay home and take care of the baby and do the housework… Money…
Christ in heaven… every time I think about money I start getting a bad case of nerves… Self-pity… she’s right… that’s
always been one of my favorite pass-times… now I’m getting old… something else I can feel sorry for myself about…
It’s like the direction of my whole life up to now has brought me to this point and… now it all seems… I don’t know…
what should I do now? I have no idea what I should do next!... I used to be so cocksure of what I wanted, where I was
going… I had contempt for people who seemed lost, aimless, without direction… Success has had a lot to do with it…
I’ve arrived… I have it made… I’m a well-known artist… I have a nice wife, a nice kid… Nice place to live…
friends… I’m socially accepted… get invited to lots of parties, everything… That’s just it… I’ve gone soft… I have it
too good… That’s the trouble… everything’s too easy now…. I don’t have to struggle anymore… I’m turning to mush
inside… I used to be tough… I was motivated by fear… Now all I want is fun fun fun, that’s my trouble… Who wants
to struggle? Who wants to suffer? I’ve created a sweet little world around myself and now here I sit… I’m in a
vacuum… my own little ivory tower… I’ve done a good job on myself alright… I’m a smart cookie… Yep… It’s a
beautiful day here as usual… This town is so utopian, it’s truly amazing… No poor people, no crime, no angry-looking
negroes or third-world oppressed… You’d think this was heaven if you just got off the boat here… It’s so boring,
though… I’ve seen her before… She works at Kinko’s Kopies… Dear Jeeziz, what a spectacular rump she’s got!!...
Meditation really works… I used to do it a few years ago and it really did improve my mental state… I did it every
morning for about a year… It’s amazing to think of that now… Where’d my self-discipline go?? Hmm… I
remember… I stopped after the baby came… The mind is always frantically searching for some distraction, and it has
no trouble in finding them… Crumb! What are you doing??? You are such a pervert weirdo! Giggle tee hee shriek!...
You have to let me do these things to you… I have to get my creative energies flowing… “How’s your mid-life crisis
today, Bob?” –“Oh, I’m nursing it along”… In the middle of the night I suddenly realized what an overblown opinion
I’ve had of myself since I got famous… I’ve been going around thinking I was absolutely hot shit!... I mean, pride in
your work is one thing, but the kind of inflated ego I’ve been strutting around with is… well… just so much excess
baggage, that’s all. How’d I get such a monstrous over-blown idea of myself? Everyone in my family is like that… We
all think we’re something special… I guess it’s a defense mechanism we all developed from being weird social outcasts
in adolescence… maybe… I dunno… Then there’s that crazy book, the ‘R. Crumb Checklist’… The straw that broke
the camel’s back… I haven’t the faintest idea what I’m going to do once I get in there… I’m scared… lost…
confused… the R. Crumb who drew all those comics is a total stranger to me… I give up… all I ever think about is sex
and collecting old records... My over-heated imagination is hard to get under control… A young sweetie like that can
do wonders for your ego… I can see why any guy would do that if he had the chance… The wife’s not too
sympathetic… She doesn’t’ like me when I show weakness, uncertainty… She gets irritated at me… Acts annoyed…
bitchy… Of course, women are different… They operate on a different clock… They go through their crisis once a
month… Are you gonna dump me now for some newer model that will be nicer to you than I am?... I don’t expect
romance every day… we get along… I have my job to do… Suicide is out of the question… Running away is out of the
question… Still, I must do something… the pressure is suffocating… My head feels about to burst.” -From The
Complete Crumb Comics Vol. 14.
“So, why am I having a ‘crisis’?? What’s wrong with me? On the surface everything appears to be fine…
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couldn’t be rosier… Who has a better life than me?? Nobody! Who has it easier? Softer? I can’t think of a living soul
I’d trade places with… That’s just it… I’ve gone soft… I have it too good… that’s the trouble… everything’s too easy
now… I don’t have to struggle anymore… I’m turning to mush inside… I used to be tough… I was motivated by
fear… Now all I want is fun fun fun, that’s my trouble… Who wants to struggle? Who wants to suffer? I’ve created a
sweet little world around myself and now here I sit… I’m in a vacuum… my own little ivory tower… I’ve done a good
job on myself alright… I’m no less gullible than any other schmuck walking the streets, even though I like to think I
possess some superior quality of awareness or some such bullshit!!… How’d I get such a monstrous over-blown idea of
myself? Everyone in my family is like that… We all think we’re something special… I guess it’s a defense mechanism
we all developed from being weird social outcasts in adolescence”… “You’re alright… You’re tolerable… I coulda
done worse… You’re still not as obnoxious as my first husband… I don’t expect perfect romance everyday… We get
along… I have my job to do – taking care of the Soph, and you.” –Notes from R. Crumb’s introduction to The
Complete Crumb Comics Vol. 14.
“This sad state of affairs took a tool on his mental state as well, to the point that he once stepped out onto a
window ledge during a visit to Paris and contemplated suicide while his wife was out and about with friends and his
daughter played with Barbies, in the next room. After a long period of contemplation he stepped back inside and
resumed playing with little Sophie again. When I asked him what changed his mind, he just shrugged and said, “Ash, I
chickened out.” Of course there was always the obvious to consider as well – namely, his family – but then that begs
the question of what he was doing out on that ledge to begin with. Sadly, such self-destructive impulses seem to go
hand-in-hand with what makes someone a powerful artist in the first place. The same hyper-sensitivity that can inspire
someone to produce such powerful, evocative work can also be overwhelming at times. It’s ‘sensory overload’ – the
result of feeling TOO much!” –From the introduction to The Complete Crumb Comics: Vol. 15.
“By the spring of 1986 I was in a state of profound suicidal depression. I seriously contemplated ending it all.
I felt like I had been run over by a steam-roller. All was pain – psychic pain. My neurotic compulsion to be loved by all
of humanity had caused me to waste huge amounts of my time and life energy on tedious nonsense that was of no real
value or interest to me. Of course, everything is a learning experience”… “Girls and women loved him. Traveling with
him, I was amazed, watching him charm the pants off of various ladies. You couldn’t help but like him, loveable conman that he was. I think he liked and respect me, even if he was bewildered by my introverted personality… I told hi,
yeah, it’s true, I hate my body. I think of it only in terms of maintenance. I tried to explain how I got to be that way
from early childhood experiences; my crazy mother, the strict Catholic school sisters, etcetera”… “We operated in
different world, different ballgames altogether. The man of action and the brooding introvert.” –Notes from R. Crumb’s
introduction to The Complete Crumb Comics Vol. 16.
"What was I doing hanging around at the O'Farrell Theatre, you might ask. Yes, there were beautiful, sexy
women, but watching them do their stage acts honestly didn't work for me. Actually, for me their routines were
disturbing, troubling, brining into vivid focus the grotesque absurdity of human sexuality. I couldn't imagine how
anyone could be aroused by the gyrations those women went through on stage, or the lap dancing, or any of it. Still, I
was fascinated by the whole scene there"… "One day circa 1987 the Mitchell Brothers proposed to me and Terry that
we put together a film script based on my "Whiteman Meets Bigfoot" story from 1971. They said they'd put five
million dollars to produce it as an X-rated full-length feature with live actors, with Terry as director. They talked big,
seemed completely confident. Terry was all jazzed up about this idea, as he was just then trying to get his big career as
a movie director off the ground. My main interest, foolish creature that I am, was in the casting search for the giant girl
to play the role of the female sasquatch character. Yeah, I'm hopeless. And so I set to work. I did some model drawings
of big, sexy (in my eyes), furry females, and started writing the script.
I hadn't a clue about writing a film script. It was all new to me. I churned out pages and pages of dialogue,
lengthy speeches and descriptions of the action. I could see it all in my head, my movie! It was gonna be great! The
first twenty pages wouldn't made a five-hour-long epic. I just didn't realize… until I showed what I'd written to Terry.
He just tore it to pieces. He was unmerciful. My ego felt injured. I wasn't used to this. I'd always worked alone (except
for my collaborations with Pekar and Aline - easy, nothing to it). I had my fans in the comics world. They loved my
stuff. This was a new ball game, and a rough one, and Terry knew a lot more about it than I did. I had a lot to learn to
learn. He sent me home to rewrite, back to page one. Pare it down, think of the timing, he told me, keep the dialogue
short and to the point. Condense the action. You've got an hour and a half to tell the whole story, start to finish. I
rewrote the rewrote. More criticism. Pare it down more, Terry said, too much 'exposition". I rewrote some more. I was
learning the art of script-writing from the ground up. It was a lot of work.
Then suddenly the Mitchell Brothers backed out, pulled the rug out from under us. When they got a look at
some of the script and my model drawings they realized instantly that our bigfoot movie was not the kind of thing that
Mr. Pornomoviegoer wanted to see. It was way too quirky, the sex element far too eccentric, comical, satirical. Terry
was plunged into a state of depression over this turn of events. I was ready to throw in the towel. The hell with it, back
to drawing comics, but Terry said, no, no, come on, let's finish the script. And then we'll take it down to Hollywood and
pitch it. He already had connections down there, and my name might open a few doors. Okay, okay…
I spent months of labor on that script, working closely with Terry. He had a lot of good ideas. He couldn't
write dialogue, but he knew a lot more about the mechanics of it than I did. Together we hammered the thing into some
kind of shape, tight, dense with elements but plenty of comedy. Our title for it was 'Sassy', the affectionate nickname of
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the female sasquatch. WE thought we had a pretty darn good film script there. WE flew down to L.A., got a bunch of
appointments pretty quickly. Hey, this is gonna be a cinch, I thought. WE took meetings. They all loved us and our
script. They thought Terry and I were a great tea, but then they never got back to us, wouldn't return our calls. It was
bewildering… Kafkaesque. I never could decipher their behavior down there. It's highly codified. You gotta be an
insider. I went back to making comics… simple, straightforward, pen and ink and paper, that's it. I'm out of the film
industry! Well, in fact, Terry and I did try our hand at a couple more scripts. I became somewhat adept at it. I would've
made a good dialogue writer for T.V. sitcoms. But I tall came to naught. Zero. Dead in the water. Terry, in desperation,
turned the cameras on me, and made the 'Crumb' documentary, and went on from there to become a moderately
successful director. Me, at first I was a tad bitter. The undertaking had been a colossal waste of time… all that work for
nothing! More nonsense that I'd gotten myself suckered into… when will I learn my lesson and stay at the drawing
board where I belong?!?
It wasn't until years later, re-reading those comic stories I'd done in the script-writing period, that I discovered
how that experience had sharpened my story-telling skills, that I'd gotten a few good comic book stories out of it. That
made it all worth it, I guess." -R. Crumb, April '05. -Intro from The Complete Crumb Comics: Vol. 17.
Notes from R. Crumb’s America by Robert Crumb: “City of the Future: Let’s look at some of the things
we’re going to get in the years to come! You wont’ have to shit anymore! Bowels will be removed at birth and a
sanitizing disposal unit installed”… “Buildings, cars will be soft plastic. Streets will be soft plastic. Accidents will be a
thing of the past. Nobody will get hurt anymore! No more heat and cold, night and day. Cities will have room
temperature all the time. Lighting will be soft, diffused. Warm snow for Christmas!! Everyone will be tuned in to
everything that’s happening all the time! No-one will be left out. We’ll all be normal! Nobody will work! All
production, distribution and maintenance will be done by computerized robots. People can spend all of their time
playing, eating, and watching TV! …Or, they can fuck!! Special fucking androids will be available to everyone! Social
problems will disappear. Risk of involvement with the opposite sex will be eliminated! The androids will be put to
other good uses. Sadists can torture them, cut them up, tear them to pieces! Men can build their own armies, fight their
own wars, have mass executions. Concentration camps, if you please! All with androids, who won’t mind a bit! In fact,
you will have the whole spectrum of experience at your finger tips. Fantasy machines will manufacture any world you
ask for in a matter of seconds! Be a locomotive engineer! Be a secret agent! Be a whore! Be Jesus Christ! Create your
own masterpieces! Blow up the world!!... Yes, everything will be beautiful, but we’ll still have to regulate population
growth. So when you’re 65 they’ll come looking for you with a pie… not just an ordinary pie!! A cyanide pie!! What a
way to go!!”
-Harvey Pekar/ “American Splendor”
American Splendor: “Look at me. I’m all grown up and going nowhere”… “I think we should just skip the whole
courtship thing and just get married”…”She thinks I’m a social embarrassment”… “I’ve got to get out of here before I
kill myself”… He’s a super hero film clerk at a Cleveland Hospital… “Don’t compromise yourself for women”… “I’ve
got a compulsive obsessive quality to me about collecting jazz records. I’m like a junkie”… “Bob works at the
American Greeting Card Company in town”… Writing a story within the comic book panels… “I tried writing some
stuff about real life. There’s no idealized stuff in it. This is the real stuff”… “You’ve made yourself into a comic book
hero”… “You’ve cured me, man, by drawing my writings and life as a comic book!”… “I’m desperately lonely and
horny as hell”… “I do get lots of recognition for my writing, but it’s not like I can make a living on it like Crumb. I
can’t quit my day job”… “You might try believing in someone other than yourself. You might feel better”… “How do
you cope with loneliness? You watch TV. You write with your stick figures”… “You’re famous. I just got a diploma,
and became a house wife and mother”… “I help teach prison inmates to make art out of their suffocating, monotonous
routines”… “I think you and I have a lot in common. You should meet me! I’m a great guy!”… “Wow. You’ve a sick
woman”… “Despite all your problems, I think you’re a real great person”… “That yuppie food did me in”… Camel
Tea… “Harvey tends to push the negative”… “He doesn’t think that flowers and sunshine sells. Harvey believes misery
loves company.” –“My perspective is gloom and doom”… This film was very empowering. He’s desperate for love –
any love! But that’s what makes him real. “I tend to marry fast because I’ll have any woman who’ll have me”…
“Delusions of Grandeur”… “Comics about his pains and pleasures”… “I was brought on the Letterman show just for
laughs”… “A Genuine Nerd”… Harvey’s got anti-charisma. And most of the characters are unattractive, yet humorous
in their misery and suffering… … “I want to do something important to me. Something that matters!”… “I was starting
to lose it, between the lump and the loneliness”… “I’m not strong enough”… “You’ll document the entire cancer
experience as a comic book and remove yourself from the entire experience”… “Time passes strangely”… “If I were to
die, would my character keep going on – or just fade away?”… “I like reading comics backwards”… “Don’t think this
is a happy ending. Every day is a major struggle. My life is total chaos. My wife still hardly ever works”… “I met
Crumb in 1962 when he moved from Philadelphia to an apartment around the corner form me in Cleveland. Our mutual
love of jazz was the initial basis of our friendship, but I became increasingly interested in his comic book work over the
years, which demonstrated to me that comics were as good an art form as nay that existed, and could be used to cover a
much wider variety of subject matter than was generally done in the 1960s. (They continue to be underutilized today.)”
"Yeah, Harvey is an ego-maniac; a classic case... a driven, compulsive, mad Jew"... "But how else
could he have gotten all those comics published, with almost no money; in total isolation from any comic -
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publishing "scene" such as exists out here in California, or in New York; constantly brow-beating artists to
illustrate his stories; handling the distribution himself... only an ego-maniac would persist in the face of such
odds"... "It's a sad fact that you can't sell "adult" comic books to American adults. Comic books are for kids.
Adolescent male power fantasies, that's what most comic books contain; escape fantasies for pimply-faced
young boys"... "While Pekar's work is highly respect in certain intellectual circles, it's definitely not
commercial"... "Pekar has proven once and for all that even the most seemingly dreary and monotonous of
lives is filled with poignancy and heroic struggle"... "There is drama in the most ordinary and routine of days,
but it's a subtle thing that gets lost in the shuffle"... "Usually he writes his story ideas soon after the event ,
while the nuances of it are still fresh in his mind. He always has a large backlog of these stories, which he
can choose from to compose each new issue of American Splendor." -R. Crumb's introduction for "American
Splendor".
“For a long time I collected records in a rational way. I only bought records that I enjoyed listening to, and /
or that had a great deal of historical significance. Then, for some reason, I got obsessive about it. I started buying
records I knew I’d seldom if ever listen to just for their collector’s value. It got worse and worse. I started getting all
these auction lists and spending fantastic amounts of money on out-of-print L.P.s. I was spending all of my money on
records I just filed away without listening to. I had to think twice about buying a hamburger or going to a movie… No
matter how many records I get I’m never satisfied; I gotta get more. I’ve tried to quit but I can’t. What am I gonna do?
This is like being a junky!!… Life is about women, gigs, an’ being’ creative… I hate t’ admit it, but workin’ sort of
helps me keep from goin’ nuts. When yer alone alla time, like I am some weekends, y’ start concnetratin’ on yer
problems an’ thinkin’ yer the only person in the world. But workin’ with people helps ya put yerself an’ yer problems
in perspective. Still, it’s a shit job an’ a lotta times I feel trapped here… A buddy once called him a working class
intellectual… In his late teens and early twenties Herschel had been unemployed a few times for months at a time and
the desperation and feelings of uselessness that he’d suffered when he couldn’t get a job were nearly traumatic… Since
he has no reputation as a writer in political and historical article fields, he must buck an establishment of college
professors and “name” journalists, who editors favor because of their reputations. ‘Mother fuckers! This is better than
anything they’ve printed in six months. They turn me down because they never heard of me. Assholes, I wonder if they
even read it!… Most people that know him do like him and find him interesting and entertaining. But his lifestyle is so
different from theirs that his relationship with them is superficial. He doesn’t fit into any category. He’s uneasy around
academics, feeling that they think he’s crude. He doesn’t even fall into the hippy or junky or wino categories. He’s had
an especially difficult time forming a lasting relationship with a woman since the breakup of his marriage several years
ago. Sometimes he thinks if he could find the right one they could groove on each other and forget about the rest of the
world. He digs intelligent women that he can rap to about stuff like politics and music, but they don’t’ want to go out
with him because they think he’s too eccentric and low class. They prefer doctors and college professors”… “There’s
no point in your going out together if you don’t spend any time with each other”… “I know, I know, I’m an atrocious
person. But, that’s what desperation will turn ya inta”… “Don’t get emotionally involved”… “Yeah, I know. It was
sordid, it was disgusting. I got involved with Carla because I was goin’ crazy from loneliness, so I traded one kinda bad
for another, knowing pretty much what I was doing, but doing it anyway. If I had it to do over again under the same
circumstances, I probably would”… “So I sublimated by writing this story… That’s about what I can do when things
bother me – write stories about them”… “The only way to get more friends is to get more recognition for my comic
book writing. I gotta reach people through my stories”… “God, these guys can’t make any money unless they write
commercial crap”… “I’m middle aged. I’ve been married twice, but I’ve gotten divorced both times. Now I’m single
and in a lotta ways I’m living like I did twenty-three years ago. I dunno, I guess my life is more cyclical than most
peoples’. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. I could be doing better, but things could be way worse too. All
things considered, I’m in pretty good shape. At least I’ve got a steady job. It’s going on two years since I broke up with
my last wife. That wasn’t too hard t’ take. When I realized how little I meant t’ her it didn’t even seem like there was a
marriage; it was like splittin’ with a girlfriend”… “But I was so happy during my second marriage, so happy that I
didn’t even mind going to work much. I had what I wanted, a steady, tolerable job, a woman I loved that I thought
loved me, I lived in a nice apartment in a mellow, interesting neighborhood, I had a creative outlet and it all added up to
make me feel great!”…
“People have been asking for a long time where they stand in the cosmos; wondering if it
matters whether they take one course or another when they’re gonna die in a few decades anyway. But stuff like that
doesn’t upset most people for too long. They can’t conceive of nonexistence because fro as long as they remember
they’ve existed. So, absurd as it really might be to believe it, we really think we’re very important, regardless of how
insignificant or short lived we are. After all, we’re the only ones living in our heads and in our skins”… “It’s good to
work toward goals, do something constructive, just to keep from bein’ bored. Never mind what it’ll mean in the twenty
fifth century”… “I’m starting to accept the fact that there are better things to do than covet the friendship of people who
don’t understand me, don’t accept me and bore me anyway. What do we need with each other? I’ve known it was
pretty futile for a long time to run after people who didn’t have any use for me and vice versa, and it was humiliating to
do it, but I’d get so lonely I figured I had to. But as time goes on I’m getting increasingly inured to loneliness. I mean I
can always read. I read all the time now. I’d much rather find out what George Eliot or Chekhov or Flaubert has t’ say
than most of the people I’m acquainted with. Whether books’ll be the same comfort to me if and when I get to be sixtyfive and friendless that they are now, I don’t know. God, I’m tryin’ t’ do the best I can but I dunno, I dunno”… “I’m
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not in love with my work gig, but it’s a stabilizing element in my life. I have almost nothing to do with my family and I
have very few friends. Working and dealing with people at work, many of whom I like, prevents me from getting too
lonely and helps me keep the right perspective on things; it tends to stop me from exaggerating my problems.” –
Dialogue from “American Splendor” by Harvey Pekar. This is raw, honest, introspective, confessional, passionate,
autobiographical comic book work. This is a man’s life in comic book print. It’s the hardcore truth in personal detail.
“As I got into comics I saw clearly what could be done with them. It was wonderful! Here’s this field with
such potential and yet, so little has been done with it. I thought, 'God, what a great opportunity for me!' This was kind
of a slow process, and finally, I hooked up with some illustrators and I got the thing going”… “Well, technically I was
losing money, but prior to publishing my comic book I was buying all these records and spending every extra penny I
had on record collecting. I had to quit that to put out the comic book. I didn’t spend as much money on the comic
overall as I did on record collecting, and I really enjoyed what I was doing. It’s somewhat hard for me to understand
how people who are interested in being artists at one point in their lives will quit because they’re not making money at
it. I mean, it seems to me that’s like cutting off your nose to spite your face. You don’t make any more money by
stopping the writing or painting or whatever you’re doing. You’re sacrificing a lot of pleasure”… “I was losing money,
but I wasn’t being cheated. I went into it with my eyes pretty wide open. When I started, I was pretty old, relatively
speaking. I was 32 years old, and I had done a lot of reading, and I was familiar with the biographies of a lot of
experimental artists; great people who had not made any money to speak of. Van Gogh’s an outstanding example [of
someone] who didn’t sell anything in his lifetime. I never considered giving up my job. Some people give up their day
job, they go into the arts, they can’t make a living at it, so they quit. To me, that’s like throwing out the baby with the
bath. I just try to keep my job and have that support the stuff I really enjoy doing.” -From a 1994 “Hero” magazine
interview with Harvey Pekar.
“What I’ve found, though, is that to make a commercial success as a writer, or politician, you’ve got to
appeal to a low-common-denominator audience, and the best way to do that is to be one of them so you’ll know exactly
what they want. You won’t think you’re selling out.” –From “Selling Out”.
“America, how can you treat your creative artists with such callous indifference?” –From “Andy Statman”.
“But my books don’t sell well enough for me to earn a living as a writer. Comics fns aren’t interested in them
because they’re about the real world – working at a flunky job, trying to keep an old car running through Cleveland’s
arctic winter. They’re into fantasy, escapism… plus my no-punch-line, no-happy-ending stories upset them. They want
stuff that’s neatly resolved at the end, even though life’s not life that. Consequently, for the past 30 years, I’ve had to
make a living as a file clerk at Cleveland’s V.A. hospital – that’ll keep ya humble!”… “I’ve been contacted from time
to time by moviemakers about doing an American Splendor film, beginning in 1979 with Jonathan Demme in his precannibalism days. And I’ve signed a coupla options, but they’ve expired. At one time I didn’t care about that stuff,
because comics are quite similar. Comics use still instead of moving pictures, and written instead of spoken words. I
don’t’ have any hope of Hollywood doing a descent film based on my work. Movies cost so much to make that they’re
mostly produced according to formulas and aimed at a lowest-common-denominator audience. The Hollywood
filmmakers know what that audience wants, because it’s what they want – they’re not selling out – they like garbage.
Forrest Gump had to be done by people who thought a screenplay full of the contrived devices and feeble
sentimentality they used was clever, maybe even profound”… “That’s real important: to get a movie financed, it’s
important to hook it up with a prominent actor”… “He doesn’t discover an universal truths”… -From “An Almost AllExpense-Paid Vacation”.
“Push outta bed.. get into the dumb routine… get involved in boring work. That way you don’t’ think about
death, at least. Get tired… go home an’ read a book (yet s’ posed t’ review), nod off at 7:30 with yer clothes on. The
lucky ones think it means something. Wish I did… Work to live to die”… “Can’t stay in the womb, in Cleveland”… “It
terrifies him to get up in the morning to face the day. Ev’rything seems so chaotic t’ me that I gotta grab on to a solid
thought. But my only solid thoughts, the only ones I believe in, are thoughts of failure. That’s not rational, but that’s the
way I think – failure is a sure thing”… “I was really happy to see how patient you were with me at Writers and
Readers. Normally you get antsy when you have to wait over two minutes”… “Do I really mean all that?”… “The
signing didn’t go so hot. The people who came were nice, but there weren’t many of them. I’m so sick a’ doing
signings where hardly anyone comes… The store owner buys all these books and they don’t sell and the same few
people stay for the whole time making small talk… It makes me feel bad for them. It’s so melancholy.” –From
American Splendor Special: A Step Out of the Nest”.
“I don’t try to rank the various art forms in any order, and comics are the thing I do best and like to do the
most. But I’ll tell you what, you can make a lot more money in movies than you can in comics”… “I was having panic
attacks every morning”… “The shooting for the American Splendor movie was completed. Then I really hit rock
bottom. I had nowhere to go in the morning, my life had no shape or direction. I got way more depressed… I had to be
hospitalized for ‘major depression’”… “I wrote some stories about my working-class life in storyboard form with
panels, stick figures, word and thought balloons, captions, and instructions to the artists”… “So what if I lose a couple
thousand a year? At least I’ll finally be doin’ somethin’ creative”… “I’ve put out some of my best books recently, like
‘Trans-Atlantic Comics’, but nobody reads them”… “If you’re of the misery-loves-company persuasion, chances are
you’ll find it comforting”… “People will forget!”… “Just work, work, work and hope something will come of it.” –
From American Splendor: Our Movie Year”.
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"Our next guest tonight works as a file clerk in a Cleveland Hospital. He also writes comic books, which deal
with his everyday pains and pleasures. Please say hello to Harvey Pekar!" Harvey Pekar revels in disclosing his inner
dilemmas and deficiencies. He doesn't care how unflattering they make him. It's all out in the open. He's not trying to
impress anyone. He's expressing the truth about himself. I've been writing the truth about myself in my journals for
over a decade, and now I realize it would be great source material for an autobiographical time-based artwork. That is
why I find reading American Splendor so liberating. Harvey Pekar is my creative savior. The key trick or element to
doing such an autobiographical work is to reveal and express something interesting or hidden that would captivate an
audience's interest. Something fantastic or truthful has to happen. And that can be exploiting the monotony of a daily
routine through a personal expression of one's life. It can be through exploring one's neurosis and weaknesses where
one's insecurities and broken dreams are laid out for the world to see or even empathize with. That is what makes it art,
at least to me. His car breaking down can be fascinating to read about in picture form because we're seeing life from a
different and artistic point-of-view... "That's it? One guy? I've always done lousy at signings, but never this bad!"... "If
Doubleday hadn't given my work 'legitimacy' by publishing it, there's a good chance you wouldn't wanna run anything
about me. Let's face it, what does your yuppie audience care about me?"... "God, what if I lose my voice for months
like I did in '77. What a strain that'd put on the marriage"... "Shit - I'm depressed. Why? Things're goin' along o.k...
Maybe it's because I'm gettin' all these rejections from magazines"... "He knows he's a terrible driver with a rotten sense
of direction. He's extremely nervous, expecting to blunder... and he does"... "Whatsa matter with me that every time I
get a new idea I go crazy to put it down on paper right away. I'm so scared of forgetting anything"..."You did give me a
lot of grief; running all over the place; rude to that guy, brooding at dinner"... "Lost and found and lost and found
and..."... "I was considered to be different"... "Here he is, coming home to her in a good mood because he's picked up
some good records on his way back from the job for next to nothing"... "Our man is so obsessive, so compulsive that
losing track of anything makes him panic and think he's lost control of his life"... "Did I feel lousy! My relationship
with my girlfriend was poorly defined, my buddy visits me and I don't plan for us to do anything on Saturday night. I
knew that he did mind being left alone but I'd gotten myself into a position where if I pleased her I abandoned him. I
knew he's let me off the hook for it, but how could I have been so stupid! At any rate I was gonna alienate everyone I
knew"... "Colin is out there living his life, trying to deal with it and understand it. This is what he writes about and what
he has to say should be of interest to many people. I say should be because actually there are a bunch of folks out there
who think if you're not a president or a general you're not worth reading about. Q. How can a democracy function in a
nation full of people who believe that their lives and their neighbor’s lives are insignificant? A. In such a situation
democracy functions imperfectly at best. Colin realizes, though, that he has something to say, that his observations are
useful, that they may be comforting or enlightening to some readers. So check this book out; see whatya think." -Notes
from The New American Splendor Anthology by Harvey Pekar.
"He reports the truth of life in Cleveland as he sees it, hears it, feels it in his manic-depressive nervous
system. There's nobody else to do it. Who would want to? There's no money in it. There's no money in telling the truth.
People want escape. They want myths. This slice-of-life stuff, with no spices added, no glamour, no heroes, it's only
going to reach a small, select audience, no matter how eloquent or 'poetic' it is done. And just who are they, this small,
select audience? We don't know. They can't be nailed down. They can't be market-researched or 'targeted'... it’s an odd
scattering of individuals. Some are comic-readers, some not. They're to be found among the 'working classes' as well as
among the 'cake-eaters'. But, you know, a population raised on mass media, spoon-fed a constant diet of sensational,
formulized storytelling, they're gonna be impatient with Pekar's comics... where's the chase scene? The punch line?
When is somebody going to, you know, explode with rage, lash out, commit murder 'n' mayhem? And then somebody
comes in and saves the day.... And where's the love interest? Boy meets girl? Something! But all you get from Pekar
is... real life.
That's not to say there isn't entertainment here. Harvey is a great story teller... he brings this mundane work-aday world to life, gives us its poignant moments, its humor, absurdity, irony... and mostly, it's absolute truth. There is
no exaggeration in these stories. What you read is what really happened." -Notes from R. Crumb's introduction to
American Splendor Presents Bob & Harv's Comics by Harvey Pekar.
“That woman from that big publisher never got back t’ me. Guess she wasn’t serious; probably wanted a free
book or was too lazy t’ look for my stuff on the stands or sum’n’. But what if she’d been serious? What if they’d have
published my stuff and it’d sold well and I’d have made enough to support myself as a writer? How important is that to
me? It’d be nice not to have to get up ev’ry morning and go to work to be able to read or work on stories and articles
whenever I felt like it. But then I’d sort of be out of the struggle, sort of in an ivory tower watching the mainstream of
life go by rather than participating in it… I’d be alienated but I wouldn’t think I had the right to feel bad about it. I
mean, I’d be a well-paid, famous author. What right would I have to complain about anything? Maybe my writing
would suffer. I’ve got a pretty unique viewpoint now… I’m a writer but in a lotta ways I’ve got a working man’s
outlook on life. I’d have to as long as I’ve worked at regular day jobs. Still maybe I’m making too much of this. As
long as I’m alive I’ll be finding interesting things to write about, meeting interesting people… If I lived a different life I
could still write about it. But would it be as interesting a life? Maybe it’d be too bland But then, knowin’ myself, I
could always find something to get shook up over and write about… Ah, fresh bread!" -Notes from American Splendor
Presents Bob & Harv's Comics by Harvey Pekar.
“Yeah, I know what I’m letting myself in for when I come down on him so hard. It doesn’t look good to
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knock someone in the same racket. You could charge me with being jealous, or with being an egomaniac. Like, ‘Oh
man, you’re not the only guy who thinks he’s hot stuff – everybody’s out there blowing his own horn. He’s getting the
bread and exposure, you’re not. Tough! Maybe he deserves it.’ All I can say is, look at his work and look at mine and
look at someone else’s and make up your own mind what they’re worth to you. There are as many sets of standards as
there are people. If an artist is in the right place at the right time and is hooked up with the right audience maybe he gets
fame and fortune. If not – too bad. It’s a crap-shoot, virtue and excellence don’t automatically get rewarded, especially
when people can’t agree on what they are. After dealing with these people at the voice I was particularly mad - not that
I hadn’t worked with irresponsible, inconsiderate people before, some far worse than anyone on the Voice, but it
seemed so stupid from any angle I looked at it – aesthetic, economic – for them to have given me the cold shoulder. I
used to get furious thinking of those mealy-mouthed clowns, the art director and the editor-in-chief… and exposure in
the Voice couldn’t helped me so much! Time passed and occasionally someone would try to get me involved in one
project or another. Once in a while I’d go along with them, maybe even invest time and money, and then everything
would come a cropper. I was even contacted by a few movie producers fishing around for material! Most of these jerks
had been hipped to me by the Voice article. No other piece of publicity stirred any significant interest in my work.
There was something about me in Oui and nobody even mentioned it. So now it’s September of 1982. My seventh book
has come out a couple months ago. It’s one of my best but I’m getting very little response to it. Sales are way off, partly
because I’ve lost two distributors and partly because the economy’s in such bad shape. I gotta get ridda some a’ these
books! I need publicity. Where am I gonna go? All the other periodicals are blind to my work. The Voice has about ten
percent vision in one eye for it. What can I do? ‘In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king!’ I call my
contacts at the Voice, the senior editor and his wife who wrote the famous article about me, for advice. The editor
sounds annoyed. He doesn’t want to pilot an article about me through. He’s got other things to think about. I can’t
blame him. I never did anything for him, and I’m not in a position to do anything. It finally occurred t’ me that he
mighta taken alotta interest in his wife’s writing about me because he was concerned about promoting her, not because
he cared about me! So he tells me to send a copy of my latest book to the book department for review. In other words,
to go through channels. That’s almost impossible for someone in my position to do successfully, though. His wife says
she’ll talk to the assistant book editor about me, so there’s a sum ray of hope. I write to the assistant book editor to ask
for a review. Amazingly she answers my letter – only a month later! Her answer is very encouraging. She says she’ll
get someone to review my book. She even asks me to write for the Voice and keep in touch. But I’m not optimistic yet.
I’ve been flattered before. I write back to her courteously, enclose a copy of a literary article I’d written to give her an
example of how I write essays and criticism. Then I wait. No reply. After a few weeks I write to see if she’s gotten
anyone to review my book. Still no reply. After a couple more weeks I call the senior editor to find out how to get to
this woman. He says: ‘Don’t call her. She’s known for not answering phone calls. You might send her a note, though.’
What he said led me to believe that she probably liked my work but wasn’t going to do anything for me, and she didn’t.
I was enraged, even though I initially didn’t think there was much chance of the Voice doing anything for me. Why
hadn’t this woman ignored my first letter instead of answering it and giving rise to some false hope I couldn’t
completely suppress? I think I know the answer. She had good intentions, but good intentions come cheap. It’s easy to
make promises, give assurances. Her execution was lousy, though. A person with good intentions who promises thing
sand is too lazy to come through is often more harmful than a malicious person. A malicious person is easier to spot.
You can be on your guard against him. Plus he’s interested enough in you to try to hurt you. If you convert him maybe
you’ll have a friend…. But people like the assistant book editor who, I should point out, very often hold positions of
power, don’t even care enough about you to want to hurt you. That’s why they’re shocked when you get angry at them.
They promise you things because they want to seem agreeable. They don’t keep their promises because it’s too much
trouble. They keep on breaking their words because they’re so seldom penalized for it. It’s accepted behavior in our
society, like being fashionably late for dinner. I’m sure the Voice has treated many people as inconsiderately as it has
me…. I was gonna write this jive woman a nasty letter, but a guy at work talked me out of it… ‘Wadda you wanna do
that for? They’ll just laugh at you… They’ll think you’re a crank… They don’t care about you…’ So I sublimated by
writing this story… That’s about what I can do when things bother me – write stories about them….” -From The
Complete Crumb Comics Vol. 14.
Notes from Best of American Splendor by Harvey Pekar: “Maybe you’ve read some of my gloomy stories
here before. They appeal to people who are miserable and love company”... “What I’ve found, though, is that to make a
commercial success as a writer, or politician, you’ve got to appeal to a low-common-denominator audience, and the
best way to do that is to be one of them so you’ll know exactly what they want”... “But my books don’t sell well
enough for me to earn a living as a writer. Comics fans aren’t interested in them because they’re about the real world working at a flunky job, trying to keep an old car running through Cleveland’s arctic winter. They’re into fantasy,
escapism... Plus my no-punch-line, no-happy-ending stories upset them. They want stuff that’s neatly resolved at the
end, even though life’s not like that. Consequently, for the past 30 years, I’ve had to make a living as a file clerk at
Cleveland’s V.A. Hospital”... “Lemme get this straight. You think Bernt’s script doesn’t have the normal Hollywood
structure. The hero doesn’t , after overcoming myriad difficulties, successfully attain his goal - money, power, a
beautiful woman... He doesn’t discover any universal truths”... “You work to keep alive to die. Y’ kid yerself into
thinking stuff matters”... “Everything seems so chaotic to me that I gotta grab on to a solid thought. But my only solid
thoughts, the only ones I believe in, are thoughts of failure”... “I cling to my depressing visions because I can’t stand
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things being in flux”... “Man, it’s great to see people like that who make me feel like an artist. But when I get back to
Cleveland, I’ll be a file clerk again. You live in the past, present, and future, at the same time. But why is it that I don’t
take any pleasure from my past achievements - only feel pain about my failures”... “The signing didn’t go so hot. The
people who came were nice, but there weren’t many of them. I’m so sick of doing signings where hardly anyone
comes”... “I’ve done stuff I’ve been pretty happy with in the past, and it’s gone pretty much unnoticed”... “Another
thing is that retirement wouldn’t be good for me from a psychological standpoint. I’d just be hanging around the house,
getting on my wife’s nerves all day long. Most of my friends have long since left Cleveland”... “But I’m gonna keep on
writing’ this. I still need catharsis. Gotta get the demons outta my system”... “Like if I’m just working my eight hours
and then going home and writing, and the stuff’s getting published and I’m getting paid, but there’s no feedback about
it and I’m isolated - that can be a drag. Why would I or anyone get anything published if we didn’t want it to be read
and have an impact on people?”... “Hey, it’s not just me that’s not getting attention. Look at the wonderful body of
work that Frank Stack and Spain Rodiguez have created that’s being ignored. Look at Joe Sacco’s Palestine. It’s only
five hundred times better than Maus, but, strangely, Joe didn’t even get nominated for a Pulitzer”... “But now, doing all
the things I have to do to make money, I work about seventy hours a week myself. And like I said, my social life in
Cleveland is so barren, I’d rather work than retire, even if I could afford to retire”... “Diversion is the best strategy I
know of. I’ll lose the war, but maybe I can win a few skirmishes”... “What do I have to do today? What do I have to
worry about?”... “I’m not a dangerous driver, but I’m a pretty confused one, and I’m hyper, so some sometimes I drive
over the speed limit. The thing is, everyone drives over the limit from time to time – you can’t help it. And if a cop
happens to see you, you get a ticket. All you have to do is let your mind wander for a second and you can commit a
moving violation”… “I kept writing jazz criticism for a long time because it made me feel like something more than the
file clerk I was and am”.... “You can be creative writing music criticism; I felt the juices flowing in a part of me I
thought I’d never use again”... “I have no use for Oscars or Grammys or any kind of artists’ hall of fame. There’s a lot
of P.R. and politics involved in who gets the award and who doesn’t. Great and even influential artists are routinely
ignored. On the other hand, some pretty ordinary writers and musicians, who for one reason or another appeal to the
lowest common denominator, make fortunes and get all kindsa publicity”... “My troubles get put in perspective when I
talk to her”... “To me, each day has a purpose”... “The same old loveland”... “I guess you could say humankind in
general often seems kind of absurd to me”... “The early and middle seventies – what a lonely, awful time for me”… “I
wanted a wife because I was alone all the time”… “Surviving the second divorce wasn’t too bad. I had the comic book
going for me, so that gave me more self-esteem”… “We love each other, but we’ve had some difficult times. I’m hard
to live with because I don’t like to go out much anymore. I’m depressed a lot.”
-From a story about Colin Warneford, an autistic writer/ artist: “Dear Harvey, This may (or may not be) the
first letter you've received from someone with autism… (I'm worried you may not write back, so I'm trying to grab
your attention early on, here.) In fact, Asperger’s syndrome, or ‘high-functioning’ autism... which I suppose means I’ve
got above average intelligence, rather than the more well-known type of person with autism... who has a low IQ, or
learning difficulties... I don't know how much you might know about autism, but since people with the condition can't
always 'speak for themselves', the media representation of the condition is very poor*… most people expect someone
who can't dress themselves or live independently. *The psychologists have got it all wrong, too… To get to the point,
I’ve always had what you might call a ‘mission’ (a real obsession) to write autobiographical work and get it before a
readership. In fact, since I was at school I’ve been determined to do so - having a ‘communication problem’ such as
autism, it’s no surprise I’ve been literally bursting to communicate all my life... I’ve written and drawn comics for
about 12 years now. I’m conscious of the fact that you might get letters all the time from ‘no-hopers’ & ‘would-be’
cartoonists - but I’m pretty sure I’ve at least a new ‘angle’... and a damn good reason for doing autobiographical work I don’t have any choice, because I’m just about he only person I can understand, due to my condition. ‘Having’ autism
means a whole different way of thinking, feeling, and perceiving the world - and it’s the ignorance of non-autistic
‘society’ (a pretty baffling and bewildering set-up to anyone with this condition) of our way of thinking that causes us a
lot of our difficulties. Many of us believe that if there were NO non-autistic people on the Earth, a lot of our
communication and social problems might never arise in the first place (but this ain’t gonna happen!). I’m gonna
apologize (in advance) for the long length of this letter - I can't write a short one. Can't help myself… I was only
diagnosed as having Asperger’s syndrome last October... aged 31... (really damn late), so I’d lived, up to that point, in
complete bewilderment and frustration, and, though I knew I was ‘different’, I despaired of ever getting any
ANSWERS as to why, and in what way, I was different. Prior to my diagnosis I had written and drawn many comic
strips, but had always found something was lacking... a ‘theme’, I suppose. Something that would tie it all together...
help me understand all the disconnected fragments... (my perception of the world is, by nature, fragmented) and get
some coherence to it all. Then I got this ‘label’, and everything started to make sense... My life was, to me, a puzzle to
solve. I always liked that line “Every human being has a project” (Jean-Paul Sartre)... I’m beginning to make sense of
my world, and at the risk of sounding arrogant, I feel sure it’s an interesting journey, and I’m determined to make it a
public one. Needless to say, the need to communicate and receive feedback is IMMENSE. There have been a couple of
autobiographies published by people with autism, and there are also newsletters published by (and for) people with
autism (they’ve printed some of my work), but, as yet, I don’t know if there are (m)any autistic cartoonists? One thing
I’m concerned to avoid is any kind of ‘super-cripple’ perspective - I despised those recent Hollywood movies about
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‘disabled’ people, and all those OSCARS going to actors playing disabled people. I abhor any kind of ‘Freak Show’...
where the non-disabled or so-called ‘normal’ people give the ‘weirdos’ a few moments attention then go home, much
relieved they’re ‘okay’. That sick fascination with abnormality! (ie: Victorian ‘society” visiting the ‘Elephant Man’)...
spare me the sheer repugnance of society ogling the ‘less fortunate’! I hope to somehow avoid the ‘novelty factor’ (but
it’s not going to be easy)... Apart from a sudden impulse (this afternoon) to communicate, I'm not sure what I hop to
gain from writing to you, Harvey. A word or two of encouragement? Advice? I guess so… I'm certainly not expecting
any help with my day-to-day difficulties. You've got troubles enough, I'd expect. To have autism, it's been said, is to
feel like an alien just arrived on planet Earth, lacking a guide-book. The sense of isolation is so intense, it's difficult not
to writ, in an attempt to 'make contact', to someone you 'know' through their work (such as you). Imagine having no
real understanding of the word 'friend', or no sense whatever of any 'friendship', even if you have daily contact with
people who tell you they're your friend… it's only recently I developed any understanding of the concept of 'friendship'
at all. I always lacked an awareness of the difference between 'friend', 'stranger', and 'acquaintance', Everyone (and no
one) is your friend. You trust everyone, and no one. You're hostile to people who try to be friendly, and friendly
towards people you should avoid…… You live in fear, you live in a state of complete bewilderment, and at times you
feel so desperate for a sense of connection with SOMEONE (anyone) you'll write to someone you've never met in the
hope they'll write back, so you get a sense of having 'reached out'… “Something had a big influence on me: this was
the life of Robert Crumb. Basically, I attempted to ‘be’ Crumb. I saw Crumb, portrayed sitting in a separate room
(drawing) and described as a ‘quiet, retiring guy...” I’d always been labeled “SHY” (and ordered to ‘snap out of it’). I
thought if I did what Crumb did... find some kind of ‘Bohemian’ crowd to join in with, things would start to improve.
A social worker had said I'd 'missed out on certain key developmental stages' -- all I had to do was 'get out and
socialize'… and I'd soon 'catch up'. He was wrong, but I tried it. People noticed I was 'different', and tried to 'help'...
“So... apart from one long-term friend whom I’ve known since school (and who has Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder,
which makes him, in some ways, similar to me), my other six friends were all met during this attempt to be ‘one of the
gang’. But as soon as they tried to ‘get to know me’ - outside the pub - problems arose... Now I avoid pubs and most
overtly ‘social’ situations... EXTREME ANXIETY as I draw this peaceful man (slumbering alcoholic dreamer). The
panic induced in particular by having to draw this and do it right… combined with too much happening too quickly all
at once all piles up on top of each other can't cope leaves me in pieces… to calm down takes time… if it can be done at
all… my daily teatime anxiety… “I've just given a good example of what I consider 'irrelevant' areas of life - going
out, getting pissed, having a 'laugh', forgetting about work (whereas in my mind, my 'work' is never forgotten), playing
pool - all ‘recreational’/ social areas are irrelevant... although, I’ve spent most of my life aware I was missing out on
something, and wanted to enter into it. Obviously, the feeling of ‘missing-out-on-the-fun’ was brought intensely to the
fore when I saw my professional -‘careers’ (social workers, Day Center staff, psychologists) were able to forget all MY
troubles and go back to their lives - whereas I’m relentlessly stuck in my own groove, even on a ‘night out’... wanting
to talk only about my ‘pet’ subjects ... and if I CAN’T. I suddenly realized that it was ‘just a job’ to my psychologist...
the one who diagnosed me... she even said: “Don’t ever believe that people do this kind of job because they want to
HELP people.” (I must be more naive than I thought.. I’d supposed this was the basic idea behind it!) She said it was:
self/ career/ position/ ‘ADVANCEMENT’ first... ‘HELPING’ second... I left school and dropped instantly OUT…
went on the dole… (nowhere else to g), whereas I watched my 'peers' running frantically here and there, planning their
'future'. I hadn't any plans, didn't know what it was all 'for'… I was just committed to: drawing, thinking, and to one day
'expressing myself'… only dream I had was to be a cartoonist… but a 'career plan'… what's that? Whole idea makes me
RETCH!! This was my situation until I claimed for disability living allowance in 1996... People my academic/
intellectual equal (or even, in many cases, my inferior) from my school year have gone on, through University, etc., to
become: social workers, City Planners, Physicists, and so forth… I will admit to ENVY… but my path was different…
and indeed it had to be… and I'll 'get there' in the end (where? Who know) MY way… "I wanted to be an opera singer
when I was your age, but now I have to do THIS for a living - and I sing in my spare time, as a hobby… You'll really
have to widen your horizons, Mr. Warneford!!" -"And maybe (yeah, like Crumb, too) 'I'll show those bastards!'"…
"Usually, I just want to be ELSEWHERE, pursuing my interests”... "There's one thing I KNOW was on his mind: How
was I going to survive in the 'Big Wide World' (I wonder myself)"… “I was obsessed with those crawled notes…
OBSESSED with communication… and curious to know what'd happened to my mother's mind. But me dad soon
threw those scraps of paper out.. Too many memories, I suppose”... “I try to blend in, be as much like the people I meet
as possible... but WHY should I conform to some ‘normal’ standard? I’ve been as flexible as I possibly could. I try to
‘fit in’, but they won’t do the same for me. I’ve learned some of their ways... but... they don’t grasp my ways at all.... I
just never feel ‘natural’, relaxed. I think really LIVING is about confrontation… or being able to be confrontational
when required. From my angle life… SOCIAL life, is just a constant battle… and I don't want any part in it… I don't
understand the drives most people have - they're out of my experience, especially sex drive - or, more accurately, all the
so-called rituals, games… needed to be entered into to find yourself in a sexual situation. Although I'm attracted to
women, I have no idea what to do about it”... “Too many questions, from too many strangers, coming too fast. I felt
trapped and unable to move or escape… fluctuating between feeling completely invisible and completely exposed…
or… both at the same time. It wouldn’t have been helpful to say: 'I’m someone with Asperger’s syndrome or ‘mild’
autism' - it still wouldn’t have stopped me being bombarded by: Noise, emotions, cross-cutting conversations I couldn’t
follow... It wouldn’t have stopped the withdrawal... or the fear... At school age, I got on best with adults. I could talk to
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them about some science topic I’d read about in the encyclopedias and textbooks I loved... I still have the most trouble
with people my own age... especially women... and ALL children & teenagers - they seem to spot instantly that I’m
different, vulnerable, an ‘easy target’. Local kids still bully me... I’ve had snowballs thrown at me by ten-year-olds in
winter... they seem to realize I won’t fight back or shout. It’s still dangerous to be me. I was once molested in a Chinese
Takeaway... I was 18. I could only stand there and wait for it to finish.... What good are my ‘insight’ and ability to
articulate in writing if I’m still quite defenseless in real life? I think this is the point you have to grasp... I’m not
actually ‘anti-social’ at all. I started out quite unaware of the concept ‘social’ - without the in-built capacity to learn to
BE ‘social’... but ANTI-social means, to me, a person capable of being social, but who prefers, for whatever reason, not
to be. I’m accused of selfishness and thoughtlessness... but this, too, is inaccurate. I’m egocentric, yes, because I never
really left that stage of development... whereas there are people who choose to be ‘selfish’. I long (or used to long) to
be able to socialize... but I haven’t the ability - some ‘autistics’ aren’t really much interested in ‘social’ stuff, or sex...
and maybe they’re the fortunate ones.”
-Afterword: "I've been in contact with Colin Warneford for a couple of years now and feel awfully pleased
that I've been able to work with him. Colin's an outstanding illustrator and fine writer, something you probably realize
if you've gotten this far. He's had to pay a lot of dues and, hopefully, getting his work out will, in the long run, make
him feel better. In case you're interested, I put together excerpts from several of his letters to create a lot of the text for
his story, to which Colin added extra dialogue in some panels, using Geordie, the dialect spoken in and around
Newcastle. He's got a really good ear. 'Hoy, Colin, great job like, an' a' hope t' work with ye again soon.'"
Our Cancer Year by Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner: “It took me so long to get the life I wanted: the right job, the
right apartment, in the neighborhood that suited me best, a good wife, an artistic outlet. I wonder how much damage
getting’ a house I gonna do to me, how I’m gonna cope with it? Let’s face it. I’m a compulsive guy. Any time there’s a
big change, it messes me up.”
Pekar’s words are almost identical to the worried voices and feelings inside my own head. It’s like reading
your kindred spirit’s journals in comic book form! This is EMPATHY writing in its finest, rawest, more honest form.
Notes from The Quitter by Harvey Pekar: “At the age of ten, I started working for my parents on Saturdays in
their store. At first I felt proud to be working at a job at such a young age. It was like I was more grown-up than my
peers”… “So, after being what I considered a star in elementary school, I went into the seventh grade, junior high
school. There were a lot more kids in my grade, and a lot more competition”… “Another problem I had when I entered
Junior High School was girls. Guys were starting to go out with them in the seventh grade, and I was strongly sexually
attracted to the, but I was afraid to ask them out... Then part of it was class. A lot of the girls I liked came from richer
homes than me, and I felt like they kind of looked down their noses at me… That messed up my confidence for a long
time”… “Even at this stage in my life I was deeply depressed and pessimistic”… “As nice as the customers were to us,
working at the store really depressed me”… “I was afraid to ask girls out”… “You’re making a mountain out of a
molehill”… “Underground comics were often written about the bohemian life style. But it didn’t have to be that way all
the time. Underground comics had already proved that comics could appeal to adults. They were as good an art form as
any that existed. Comics are words and pictures – you can do anything with words and pictures. So I thought, why
couldn’t I write about everyday quotidian subjects in comics? Why couldn’t’ comics be about the lives of working
stiffs? We’re as interesting and funny as anyone else”… “Look at this. Nothing but super hero crap!”… “I finally got
around to writing comic scripts in storyboard form.”
Notes from Harvey Pekar's Cleveland: "Yeah, I've had plenty of good days"… "I should give her credit for
toughening me up in view of some of the troubles I would experience. I learned early that you have to allow for
unpleasantness in your life"… "Actually, the job might've saved my life. I had worked for short stretches as a US civil
servant when I was seventeen, and although pay was low, I liked the security and fringe benefits I got there"… “Toby,
the self-proclaimed ‘Genuine Nerd,” who was a bright guy but said and did strange things. Later, it occurred to me that
he was autistic; he sometimes astounded people with his remarks”… "I'd gotten divorced in 1972, and , aside from a
date here and there, had had a pretty quiet love life. My isolation was really bugging me"… "But I was losing money
on the comic book, and nobody, aside from comics fans and insiders, knew about me"… "Everybody's into
SUPERHEROES!"… "In 1980, I did get a call from Jonathan Demme about him making a film based on "American
Splendor", but he wasn't well-known either, and the deal went nowhere"… "I started to realize my fear would come
true, that once she had her degree she'd view me as a liability and DUMP me. I had made another wrong guess about
her. I didn't realize what an upwardly mobile person she wanted to be"… "See, it would've be too much of a problem
for her to get a job at a so-so local college or university. Sure there wouldn't be any prestige connected to that, but the
main way academics get prestige is publishing articles, and you don’t' have to be from an Ivy League school to publish
articles"… "I just don't think I can get the position I want here"… "At the same time, for reasons connected partly with
getting even with my second wife, I had begun building this huge book collection, and was writing literary criticism"…
"I'm not the voracious seeker of knowledge I used to be"… "I mean, there have been times when things looked pretty
bleak for me. Like all the important stuff in my life had already taken place. But y' know, I really don't wanna give in to
that. If you're gonna be alive, you oughta at least make an effort to feel good"… "But he's also studying to be an
occupational therapy assistant at a two-year college. It's great that he's still ambitious"… "I really like it when they say
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they like my complaining because they have the same problems I do, and it's nice to know they're not alone in this
world"… "Well, first of all, it's fine to have the energy to take on a lot of work, but don't quit your day job. Even if
you're a terrific author/ cartoonist, there's no guarantee anyone will publish your work. And even if they do, chances are
they'll pay you little or nothing for your work. To a lot of people, publishing comics is a labor of love. They lose money
themselves. I mean, if you really enjoy doing comics, and you think you're creative, by all means keep at it. But it took
thirty years and a movie based on my work to make me any money"… "And another thing, you don't live in a media
center. If you live in a media center, you have a huge advantage"… "Y' know, life ain't fair, and that's especially true in
the arts"… "Well, these days, Cleveland isn't the worst place for me to be. Now everyone's depressed, not just yours'
truly!"… "People don't come here to the Midwest to dream - they are here because it's cheap, and they stay because it's
cheap."
Notes from Huntington, West Virginia "On the Fly" by Harvey Pekar: "I continued and graduated from NYU
in 1987 and was working in an animation studio. It was a cutthroat atmosphere. I wasn't comfortable there"…
"Meanwhile the sprout business was doing badly. The bank took everything. My mom and dad separated and
eventually got divorced. My mom had another breakdown"… "My marriage was not doing well. We were growing
apart. Having a child was stressful. The relationship wasn't stimulating enough"… "See if there's anything on TV." "Why bother?"… “I took a bunch of nightmarish jobs and then got a job at Wal-Mart. I worked there about seven years
and then got fired. I’m not feeling too bad about it ‘cause the job caused me a lot of stress and strain”… “Now started
the 60-to-80-hour workweeks and over-seeing a staff of over 50 people”… “I always heard that running a restaurant
was the toughest job in the world and soon learned that was the case. I had lost twenty pounds”… “We got less than
half of what we put into it”… “Big Fun is like the safe place on the Monopoly board. The bottom line, Harvey, is I just
wanna make people happy”… “In 2003 I was picked up by an agent who booked speaking engagements, many at
colleges. These are great gigs. Even after he takes his 30 percent, you often wind up with $3,000 to $5,000. The first
year I thought I was in heaven, I had so many speaking jobs. Since then things have fallen off. I’ve been averaging one
or two gigs a year. Now that the American Splendor movie isn’t around, there’s not so much interest in me”… “He said
your number was in the book and you said that anyone was welcome to call. So we thought we might call and get
acquainted”… “I wanted to write about everyday life.”
5-8-04: I’ve been reading “American Splendor” on my back porch this perfect weekend May Day by myself
(even after I called three different sets of friends if they wanted to do anything). I found myself relating too heavily to
Harvey’s loneliness. We both had long streaks of being without ladies and longing for our exes. We also put our free
time into expressing our creativity through introspective, autobiographical art stories.
2-28-07: Eric Homan finally got to meet Harvey Pekar this evening at OSU’s Mershon Auditorium for a one
hour talk he did with an OSU professor of cartoon art. Then I waited in line for fifteen minutes to meet Harvey, have
him sign my trade paperback for “American Splendor”, and got my picture taken with him. I knew I was just another
“ardent” fan of his and he’s met my type thousands of times before. I shook his hand and told him that I found his
books to be very cathartic. He didn’t really respond. He looked tired and obliged to get his picture taken with me. That
was how I expected him to react anyways. Meeting your idols are usually disappointing experiences if you think too
much of them. He has no idea who I am or what I’ve written. I’m just another “Eric… spelled with a ‘c’” that he’s
anonymously met. One young woman asked a question to Harvey how beautifully and honestly he’s written about
depression. In the way she asked I could sense she’s battled depression just as I have and how much his work has
helped her. And that was when I realized that Harvey’s “American Splendor” books are really therapy. It’s plain and
simple. They’re just disguised as a comic book.
7-12-10: My wife Lisa called me up around 12:20 p.m. this afternoon while I was out Half Price Books
shopping and at Used Kids. "Did you see on the Internet? Harvey Pekar died. He was 70 years old." I didn't really react
at the moment. I just shrugged it off. He'd been battling prostate cancer, asthma, high blood pressure, and depression.
He also had cancer back in the 90s. It was his time. Yet later on, it fully sunk in that one of my biggest role models on
my artwork and journaling was dead. I sarcastically left a phone message with Lisa that if Neil Young died today, I
didn't want to know. It would just be too much grief for me to handle. Cleveland lost LeBron James last week. Today
they lost Harvey Pekar. Pekar chronicled his life and times in the acclaimed autobiographical comic-book series,
"American Splendor," portraying himself as a rumpled, depressed, obsessive-compulsive "flunky file clerk" engaged in
a constant battle with loneliness and anxiety.
-Chris Ware/ "Building Stories"
Building Stories: Reading 14 booked stories out of order like picking up pieces of someone else’s memories to go
through, analyze, read, and reflect on. There’s a stark honesty to these stories and memories that I find quite refreshing,
relatable, and engaging. And I love the ability to read someone else’s most private thoughts and learn that I feel the
same way, too. For me, that’s art. It’s about relating to something from the heart of another. I also felt deeply inspired
by this book since the subject matter felt like it was ripped from my very own journals. You can also read this 14-book
story in any non-linear order and still get the story… Simple things like discovering one’s past ex on the Internet can be
so full of drama. I also must add the relationship this book has with another favorite graphic novel series, American
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Splendor. Both deal quite candidly and honestly with living and coping with depression, especially with artist types. No
wonder I find myself enchanted and deeply empathetic with these tales… This book also inspires me to tell my own
tales from my life experiences from my journal entries. Chris Ware makes everyday life events and private emotions
feel like high drama. This work informs my own artwork to continue on by taking what’s working with this book and
express it into my own art. My work just needs more of a narrative to it. I need a story to tell… I really don’t want this
book to end. It’s like being around a really good friend who really and truly gets you… “Momma, I don’t know how I
feel right now. I mean, I don’t’ know how to say it. I’m just not happy or sad, I’m in between”… “I don’t car… I just
don’t care… Let it snow…. Let it bury me, for all I care…”… “I thought I’d gotten over it… I thought that somehow
I’d fixed myself, but the hole, the horrible emptiness inside me just won’t go away… Everything… everything makes
me feel awful… alone… the hole just keeps getting bigger… How are other people able to do it? Where do they find
their ‘happiness’? And was I ever actually happy? It seems impossible now… unthinkable… Maybe when I was a
kid… the smell of our house… of dad’s old coat… The promise of a long Saturday, of sitting in my room on a cloudy
day, drawing”… “I almost had everything… almost had… a family of my own…”… “Maybe it’s old-fashioned to even
want a family… maybe there’s a reason I’m alone… It’s evolution or biology… Am I really so awful? I must be… I
must be… My dead end job… My dead end life… It’s what I deserve”… Capturing everyday moments in life as you
raise your little daughter up. Observe the spring flowers on a walk. It’s all an artistic event to be expressed… “He was
just the kind of non-threatening boy a shy girl like me needed… I’m pretty sure I was the first girl he ever hung out
with, actually”… “I told him about Phil and Lucy and my wasted years in art school”… “Y’ know, it’s no wonder he
never got married… anyone in their right mind would run screaming”… “Just then for no good reason at all, while
staring into my plate of Trader Joe’s Tortiglioni Parmagianno, something came loose inside me and floated to the
surface… the uncomfortably loud swishing of my prom pantyhose in his father’s station wagon, his damp hand in
mine, the rear view mirror reflecting the headlights of passing cars into my eyes”… “As a kid, I could sit in front of a
mirror and stare at myself for hours, trying to imagine what I’d look like when I grew up”… “Men just don’t
understand the tremendous anxiety girls feel about their bodies and appearances”… “So why was I so mopey? I mean, I
got a boyfriend practically the second I arrived at college”… “I’ve been home for barely a day and already my mom is
driving me crazy”… “A lonely kid with an over-active fantasy life”… “Later, it turned out that she had some pretty bad
emotional problems, and she’d fallen in with a different group of girls, anyway. So I didn’t let it bother me… At that
point I was starting to become acquainted with the unfairness of life”… “I’m really am happy… finally. I am happy”…
“Why couldn’t she just be happy for us?”… “Had I really just signed my life away as a suburbanite?”… Cats puking
on the floor again… “Sometimes I think I used to be a calmer person when I lived alone… more spiritual… I feel like
somehow I was more alive then… taking that creative writing class and writing and drawing in my journal… even if it
was mostly terrible… God… have I really given up on myself that much?”… “When was the last time Phil and I had
sex, anyway? A while, that’s for sure… after Lucy was born”… “And even though he broke my heart and ruined my
life for years I have to give him credit for loosening me up a little”… “He was probably right about us… knew it
wasn’t going to work… So why do I find myself thinking about him sometimes, still?”… “What if we had stayed
together? Had our child? I wouldn’t have met Phil, had Lucy”… She had an abortion when she was younger. She
wonders if she had raised that child s/he would have been in college now… “I guess I was mostly looking for a reason
to call Stephanie… ugh… I feel bad how long it’s been”… “Having Lucy in kindergarten has given me some of my life
back”… “I feel so guilty for just wanting more time to myself”… “Phil first started to worry about losing his job”…
“Lucy and I were playing in the yard on one of those early summer Sundays that seem made for childhood… Blue sky,
green smells and nothing to worry about other than what I was going to make for lunch”… “This was what it was all
about… This very moment… the joyful reality of my daughter”… “That was when Phil came outside… I could tell
from his voice that something was wrong… very wrong”… “She’d always had a knack for knowing when to snap the
shutter”… “To quell my fears that as a bad friend I might’ve had something to do with her ‘decision’ (to kill
herself)”… “I have the best family in the world. It really hit home that morning how profoundly lucky I was… how
close I’d come to my own lonely oblivion at one time”… “I looked up Stephanie’s old emails… When I’d received
them they’d struck me as rambling, oppressive screeds, suffocating for their length and neediness… but now… I was
shocked by their lucidity and wit… They showed genuine insights into human character and relationships, a sensitivity
to the invisible forces that bind us together and push us apart”… “At least I had the repetitive daily grind of parenthood
to distract me”… “Phil, I think I might really need some help”… “Fuck you, God!”… “You were always takin’ notes in
that diary of yours… We thought maybe you’d be famous someday”… “I… yeah… I guess I gave it up… kids, y’
know? Maybe I’ll, uh, get back to it someday, though”… “Had I really been so obvious in my ambition back then?
Either way, his mentioning it had heightened the bittersweet nostalgia of the afternoon and put me into a weird funk”…
“Would it kill you to spend a few minutes with your daughter?”… “I really like Amanda… ‘Militantly single’”… “So
much for my two hours of ‘me time’”… “What was I supposed to do? Duplicate myself? I could feel everything
crowding in on me, the pressure building”… “My God… was I happy? Was it possible?”… “I sat there, tingling with
revelation”… “Just these few hours of solitude had let me do what I wanted… refreshed me… given me the sense of
serenity that I’d been missing… So why couldn’t Stephanie have found that same solace in her solitude? Why had life
ultimately been such torture for her?”… “I thought I’d gotten myself together… but I hadn’t”… God is a flower to
Branford the Bee. “Around and around, God rushes up to him. And Branford kisses and kisses!”… “Wow, well, now I
am officially jealous”… “Why does he have to be so mean to me?”… “I try not to say anything stupid or dumb”…
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“He’s such a fucking asshole”… “I guess I’ll just wear this skirt… After all, it’s what I had on when xxxxx (cute guy at
work whose name she won’t allow herself to say. –ed). What if… we fell in love with each other?”… “Just some
memory fragments I pulled from this area’s consciousness cloud”… “It wasn’t until the pornography paradigm
changed that the God-wave was discovered”… “No, I never wanted to have children. To have one’s life completely
taken over by the needs of another person? I think not”… “I’d pretend I was being swallowed down the gullet of some
enormous whale or a fantastic sea serpent”… An old woman drifting through the memories of her selves of her life…
“He does magic, but only as a hobby… I don’t’ think he feel there’s any future in it”… “Briefly, our knees brushed”…
“But in my situation a girl can’t afford to be choosy… I suppose he’ll even ask me to marry him one of these days”…
The stillness of time… “I’m sorry, but I relish the time I get alone”… “I guess I just got testy, that’s all”… “I just miss
you”… “I realize it may be heresy to say this, but sometimes I almost find myself feeling nostalgic for the days
following 9-11… There was such an air of seriousness, of frugality… of, well, reality… But then we all slowly
returned to our corners, and, one by one, went back to sleep”… “Still reading about the end of the world, I see”… “A
bomb… a bomb has gone off downtown… The Sears Tower has been bombed and people are dying right now and in a
few seconds a nuclear fireball will sweep over us”… “I know you’re under a lot of stress lately”… “Phil and I
discovered our checking account was overdrawn”… “Well, if you think working on Saturday night – and a holiday! –
is more important than spending time with your daughter, that’s fine… just great”… “Trying to close my nose and
thoughts to the musty loneliness of mom’s sad new life”… “You know, dad had an affair”… “The worst part was that
she’d been keeping this from me only since dad’s death, it all having com e to light in a packet of old letters from a
teaching assistant of his she’d found in a file marked ‘business’”… “It’s weird, but if there was anything guaranteed to
bring us together faster as a family it was mutual anger at my mother”… “Personally, I think estheticizing the sense of
taste is a classist, morally indefensible notion, a function of privilege rather than one of necessity, especially when it
comes at such expense”… “I just need to keep my mouth shut, I guess”… “Repetition… that’s what wears you down…
day in, day out… It all runs together”… “Granted, I could probably use an invisible friend myself every once in a
while… Maybe that’s all ‘God’ is, really”… “It’s certainly very reassuring, the feeling of being looked after… watched
over”… “Mom, did Miss Kitty go to the same heaven that your dad went to?”… “After years of not caring and not
looking I’d found my first boyfriend, Lance, on the Internet”… “Living in Australia? My initial shock gave way to
acceptance, and then blithe dismissal… over a decade and a half of curiosity, sated all at once”… “I can’t believe he’s
got his own domain name… what an ass”… “His site answered pretty much every question I had… He was still acting,
appeared to be successful (minor awards, lots of parts) and offered numerous head shots and stage photos… with one or
two glaring omissions… Namely, was he married? And Did he still love me?”… “God, I really miss him sometimes”…
“I just got an email from my ex-boyfriend”… “Were Lance and I cosmically linked, somehow?”… “Everything was so
much easier when the world was still going to end”… “I liked the idea of maybe making him sweat a little”… “But I
had no career… no accomplishments… nothing to show for myself”… “I’d given up on myself, on life, on ‘my
dreams’, just like all the clichés say… How was I going to account for it? Oh God, what was I going to say to him?”…
“I can’t begin to explain how strange it was to see someone I was once in love with suddenly appear on a stage
pretending to be someone else”… “The 20-year-old self buried alive inside me awakened, sat up, and said, ‘This is
where I belong. This is the man I really love, the man I am to marry. Thank you. Thank you for finding him. And then,
gratefully, that me finally laid down, and died”… “Oh God. You came”… “We stood there, embracing, and then he
quietly started to sob”… “How was it?” –“Stupid”… “So I picked it up, and, to my amazement, it was my book…
someone had published my book! And it had everything in it… My diaries, the stories from my writing classes, even
stuff I didn’t know I’d written… everything I’d forgotten, abandoned or thrown out was there… everything… And you
know, it wasn’t so bad… In fact, it was kind of good… interesting”…. “Because your dreams are always so retarded,
mom”… “Oh, you’re young… You don’t know what it’s like yet to completely give up on something”… “’I’d never
seen her before,’ thought the building”… “And sinking back into its morose self-reflection”… “’Oh well… I’ve had
my fun,’ it thought”… “So the building, accidentally catching a glimpse of itself in the glint of the windows across the
street, sighed”… A building filled with a vacancy… A 98-year-old building tallied its events within itself: 29
marriages, 178 trysts, 14 diaries, 28,224 hugs, 68,418 orgasms, 5 spiritual crises, 11,627 lost childhood memories, 425
begged forgivenesses, 6 suicide notes, 29 broken hearts, 32,931 lies… “I guess with that weird sex dream I woke up
from in the middle of the night… I’m just glad I remembered to write it down, otherwise I would have probably
forgotten about it… That’s one good thing I learned from that creative writing class, at least”… “Anyway, what’s even
weirder is that now, it still seems sort of sexy to me… Maybe this is one of the first signs of going nuts from
loneliness”… “I was sort of proud of myself for figuring this out, actually”… “Mom. I’m looking more and more like
my mom. Her tired eyes”… “She was clearly desperately lonely”… “Look, obviously you don’t even want to be
around me”… “Look… obviously you’re trying to pick a fight”… “I mean, you can hear almost everything my
neighbors are saying when they’re yelling at each other”… “I mean, Saturdays are usually pretty depressing for me,
anyway… But at least I’m either distracted by being at work or passing time at a bookstore or hanging out with a friend
or something… Today offered no such distractions, however, because I had to wait around for the plumber and nothing
I could think of to occupy myself at all appealed to me… It was as if all of my failed ambitions were closing in on me
as the hours ticked by”… “I had to face it: I’d never be an artist, I’d never be a writer… I’d never be anything… My
neglected diary stared back at me from the living room, untouched for days”… “I lay there trying to figure out how
long it’d been since I’d actually kissed someone… Six Year? Seven?”… “God, I did not want to end up like her…
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alone, my life over”… “Finally, in a last-ditch attempt to pull myself out of my funk, I called pretty much every single
friend I had in the world, including increasingly distant acquaintances from school I hadn’t talked to in a year or
more… Not a single one of them was home, though… They all had ‘lives”… Were out ‘having fun’”… “It gets lonely
sometimes, but that’s the way it goes, I guess”… “I started to feel depressed the longer I sat there… I never can think
of anything interesting to say… I’m boring… People are nice to me at first and then I disappoint them”… “I was so
impressed by his maturity, his kindness”… “Un-Kiss”… “How many years had it been now, anyway? Six? Seven? Day
after day of hopeless loneliness suddenly brought to an end just because I happened to get invited to a dumb birthday
party”… “It felt… alive”… “I didn’t want the night to end. I wanted to prolong it. And my feelings, as long as I could.”
So she writes in her diary… “So I wrote, and I wrote… I wrote down everything I could remember about today”…
“I’m never going to change”… “I go to my dead-end job, I go out with friends, I stay home… It doesn’t matter.
Everything depresses me”… “And all I’m left with is just the vaguest sense of it all… a general ‘jist’. And then even
that dwindles away… Whole periods of my life are now nothing more than a few isolated, unrelated recollections”…
“While I was still in art school, I developed a reputation amongst some of the faculty as a readily available cat/ dog/
house-sitter… I was perfect for the job: single, reliable, well-spoken, and ambitionless”… “Gradually being buried by
the trappings of a creeping middle-class prosperity”… “Exhibition announcements from washed-up friends”… “I had
no idea what I was going to do with my life… I couldn’t afford graduate school and had been so confused by all my
classes I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be an artist anymore… It would give me time to think”… “Mostly, I just read
books… lots of books”… “There were whole stretches of days where I never even left the house at all… Never saw or
talked to another human being”… “I imagined them, t he dad always busy, disinterested in both his wife and his
child… A sports fan who probably slept around on business trips”… “It must’ve been its own lonely sort of hell”…
“But I couldn’t get that ‘look’ he’d given me out of my mind”… She gives head a lot in this book, too… “I didn’t see
him again for a number of days, but the seed had been planted in my mind”… “Mostly I was just nervous about
seeming like a nerd around him”… “What do you mean I’m never around anymore? You’re the one who’s never
fucking around!”… “I guess I was just avoiding my life, and I was blaming them for it”… “Rather than always being
‘the aggressor,’ I’d frequently allow him to ‘get the better of me,’ just so that he didn’t ever end up feeling threatened
or impotent, or something”… “In fact, I think I knew too much”… “We’re… going to have to let you go, I’m afraid”…
“So I’m getting fired for doing my job, then”… “It was a lonely, horrible time”… Can flowers feel?... “Her mind gone
idle over the overwhelming reality of her loneliness”… “Well, I’ve gotta write about something”… “As if her
depression was the only valid one”… “Seeing her reminded me how emotionally raw I used to be”… “After spending
all day trying to justify my terrible paintings to my teachers and to myself: ‘I guess they’re about the intersection of
loss and recognition… and the spaces we create to negotiate them’”… Your ex-boyfriend Lance called up your mom a
few months ago… “Why did he even call, anyway? Did he have a dream about me, like the ones I still had about
him?”… “Did he want me back?”… “Why can’t I simply forget him? Is it because I can only remember the good times
when I think about him?”… “Because I preferred being by myself, anyway”… “So the reason someone with a weak
heart and one and a half legs would live on the third floor of a walk-up apartment building is that otherwise, I wouldn’t
ever get any exercise”… “Except for a few weirdoes and fetishists, people with missing limbs aren’t generally
considered the most sexually attractive members of society, and so I don’t need to be fat to complicate matters (even
though I am)”… “Lance and I met in an art class. I was nineteen, and had pretty much never kissed, let alone hardly
ever talked to, a boy before in my life”… “I’ve had hundreds of orgasms myself, but I’d never felt this… ‘filled up’…
whole… before”… “Suddenly, impossibly, I had a boyfriend, a real boyfriend! Me!”… “Like all relationships, though
(I guess) our initial tumult gradually died down… He still slept over, but he didn’t seem to want me to touch him, or
hug him, as much… As the summer approached and his imminent European backpacking tour with it, our
‘lovemaking’ had become more of a clinical act of mutual satisfaction, but I didn’t complain”… “My once-pounding
heart was now an open, gaping ache, a shot-gunned-out wound that wouldn’t heal, or close. He’d never told me why…
He’d never ended it… Just left it, to fade, to dry out”… “He was too much of a coward to break up with a ‘cripple’?”…
“I’d gone from being a shy high school kid to someone’s intimate partner all in the blink of an eye”… “It was what I’d
always wanted”… “It was as if we were married… Me, eighteen years old, and Lance, nearly twice my age… Those
first few weeks were bliss”… “Like most new couples, we slept together (i.e. had sex) virtually every night from the
day we first met… I felt as if I’d grown up overnight, as if I’d joined the ‘club of adults’”… “Actually, I’d always been
sort of curious about ‘X-rated’ movies, and my newly-blossoming self was ready to try an ever-widening array of
things (within reason, of course)”… “(Besides, the whole situation was pretty much completely turning me on, to be
honest)”… “’The 400 Blows’?” –“I know… Isn’t it hilarious sounding?”… “It was about two weeks later that I had
my first pregnancy scare”… “I felt so strange and confused, having practically just left my own childhood behind and
now here I was faced with the insane, unimaginable possibility of becoming a mother myself”… “This whole irregular
period thing is a bit troublesome… And, unless you object, I’d like to get you on oral contraceptives and see if that
improves things”… “You know I really really like you, right?” –“And I really really really like you”… “But I did miss
the intimacy of the early days of our relationship and wondered when it would return”… “I remember this one time,
after being taken to task by a girl for being too ‘tentative and modest’ in my painting”… “Anyway, of course, it was at
my parents’ house that all of a sudden when we were in bed playing around that he decided he wanted to enter me
again”… “My worst fears had been confirmed: I was pregnant. Pregnant”… “You can’t even stand to touch me
anymore!”… “It was clear somehow that deep down he suspected I’d ‘engineered’ it all, that I was trying to ‘trap’ him
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the only way I could”… “I had an exam the next day that I wasn’t at all prepared for… a critique at the end of the
week”… “…But you know I’ll always be here for you, right?”… “I just heard what I wanted to hear”… Symmetry…
“A bundle of cells” the size of a quarter… “Then, when they actually turned on the shockingly loud vacuum the pain
was so bad that I told them to stop, but the counselor just squeezed my hand and said it was ‘almost over’… I cried
until the vacuum finally stopped and the doctor got up abruptly and left without saying a word… The counselor
continued to hold my hand and stroke my hair from my forehead as I cried, telling me that it was over… ‘over’”…
“And then, amazingly, about a half hour later, I was sent ‘home’”… “I’m all sucked out”… “If anything, I felt even
more alienated from him”… “Whatever had bound us together before was now replaced by a descending shroud of
shared shame and guilt”… “I’m sorry, but I just had an abortion here”… “Hoping to glimpse into the private lives of
its inhabitants”… “This nauseated girl who, for most of her life, has been much too eager to be loved (and so has lived
it for the greater part alone)”… “I am entirely, 100 percent, horrifyingly, alone.”
4-30-13: Just finished this book, "Building Stories" by Chris Ware. This is one of the best, most intimate
graphic novels I've ever read. It's like Harvey Pekar's "American Splendor", except from a woman's perspective. I
wrote up 7 pages of notes from it over the past 9 days it took me to read all 14 parts of this epic achievement. Chris
Ware was also the keynote artist at CCAD's MIX symposium last year. Highest recommendation! Available at CCAD's
Packard Library for faculty and staff checkout.
-Art Spiegelman/ “Maus”
“As soon as time allows, I’d like to have a nice, long depression.” -Art Spiegelman.
“Maus I” was a deeply worthwhile reading - a personal statement of a
horrifically senseless "shoah" of human (mouse in this case) existence and
their love. I do appreciate learning about the horrors of the past; I like to
learn and dream about them.
-Terry Moore/ “Strangers in Paradise”
“It’s $2.95 for therapy.” –Quote from a Strangers in Paradise letter column.
5-15-08: Notes from the Terry Moore talk at the Wexner Center for the Arts: “My unhappiness drove me to
make art”… “I’m obsessive compulsive”… “I’m good at drawing, but I had nothing to say”… “I didn’t write about
characters. I wrote about people. Making that distinction was very freeing”… “‘Art’ is a verb. It is something you
do”… “Clever is good, but sex sells”… “You have to be grateful for your career”… “You have to ask yourself the
question: ‘Would people want to read your book?’”… “Comic book creators are often driven by fear to keep making
quality work”… “What are you saying to the world? Are you helping them? Offending them? Are they timeless like
matters of the heart?”… “Watch a movie with the sound off. See if it tells a story through the acting and the editing”…
Strangers in Paradise: A sensitive person’s book… “I vent on the page”… “I’m not gay and I’m not a woman. But I
wrote about gay issues from the heart.”
Paradise Too! #3: “When I was 25 I couldn’t write my ideas down fast enough. But at 45 the ideas don’t come so easy
anymore.. and I wonder why. Is it because I’ve been drinking too many cokes all these years? Is it the junk food?
Maybe the older we get the more our mind fills up with practical thoughts, pushing our imagination aside. (War,
famine, politics, divorce, sin, fear, Hollywood, hate, doubt, abortion, civil rights, duty, money). Or maybe I’m just
lazy.”
-Sergio Aragones
“Being a cartoonist is not just sitting down and drawing. You have to dig down in your imagination and grab
stories nursed by your experiences – some read, some heard, some observed, and others, like this one, lived.” –Sergio
Aragones from Solo #11.
-Walt Disney
Walt Disney is another incredible visionary who I greatly admire as a role model.
Salvador Dali described Disney as one of the three great American surrealists for Disney's imaginative
freedom of animation mirrors Dali's artistic vision. The two had great respect for each other.
“I believe it is important for every young artist to have at least one hard failure in their life. It builds
drive and character... It is in my nature to experiment.” -From a Walt Disney retrospective short.
"If you can dream it, you can do it." -Walt Disney.
-Ollie Johnson & Frank Thomas
Frank and Ollie: “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a breakthrough for ‘personality animation.’”
“All of us are potential villains. In spite of ethics, morals, codes of conduct and a general respect for laws, if
we are pushed far enough, pressured beyond our breaking point, our self-preservation system takes over and we are
capable of terrible villainy.” -Ollie Johnson & Frank Thomas.
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-Tex Avery
Tex Avery’s Screwball Classics: Opera football... A white ghost turning completely red from blushing.
Tex Avery's Screwball Classics: Animation that made extraordinary use of its
creative canvas and medium. The twisted deformations define what animation can
accomplish. "Anything is possible in animation." (Digital Imaging can do
similar effects for me.)
More Screwball Cartoons, featuring a creative exercise of literally
translating slang. In animation, cats and dogs really did rain; the grinning
cat has your tongue in its paw, a couple painted the entire town red, and tears
do run down a cheek. Animation worked better than Digital Imaging.
-Max Fleisher
Rotoscope animation innovator of taking real-life movement and transforming it into unique forms and
movements as in the old Betty Boop animated shorts.
-Jan Svankmajer
Svankmajer is clearly one of the greatest surrealist animators I’ve ever
come to the pleasure of witnessing his work. It’s like watching one’s
subconscious mind broken loose from the repressive dam gates.
Scenes from the Surreal: A moth with ear wings... Ears on a hand... The Surrealism Movement as an
animated short instead of a painting... Clay flesh... Autopsy of a statue... Limp loaves of Czech penis bread...
Jan Svankmajer: “For me, animated film is about magic”... “Both childhood and dreams are the basic
constants of my films. I believe every artist derives his work from these two sources because these are his
strongest experiences”... “Childhood is never innocent. It’s subversive” ... “Surrealism is a living organism in
me”... “I made this film out of catharsis. That’s how my film should be looked upon... and understood”.
Alice (1988): Extraordinary use of imagination: swim in your own pool of tears,
a key inside a sardine can, a croissant with nails, jam with tacks, a living
sock that sews its eye lids shut.
-The Brothers Quay
The Brothers Quay Collection: A house/ world made of paper and print. Dark visions from a stop-motion
subconscious dream world.
-Ray Harryhausen
Ray Harryhausen Chronicles: “That giant ape King Kong left a lasting impression on me of what you could do with
animation”… “We’re going to grow old, but never grow up”… “What can I do with this film? Perhaps I can make fairy
tales for children”… “Everything Ray touched was a time-consuming process with little rewards.”
-Bruce Bickford
Baby Snakes: Featuring some utterly amazing stop motion clay animation by Bruce Bickford!... Intercontinental
Absurdities Presents: Over 2 ½ hours of Baby Snakes Outtakes: The Movie.
-Nick Park/ Peter Lord/ Aardman Animation
Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were Rabbit: “May Contain Nuts.”
Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death: Nick Park's brilliance continues. His Wallace and Gromit world is
ones of strange, almost Boy Scout-like 1950's innocence. Wallace is always looking on the bright side of life... "It's not
every day that you meet the girl of your dreams"... "This is getting ridiculous"... "I suppose you can't be everyone's cup
of tea, can you?"... "I've got a bomb in my pants!"... "DO NOT FEED THE CROCODILES"... And the crocodiles eat
the Baker Lite Girl!
-Chuck Jones
Chuck Amuck: The Movie: A great documentary on Chuck Jones… " I think you must learn - if you're in any
filmmaking - you must respect the single frame. And there are twenty-four of those per second. If you don't respect that
single frame you're in the same boat with a musician who does not respect an eighth note or a sixteenth note or a thirtysecond note or whatever. You have to find the smallest unit and you have to love it and believe that one will make a
difference. One frame to me will make the difference between whether the thing's funny or not."
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Comic Book Superheroes/ Fictional Characters
-Superheroes
“There's a reason why the adventures of Superman rank among the most enduring stories ever told (69
uninterrupted years and counting): Superheroes speak to the part of us — and we all have it — that hopes, deep down,
that we're special. By tapping into our longing, these tales become legend. The one who can fly. The mad scientist. The
one who's invulnerable. The Jekyll-and-Hyde. The one who can teleport. The psychic. The seer. And that's why people
flocked to Heroes: because it was filled with stories that we already knew, presented in a completely different way.” –
Exert from an Entertainment Weekly DVD review of “Heroes: Season One”.
Powers #12: A cop interrogating a female superhero groupie: “Got a thing for the powers?” –“Oh, yeah, ever since I
was a little girl. I’m not the only one. There’s quite a few, quite a few.”
-Catwoman/ Selina Kyle (also see Julie Newmar as Catwoman)
3-16-04: Reactions while reading/ star-gazing at “Catwoman” comics: There is something so unbelievably
erotic about seeing a well-developed woman in a cat costume like Catwoman’s in full body tights and tail. It’s the
combination hybrid of the cute/ soft/ cuddly elements of a kitty-cat with the sensuous form of a beautiful nude woman.
The villainous female is an alluring character. Yet in a comic book type costume, she becomes a sensual
fantasy in reality (Catwoman being a prime example).
“Catwoman: Her Sister’s Keeper” told the shocking secrets of Selina Kyle’s beginnings as the Catwoman.
The most interesting part of this character was that Catwoman was a hooker. The whole story was very realistic and
entertaining with an allegory.
-Batman (also see Frank Miller)
Batman also lived through a traumatic experience that evolved him into a costumed vigilante. Instead of
going mad like The Joker, he used his emotional "demons" to fight back against the world's insanity - evil. He felt an
urgency to act when the innocent are senselessly murdered, violated, or humiliated.
JLA: Secret Origins: Batman: “To prepare myself for the battle, I developed my mind, mastering science and
criminology. I pushed myself to the limits of human endurance, training my body to physical perfection… all the while
driven by the pain of my worst memory – the night a criminal stepped from the shadows and tore my world apart. In a
heartbeat I had lost the two most important people in my life. It was this loss that changed me forever… the night a
grief-stricken boy made a solemn oath he would never forget.”
Batman Forever: “I wouldn’t fit in at family picnics”... “You like strong women.”
-The Joker
“Batman: The Killing Joke”: The Joker - the man - was so sure of his talent as a comedian; he only got a
laugh for how pathetic he was. His need for success was intensified by his overwhelming responsibility of supporting
his pregnant wife. Suddenly, one night, his wife died accidentally... no friends to help him comfort his grief - instead
strangers laughed at his misfortune... finally, after accidentally falling into a pool of chemicals, his appearance was
horribly deformed, forever. The "emergency exit" was to go mad - where he could save himself from all the terrifying
thoughts of reality.
Batman also lived through a traumatic experience that evolved him into a costumed vigilante. Instead of
going mad like The Joker, he used his emotional "demons" to fight back against the world's insanity - evil. He felt an
urgency to act when the innocent are senselessly murdered, violated, or humiliated.
In the end, they forgot their suicidal conflict and shared a long, long laugh together.
-Superman
Look, Up in the Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman: “Superman: a refugee from a distant planet… clothed in a
muscle-defining outfit of an acrobat”… “Superman’s Suicide”… “We had a little crush on each other”… Christopher
Reeve made Superman look great in tight. He looked like an ideal… an icon… a hero. He had the earnestness and
morals that made him incredibly appealing.
Superman, The Movie: Space filmed using microphotography... “It’s suicide... genocide”... “He will defy their
gravity”... “Here in this Fortress of Solitude, we will find the knowledge.”
Superman II: “Don’t you know? Terrorists have taken over the Eiffel Tower and are threatening to blow it up
and Paris along with it with a hydrogen bomb”... “You are Superman!”... Another fine super hero movie
about the theme of superhero duality - having secret life, a secret identity that no one else knows about.
How mysterious and alluring!... Eating snow for food and water.
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Superman IV: The Quest for Peace: What a shock to rediscover the quality and sincere passion of this
movie! Superman has to make a stand. “The earth is my home, too. And I can’t stand idly by and watch us
stumble into the madness of possible nuclear destruction” ... “Someone has to be an optimist”... “You’d be
perfect for it. You’re young, single, successful”... Because he lives a duel life, he can have two different
loves. Lois Lane for Superman, and another woman for Clark Kent.
-The Punisher
The Punisher, Frank Castle, is a human “super hero” who is really quite intriguing to me on a moral level.
He has a suicidal, obsessive quest of bringing real justice to the world since the free world that we live in is, in truth,
corrupt. He has been tempted with money and has actually turned it down. It’s one thing to believe that you wouldn’t
take the money, and another when you’re actually tempted in real life. He just continues to live in near poverty. That
alone is a fantastic nobility. His entire family has been murdered, so avenging those who commit crime or allow crime
to flourish is his main focus and pursuit in life. He is a wake-up call to the world to shape up.
-X-Men (also see Chris Claremont, Stan Lee)
11-20-00: I rewatched “X-Men: Night of the Sentinels”, the 1993 animated series pilot episode,
which rushed back memories of how much that show meant to me when I was 16. I felt like a weirdo... an
outcast. The comic book was my teenage support book through characters I identified with and stories that
impressed my sense of imagination. I remember anxiously waiting for months through the summer for this
show to premiere on TV. With all the family problems and teasing at school, the X-Men cartoon and the
comics (especially written by Chris Claremont) was what I lived for. I decided not to “kill” the school
underclassmen bullies that taunted me on a daily basis, my overbearing and sometimes verbally abusive
father, or myself for that matter because I didn’t want to miss seeing the X-Men on TV. How crazy is that?
Seeing the show now, I actually found it to be pretty juvenile stuff - though great escapism none-the-less.
5-31-01: X-Men: Night of the Sentinels: This was the premiere episode that I spent months looking forward
to seeing in 1992. Looking forward to seeing this animation series was all I had going for me. I kid you not. I was also
heavily into comic books during that time period. Comic books meant power and imagination to their readers like me.
My fantasy world inside me bloomed and flourished during this time. I admired Gambit’s charms and mysteriousness. I
wanted to have his mutant super powers to show off to the girls for once. I adored the whole concept of being a
superhero and being around women in tight, sensuous costumes fighting for the right of good. That was a future. Also,
the X-Men were considered outcasts by society. For a confused outcast like myself at that time, these characters were
like my best friends. I belonged with them when no one else quite fit the bill. They had my empathy. When the X-Men
cartoon did come on one Saturday morning, I had to tape the episode because my family decided to take everyone to go
shopping at the Lima malls that day. I prayed to God that the VCR worked and I got the episode! When I saw this
episode, I watched it again and again every day for ten days straight. It was the comic book come alive! It got my heart
racing wildly out of control.
-Wolverine (see Chris Claremont’s “Uncanny X-Men” work)
-Mystique
Mystique is the ultimate bisexual creature. She can take the shape of a woman or a man, or even
shape her anatomy any way she imagines. Mutant sex would be off the charts fuckin’ incredible.
-Firestar
Firestar #1 (2010): She can warm a can of soup with her hands. Neat trick. She’s her own personal microwave…
“Angela the freak girl!” Firestar is a teenage female mutant that her peers treat like a total outcast that they ridicule
mercilessly… “Such a loser!”… “These things you can do… I don’t understand any of it. It’s all strange and
unsettling… but you must have a pretty amazing life”… “Being a mutant, it comes with a lot of baggage. A lot”… "I
was almost married. In the end, things didn't work out between us, but there isn't a day I don't wish Vance and I were
husband and wife. You can't know how it'll all pan out"… "…Are you wearing a wig?"… “I don’t know what I’m
doing either, Cassie. I really don’t”… “Angel, most people go through their life never figuring out what to do with it.
And those that do, most of them never go for it. You have a passion and you’re actually pursuing it”… “This is my
new life.”
-Daredevil (also see Frank Miller, Stan Lee)
8-15-95: I read (in passive concentration) “Daredevil: Gang War”, a compelling Frank Miller trade paperback
that I got from the library from request. Daredevil is such an intriguing hero to read and see on comic book paper. He’s
also the more “human” of super-heroes, too, with a startling scarlet costume and mesmerizing villains (Kingpin,
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Bullseye) and foils (Elektra, Stick, Ben Urich).
Daredevil: From the Frank Miller interview on Daredevil: “Matt’s a guy who should have ended up a villain. He came
from a terrible childhood. He had the worst love life”… “I introduced Elektra in my first issue I wrote of Daredevil. I
thought there was always something stupid about superheroes having normal girls for girlfriends. Why does Superman
go out with Lois Lane? Wouldn’t he rather be with Wonder Woman who is at least a match for him? Why wouldn’t
they be operatic about their romances as they are in their combat?”… “It was an exploration of what superhero sex
would be like.”
“My read on Daredevil is that – mostly as a mental survival skill thanks to all the personal hells he’d endured
– he’s the only Marvel hero who lives totally in the moments.
He doesn’t worry about what happens next, nor does he allow himself to be haunted unendingly by his past.
He’s been through enough agony to have confidence that nothing will break him and (more importantly) that no pain
lasts forever.
He’s the Man Without Fear not just because he’ll dive off a skyscraper, but because he genuinely believes
that after all he’s been through, there’s nothing unimaginable left.
Nothing out there that could frighten him that he hasn’t already weathered. And he’s right.
For a while." -Mark Waid’s pitch to write Daredevil.
-Elektra (also see Frank Miller/ “Daredevil”)
Daredevil: From the Frank Miller interview on Elektra: “Freud named a complex after her. I mean, she’s got issues.”
7-19-96: Once finishing The Elektra Saga, I realized that she is one of my favorite characters of fiction.
Elektra's worst enemy was her only love, Matt Murdock - Daredevil. When they encounter each other, they also fight
the intimacy of their memories and feelings more than actually physically battling each other.
-Hulk (see Peter David, Stan Lee)
-Spider-Man (also see Stan Lee)
-“Am I more interested in the adventure of being Spider-Man than I am in helping people?? Why do
I do it? Why don’t I give the whole thing up? And yet, I can’t! I must have been given this great power for a
reason! No matter how difficult it is, I must remain as Spider-Man! And I pray that some day the world will
understand.” –Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man #4.
“With a new, pragmatic world view, I did the mature thing. The gown-up thing: I decided I was Spider-Man.
He had trouble with bullies too. They embarrassed him in front of the girls. They called him names. But he put up with
it, concealing the secret of his awesome power. He put up with it and put up with it, just like me, he put up with it and
put up with it, until—” –From a Frank Miller speech at a Diamond Comics Seminar.
-Dream/ Morpheus/ “The Sandman” (see Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean)
-Death (see Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean)
“When the first living thing existed, I was there waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job will
be finished. I’ll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights, and lock the universe behind me as I leave.” –
Death.
12-5-93: I bought “The Death Gallery” also today. To tell the truth, I’ve been in love with some fictional
characters like Death more than most women in real life. Maybe it’s the way Neil has handled the character, making
her absolutely, completely beautiful physically, mentally, and emotionally. She's simply someone I could talk to. He
also wrote that when creating her. He meant to make her irresistible so that the person who would see her when he/ she
dies, they would fall head over heels in love with him/ her. Neil succeeded all too well triumphantly. She's to die for
indeed.
-Delirium (see Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean)
-Swamp Thing (also see Alan Moore)
6-29-93: I can’t really think of anything that big that happened today, so I will tell you about the “Swamp
Thing” Agenda. A couple of years ago, a friend, Bill Hess, lent me some comics. One of which was a “Swamp Thing”
trade paperback. I looked through it and immediately felt embarrassed and uncomfortable about having that book in my
room. You see, it contained a few panels of partial nudity, moody emotional colors, and stark, violent artwork. Back
then as a 6th grader, I was uncertain and frightened of such material. Today, I asked Bill if I could buy that book. I
wanted it since I have matured and have read that the book was critically acclaimed by being written by one of the
finest writers in the comic book business, Alan Moore. I read a bit of it again. Now I feel it's utterly brilliant. What a
brushstroke of inspiration and genius Alan Moore and his artistic collaborators are!!!!
7-9-93: I guess on the positive side of things is that I have finally finished the “Swamp Thing” trade
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paperback. It was superbly written and drawn by such top comic book creators. The British author, Alan Moore, has
won numerous prestigious awards including the British Fantasy Award. Alan Moore has really influenced me and my
creative writing. He's a major inspiration to me. I feel so full of ideas after having read "Swamp Thing". I hope to keep
writing all because of him.
I realized tonight that the relationship between Swamp Thing and Abbey is one of the great unique romances
of modern comic book literature. In a time where homosexuality is now widespread and acceptable, here was a
relationship where love was bonded between a humanoid vegetable and a human woman. It is beyond heterosexuality
or homosexuality – it was love between a plant and a human! If they can find passion, respect, and friendship with each
other, I suppose their love can be real – no matter what type of life form you happen to be.
-Preacher (see Garth Ennis)
-Hellblazer (see Alan Moore)
-Animal Man (see Grant Morrison)
-Doom Patrol (see Grant Morrison)
3-13-05: Doom Patrol is an extremely creative book. God, I love this book. It's one of the primary reasons I
read comics.
-Miracleman (see Alan Moore)
-Concrete (see Paul Chadwick)
-Magneto (also read Chris Claremont’s “God Loves, Man Kills” trade paperback)
12-26-05: I want to have the awesome power of magnetism of the super mutant villain/ anti-hero Magneto to
fly or stop speeding cars in my path. I want to unleash my wrath for the greater good.
-Dazzler (also see Chris Claremont’s “Uncanny X-Men” work)
I was so infatuated and obsessed with Chris Claremont’s run on the “Uncanny X-Men” when I was sixteen
years old. The tales that Claremont wrote in the early, mid, and late 80’s were a fantasy world populated by outcasts
with superpowers. And I loved it so. Dazzler/ Allison Blaire took the form of a high school crush for me. I didn’t
exactly relate to her personality wise, but I thought she was extremely hot in that spandex blue skintight costume she
wore. Reading and collecting those issues were like windows into a life/ fantasy that I wanted to live in. And spending
time with Dazzler was all the more blissful with every issue I found with her in it. Since I didn’t have a girlfriend when
I was in high school, she took the role for me. Allison Blaire was my de facto girlfriend. “So don’t go knockin’
Dazzler, man! She was my de facto girlfriend when I was 14 years old!”
Dazzler #38: Dazzler on the run and being chased by Wolverine and Colossus! She's a sexy outcast trying to get away...
Wolverine never thought Allison was strong enough to be with the X-Men… "Bursts into view as a portable tape deck
behind her loudly fills the room with music! But Wolverine and Colossus barely get the chance to hear it… for the
throbbing sound waves are swiftly absorbed by Alison Blaire's mutant body to be transduced into light. Brilliantly
gleaming, pulsing light. Dazzling light"… "She's changed costumes! A new costume…! Seems to help her control,
amplify the light"… "Petey, forget how much you like her singin'." Colossus has a crush on her… "Light surging out of
his target pounds Wolverine in waves of color"… "The light changes in an instant. No longer pounding waves. Just one
thin beam. Sharp as a razor… or adamantium claws."
Dazzler #39: Dazzler is an outcast. A hot young woman, but still an outcast that society fears and distrusts. She's a
strong, passionate singer, but she's also fragile and vulnerable inside. "After a good performance… I can hardly contain
the glow. Only -- it's also frustrating, knowing how seldom these opportunities come along now… because of the
mutant thing"… These Archie Goodwin written and Paul Chadwick penciled issues, Dazzler #38-42, only five until the
series ended, are uniquely special and rather sensitive. They're the best representation of Dazzler ever in comics: the
outcast musician on the road and on the run. I also adore Dazzler new costume that was introduced in Dazzler #38, the
skintight blue neck to toe bodysuit unitard. She always looked so incredibly sexy in it. She looked like a beautiful
gymnast/ 80's aerobics instructor/ acrobat in that dazzling costume. And I liked that she had to wear it to help focus her
light powers, too.
6-25-03: I found out today that the X-Man Dazzler, one of my favorite female comic book characters that I
had a huge crush on when I was a teenager, was killed off in Uncanny X-Men #393. In a way, I was heartbroken.
-Rogue (also see Chris Claremont’s “Uncanny X-Men” work)
One of the things that I absolutely loved about Rogue of the “Uncanny X-Men” issues from the 80’s and 90’s
was that she had to wear a skintight bodystocking over her entire body because if anyone ever touched her naked flesh,
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she would absorb their thoughts and powers. So she was basically a default nylon fetishist no matter what. Every
costume she wore covered her lovely body from head to toe. She was a perfect specimen of comic book sexiness. I just
loved the sleekness of how she looked in those body-hugging costumes. It was like looking at her nude figure, but not.
So in a sense, it was PG-rated – but not! Rogue was also a terrific emotionally wounded character because she could
never touch another person, which meant she could never show love or give physical love. She couldn’t even kiss a boy
without possibly killing him! These two qualities really made her quite endearing to me as a teenage. Smoking hot
body in a bodystocking + emotionally fragile ÷ mutant absorbing power = great X-Men character.
-The Black Cat (also see Peter David/ “Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-man”)
-Black Widow (also see Frank Miller/ “Daredevil”)
Black Widow: The Coldest War: I always loved Black Widow. She caught my eye and my hormones when I was
fourteen by wearing a gray skin-tight body-stocking costume that covered every part of her body except her neck up.
She didn’t even wear shoes. She was the female nude without being totally nude. She also had ravishing red hair and a
scarlet spider on her left breast – like a deadly nipple for her enemies. Oddly in this graphic novel, she’s feeling alone
and in need of someone to talk to. Geez, do I ever feel empathy for her! She visits her ex-lovers – people she’s been
close to intimately and emotionally. Only now most of them have married or have girlfriends. She feels like she’d be
intruding…. She’s a world class dancer/ gymnast and a heroic female costumed crime fighter. God, I love her.
-Diamondback
-Spider-Woman (also see Chris Claremont)
(Written after reading an issue of New Avengers): I must admit that I really like her. I mean, how can you not
with a cool costume like the one that she wears? And she’s a pretty interesting and mysterious character to boot. It’s
pretty sexy fun to just read about her adventures in comic books. Who wouldn’t want to hang out with a sexy comic
book heroine in the realms of their imagination? It’s like being closer to one’s greatest wet fantasies.
-Green Arrow
JLA: Secret Origins: Green Arrow: “Going hungry wasn’t an option, so I forced myself to master the bow and arrow.
After weeks of practice, I was good. No, exceptional. Before you call me conceited, let me assure you that going
without for so long humbled me quite nicely. I only took what I needed and was grateful to have it. The experience
opened my eyes. When I finally made it home, I decided to use my skills and new attitude where they’d do the most
good. I became a sort of urban Robin Hood, a self-appointed champion of the little guy. For a while I had a partner. A
good kid, talented, brave, and no stranger to adversity himself. He conquered his personal demons and moved on. So
did I. And yeah, I did my time with the League. But ultimately, it was not the group that held my heart. That belonged
to those people down there. The ones carrying on their own fights against injustice and a world that would cast them
aside. It was a lonely vigil at first, but lucky for me, I met a pretty bird who felt the same way – Black Canary.”
-The Phantom Stranger
“Phantom Stranger, enigmatic and all knowing, at one with the cosmos but forever alone.”
-Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman: “Beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena, strong as Hercules, and swifter than Mercury!”
-Zatanna
Zatanna (2010) #2: She’s always been one of my favorite female characters because of the cute magician’s outfit she
wears with the black top hat and the fishnet stockings. –“Did you actually wear some of that stuff?” -“Sure. Every
single, shiny and revealing item. I like dressing up, I like being on stage."
-Conan the Barbarian
Conan the Barbarian: In the age of lust and rage… Lizard on a stick… Riding a horse across an ocean to seek
vengeance on those who killed his family… Conan must learn the riddle of steel…“What do you see?” –“Infinity.”
Conan the Destroyer: “The dreaming god”. “Darkos, God of God”… “A bird of smoke.”
-Ariel, The Little Mermaid
Ariel, The Little Mermaid, was a crush of mine when I was a teenager. I thought she was the sweetest
mermaid in the world… so innocent and beautiful.
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Music
The Melodic Addiction
“You could get high on the energy and driving pulse rhythms of rock ‘n’ roll.” –Bob Dylan.
11-15-98: Well, I’ve come to realize that I do indeed have a “drug habit” - an addiction - listening to
great music. I’ve been obsessively collecting the best music to absorb into my consciousness and skills. When I
listen to music while working on my computer, it keeps me emotionally awake and artistically stimulated so I
won’t go into a creative doldrum. The best thing about this habit is that I can experience them as many times
as I want. CD’s like “Bob Dylan: Live 1966”, “David Bowie: Low”, and “Miles Davis: Kind of Blue” are sonic
narcotics for me. Rather than merely entertain, they change my mind, alter my perceptions, expand my
mind, emotions, and ideas - and completely without real drugs. Take this analogy: you need a beat to keep
dancing; same goes for making art. You can channel the energy, vigor, and creativity of rock music (or jazz,
progressive rock, bluegrass, classical, rap, rhythm and blues, or pop) into one’s own being. Music has a
direct connection to our emotions. Before I get started working on art or writing, I select my music for
whatever fits my state of mind and emotion. Music is my creative fuel to creating doing artistic work for long
periods of time on a creative high. Since music is a place where musicians express their feelings, I take
those feelings and passion that I strongly empathize with and let them raise me to a higher artistic place. I
feed off the energy that good music brings - no matter how diverse and different it may be. It’s like a
narcotic, but it’s emotion-based instead of chemical-based. Music is my muse. Some people spend their
money by getting a massage for relaxation and peace of mind. I spend my spare money on CD’s to keep my
mind and creativity stable and strong. I’m shopping for “inspiration”. I need eccentricity and inspiration. I
need emotions that will measure up to my own. I need the B-52’s, R.E.M., Nirvana, Björk, Sinead O’ Connor,
John Lennon. I need balance. I turn my pain and anguish into a motivating force channeled through
computer art and fueled by music so loud, so passionate and empathic (from “Björk: Homogenic” to “Bob
Dylan: Time Out of Mind” to “U2: The Joshua Tree”). Music is a life support system for me when life gets too
rough, boring, or desperate.
We live in a time where emotional nakedness is commonplace. Rock ‘n’ Roll was the first time in
history that white people actually spoke what they felt to a mass audience. When you grow up with role
models like Sinead O’ Connor, Björk, Kurt Cobain, John Lennon, and Kermit the Frog, how else am I
supposed to act? Music keeps moving me emotionally and on track for hours.
I alluded before that music was like a drug addiction – and that includes all the trappings of a real
addiction. I constantly go to used CD stores to find more music to add to my ever-growing music collection. I
find myself growing increasingly drawn to sustaining my creativity through music, hence a dependence.
My First Music Albums on CD
5-30-08: These are the first CDs I ever bought (usually from BMG Music): U2: War, U2: The Unforgettable
Fire, U2: The Joshua Tree, U2: Rattle and Hum, U2: Achtung Baby, U2: Zooropa, Duran Duran: Decade, Duran
Duran: Duran Duran, Elton John: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Elton John: Sleeping with the Past, Bob Dylan: Blonde
on Blonde, Neil Young: Sleeps with Angels, The Police: Every Breath You Take: The Singles, Sting: Dream of the
Blue Turtles, Sting: Like the Sun, Sting: Ten Summoner’s Tales, Don Henley: The End of the Innocence, Madonna:
The Immaculate Collection, Madonna: Erotica, Madonna: Bedtime Stories, Tori Amos: Little Earthquakes, Tori Amos:
Under the Pink, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Greatest Hits, The Doors soundtrack, The Velvet Underground &
Nico, John Lennon: Plastic Ono Band, The John Lennon Collection, Yoko Ono/ John Lennon: Two Virgins, Paul
McCartney: All the Best, The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles: Abbey Road, Sinead O’
Connor: The Lion and the Cobra, Sinead O’ Connor: I do not want what I haven’t got, Sinead O’ Connor: Am I not
your girl?, Sinead O’ Connor: Universal Mother, Eurythmics: Greatest Hits, Red Hot + Blue, Remains of the Day
soundtrack, Blade Runner soundtrack, Batman soundtrack, Batman Returns soundtrack, Philadelphia soundtrack, Pulp
Fiction soundtrack, Dances with Wolves soundtrack, Once Upon a Time in America soundtrack, The Mission
soundtrack, Blade Runner soundtrack, Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon, John Williams: Pops in Space, Jurassic Park
soundtrack, Schindler’s List soundtrack, Danny Elfman: Music for a Darkened Theatre, Two Rooms: The Songs of
Elton John & Bernie Taupin, Bruce Sprinsteen: Tunnel of Love, Peter Gabriel: So, Peter Gabriel: Passion, Peter
Gabriel: Shaking the Tree, Peter Gabriel: Us, Prince: Sign “O” the Times, Prince: The Hits, Michael Jackson: Bad,
Bjork: Debut, Bjork: Post, Beastie Boys: Paul’s Boutique, Seal, Seal (2), The Clash: London Calling, Sex Pistols:
Never Mind the Bullocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, David Bowie: Changesbowie, Pet Shop Boys: Discography, George
Michael: Faith, Tears for Fears: Tears Roll Down (Greatest Hits), R.E.M.: Out of Time, R.E.M.: Automatic for the
People, R.E.M.: Monster, Pearl Jam: Vitalogy, Stone Temple Pilots: Core, No Alternative, Nirvana: Nevermind,
Nirvana: In Utero, Nirvana: Unplugged in New York, Nine Inch Nails: Pretty Hate Machine, Nine Inch Nails: The
Downward Spiral, Enya: Watermark, Enya: Shepard Moons, Derek and the Dominos: Layla and Other Assorted Love
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Songs.
My Music Connections
10-8-00: I found myself discovering a new used CD outlet store that was a sister store to Larry’s
Records, just fifteen minutes west off of Oakland Blvd. How do I contain myself with so many bargain CDs
and enough to buy the ones I want? So I got emotionally and physically pumped tonight and got lost in the
music (Pulp, Porno For Pyros, “Forest Gump” soundtrack, Mad Season, 80’s rock) while doing sixty-some
sit-ups. It was my escapism from my dooming boredom. I consider the money I buy used CDs with as “drug”
money... it’s to keep me high.
This Music Drug
4-19-00: Fiona Apple’s new album “When the Pawn...” brings something out of me... something
strong... realizations of my own emotional honesty! I’m a workaholic and a loveaholic! Emotions that people
normally don’t reveal are taken out of the dark and given light. She’s proud, vulnerable, confident, hurt, and
strong. Music is an emotional addiction - and I know I’ve got a habit. I can’t deny that I really like it… this
music drug. It’s what keeps me going through these months of gloom.
Music vs. Drugs
Some people are very critical of how many CDs I have and find that I am very “selfish” to have spent so
much time in my life for my music collection. Well, there are a few things these “critics” simply don’t understand on
face value of things. One: music is what inspires me to do artwork, to become a better artist, and therefore propel my
career forward. Some artists use lots of pot or alcohol to get them to that creative state of mind. And if you kept all
those empty beer cans, vodka bottles, and ganja, it would be just as much as my music collection and cost just as much.
I just felt it was also more economically viable to find a source of inspiration that lasts and isn’t gone after one night of
getting a high from it.
It's My High
9-12-02: To me, letting my friends borrow CDs from my collection my way of “passing a joint”. I don’t have
any drugs to share, so I share my music CDs, which take the place of any sort of chemical stimulant or drug. Music is
my spiritual and emotional uplift. It’s my high.
Emotional Uplift
9-15-02: More importantly, music uplifts and empowers me with the emotions, imagination, confidence,
drive, and pride – especially to keep me from sinking into depression. It can fill you up with so much feeling that it
makes you feel like you have super powers!
You’re Got to Love Something in Your Life
8-11-01: You’re got to love something in your life: music, nature, a woman.... I’ve been single for
over a year and a half and I’ve been obsessed with music. A beat has replaced intercourse. Intelligent lyrics
have replaced a good personality. Rhythm has replaced touch. My music collection and music knowledge
are overflowing. I need a lotta love to get me through the day and night. When I need some sensual healing,
I turn to an orgy of great music. Give me jazz, give me grunge. Give me hard rock, give me new age. Give
me Hip Hop, give me alternative rock. Give me Goth rock, give me Classical. I want it all.
The Appeal of Music, Movies, and Art
I know that I’m a highly complex human being. I’ve made choices that few other people tend to make. I’ve
lived an immensely unconventional life so far. And through it all, I’ve found myself feeling isolated and alone. So I’ve
looked for solace and company that would empathize, or at least sympathize with what I’ve been going through.
Certain music and movies have offered me such relief. Through their words, sounds, and images, I’ve discovered a
kinship of emotions that I can’t find easily and every day in real life. They understand me. I don’t have the opportunity
to have extraordinary living people living around me in Ohio. But I do have their creativity, intelligence, and emotions
to be expressed through their artwork of songs and moving images. They save my life when I am down. They keep me
growing inside when I am uninspired. They make me more than I ever could be with ordinary people. Indeed,
“someone saved my life tonight” –by Elton John. Sometimes a musician’s lyrics can shape and articulate one’s soul.
Music Is My Momentum
4-25-99: I tap into the movement of music that keeps me working without break. Until the music
stops, I don’t have to quit. This pattern has come to define how I’ve managed to get so much work done
throughout graduate school. The music sets me free. It's my momentum, my fuel. Without it, I wouldn't have
gotten nearly half as much work done.
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Hypnotic Music
11-29-02: I’ve always felt very tempted, if not hypnotized by music… like the pidded piper blowing his flute
and hypnotizing me to follow. It’s as alluring as a pretty girl flirting with me. I want to come closer and let it consume
me. When you're listening to a really good song, it can totally take over your mindset and help you along with a day's
work. In times of hardship, it is absolutely the best medicine for one's soul. Once you're in its wavelength, it feels like
nirvana.
Freeing the Creative Spirit and Emotions With Music
You can create a creative alchemy through music if you can find the right type of emotionally,
spiritually, physically, or intellectually thrilling music. When one is creatively deep within oneself, one can go
into a stream of consciousness where one is able to work for long periods of time and achieve extraordinary
amounts of good work. Yet keep in mind that the main thing about sustaining that creativity for me is a lack
of distraction. I tap into the movement of music that keeps me working without break. Listening to loud music
on headphones is like plugging oneself into an electricity socket. Until the music stops, I don’t have to quit.
When I feel the need to work, I put on the appropriate music to keep my mind flowing. Music, I believe, is the
best “drug” to sustain a creative high. This habit is why I own a rather expansive and diverse music library.
When I do make mistakes while working and get disoriented, my artistic mindset is not broken because I am
still in the moment with the music energizing me along. I always select my music wisely and personally for
what will move me into the right state of mind and emotion. Music offers a way to channel or process
particular emotions while in the art-making process. Sound can inspire, influence, hypnotize, empathize,
arouse, and outrage feelings out of my psyche like a sonic exorcism. It is truly my “creative fuel power”.
I have a profound attraction for all types of music. I think that’s clear from my CD collection that has
become the soundtrack to my life and personality. Music defines who I am. The diversity of my CD collection
showcases that open-mindedness. The music is my audio dreams... my audio emotions.
Music Arises the Feelings to Make Great Art
11-5-02: Even if you don't know or follow along with the lyrics, you can still feel the emotions within the
vocals and music. In that way music arises the feelings necessary to create great art. Feeling the music allows the
emotions to be lubricated enough to channel yourself into the right state of mind in order to express yourself. Music is
the gateway. You just have to find the right type of emotion to elicit an emotional reaction that unleashes one's inner
creativity.
Making Night Art with Music
I usually do some great artwork done at night when I’m not really thinking because I’m just too tired. I’ll put
on some good music, like some old Smashing Pumpkins, and I’ll drift off into a different state of mind where I don’t
feel exactly exhausted. I’m tired, but my mind is like on a cloud of creativity that allows me to work for hours upon
hours. It’s a very nice sensation. I’ll just work and work and work when I know what needs to be done. And because
I’ve got music to listen to, my mind simply flows along with it. I become in a pre-R.E.M. state – stream of
consciousness working.
Healing/ Empathy Music
An epiphany occurred to me that all the CDs that I’ve bought through the years are part of my self-therapy to
heal myself. I’ve been purchasing good music from talented, emotional, spiritual musicians with something to say and
sing about. Be it Nick Drake, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Björk, Metallica, Tori Amos, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Jimi
Hendrix, or Nirvana. I’ve been buying music as an alternative to going to therapy. I needed empathy voices to listen to
so I could find others to relate to in order to feel less alone and to understand myself better.
A Self-Esteem Soundtrack
12-5-00: U2’s single “Beautiful Day took on significance for me this morning upon reading about it
online at U2’s website. It’s about losing your wife, children, girlfriend, or anything and still being happy after it
all. The song remained in my head like a self-esteem soundtrack. I lasted, emotionally sound.
Music That Uplifts and Heals
12-30-00: While listening to U2’s “All You Can’t Leave Behind”, I realized that I was in pain and this
music was healing me with personal words and uplifting melodies. “I want you to know that you don’t need
me anymore. I want you to know you don’t anyone, anything at all. Who’s to say where the wind will take
you. Who’s to know what it is will break you. I don’t know which way the wind will blow... I’m a man, I’m not a
child.” “Kite” by U2. Another song uplifted me as well: “And if you glass heart should crack, and for a second
you can turn back. Oh no, be strong. Walk on.” “Walk On” by U2.
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Listening to Confessional Music Helps Make Confessional Art
1-2-01: It was from listening to John Lennon, Neil Young, Björk, Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, and other
great musicians that I influenced me to doing confessional art. I owe a great debt to these musicians for
helping inspire my artistic focus. If they have the guts to express themselves, maybe I can as well. And I did.
The Importance of Music After 9/11
9-16-01: Following the traumatic experiences of the World Trade Center attacks, people have been
in immense need of emotional comfort. Suddenly important songs that were replaced by teen pop have been
put on the forefront to combat our sorrow. They’re playing John Lennon’s “Imagine”, U2’s “One”, Sting’s
“Fragile”, Tori Amos’ “God”, The Clash’s “Rock the Casbah” (though some radio stations are banning the
song), R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts”, Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven”, even USA For Africa’s “We Are the
World”. Art has become an all-important weapon in a time of national vulnerability. For the first time in
generations, the world was coming to grips with an apocalyptic reality. And art and music needed to offer us
some cathartic charge and relief. Art was more important than ever before. Art made sense.
“God, sometimes you just don’t come through.” –“God” by Tori Amos.
“The king called up his jet fighters. He said you better earn your pay. Drop your bombs between
the minarets down the Casbah way. As soon as the shareef was chauffeured outta there, the jet pilots tuned
to the cockpit radio blare. As soon as the shareef was outta their hair, the jet pilots wailed. The shareef don't
like it, Rockin' the Casbah, Rock the Casbah. The shareef don't like it. Rockin' the Casbah, Rock the
Casbah.” -“Rock the Casbah” by The Clash.
Music as Release
7-14-03: On the way home, I heard Garbage’s “Stupid Girl” on CD101. It felt like a baptism of sound
washing over my emotions. I needed release so badly. There is such freedom in music that it releases oneself from the
troubles of the day. It is all the more powerful when you’re down and exhausted from the lack of interest to life. Music
works the entire human framework. In come these pulsating beats and rhythms that sooth the body and free the
emotions from a day’s stress. The music expresses yourself when you need it.
Music Therapy
1-4-02: To escape the pressures, stress, and despair of life, I turned to music for relief. If you know
how many CDs I have, you would have a good idea of the magnitude of my musical therapy. This alone is a
great reason to support music and the arts in school and afterwards. How else do you deal responsibly with
life?
Music Ended Up Being the Replacement for Women
2-5-02: I started building up my music collection after the breakup of my last serious relationship. I needed
something to replace the passion, and music ended up being that replacement. I also needed something to keep me
working on computer art for long periods of time. I’m pretty much anti-drugs, so music became my creative fuel.
You’re right, though, that once I settle down and start a family my music collecting days will just have to be put on the
side. Then again, my CD collection is nearly at a point of maximum saturation.
Music as Better Therapy
5-13-02: I just bought the four CD “John Lennon Anthology” for $70. His music can heal me more
than any $125 per hour psychiatrist session. Here is music from a man exorcising his personal demons in a
universal way than anyone with emotions could empathize with. It’s a catharsis people need. Finding
someone to relate to and look up to is part of life. To find role models no matter how flawed they are is a
crucial part of growing up and finding yourself – hence, finding personal happiness. Here is a man who is
addressing his problems in a way so few human being can. He spoke straight from the gut, heart, and mind.
He can communicate them with a fierce determination and strength that fragile, emotionally damaged human
being need. Do you want emotional relief? Listen to some good music! Listen to John Lennon. Listen to Neil
Young. Listen to Bob Dylan. Listen to U2. Listen to Sinead O’ Connor. Listen to Bob Marley.
“We insult her every day on TV and wonder why she doesn’t have any guts or confidence! When
she’s young we kill her will to be free!” -“Woman Is the Nigger of the World” by John Lennon.
Time-Transporting Through Music
While experiencing an intensely abstract concert cacophony by Philip Glass, I had a profound
revelation: I solved the concept of the fourth-dimension (time). It was through the fifth-dimension
(imagination). You see, when you’re thinking passively to yourself, there is no concept of time at all. When
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one is daydreaming or pondering about life, one does not have any concept of the present tense since
you’re not actively engaged in the moment. Tonight I was listening to music as a spectator that allowed my
mind to drift off ever so much. Memories flooded back... thoughts arrived of what I would do in the future. I
was truly time-traveling! My imagination made it real. I just had never accepted it before. No one allowed me
to believe that such a concept was feasible when everyone was experiencing it at some level of
consciousness. I’ve been able to tune into it because I’m such a daydreaming introvert. Those who talk
constantly all day long live remain rooted very much in the present because they’re actively engaged in
conscious discussion. When you’re inactive, the consciousness will slip into time and allow the mind to
travel. The body remains in the so-called present, but the mind is completely elsewhere. Dreaming is the key
to time-travel. Imagination is the space in which one moves in three dimensions. Time is the fourth
dimension for how long one is in that space. Since imagination has no rules, time is always relative or
obsolete. The fantasy of one’s mind is what makes this all real and indisputable. It’s a matter of believing in
one’s dreams.
Sonic Sails
3-26-06: Years ago when I was single and left at home with my own devices, I found solace in writing and
music. It was practically a way of saving my life from defeating my own personal loneliness. Living alone and with
few friends or a lover to take my mind off of being alone, these things distracted me and kept my grasp onto my sanity.
I was so much in desperation and loss that I found it easy to relax into creative outlets. And music allowed me to create,
“sail”, “fly”, “leap”, and breathe easily. I entered a new state of mind where the words and images simply flowed. I had
not other distractions but to release what was locked so deeply inside of me. It was a time of deep reflection and
introspection. Sometimes I’d start writing about old memories… It would be that easy.
Movie Soundtracks
11-7-93: I also became utterly absorbed and swept away by the John Barry's Oscar-winning music. I now
dearly hope that I will make the “Dances With Wolves” score my own in my CD Christmas presents and gifts. Basic
Instinct, Sleeping With the Enemy, Silence of the Lambs, and Pump Up the Volume soundtracks are the other CDs I
hope to own in the very near future. Movie soundtracks have quickly become my passion.
Music and Media as Companions
Ever since the end of a failed relationship several years ago, I started buying discount used CDs as
my means of having (stable, reliable, or creative) company. My CD collection is now massive. That’s a lot of
emotion I’ve been trying to cover for! The music collection is also a solution for an expressive medium that
will sustain my artistic drive and creative hunger. It has been what’s gotten me through many days’ solitude.
You’ve got to love something in your life: art... nature... a woman... your children.... Whenever I find myself
alone, I become obsessed with music.
Music is the great healer of my soul. Music makes you feel! Only in music do I find the emotions that I
rarely see in other people. This is the vulnerability and ecstasy that I crave to share. People barely show
emotion or imagination in social occasions. Music is all about self-expression that can border on genius (if
you know who to listen to). The same goes for movies, art, and books. They are the most accessible things
in my life. People are not quite as dependable of keeping my interests up. I can at least know beforehand if
they are worth my time and energy.
Music is the universal language. A beat replaces intercourse. Intelligent lyrics replace a good
personality. Rhythm replaces touch. When you’re an artist, life can be a lonely journey. I must admit that my
music collection and music knowledge are overflowing. I need a lotta love to get me through the day and
night. When I need some sensual, emotional healing, I turn to an orgy of music.
Music As Sonic Life Support
6-22-97: Because I had no directions or plans, I plugged myself into the CD player and let myself drift into
the noise. It was like hooking myself up to a sonic life support machine and I wanted no interruption from the outside
world. I was adrift in the artistic sonic escapism. I felt so good… so alive. So alive. So alive. I truly felt tuned into the
currents of other artists. I felt free from all the hurt and pains and loneliness I felt in this world. Music saves me.
Music Companionship
7-16-99: Home is a creative haven. A flow of music helped lubricate my creativity and ease my
loneliness. It doesn’t really matter that I don’t have real friends as long as I have music and art. I know the
flaw in expressing that. How essential it is to have human friends? At least with music, it's always there and
never abandons me. Good music doesn't disappoint me. Music is the best companion I've ever had. Yet I
know that doesn’t mean I still don't need real friends. Maybe I prefer the company of The Beatles or Neil
Young sometimes because I know I'll get some brilliance back from them.
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Great Music Helps Stimulate Creativity
5-26-06: I base the majority of my creativity from listening to great music. It is what keeps me going, keeps
me alive, and keeps me vibrant. It is a life force and a savior. It drives me through long hours of writing and making art.
Without it, I’d just be a car without gas. I’d lose inspiration, motivation, and propulsion. It all comes down to great
music can help stimulate creativity. It gives you ideas, a beat, a point of view, and a voice. The music can affect you
like a drug that won’t let go for hours on end. It’s that powerful and potent.
Music: The Sonic Viagra Prosaic
I can understand why I have such a large music collection: I use the sonic ecstasy of rock ‘n’ roll as a sexual
device to heal, massage, exorcise, or provoke my emotions and imagination. That’s how I get my Kicks. Perhaps
there’s also a connection with my sensitive arousal when a woman’s tongue and lips is caressing my ears: the music
does the same thing, only as a sensory fusion mixed with my brain’s intellectual and emotional components. The songs
I listen to are provide me as my orgasms, my cocaine, my “Popeye’s spinach”, my roller coaster, my meteor shower,
my shooting stars, my lover. They’re my Cure, my Nirvana, my Blind Faith, my Wings, my Eagles, my Sting, my
Sonic Youth, my R.E.M., my XTC – that’s Who they are. Anyone can channel them if they’re emotionally open
enough to let ‘em in.
Music for Treating Loss
From my journals: “4-8-00: Loss is the greatest and strongest emotion that I have ever had to deal with in
life. My love for her is now just another busted dream along the road. I go to used CD places to find music that will
give me therapy and sonic medicine for my broken heart: “U2: Achtung Baby”, “Bruce Springsteen: Tunnel of Love”,
“Bob Dylan: Blood on the Tracks”. Dylan’s “Simple Twist of Fate” speaks the closest and most directly to my heart:
“People tell you its a sin to know and feel too much within.” “Is it a sin to feel too much inside?” Indeed, it is when no
one can handle loving you back when your emotions are too great for them to deal with. It is anguishing to feel too
much emotion; yet it’s also so exhilarating.”
“Rock is more like the blues, which have been telling the truth for so many years, but for so long
only spoke to blacks. Rock deals with sadness, bummers, fear, despair, adversity, desperation, as well as
sex, sensuality, highs, and super-highs. The straight world tends to like escapist entertainment, the hip world
accepts more pain and thus more reality. If the “new culture” [of rock ‘n’ roll] is anything, it is a movement
toward a greater personal reality.” –Charles Reich, Yale professor and rock critic/ biographer, 1972.
Music "Completes" My Creative Soul
7-4-01: It’s become rather explicit to me that music has become my sex life in the wake of my last
relationship. The evidence is in the eighteen-and-growing CD towers in my apartment. I’m hungry for the
release and nurturing of emotional growth. Music has done it for me in ways that the women I’ve met since I
left my ex haven’t done for me. Bethany was my own Yoko. She was someone who lifted me up so high, and
took me down so low. Now that we're apart (for good), I'm looking elsewhere for someone who'll lift me up
without breaking me. It's no wonder I've found music to be a safety net. Music won't desert me. It'll challenge
me, fuck me, inspire me, dare me, excite me, thrill me, kiss me, please me, provoke me, scare me, blow me
away. Music has become my world, my galaxy, my universe. That's not to say that I've given up on women.
It's just that in the meantime, music has saved my life while the search continues for someone to complete
me. Music simply "completes" my creative soul.
Personal Favorite Music Albums
Lou Reed: "Berlin", U2: "Zooropa", The Beach Boys: "Pet Sounds", The Beatles: "The While
Album", Nirvana: "Unplugged in NY", Neil Young: "Zuma", John Lennon: "Plastic Ono Band", Björk:
"Homogenic", Bob Dylan: "Blood on the Tracks", Bruce Springsteen: "Tunnel of Love", The Pixies:
"Bossanova", R.E.M.: "Automatic for the People", Sinead O' Connor: "The Lion and the Cobra", Radiohead:
"OK Computer", Neil Young: "Decade", Derek and the Dominoes: "Layla", David Bowie: "The Man Who Sold
the World", Jane's Addiction: "Nothing's Shocking", Ennio Morricone: "The Mission" soundtrack.... This is
really an impossible list to put together. I have too many favorites and I can't list them all. It would take too
long to list the entire catalog of Neil Young, U2, Nirvana, Lou Reed....
Expand Your Musical Horizons
The following is an article I found on the Internet (I’ve become an internet information whore):
“Are you one of those people who only likes one genre of music? Stop
that! Open your horizons and listen to some great tunes from other styles of
music than the one you currently listen to.
First, we will take a quick look at classical music. Although I love lots
of classical music, I'm not really an expert. However, I do have one very solid
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piece of advice: it’s the performances that count. You are shortchanging
yourself if all you have is bargain-priced Naxos in your collection. My
favorite classical piece is Beethoven's 9th. This symphony expresses the range
of human emotion: majesty, triumph, devastation and sorrow. Get the version
conducted by Leonard Bernstein, 'Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 in D minor'.
Jazz: There's a lot of ground to cover here. I recommend you start with
Miles and Trane. You can't go wrong with 'Kind of Blue', or 'Giant Steps’
(although my personal favorite by Coltrane is 'My Favorite Things'. A couple of
other essential jazz albums: 'Time Out', by Dave Brubeck and 'Mingus Ah Um', by
Charles Mingus.
Blues: This is the music that so heavily influenced the Stones, Zeppelin,
Clapton, etc. al. Some great albums include 'King of the Delta Blues’ (Robert
Johnson), 'King of the Blues [Box]'(B. B. King), and 'His Best: 1947 to
1955'(Muddy Waters).
Country, Folk, and Bluegrass: Some good places to start are: 'Essential
Johnny Cash 1955-83'(country), 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?'(Depression era
folk/blues, although most of these songs were recorded recently), 'The
Essential Bill Monroe & His Blue Grass Boys’ (bluegrass), 'Heartland: An
Appalachian Anthology’ (modern bluegrass performed by elite classical
musicians).
Latin: A really wide area that I am not giving nearly enough justice with
these two selections: 'Buena Vista Social Club', and 'The Best Of Santana'.
Fusion: That combination of jazz and rock that saw its greatest
popularity in the 70's. Fusion starts with 'Bitches Brew', although you should
also listen to 'Romantic Warrior', 'Headhunters', 'Inner Mounting Flame', and
'Heavy Weather'.
OK, with that out of the way, let's move on to my favorite kind of music,
rock! I won't be including anything pre-Beatles here, simply because of my lack
of familiarity with it, and also even on classic rock radio stations, they
don't play anything earlier than the Beatles.
Classic rock: Once upon a time, my parents were hippies, and even though I grew
up with this culture, I never rebelled against it. Classic rock remains my
favorite kind of music.
There's almost too much to cover here. Let's see, some of my favorites
are Beatles ('Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'), Stones ('Sticky
Fingers'), Grateful Dead ('American Beauty', 'Workingman's Dead', 'Europe
'72'), Led Zeppelin ('Led Zeppelin IV', 'Houses Of The Holy'), Hendrix ('Are
You Experienced?') CSNY ('Déjà Vu'), Clapton, Cream ('Layla & Other Assorted
Love Songs', 'The Very Best of Cream'), Emerson, Lake, & Palmer ('Brain Salad
Surgery'), Yes ('Fragile') The Who ('Who's Next'), Jethro Tull ('Aqualung'),
Pink Floyd ('Dark Side of the Moon'). There is much more to explore here, but
these are a start. The great thing about classic rock? It really encompasses
everything else.
Hard rock to metal. Rush. You should definitely listen to Rush. Start
with 'Moving Pictures'. My other favorites include '2112', and 'Hemispheres'.
Other great bands include Black Sabbath ('Paranoid'), Ozzy ('Blizzard of Ozz'),
Iron Maiden ('Powerslave [Enhanced]'), Metallica ('Master of Puppets'), and
Megadeth ('Countdown to Extinction'). I try and stay away from the big hair
bands and bands with shallow lyrics. There is some intelligent music in this
genre.
90's hard rock (grunge)- The best albums of this era are: 'Ten',
'Nevermind', 'Badmotorfinger', 'Dirt', and 'Stone Temple Pilots - Purple'. Oh,
and this isn't really grunge, but it will probably be remembered as the best
rock album of the 90's: 'Achtung Baby'.
Well there you have it. A sampling from a wide variety of music styles.
If you're not familiar with any of these, add to your collection as a starting
point and go from there. Obviously I only had room for some highlights. There
is much more to explore.”
The Music Memories
12-9-93: One reason why I cherish music so much is because of the memories. I heard “Uptown Girl” when I
was eight years old while leaving the Racquet Club from an outside speaker. That breathtaking melody of unforgettable
words and beats sing verbatim in my mind and I feel excited and smile just like the way I did every time I heard the
song years before. Likewise, I adore movie music from John Williams. I can’t wait to listen to numerous movie
soundtracks to re-treasure the rhythms, currents, glories, and mysteries. 80’s rock musicians like Michael Jackson,
George Michael. Phil Collins, and Duran Duran soothe my nerves with memorable verses of powerful music. I adore
them all.
The Innocent Music of 1987
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2-14-10: I've been listening to the top 100 Billboard hits of 1987 and was really stuck by how nostalgically
appealing these songs have been to my ears. I was just barely a teenager when these songs came out. What really made
an impression was how innocent and conservative the most popular songs were back then. They were almost tailor
made for junior high and high school kids from small towns… like I was at the time. Seriously, look at who was
popular. Michael Jackson, Madonna, Debbie Gibson, Chicago, Huey Lewis & The News, Genesis, Cyndi Lauper, Janet
Jackson, George Michael, Bon Jovi, Whitney Houston, and Tiffany! All the music was incredibly lightweight and
breezy. It was a less complex time. No wonder I felt so deeply nostalgic for those times. Many of these popular music
pop songs were about having crushes rather than carnal lust and sex. These songs symbolized a more uncomplicated
time to my life years before adulthood would become infinitely more taxing and trying.
Music Treasures... at a Discount Price
12-8-99: The dream arrived this afternoon. At Larry’s Records, I found myself picking out twenty
CDs, each for only $2. So many bargains so suddenly, I couldn’t help myself but to take the moment before
someone else take their share. David Bowie, Snoop Doggy Dog, Brian Ferry, Van Halen, Elvis Costello, The
Pixies... they just kept appearing even after I looked over the selection of CDs. It was one of those dream
days where I actually found the treasure... at a discount price. It was insane. It was a real dream.
Expanding My Diversity
7-4-01: I scored five new music CDs at CD Exchange after I dropped off my three-time broken
surround sound receiver at Radio Shack. The German Jewish late-forty lady asked me my age because of
the diversity of the albums I was buying: “Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely”, “Great Expectations”
soundtrack, “Erasure: Cowboy”, “The Living Sea: Featuring the Music of Sting”, and “Marvin Gaye: Let’s Get
It On”. She was shocked that I was only 24. Her son was 27 and only listened to hard metal like Metallica.
“You really know your music,” she observed.
Music Collection Personality Test
9-18-03: You can tell so much from what music collection people have. If they’ve got mostly Celine Dion
and Mariah Carey, it paints a clear picture of how bland they are as far as being adventurous in mind, emotion, and
spirit. Then there are others who have a limited collection of music, which also happens to be alternative/ indie rock,
but won’t venture to other types of music out there. What appears to be open-mindedness turns out to be closed to
branching out to a greater diversity around them. They’re locked in their own indie world. My music collection is so
vast and expansive in its many categories that it suggests and openness to everything! Yet it may also suggest a
schizophrenic personality at work searching for styles and moods to put oneself into.
The Death of a Parent of Musicians
3-8-02: Right before I went to bed tonight, I found myself bored so I looked through some old photo
albums. I came across photos from mom’s funeral and re-experienced how deeply traumatic the event was
for my family and myself. I grew up fast during those months that passed. Odd that I learned later on how
many other of my role model artists and musicians experienced a similar tragedy involving the same
circumstances. John Lennon’s mother, Bono’s mother, and Sinead O’ Connor’s mother all died suddenly in
car accidents while they were all still young or in their teens. Also, Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney, and Jerry
Garcia all tragically lost their mothers at a young age that ended up deeply affected them and their art.
Being in the Right Mood
4-24-02: In order to fully appreciate some types of music, you have to be in a similar mood. If
you’re tired and exhausted by life, listening to The Smiths or Sting feels like perfection. I was feeling pretty
burnt out or nervous about moving, so hearing “Fragile” felt so nice. It’s the sound of empathetic voices.
The Sleazy Side of Musicians
9-8-00: At Borders, I read a magazine article on the sleaziest moments in music: Elvis’s heavy drug
dependence (for the longest time, I knew just the image and music of Elvis; here was this other side of
reality), Michael Jackson’s child molestation, Led Zeppelin’s fucking groupies with sand sharks, the Go-Go’s
and 2Pac’s widespread looseness with roadies and groupies, Brian Wilson’s drug dependence and doctor
manipulation... Alice Cooper... Sly Stone... Trent Reznor... the sleaze was endless and real. So many stories
I simply never knew about revealed to me. My respect I had for their music was separated with their
excesses with drug/ sex bingeing. Oddly, it seemed like nothing new considering having read about the
other lives of such “role models” of mine like Charlie Chaplin, Neil Young, and John Lennon. No one who
has “genius” or celebrity or wealth has made it out without having done some “bad” things. Too much fame,
fortune, and imagination did them in. It's a lesson to learn, I guess, that even my favorite musicians that I
consider role models have acted poorly in the past. They're human just like everybody else. I’m just sitting
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here waiting for when I’m going to breakthrough, breakdown, or be myself.
Living Out My Subconscious Desires Through Buying Music
10-13-99: I went used CD shopping this Wednesday immediately after I left school and all its
frustrating problems. The Mac I work on fouled up again today and wouldn’t read the drive my work was
saved on. I bought so many used CDs that I’ve always wanted that I realized that I wasn’t alive anymore - I
was living out my subconscious desires. I was dreaming when I bought all these CDs. I wished to live in that
music to escape from my problems.
Purchase Mass Quantities of Music CDs Day
11-5-02: Spontaneously and unexpectedly, today was Purchase Mass Quantities of Music CDs Day. I got so
excited from getting new CDs from U2 and Björk, as well as used CD bargains from Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, The
Who, Aphex Twin, The Rolling Stones, Skinny Puppy, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and Moby, that I nearly exhilarated
myself to death. It was like purchasing the ultimate stockpile of drugs – ever. And I had the money to get it. Yet I knew
that I was near the end of my music-collecting hobby since I was finding the last of the CDs I’ve been searching for
years for. I wouldn’t find this much great music ever again. Then again, there’ll always be new and more diverse music
that I haven’t yet heard….
The Music and Comics Have Saved My Life
4-17-04: But there is meaning behind all the “collections” I have. The music I’ve gotten throughout the years
has saved my life on countless occasions when I needed to feed my emotions through something. I do have emotional
upswings where I do need someone to talk to. And I communicate by listening to music while expressing myself
through my journal or artwork. It might as well be through a kindred creative individual spirit like a John Lennon, Kurt
Cobain, Björk, Sinead O’ Connor, or Bob Dylan. And the music remains to be heard over and over again. That’s
something that last the test of time for me to enjoy for the years to come.
My Addiction to Collecting Music
5-2-04: I fear that I may just be an addict to collecting music. I bought $206 worth of used CDs – and I
swear they were all rare, hard-to-find items, too! At CD Warehouse down High St., I purchased an additional $48 in
used CDs (including Neil Young’s ultra rare, long sought after “Time Fades Away”/ “Chrome Dreams” import and a
U2 “Covering ‘Em” import) and a Led Zep DVD. My hands actually trembled when I found that Neil Young “Time
Fades Away” album. It was like discovering the recorded whispers of God on CD. But I don’t feel good about spending
all this money so compulsively. It gives me such a high to get the most creative expressions of such great artists like
The Blind Boys of Alabama, Bob Marley, Elvis Costello, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Cowboy Junkies, R.E.M., Björk,
Jane’s Addiction, My Bloody Valentine, and so much more.
My Compulsive Bargain Spending Caught Up with Me
6-23-04: I now admit that I have become a compulsive spender whenever I find things at a discount price. I
simply binge because they probably won’t be there the next time I come in. I’ve become a collector to the point where
I’m not even reading the comics. I’m just bagging them and putting them away. The same goes for the DVDs with
special features I purchase. I just buy them used at a low price and say that I’ll get more money back because it’s a tax
right-off for my video classes. But I don’t actually watch the movies anymore. I just put them away on display on my
shelf. I’ve been buying all this music, movies, and comics to keep out the pain and loneliness I’ve been feeling so
deeply throughout the years since Bethany left me. It’s been a bottomless sorrow that can’t seem to quench my soul.
It’s become a sickness and a disease like alcoholism or an eating disorder. I got this “big” grant and went out spending
on myself like crazy. Now I’m looking around and I can’t keep up with it all. It’s madness. I have to stop. It’s become
joyless. I admit I need a certain degree of counseling. That is why I poor out my soul in my journal. To purge myself of
my sins. It’s like a recorded religious confession. (This is also why I am also increasingly paranoid that someone is
going to download my Word journal files and put them on the web for the world to see what a hypocrite, "pervert", and
a liar I am.)
And yet, this was the probably best thing that could have happened to me. I needed an impetus to force me to
wake up, realize that I had an addiction like alcoholism, and I needed to stop or slow down drastically. I went wild with
spending when I got involved with this $10,000 grant deal and I’d be getting all this extra money. Yet, it’s all just
material belongings in the end. It doesn’t truly make me happy. It does to a certain degree, and it certainly enhances my
creativity, but it’s not the solution to my problems.
My CD Collecting Days Are Waning
10-16-05: I did my near monthly venture over to High Street for CD and DVD shopping/ browsing. I hit a
major omen on the drive down: a marathon was blocking a main road that I would have to cross over. I had to trek ten
minutes further south to wind around. It took twice as long as usual to get there. Once I was at the stores, I hardly found
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anything. I’m just at that point where my collecting days are ending. And that means my going out to these used CD
stores as a way of getting out of the house is also waning. I’ve got just about everything I ever wanted. I’ve already got
a grossly excessive collection. I’m always looking for the biggest bargain on CDs and DVDs. I was ready to throw my
collecting days away and just concentrate on having a better, lasting, meaningful relationship. It was such nice autumn
weather out that I had to get out. It was depressing me down that no one was home when I tried calling to actually do
something extroverted. Frustrating. The repetition of always going to these stores for the past few years has finally
become a burden to me. I have to space out the visits or stop completely because it’s no longer fun for me. That’s all
there is to it. It’s subtly making me miserable. I don’t appreciate wasting my money away when I’ve already got
enough.
A Lonely Collector’s Hobby
1-2-07: I knew that some positive/ negative things were going to have to happen to my music collecting
hobby. More precisely, my music collecting obsession would have to be shrunken or ceased because I had come to the
realization that I had just about every CD I would ever want. At this point, I was just picking up CDs that I was only
curious about. They were simply not essential. I was also spending way too much money on this hobby and I didn’t
have any more room to store the CDs. And most importantly, I just wasn’t enjoying myself taking those trips out to
High Street to buy over $150 worth of music nearly every month. It was a lonely collector’s hobby and I knew it. Once
I had a steady girlfriend, I knew I’d have to spend my money towards supporting the relationship rather my music
hobby. So like a daily drinker (or an alcoholic, depending on how you look at it) giving up beer, I’ve diminished my
spending greatly and collecting. Yet as I look back at the past year, it’s astonishing how much less I’ve spent on that
particular hobby. I spent my time with my girlfriend rather than taking those compulsive trips to Half Price Books, Buy
Backs, and Used Kids. Is this a sign that I've grown up and moved beyond my lonely collector's hobby?
The Changing of the Times With My CD/ DVD Collecting
12-26-07: I’ve been going through a lot of changes in my life lately. One has been the sharp reversal of
spending money on DVDs, CDs, and comics. Perhaps it was just a matter of time before I slowed down the way that I
have. I do have a mighty collection and I’m just not looking for anything anymore. So going to Used Kids used CD
store today is a less than exciting experience. I just don’t find all that much of anything anymore. I got a $4 DVD and a
$3 CD today. That was it. And I didn’t find anything at the other two used CD/ DVD stores. I felt the shock and chill
that neither are retaining their value. It’s like everything has moved on to HD and mp3 formats. These things used to
mean so much to me… as creative company and support. They used to give me such a high… a temporary high, but a
high nonetheless. It’s no wonder I bought so much through the years. They were my finest inspirations. Now I’ve got
my fiancée Lisa. I also don’t have the extra money I used to have to spend so freely on myself.
Like Touring a Music Cemetery
7-29-08: I ventured down to campus area to go to my three used CD/ DVD stores. I observed that some of
the stores were even phasing out used CD completely to make way for used vinyl and video games. Such a sight made
browsing through used CD stores like touring a music cemetery. And just five years ago, buying used CDs meant
everything to me. Now it’s secondary. Even paying $5 for something feels pricey. So I ended up mostly buying used
DVDs for $3 a piece.
The Eventual Demise of the Used CD Store
10-17-99: The cute young lower-middle class girl clerk who works at Larry’s Records told me that
the store probably wouldn’t be around for another five years. She explained that downloading music off the
Internet would take over used CD places like Larry’s and the other one’s I so frequently go to. To me, that
was like hearing that they’re closing Disney World. I didn't want to believe it. Is the CD format that I adore so
much going away? Everything I love seems to go away… eventually.
The Slow Death of the CD Market and Music Industry
4-7-09: I shopped at Used Kids used CD store and was a bit taken aback by how low priced CDs have gotten.
Too bad I’ve got most of them by now. It just kind of breaks my heart to see Bob Dylan’s “Modern Times” album and
U2’s “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” going for just $3 a piece. That’s like the Mona Lisa going for $10 at a flea
market.
Collecting Obsolete Media Technology
4-15-11: I also overheard the Half Price Books workers discussing how Blu-Ray wasn't taking off. When
someone was selling a movie, they were offering only $1.50 for a new Blu-Ray disk. The disk probably cost $27 new.
The clerks mentioned that the technology just wasn't taking off and people weren't buying many Blu-Rays because of
their higher price. Most people don’t care about the extra HD definition. Nor do they want to go out and re-buy their
movie collection when they've already got movies on DVD. Overhearing all this talk about media becoming obsolete
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so quickly made me rethink everything I've been buying and collecting over the years. CDs also seem to be a dying
medium. I later stopped off at Used Kids used CD store and only found one $5 CD. I remember a time when I would
leave there with $250 on average per monthly visit. I hadn't been to Used Kids in over two months. This was
ridiculous. Going to Used Kids was the highlight extroverted excursion of my early years here in Columbus, especially
2002-2004. Now it's just a fading memory and a near-empty used music store. It's a bit sad. So much has changed over
these past few years. Even buying a DVD nowadays seems like a waste of money when you can just download the
movie on the Internet. Everything's changed.
Visiting a Graveyard of Soon-To-Be Obsolete Media
8-6-11: On the way home, I stopped at Used Kids and picked up some used DVDs and CDs. It's a highly
mixed experience to go there anymore since it's sort of like shopping at a graveyard of soon-to-be obsolete media. I
even have to ask myself: why am I even buying CDs anymore if everyone simply listens to mp3s? I only buy stuff if
they're a good price or a rare, hard-to-find item. It's hard to spend money there now when I'm so accustomed to getting
used CDs for $1 at Half Price Books. And there's the existential question of buying DVDs knowing that I probably
won't watch a DVD more than once anymore.
The Slow Death of the Used Music Store
3-29-12: For the first time in months, I visited Used Kids used CD store that I used to frequent on a monthly
basis nearly ten years ago at the height of my CD collecting phase. This time, I didn't buy anything. Not even a $3
DVD. I could see by the emptiness of business at the store that this place was dying off. Only diehard LP record
collector's frequent the store anymore. It's an endangered species now with digital mp3 iPods and the like. It's rather
sad to bare-witness to. I can't even find the desire to buy a $3 used CD either. I know I might be able to get a better
price on it at Half Price Books. And parking around OSU campus is too much a bother as well. This place I used to
love so much is now looking like a relic of the past on its final hours. It's good for my budget to not spend any money.
Hell, when I was single, I used to spend on average a $100 per monthly visit at this place! Now I stop by every three to
four months - and buy nothing. It's crazy how times have changed. I loved the grungy vibe of the place. But the
industry changed over the past decade. And I grew up, got married, and had a child. So my priorities shifted away. Not
to mention that I've also got thousands of CDs to still listen to! I've got pretty much everything! And now I'm a new
man with an upstairs side room in house with a massive used CD collection as my daily reminder of my past and how
much pleasure I still sometimes gives me.
Musicians
These Are Sirens Who Inspire Me Artistically and Emotionally. Mixed within these notes are lyrics to
songs that I empathize with and feel with. They are my empathy songs that keep me alive. Here
within lies the music that has played and is still playing inside my mind:
“He’s a real nowhere man. Sitting in his Nowhere Land, Making all his nowhere plans for nobody. Doesn't
have a point of view, knows not where he's going to, isn't he a bit like you and me? Nowhere Man, please listen. You
don't know what you're missing. Nowhere Man, the world is at your command.” –“Nowhere Man” by The Beatles.
-Neil Young/ Buffalo Springfield/ Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young/ Crazy Horse
Neil Young has kept me artistically active more than any other musician or artist. I’m a computer artist, yet
his music and content has driven me to keep changing and channeling my inner feelings and surreal dreams into my
creative output for so many years now. He’s been a beacon of hope and lasting creativity that continues to inspire me.
He’s remained a vital, uncompromised, and important voice in music for decades while his contemporaries faded away
into nostalgic acts.
This is meant as a guide map for my inner workings as a human being and as an artist. Readers can figure out
why my own artwork works in a personal context with their own lives. Neil Young is a role model of mine. Here are
my personally selected notes and quotes from “Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography” that explain myself, why I adore
Neil Young, and the creative process: “He surrounds himself with quirky people… People keep telling me that my
music has helped them through periods of their life, and I’ve never understood how that happens, but it must happen
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because of the way I do it. The way I do things is I give enough facts to make people get a feeling – and then they can
associate their own lives with these images that make it seem to apply directly to them. Like the song was written for
them. They can’t believe it’s so directly and obviously about their life. That’s because it’s not so specific that it
eliminates them… Neil’s run by his art… Dylan’s songs are what’s happening all around him. Neil writes about
inside… First-person confessional songs… There are so many different facets to Neil… Neil Young’s music changed
my life… Canadians? They very resolute about some things. They’re conservative, they’re liberal. They don’t seem to
be quite as worried about how they look or what people think about them… I wanted to get out of Canada because it
was limiting… A family of outspoken, independent individuals – especially the women… As the family disintegrated,
Neil’s obsession with music intensified… Extremely emotional… In the matters of teen romance, he wasn’t exactly
lucky… I felt his mind was always working. He was a loner… Neil was driven by a lot of problems he had in his life –
the polio, his parental breakup… I was living in another world. A music world. Everybody else’s life centered around
girls and dances and sports. My life centered around music… I didn’t really have any guidance to what a guy was
supposed to be like – what you could take and what you couldn’t… I’m still learning… I’m too intense. I made Pam
nervous… They were kindred spirits; both young, intense and painfully unique… There was a lot on my mind… He
uses lyrics to replicate the inner experience. Images rush out the way feelings do, imperfectly, veering from high to low
without a road map and sometimes without logic. Listeners can dig all sorts of meanings out of the ambiguity, finding
jagged little bits of their own lives poking through… Songwriting, for me, is like a release. It’s not a craft… The song
is not meant for them to think about me. The song is meant for people to think about themselves… It was a humbling
experience. A slow, sinking feeling as I realized “My shit’s not very good. All by myself, making a tape for nobody”…
I think he just felt so different inside that he was terrified of people. Neil and I shared a fear of that fine line between
sane and insane… As he tuned out from socializing, he immersed himself in a friend’s folk music collection… Driving
used to bother me… The psychic symptoms for these seizures can include sensations of déjà vu, unreality,
depersonalization, fear, panic, and hallucinations… Certainly some creative people have been epileptic – van Gogh,
Dostoevsky, and Ian Curtis. There are even those close to Neil who dare to suggest some of the more abstract aspects
of his songwriting might have been influenced by the seizures… I couldn’t handle the heavy load of things very well
when I was twenty… That’s the strength of his creativity – he’s been to all these far points where he’s had only himself
to talk to. Most of his songs are just Neil talking to himself… I knew from the second I heard it that this guy was
plugged into to everything. It was somebody speaking directly to me. Everything about it was so right, when everything
in my life up to that point had been so wrong. I mean he understood… He was always trying to get the approval of his
mother… He sounds desperate to connect to women in his songs… Neil was very shy about women – extraordinarily,
painfully, tragically shy… His frail, skinny body was a huge emotional scar for him. We talked about how cruel kids
are when you’re growing up. It explained a lot… He never felt he fit. He wanted to desperately, but it always eluded
him. Neil was always bleeding inside… Where I came from – Canada - was just different. I was so innocent sexually. It
was just too fast for me. Too much, too soon. I didn’t understand it. I wasn’t ready… Everyone was ahead of me
socially. But eventually, I caught on… I was just so into what I was doin’, I wasn’t really focusing on women that
much. I wasn’t worried about it – I just wasn’t into it. There were other things on my mind… I think everybody’s felt
rejected… Getting high was a prerequisite in the Los Angeles rock scene, but drugs were something Young had grown
extremely cautious about… You could see the fear in his heart about this success being thrust on him… The doctor
inferred that I was a little bit too far out there to take LSD and that I might not make it back. So I was thinkin’, “Well,
y’ know, maybe this is a bonus. I get this for nothing – without taking the drug”… Outside looking in… Stephan
Stills’s tracks were everything Neil’s weren’t: accessible, commercial and sung by a voice radio could understand…
Neil was beginning to lose confidence in his music… We’re not entertainment for the masses… Social activities
invariably seemed awkward for Young. You could see he kind of hated it if we were having fun… I’ll take it (drugs)
right to a point, and then one day I just won’t do it anymore. That’s the way I am… We weren’t communicating… I
didn’t like to hang out at parties and the Hollywood trip… Neil was in a pretty good mood about Buffalo Springfield
breaking up. The feeling was that it certainly wasn’t over for Neil… Neil very rarely called anyone and never
socialized – Neil just doesn’t go to parties… He was his own person… He fears a lack of control… Living in a
hideaway for outcasts… He just seemed very lonely and withdrawn a lotta the time. He seemed much more adult… He
enjoyed silent times… Sometimes if I get sick, get a fever, it’s easy to write. Everything opens up. You don’t have any
resistance – you just let things go. Your guard is down… “I love you so much, it’s gonna bring me sadness”… I have to
get ready to see people. That’s the way I feel comfortable. Maybe I’m shy. It’s just the way I am… He utters a question
unspeakable in any relationship: “How can I place you above me? Am I lyin’ to you when I say, I believe in you”…
William S Burroughs once said, “The function of art and all creative thought is to make us aware of what we know and
don’t know we know”… I love nature. To me, nature is a church… Success brings out the prick in everyone, but Neil’s
very good at keeping a hold on that… Young’s career had exploded, and one casualty would be his marriage… She
was a bit insecure about Neil’s fame. Even more so since she was older than Neil… I was busy. Had a lot of music in
me… He expressed having felt the need to escape the relationship before her jealous rages went any further. Young
would move on to another new life. Alone… “Live alone in a paradise that makes me think of two… I fell in love with
Neil’s pain… We were in a cocoon of intensity… The ranch was a Ponderosa for sensitive people… Neil’s a naïve
explorer… I’m better at ideas than I am at actually doing things… you’re the only friend I have because you’re the only
one that tells me the truth… He (Danny) loved too much… The things that have changed me the most are the birth of
my children and the death of my friends… He was just too fatigued to start a new project… Young hadn’t forgotten
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that rock and roll was supposed to be made by misfits… Craft and technology got in the way of creativity and feeling
when it came to music-making in the seventies. Painting instead of taking pictures. I like the idea of capturing
something… I did get into a persona. I have no real idea where the fuck it came from, but there it was. It was part of
me. I thought I had gotten into a character – but maybe a character had gotten into me… Another catalytic event would
occur… The day after Whitten’s death, Young wrote, “Don’t Be Denied,” in which he recounted the story of his life:
getting beaten up in school, his father leaving, the promise of music and the moment that dreams can fail. Young had
come this far and there was no turning back. “Don’t be denied, don’t be denied,” he would scream out over and over on
the next tour. Who was he trying to convince – himself?… “Any big event will inspire a song, and that indeed was a
very large event. I think that’s the first major life-and-death event that really affected me in what I was trying to do.
Like when one of your parents dies, or a friend dies, you kinda reassess yourself as to what you’re doing – because you
realize life is so impermanent. So you wanna do the best you can while you’re here, to say whatever the fuck it is you
wanna say. Express yourself”… It was Godlike… Glitter in an album package so when you open it glitter falls all over
the place… A suicide note without the suicide… Tonight’s the Night as one’s best friend for a long, long time… Steer
Neil into the weird… Hollywood Babylon at its fullest… Possessed by animal spirits… Sometimes you just have to
pardon your heart… We’d have these meals of silence in front of a fire. Neil was very distant, very removed… The
best exorcism was through music… Pain brought out the best in him… Rape through gun instrumentality… I would be
so overwhelmed by my feelings that I would start to cry… On Zuma, women are mainly betrayers or ghosts best
forgotten. Tired of hurting, Neil spends a good deal of the album telling them to get lost… He uses a few words to
evoke a feeling or an image or a mood. His songs are an odd combination of being straightforward and elusive at the
same time… Music is much better than drugs. You don’t come down. Music is fulfilling… the next day you feel better.
Drugs, the next day you feel terrible – unless you have more drugs… Nikki was a pretty straightforward, simple person,
and Neil is just so complex – and, in his way, he’s extremely sophisticated. I think it would’ve been a disaster for both
of ‘em… The sad fact about music is – any musician, if they break up with their wife or whatever, usually their next
album is a fuckin’ unbelievably great album. Knowing that is so destructive to a relationship. But that’s a fact, y’ know
what I mean?… Neil travels a lot, has to be alone a lot. He is a very, very difficult man. He’s very self-absorbed. He a
true artist. It’s a very hard balance… My relationship with Pegi is good because she keeps changing. I think that’s
good… Low-budget exploitation films are so good because they have no budgets – the quirks of their imagination stick
out like a sore thumb, they have no means to cover it up. The music of punk was handmade – and it was handmade
with pride… I didn’t know that I shut the door on my music when I shut the door on pain… It’s concept over art –
which is not good. And when all you’re doing is blatantly putting the concept forward, and the concept comes up
empty, you’re in danger… He really is an actor – he gets into stuff in a Method sort of way… Video is an art form.
Video is an expression… Sued for being “uncommercial”… Personalized melancholy… Neil is extreme. I don’t know
where it comes from. One minute he’s a leftist Democrat, and the next minute he’s a conservative. You never know
which Neil you’re dealing with… Sandy was dating Goofy, and Poncho was dating Minnie Mouse… An album of
crickets farting… You could actually see the sound waves at a Neil Young concert… There’s a lot of violence and a lot
of anger inside me for things that have happened. Injustices… Every fuckin’ note is the last as far as I’m concerned, so
it better be fuckin’ good. It better be there. So that takes a lot out of ya… Loss of innocence can hurt, but few
songwriters have taken it harder than Neil Young. His songs contrast an Edenic rural past with a brutal, corrupt
present… Guard your heart with Shakey… A lonely hero, an outcast hero… Music is his religion… Young sounds
conflicted – and guarded – to the point of oblivion, his emotions so restrained that, for me, at least, the album is
profoundly disturbing experience… The song took a lot out of me when I did it. A lot of mental baggage went into it…
Communicating to an audience with just a guitar… I would need an obsession to distract me from my work. How can
you miss something if you don’t go away? So the only way to do that is to starve yourself. Get to the point where you
have to play… That’s why it was so intense. He was not holding back at all – and he never got to the point where he
could control it… He was built to endure, survive… The album examines the nature of dreams – both the light and the
dark side – and how they fuel reality. Dreams are the only thing that we’ve got left to hang on to… But my dad… that’s
the other side of me, see? He’s consumed by his writing – but he goes out to the farm and writes, then he walks around,
seasons change, go this friends, likes to hang out with ‘em. That’s half me. I can draw on that… I gotta get the energy,
wherever it is. I gotta get revitalized, recharged from the momentum… Just follow your dream, that’s what I did… We
have a story of a musician who has maintained his independence despite the financial and professional repercussions…
“Print the legend - Not the story”… The heart and soul of a loner… His music has influenced my life.
Notes from Waging Heavy Peace by Neil Young: This book is quite different and unique from "Shakey", the
biography of Neil Young that came out a decade ago. What's different about Neil's book is that it feels like it's from
Neil's own voice and words. His recollections on his life are also told in a rambling non-linear fashion that skips around
the decades back and forth a lot. So it's not a traditional autobiography at all while the "Shakey" book was a linear
account of Neil's life and art. In this book, you get to know the man from the inside out… "Look at this obsession. I
shrugged it off. I need it. For me it is a road back"… "Unlike me, they have mastered the art of monetizing their ideas. I
have big ideas and very little money to show for them. I'm not complaining, though"… "'Like a Rolling Stone' by Bob
Dylan is as fresh as the first day I heard it - I can still remember that afternoon in Toronto. It changed my life. The
poetry, attitude, the ambience of that piece are part of my makeup. I absorbed it"… "I used to think that buying a car or
a guitar was like buying someone's memories, feelings, and history. I would always get a song out of it"… "The roads
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in North America are long and beautiful. The scenery was God"… "Am I a dreamer or what?"… "It can be frustrating
and it may stress relationships with family to the limit, and there is no guarantee of success or recognition of success. I
don't know why I have to try these things and become so engrossed and obsessed with them. For sure music is a huge
release from these types of projects"… "Daddy got lost. That really was the last walk we went on together. All good
things must pass. Why? When he died in 2005, I cried like a baby at his funeral service. Completely lost it. Life"… "Be
great or be gone"… "I will do anything to get started on something. I will use my own money when I shouldn't just
because I hate waiting. That may be why I have spent so much money and built so many things. I just like to do it
myself. I hate waiting for approval"… "No one believes in my ideas until I actually do them. I am never able to get
backing for anything I want to do other than records because I am the only one with money who believes in them - and
I don't do them to make money. I am entrepreneurial"… "I hate waiting for other people to okay what I want to do.
Ideas are the driver. There is nothing worse than having a great idea and losing it because you can't control the process.
Working with me must be hell under those circumstances. I don't feel bad about it, though. I know I work well with
people who want to get things done"… "It hurts to be honest, but the muse has no conscience. If you do it for the
music, you do it for the music, and everything else is secondary. Although that has been hard for me to learn, it is the
best and really the only way to live through a life dedicated to the muse"… "I am going to go to Hawaii tomorrow and
will keep writing this. I love it there and I kind of decompress"… "Not that I really know how to rest like others do.
Creative work and writing are relaxing to me"… "Love is everywhere. Marc says, 'There is a river of love'"… "It is a
silent fraternity of sorts, occupying this space in people's souls with our music"… "Sending good thoughts to you,
Pam"… "Expectations can block the light. They can shadow the future, making it more difficult to be free-flowing and
creative"… "Why This Book Exists"… "So I have to slow down. That's why I am writing this book now"… "I felt that
Mort was a large part of my identity"… "There was zero success, and we got no jobs"… "We didn't succeed in taking
Toronto by storm. It was a tough time. We were small fish in a big pond, had no reputation, and really there was
nothing special about us in the big city. We were out of our league. We tried, auditioned, practiced, but nothing panned
out"… "My first review dismissed my songs as full of clichés. They probably were! What's wrong with clichés? I
thought I was pretty good, myself. I had an arrangement of 'Oh Lonesome Me' that I really liked, and people laughed at
it, thinking it was a parody or something. I used it on After the Gold Rush, and that worked"… "The music sounded like
God"… "It was time to make a big move"… "The group was more into showboating than the music"… "Somehow I
thought I could accomplish what no one else had been able to do"… "His spirit will live forever in the films he has
made and the people he has touched"… "I can't just talk about the car. I need to go deeper"… "Without the new songs
we are just reliving the past"… "We still care enough to not just run through our hits and misses"… "This creativity is
fascinating"… "Or maybe that is all in my mind, where my imagination has taken charge"… "I always leave these
projects and go on to make music. A completely different part of my brain is used for music, and it feels like I am
massaging my soul when I make music"… "My old haunting grounds"… "I want to make a difference"… "This new
poetry rolling off his tongue"… "Full of wonder"… "Loyalty to friends and loyalty to the muse"… "Crazy Horse are
my windows to the cosmic world where the muse lives and breathes"… "I am always busy doing something"… "One
of Ben Young's caregivers, asked me if I was making war on Apple. I said, 'No. I'm waging heavy peace'"… "Music is
a storm on the senses, weather for the soul, deeper than deep, wider than wide"… "It was like I had just been born"…
"I did feel strangely reborn"… "There were too many aisles and too much produce, too many choices for me"… "These
fucking bubbles are the worst pain ever in the universe"… "It seems to me that songs are a product of experience and a
cosmic alignment of circumstance. That is, who you are and how you feel at a certain time"… "When I write a song, it
starts with a feeling"… "when you do that, you are not thinking. Thinking is the worst thing for writing a song"…
"Tonight's the Night is a wake of sorts"… "The album was risky and real"… "Not every record made by me is designed
to be a hit. Some are expressions in an artist's life"… "There is good to be found in most people"… "'Words' was the
first song that reveals a little of my early doubts of being in a long-term relationship with Carrie"… "There were so
many people around all the time, talking and talking, sitting in a circle smoking cigarettes in my living room. It had
never been like that before. I am a very quiet and private person. The peace was going away. It was changing too
fast"… "Nor are the effects of loneliness on one's decision making. It is a great thing to write a song about, though. I
am just trying to make sense of the thought process and emotional landscape that resulted"… "All things natural speak
to me with a rhythm that I feel. It is this that probably makes me a pagan"… "That was a wonderful time in my life. All
was good"… "The songs were gathered from the past and the future, mostly dreams, nothing concrete"… "I love my
life and the people around me. But as you know, nothing lasts forever. We know life, don't we? Maybe that is why
people need religion. That might be it. I just might have figured it out"… "He was a beautiful baby boy, and I was as
high as a have ever been in my life! What a feeling!"… "There was some strain developing between Carrie and me as
the dream of an idyllic life with few responsibilities came shattering down around us. We knew we had to do
something, and felt like we were running out of time, not knowing what was the matter with Zeke, not knowing it was a
condition of life, not something that could be cured. Eventually we got a brace for Zeke, and he started to get picked on
by the other kids. This was the beginning of a rough time for him, and he lashed out at other kids and had a lot of anger
that he was expressing"… "He got kicked out of the school for being too rowdy. He had his brace on and was pretty
angry with the other kids. He was a real handful"… "The touring and constant womanizing finally caught up with
me"… "I was as guilty as hell myself, but that did not take away the pain. The thought that my family was irreparably
harmed was inescapable, There were too many disconnects between Carrie and me, aside from the infidelities"… "IN
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this frame of mind, I wrote about twenty songs I recorded in one form or another"… "People told us kids grow a
different rates and do things at different times"… "Although it mellowed with time, I carried that feeling around for
years"… "He likely suffered a stroke in utero"… "That dream didn't come true. There was something more important to
me that that: my family. My Pegi and Ben"… "I needed to do something besides music to keep fresh and have a
musical perspective. Have you ever heard the expression 'How can you miss me if I don't go away?' That expression
defines why I do other things. I love the variety, and the projects are all interrelated anyway"… "It was a big family,
and we shot for six weeks. I financed the whole thing myself because we couldn't get anyone to back the way we were
approaching the film"… "Of course, time must be set aside to have fun"… "At this time I must confess to one of the
worst low points I have had"… "Pegi knew I was stoned right away and threw me out of the room"… "My Pegi and I
have been through a lot of life together. I am so thankful for every day"… "I was focused on something that had to do
with me, or one of my creations, which is also my nature"… "We have no control over these things, and they are a
good reminder of our helplessness and insignificance in the grand scope of natural events"… "I might have just made
that up, because part of this book is from my memory and I have a big imagination"… "I am an incurable collector"…
"My chronological obsession"… "Writing is very convenient, has a low expense, and is a great way to pass the time"…
"We sucked at the performance. It was one of the worst-feeling gigs I can ever remember. What a monster cocainefueled ego trip! The music really sucked air"… "I could feel the music dying"… "We were all one. It was a personal
thing"… "We have been through a lot together: the Summer of Love, hell, distrust, and hurt. Life"… "Battling unseen
demons"… "I had to break away. I had so much to give, so many songs in me, so many ideas and sounds in my head. I
had to do it"… "Be great or be gone"… "I was in a fog"… "I remember once we were having some problems, and
Amber told me I was gone too much when she was growing up and I missed a lot of things. She was so true, so right. O
course I felt terrible, but that was the price I had to pay for my choices. I followed my music and missed her moments.
Amber was very honest with me. Who would ask for more? She's my girl"… "Album covers are very important to me.
They put a face on the nature of the project. I know albums are viewed as passé by some today, but I am an album artist
and I am not ready to give up on my form. I think it has a future and a past. The album cover and linear notes reached
out to the music lover, filling them with images and helping to illuminate the story behind the music, the feeling
coming from the artist. My first album cover told a lot about me, without words"… "We are doing our life's work
together"… "Quality has taken another hit, and tactile album art has an unknown future at this point"… "The horizon
speaks to me in my time of need, sharing the ultimate story of the moment of change. I accept the horizon for what it is.
That is my religion"… "Old memories are wonderful things and should be held on to as long as possible, shared with
others, and embellished if need be. Whenever I go back to Canada, my heart is flood with them - memories, that is"…
"We were all trying to make it somehow in the music scene"… "He knows how to communicate where I don't. That is
why I am where I am now"… "Some records are hits and some are great but are not commercial"… "I was really
interested in communicating what I felt at the time, more interested in that than succeeding commercially"… "I felt like
it was art, an expression of something deeply personal"… "It was a very deep and inaccessible concept".. "I was
singing through a vocoder about things they did not understand, and they could not see the characters I was doing
because there were no videos to go with them"… "They wanted me to be commercially successful, and I wanted to be
an artist expressing myself - those two goals are not always compatible. I was expecting to have the same artistic
freedom that I had at Asylum Records, but Geffen Records wanted me to be a smash, selling millions of records"…
"Things are evolving at a rapid rate"… "I was down. I was actually tanking." -"'That's what supposed to happen!' Mark
said later. 'We go on that trip to screw with our minds. That much sensory input is going to overwhelm the
subconscious. It's the best way to shock your system out o the Hawaii nirvana!'"… "I am fascinated by the power of
nature"… "Ben has a very full life and keeps moving around, doing things, seeing people, and going to events. I reflect
on this. Life is good"… "I said 'See you soon,' to Pegi. We exchanged a deep look"… "I wanted to do something. Try
to make a difference somehow. I didn't care if I failed or not, I just wanted to try. Having no knowledge is sometimes
exactly what is needed to find a solution, so I qualified"… "I was looking for another outlet, and film had a lot to offer,
especially combined with music. I saw it as a logical extension of my work. Journey Through the Past was a wild and
crazy experiment that showed no fear. We fashioned this documentary/ fantasy piece and completed it in 1972"… "So
creative and empowering to put the pictures and music together and create a whole new experience"… "But it was a
way early music video long form, in some obscure ways"… "I guess that's why they call it 'life's work'"… "We had the
most fun making it and had no fear"… ""It was billed as 'Rust Never Sleeps: A Concert Fantasy'"… "The stage used to
be my lab, where I could experiment in front of a live audience and see how it reacted and - more important - how I felt
while I was doing it"… "As is the case with many of my songs, some of it came from real-life things other people said
or did"… "'Keep on rocking in the free world,' said Poncho"… "That's part of the process. I just do what I do and keep
my ears and eyes open. Things are happening all the time"… "It was unique, and that's what we needed to make it"…
"And with rock and roll, the more you think, the more you stink"… "Rock and roll is fire, man. FIRE. It's the attitude.
It's thumbing your nose at the world"… "We passed the guitar like Native Americans passed the pipe. It really was our
language of love, our shared interest, our common bond, our own. That is the feeling we shared with our audiences
back then, too. We had a bond"… "I had nothing to lose. I was on a roll"… "I was so freed by this music. I was happy
as hell"… "It must have been frustrating for Danny to be so great and not be heard completely. Everything he
contributed had that special edge"… "I called it Le Noise, after Dan. It was a French Canadian joke, a very English way
of saying Lanois"… "I really was happiest when things were quiet because I was not a very social kind of guy"… "This
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is a time for reflection. There is no time like the present"… "It felt great to be on the road again; I was relieved to be
free from all of the feelings around the death of Carrie's mom and the aftermath of my breakup with Carrie"… "There
were lots of girls and we were living the dream"… "Zuma has a great feeling to it… Those were some of the finest,
most alive days of my life. I was getting past the lost relationship with Carrie, living the life with my best friends,
making some good music, and starting to get a grip on something: an open future in my personal life and a new future
with Crazy Horse after Danny"… "It was exciting, and we were young and very alive. Everything started moving really
fast"… "Still, with their connections, we were getting some major dates"… "While I thought it was cool to have
'Clancy' out there, I doubted whether it was commercial enough. It bombed"… "After we lost Bruce, we were never the
same"… "Lost in the magic"… "It's about chemistry. Love and chemistry"… "These are my personal successes and
failures, and they have nothing to do with money or possessions. My children are perhaps my biggest success, and I
share that with Pegi, because without her, it would not be like that"… "Walking has always been good for me. I love to
walk. Long walks on the ranch or over the lava in Hawaii are therapeutic and result in a clear head"… "It sooths the
soul"… "I open up and start thinking about all kinds of ideas about music, life, my family all matters personal. I take all
of this to heart in my personal time of reflection"… "Kurt Cobain was not just an entertainer: he was an artist and
songwriter. There is a big difference. I knew him and recognized him for who he was. I wanted to talk to him. Tell him
only to play when he felt like it. And that would be good enough. Be true"… "Then the songs just came"… "How
original are they? Very. They would echo through the area and sound like God"… "But now Linda has become
somewhat reclusive. She just dropped out to raise a family and live a 'normal' life in the 'real world'"… "If I'm not on
the road, I'm resting in August, and that rest is very important"… "He pointed out that I need to focus on what I can do,
not what I can't do. I need to figure that one out for my own sake, because it's too wearing on me"… "And through
beautiful camera work, lighting, and a great instrumental performance, we left a living picture of one of the greatest
country artists of all time, Ben Keith"… "My always active imagination was now getting the best of me in a barrage of
images and thoughts"… "I can save that anger and emotion for my guitar playing. A Crazy Horse tour is just around the
corner"… "There was something about that set that still haunts me. I was ready for the echo. The sound was like I was
in another world. Every note just hung there in space. I drew them out and felt them all lingering and adding.
Somehow, just by myself, I had become so free that It was almost transcendent"… "He has become a master of that.
Life is short and should be lived to the fullest"… "It's all about struggling with life at a young age, trying it out,
discarding it, and grabbing for more. I love hearing this energy. I recognize it from my own youth, and it gives me faith
in life and makes me feel. Feelings, once awakened, can take me anywhere, and they do. Now happy, now sad, reliving
the past again"… "Loneliness has been good to me"… "Waling in the forest for me is like going to church. It is my
cathedral, and I haven't been doing that enough lately"… "Walking the forest floor is one of the most spiritual things I
can imagine"… "Ben and I will see the God-rays streaming down through the trees and landing on the forest floor"…
"Once I was walking with my dog Carl, a golden doodle, in the forest cathedral"… "I will take you into the forest for
an new experience and a little religion. You can be my guide. You will instinctively know the language. I am reticent to
enter the forest without guidance. I will take you to my beautiful church, the place where I find myself. I really need to
do that now. I feel it. Something is missing"… "There are many reasons to live and die, too"… "Whatever you think of
the music I have made with Crazy Horse, those songs are the most transcendent experiences I have ever had with
music"… "I feel the loss. I feel the memories"… "Simple and focused. That is what I took away"… "The Wall of
Sound featured multiple players in the studio, many people all playing the same parts together, multiple tambourines,
basses, and pianos, with string sections always in the same room at the same time"… "A forgotten art"… "Music is a
business"… "I need to dig deep and discover some things along the way. How do I avoid being short with those I love
and respect?"… "This is the knowledge I am searching for. I can remember so many times in my life when I have hurt
others and hurt myself"… "The Times They Are a-Changin' in the book world. Borders closed their local store
yesterday and announced plans to close them all in the next couple of months"… "The cassette of that song was never
played for those sessions. It was too sensitive and complex and wouldn't fit with the rest of the tracks on the album, so I
saved it for later"… "I was sketching, not painting, the track"… "My mind is wandering to women I have met and
loved, and when I come to Pegi, I feel really good, ,kind of complete in a way, like I really lucked out in the end,
getting the best of the best"… Dreaming of lost, deceased old friends at a café.
Notes from “A Dreamer of Pictures: Neil Young: The Man and His Music” by David Downing: “‘Sugar
Mountain’ was written on the depressing occasion of his nineteenth birthday”… “By the end of their first week in LA,
Young and Palmer must have been feeling depressed, anxious, maybe even a little panicky”… “They were doing
something new and exciting, living on the adrenalin, and they were doing it together”… “For someone from as
conventional a middle-class background as Young it must have been completely disorientating to be besieged by sexhungry women. How could such a lifestyle be accommodated within that search for real love which he was expressing
in his songs? How could he feel respect for women when so many of them were throwing themselves at him for no
better reason than that he was a rock musician with an appealing image? And how did he feel about himself? No doubt
such a lifestyle was often fun, but for someone like Young it must have been an unsettling kind of fun. He was entering
a world and a life where it was hard to trust his own feelings and still harder to care about those of others”… “One gets
the impression that the life he was living in southern California was beginning to unravel something in Young’s
psyche”… “Young must have sometimes wondered whether coming west to fulfill his musical dreams had meant
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leaving his romantic dreams behind”… “The warm sense of melancholy that “Expecting To Fly” gives the listener”…
“He seems to have been particularly drawn to Danny Whitten, whose almost painful sensitivity perhaps mirrored his
own”… “Comfortably melancholic”… “’When so many love you, is it the same?’ Young ask in the chorus of ‘Cowgirl
in the Sand’, echoing an increasingly widespread feeling that greater sexual liberation was equal parts blessing and
curse”… “He was using his guitar instrument to explore its musical possibilities as to serve as a direct line to his
emotions”… “Neil’s “I Am A Child” played on the turntable. ’There’s something about Neil Young that goes with
this,’ he said – presumably not referring to the grown man’s continuing ability to be a child”… “For him it was an
opportunity, a way to reach an audience, to express one part – not even the most important part – of his musical
persona”… "He was already contemplating the limits on his time and energy. With most of two tours behind him and
another looming ahead, he was beginning to wonder how much longer he could keep it up. The same went with making
records"... Leave a pregnant pause… "In claiming the albums he made with Crazy Horse were meant to last, that they
were the art that CSN&Y's more entertainment-inclined music paid for, he had raised expectations in others, and
probably in himself as well"... "If he could add that simplicity and directness to more personalized, more subtle lyrics,
Young must have thought, he would really be onto something"… “After the Gold Rush provided an emotional snapshot
of a generation”… “‘Finding that what you once thought was real is gone and changing’ is a line just as applicable to
the culture as to a relationship… “Success was clearly a two-sided coin. On one side a ranch in the hills, on the other a
failed marriage”… “‘It wasn’t made for entertainment. I’ll admit, I made it for myself.’ By some huge stroke of luck
and talent he had found that the music he wanted to make was also, most of the time, the music others wanted to hear.
The same was not apparently true of his movies”… “The autobiographical ‘”Don’t Be Denied’, though musically
repetitive, is the album’s one great song. Written in the shadow of Danny Whitten’s death, it builds in intensity through
four verses, the heavy guitar riff banging each one shut, like the chained door to the past in ‘Helpless’. Young’s voice
strains at the story with an out-of-tune urgency that is often harrowing, reiterating the single chorus line – ‘Don’t be
denied’ - like a hard-won mantra. Don’t be denied, either by broken family or school bullies, or by impossible dreams
or agents. Don’t even be denied by riches and fame, by the fact of being ‘a millionaire in a businessman’s eyes’. In the
last resort, all that matters is to be true to yourself. Like ‘Love in Mind’, ‘Don’t Be Denied’ is about cutting through the
crap to find out who you really are and what really matters”… “Though Young was probably as upset as anyone by
CSN&Y’s latest failure to behave like adults, he had another, more depressing things to think about. There was the cool
reception given to his movie, and the growing problems at home with Carrie. The aftertaste of the Time Fades away
tour was no doubt still lingering on his tongue. And somewhere at the back of Young’s mind the manner of Danny
Whitten’s death continued to cast a shadow over his music and his life”… “There’s no peace like madness, the song
seems to say, and madness is no peace at all”… “Zuma proved to be Young’s most accessible album since Harvest: the
songs were all built around a universal theme of the emergence from a broken relationship”… “Explorer and
destroyer”… “Romantic melancholy”… “Lady Wingshot”, a song apparently about a young boy’s half-sexual
fascination with a circus artist”… “Of the musician-writers who had come to prominence in the 1960s he now stood
virtually alone as a continuing creative force in the mainstream of American rock music. Hendrix was dead, Dylan had
got religion, Paul Simon had marginalized himself, Lennon had gone into hiding, CS&N and the Stones had succumbed
to a mixture of smugness and other dangerous habits. New pretenders like Springsteen couldn’t begin to approach
Young’s acoustic-electric range. It was no great surprise when the Village Voice voted Young their Artist of the Decade
for the 1970s”… “What people loved about Neil Young in the seventies was precisely that he was not larger than
life”… “These may be the ramblings of a man in pain – they certainly feel as if they are – but not enough artistry has
been applied to the shaping of the emotional raw material, and the only real art on display appears to be the art of
concealment”… “Comparing music to therapy, he claimed that he had always used the former in the way some people
used the latter, as a way of ‘getting parts of yourself out’. But over the nightmare years of Pegi’s illness and Ben’s
Program he’s simply shut down his emotions, and ‘did things that were more on the surface level, because it was
safer’”… “Human Highway is full of ideas, some of them great, which Young had no doubt had for a long time. What
they lacked was any coherent context”… “They’d more or less improvised the movie, sacrificing structure and a
coherent exploration of ideas on the altar of spontaneity. An image was worth a thousand arguments. Craft was out, art
was supposedly in. It worked for him in music, so why not in movies? The answer was the old one – Salvador Dali
could bring the surreal world to life only because he’d learned how to draw the ordinary one. Young had no experience
in filmmaking from the ground up. He was trying to make movies the way he played electric guitar, but there was no
mastery of the basic chords, no cinematic Crazy Horse providing the platform form which he could take off and land.
So the movies had their nice moments, their nice images, but they never became more than the sum of their parts. After
Human Highway, Young himself apparently began to recognize his limitations in this field. ‘I know I’m not a great
film-maker but I have a lot of fun trying’”… “His contemporaries were the real dinosaurs, stuck in the past, unable to
adapt. They thought the public wanted the same old stuff churned out forever, but in thinking that they were forgetting
how they’d made it in the first place – by offering something new”… “Throughout the songs he was now writing –
prolifically, as if in some great hurry to express what was in his heart”… “And of course the short life of the Shocking
Pinks offered Young Yet another persona to hide in, yet another parallel existence to embrace. ‘I got way into that
guy’”… “Young was going sued to the tune of $3 million, for not being ‘commercial’, for turning in albums that were
not ‘characteristic of Neil Young’”… “A sum of $10 million was raised at the first Farm Aid to be spend on psychiatric
counseling – suicides among American Farmers were up twenty per cent – and on legal aid for those fighting loan
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foreclosures on their farms”… “I can’t sell my voice and my melodies to some company and then turn round, sing a
song from the bottom of my heart and expect anybody to believe it”… “Young asked himself, could he sing a song like
‘Ohio’ sponsored by a beer company?”… “’Arc is like New Age metal… It has no genre or attitude; it’s not like it’s
coming from this place or that place. It’s just metal. And it’s exploding, it’s molten, it’s happening’. The album’s
defining characteristic was the lack of a regular rhythm, of a beat. This absence offered freedom. Everybody says that
beat is the heart of rock ‘n’ roll and I agree with that, the beat is where it’s at. The masses go for the beat. But arc is
like being inside a very big thing. I equate Arc to that movie Fantastic Voyage, it’s like a trip through a power chord.
The chord may last five or six seconds but it takes thirty-five minutes, at the size we’re reducing ourselves to, to go
through it. To me Arc is more art and expression than anything I’ve done for a long time. It’s elevator music for
maniacs”… “Since writer’s block afflicts only those who sit down to write before the inspiration strikes, Young has
never suffered from it.”
Notes from Neil Young: Love to Burn: Thirty Years of Speaking Out 1966-1996: “I sing the song because I
love the man”… “To me, a great artist is someone who says ‘I am’ more honestly, more powerfully, more beautifully,
more straightforwardly, more inclusively than anyone else except other great artists”… “Giving fans more truth than
they wanted”… “Tonight’s the Night is what I mean by good music. I’ve heard some people call it sloppy. To me, slick
is sloppy”… “Slick is sloppy because it’s superficial”… “Music/ creativity is a clue to something bigger”… “But it’s
not so much innocence as openness”… “A personal essay in the form of a record review – kind of a musical diary
entry”… “THE THING IS, JUST NOT WANTING TO BE WHAT EVERYBODY THOUGHT I SHOULD BE. Not
the loner but the individualist. That’s who Neil Young is”… “Yeah, on this track Neil ‘can’t even sing’ because the
record company people don’t think the world is ready for the rawness and eccentricity of his voice”… “Singing the
meaning of what’s in my mind”… “His intensity. His commitment to a personal vision”… “If you’re not in the mood
for this, too bad. This is the meaning of life”… “This is the hard of the matter”… “And in pain. And having feelings.
That’s what this music is about. Having feelings”… “Listen to the guitars. Lots of emotional information inside”…
“Fourteen minutes and twelve seconds of trance music. It’s liberating. Absolutely ecstatic”… “But melodies, and
speaking your heart through your guitar”… “Sometimes when Neil Young sings alone, accompanying himself on
guitar, the sound of his voice is quite magical. When that happens the recording quickly becomes an old friend; you
look forward to hearing it again. His guitar strumming here also seems full of feeling, simple but moving”… “’And
everybody is alone.’ Sounds like he means it. I think he’s singing to his audience (the person who eases his loneliness
by being willing to listen)”… “A pleasing symmetry”… “Since I’m bootlegging the bootleg here”… “But every
junkie’s like a setting sun. I mean, some of us are just too proud to die”… “Emotionally, the blues on this album are the
expression of an introverted person who has to sing to earn his supper”… “Good times are coming, but they sure are
coming slow”… “A whole new era in the artist’s work. 1974-1978”… Hidden in public, in live performance. Who is
Neil Young?”… “The universality (and timelessness) of Neil’s blues”… “It is the undeniable and very relevant fact in
any artist’s life that love and art can at times pull you in very different directions, thereby causing suffering”… “Neil’s
song lyric riddles”… “The six verses can be described as: A B C D C A”… “But we’re not trying to impress anybody.
We just want to play with a feeling and none of us can play that fast”… “I mentioned that whether you like (or connect
with) a Neil Young song seems to depend on whether you’re in the right mood for it when you hear it. If so, this
presents a problem for critics who want to be perceived as having ‘objective’ reasons for their judgments and
evaluations”… “Relative value of Young’s recordings (artworks) is, in effect, ‘this one makes me feel a lot’”… “In
response to expressions of depression or more specifically lack of creative inspiration”… “Come up with something
‘new’ that’s caught your attention or made you think or feel… and let that story turn itself into a song”… “In concert,
what I play all depends on how I feel. I can’t do songs like ‘Southern Man,’ I’d rather play the Lynyrd Skynyrd song.
That’d be great”… “Autobiographical lyrics: ‘A lonely man I made myself to be”… “Romanic and raunchy. ‘Bite the
Bullet’ is forthrightly and joyously about cunnilingus”… “I’d hear about Neil’s cache of unreleased songs”…
“Sometimes the best place to hide things is in plain view”… “Loves the more respectful and outrageous references to
oral sex in ‘Bite the Bullet’ and ‘Saddle Up the Palomino’ (‘I wanna lick the platter. The gravy doesn’t matter’)”… “38
of the 283 were unreleased songs”… “Another unreleased, almost unknown, expressive sonic sculpture by the
master”… “It’s adrenaline, anger, bitterness, a dangerous sort of righteous emotion (with an edge of violent joy, I
admit) that makes me want to smash my fist through a wall. A momentary willingness/ desire to burn down everything
that’s corrupt in my life and my civilization. ‘Keep on rockin’’”… “Neil Young is a great songwriter/ performer/
creative force, but he’s famously uneven”… “You’d better take a chance!”… “Single of the year on my personal radio
station. A song like this can’t be invented. It has the kick of pure inspiration”… “What is achieved here is primarily, as
in almost all of these songs, a sound a mood, a musical experience”… “Another paper boat floated out onto the waters
of the collective consciousness (and subconsciousness; I love the way music reaches both at once)”… “Music that truly
touched and released my soul”… “Fifteen minutes of rock and roll trance”… “Great art is certainly the artist’s best
revenge”… “The lost years were not so ‘lost’ when you have the concert tapes and a good guide”… “Where do you get
ideas (lyrical, musical) like ‘Like a Hurricane’ or ‘Powderfinger’ or ‘See the Sky About to Rain’? You don’t’ arrive at
them by thinking. You’re just sitting there at the guitar or piano or notebook and suddenly this thing just starts coming
through you, and you capture it and learn from it (it shows you how to wants to be done). Inspiration. ‘Bad News’
seems to me an absolutely inspired creation. Almost nothing like it before or since”… “It’s fun to play new songs.
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They’re easy. It gets to be work playing the old songs”… “He’s saying… Well, I don’t know what he’s saying, but I
know how it feels to me”… “A wonderful opportunity to observe Neil Young in full joyous passion and abandon of
performance”… “Listening is not a science. It is a kind of personal art, in the sense that lovemaking is a personal art.
We express ourselves in our listening”… “I imagine I would also hand out a short tape of songs including
‘Winterlong’, ‘See the Sky about to Rain’, ‘Journey Through the Past’, and ‘Here We Are in the Years’. ‘Here,’ I’d say
to my students, ‘these kills me. Please listen to them and then let’s discuss what we heard and experienced”… “(And
never released, because it was too personal)”… “A lot of artists say, ‘I can’t sing those old songs anymore, ‘ and I can
understand it because you’re no longer the same person who wrote those songs. However, you really are still that
person some place deep down. So you can still sing them if you can get in touch with the person you were when you
wrote the songs”… “Under the spell of the clarity and expressiveness of “Separate Ways”, that hidden in this Rock ‘N’
Roll Cowboy set is a kind of perfect EP version of that legendary lost Homegrown album. “Separate Ways.” “Love Art
Blues.” “Pardon My Heart” in that revelatory solo version. “Homefires.” “Hawaiian Sunrise.” A song cycle”… “Arc, a
35-minute ‘feedback compilation composition’.”
Notes from Neil Young: Reflections in Broken Glass by Sylvie Simmons: “There were nights when a girl
would make the 15-minute drive from the club, climb the long flight of stairs, knock on the door, and clamber down
again the next morning. The song Mr. Soul was dedicated to the ladies of the Whiskey A GoGo and the women of
Hollywood”… “That’s why women loved the guy – they wanted to mother him”… “The scary thing about it is
realizing you’re totally comfortable in this void”… “Marrying Susan Acevado in December ’68 made Young’s solidity
and stability complete”… “She felt a kindred spirit with Neil”… “He’s a hysterically funny person if he knows you and
he likes you. He’s very reserved and weird if you don’t know him”… “Manson had worked out the Beatles’
prophecies”… “I’ve got a lot of emotion but very little technical ability”… “Too often when I got home I picked up the
guitar instead of the girl”… “California’s fuck-me-I’m-sensitive singer-songwriters school”… “Out in his isolated
mountain home, cut off by choice and temperament from friends and associates and having recently gone through
divorce, operations and fatherhood, the big black hole was sucking away stronger than ever”… “(about Tonight’s the
Night) It’s real. Either you’ll want to hear it or you won’t”… “Part theatre, part catharsis, part cryptic black joke, the
shows had people wondering whether Young was burned out, junked up, or barking mad. Whispers crossed the Atlantic
that grew into reports that he singer had OD’d”… “On the Beach is a depression record”… Even Bernard Shakey
finally came in for some good press. Five years after the slated Journey Through the Past, Young’s director alter ego
found success and critical acclaim with his Rust Never Sleeps concert movie. Sadly, it did not help him get backing for
Human Highway”… “It’s good to have different identities in life, particularly if you’re me, because I wake up in the
morning and don’t know who I am anyway. It often takes quite a while to work out who I am”… “The constant
changing, always a trademark, was as much a psychological necessity as a musical statement”… “Young made up his
mind there and then that he was ‘going to take car e of Pegi, take car of the kids. I shut the door on my music.’ It was
quite a shift. In the past his music had always come first; everyone and everything else tied for second place”… “Now I
know that the music is important only in that it reflects where I’m at”… “Young relished role-laying more than ever.
He was masking what was really going on inside”… “Then again, maybe he just had a low boredom threshold”… “If
you don’t experiment, you’re dead”… “If you don’t have a record they can play on the radio you might as well forget
it. You might as well not put out a record”… “When I shut the door on pain I shut the door on my music”… “I’m like
an old car. When I came out I was a very cool car, then I got a bit used and there were all these other newer models,
and pretty soon it was time to put me in the junkyard and use me for parts – maybe some other bands would take a bit
from here, a piece from there. Then for a long time it seemed like I must be falling apart, although that didn’t bother me
because inside I felt good about what I was doing. And finally people started going, ‘Hey look at that over there, that’s
a classic. And it’s in pretty good shape’”… “The brutal, apocalyptic jams and slaughterhouse howl were the perfect
soundtrack to war”… “Arc was ‘Elevator music for maniacs’”… “Music last a lot longer than relationships do”… “No
other veteran musician meant so many things to so many different people – gentle folkies, beer-swilling stadium jocks,
stoned hippies, feedback-jonesing grunge kids, old married couples, loners and losers and the cream of independentminded artists”… “I’m kind of a freak of saving things. I have this urge to chronicle everything. I keep going, doing
stuff for no reason, making films there’s no buyer for. I finish them and put them away.”
Notes from “Neil and Me” by Scott Young: “There is no doubt on earth that the fifteen months or so after
Woodstock in the summer of 1969 transformed Neil’s career. His marriage was one of the casualties”… “People whose
art depends on their emotions in full view”… “Rock star on the rebound”… “If Carrie was in his long-term plans at that
time, he hadn’t told anyone”… “They were really into it, Dad. They treated me like somebody”… “Journey Through
the Past was, in the end, more of a cult item than anything else”… “There is a streak in him, which I know well, of
wanting to be good, wanting to be the best. But there is also a streak in him, a very wide streak, of hating the idea that
people think they have him figured out. He despises what has been slow death for many artists – achieving success and
then repeating the formula ad infinitum”… “This last year has been full of questions and confessions of inner self”…
“As for stronger drugs, his rule on tours is, ‘If you’re wired, you’re fired’”… “What do you figure is the darker side of
you?”… “Now I was seeing images as Neil sees them, and as few others ever would. It’s as if he has a seedbed of ideas
in his head.”
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Notes from a “Relix” interview and story about Neil Young’s “Greendale” tour: “Neil Young doesn’t care
what you think. He is a helpless pyromaniac in the face of his own creative fire. “it has a life of its own, “ he says of his
music, with a possessed look in his eye. He is a slave to his art. It controls him. It whispers in his ear while he sleeps,
often waking him to a moment of inspiration. And he listen to that inner voice without hesitation, which is perhaps his
greatest quality. He is defined by his indefinable nature. After more than three decades, he has yet to fade away and his
passion for the muse continues to burn… His peer in Crosby, Stills & Nash may be largely content with giving fans the
greatest hits from yesteryear, but young is more concerned about creating something fresh, regardless of expectations.
Pleasing himself is the priority, as has always been the case, and ultimately that’s what keeps Neil young.”
Notes from “Journey Through the Past: The Stories Behind the Classic Songs of Neil Young” by Nigel
Williamson: “This is the first time I can remember coming out of a relationship definitely not wanting to get into
another one”… “The battle between commerce and art. He describes the experience of ‘singing songs for pimps with
tailors who charge ten dollars at the door.’ He wonders how he can retain his integrity in the face of this prostitution of
his art”… “My whole career is based on systematic destruction for years and years. See, that’s why keeps me alive.
You destroy what you did before and you’re free to carry on. So I’ve been busy destroying all these things”…
“Young’s father, Scott, had divorced his wife Rassy when Neil was in his early teens, resulting in a move from Toronto
to Winnipeg and a change of school. The teenager was deeply unhappy at Earl Grey Junior High School Where he
enrolled in 1960s and where he was mercilessly bullied. All of these events are chronicled in the unusually direct
‘Don’t Be Denied’” “About how middle age can dull our passion and the regret and trepidation of growing old”…
“There’s something genuinely poignant in its grasping at lost romance and the desperate optimism which flickers
through the pain”… “As a ‘prisoner’ and a ‘soldier’ in the rock ‘n’ roll wars”… “You’ve got to watch out for
depression. It’s scary because it’s a silent killer.”
Notes from Neil Young Nation by Kevin Chong: “He wrote a bunch of gloomy songs about failure and
yearning”… “Neil Young saved my life”… “He sang like the child who is the father of the man, in the voice of
innocence singed by experience”… “Young was the embodiment, in his appearance, his singing, his music, of a type of
anti-beauty. To an awkward kid, this was appealing”… “Reckless abandon”… “I was looking for the meaning of Neil
Young”… “An ode to the simple life”… “Tuned between radio stations in someone’s head”…. “Young’s song ‘Don’t
Be Denied’ reads like the valedictorian’s speech Young never made”… “On the whole, the mood of the album Zuma is
one of exuberant melancholy”… “The act of discovery requires a loss of innocence”… “The man’s wacky, fractured,
imagination”… “Neil Young helped a lot when I was going through puberty”… “At certain point in your life, Neil’s
there and it just seems to click with what you’re going through”… “His music is part of my soul”… “We have more
pictures of Neil in our house than we do of our children”… “Attendants to Farm Aid ran the gamut: men in cowboy
hats and boots, middle-aged women in tie-dyes, vegan punk girls, bespectacled volunteers from the college radio
station, guys in Harley Davidson T-shirts, clean-cut Dave Matthews fans”… “Thank God for love.”
Emotive, introspective songwriter musician.
Legends: Neil Young: “It took me longer to grow up into an adult because I was growing up through my
music.” People can grow up through their art, their professional career, or their personal life. I’ve managed
the first two well - yet my personal life still needs maturity. “He was a major creative force... Emotionally
accessible to millions of people... His personal life was still in conflict... He was known for being reclusive
and mysterious... He put up a wall between his personal life.”
Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Rust Never Sleeps: Legendary fantasy concert featuring my all-time favorite artist
musician.
Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Rust Never Sleeps: I really concentrated on and felt in tune with Neil’s electric guitar
playing… What other concert performance do you have dancing bishops and “Road Eyes”? Neil Young achieving
sonic orgasm on his guitar solo on “Like a Hurricane”?… Shot in Rust-O-Vision, the muddy brown, poor film quality
cinematography is meant to visualize the rust and deterioration on this band that never sleeps.
Year of the Horse: Neil Young and Crazy Horse Live: “We’re very emotional, sensitive guys”... Doubleexposed film-making - live concert Neil Young mixed with traveling clouds and nature... A rock star wearing
a “TIDE” advertisement t-shirt.
Year of the Horse: “Made Loud to be Played Loud”... Enter Neil’s World... “He’s a very intense person”...
Playing drums on a guitar.
Neil Young in Berlin: Neil’s “Trans” album was the godfather to “Radiohead: Kid A”.
Neil Young In Berlin: It was like an early 80’s revision of Neil Young when he was doing his experimental
synthesizer Trans music. Vocoder voiced and looser than I’ve ever seen him before, I was jamming on my
bed and in my imagination. They were like a science fiction band in a foreign land playing live with electronic
voices.
Neil Young - 'Solo Trans' Concert Video: Neil Young Concert TV… Changing genres between songs from folk to
electronic to rockabilly! You can’t deny the fact that he needs to keep changing and evolving into to stay vital to
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himself and his art. Otherwise, he’d be stagnant… Hey everybody, it’s Neil and the Shocking Pinks!!!! Do you wanna
dance?!?
Neil Young & Crazy Horse: Weld: And the diverse crowd knows every word Neil sings and every note they play! The
crowd has African-Americans, children, teenagers, aging hippies, rednecks, artists, eccentrics, and preppy chicks… A
Jimi Hendrix style rendition of a 60’s national anthem, “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
Neil Young: Heart of Gold: Concerts are better when they’re among family and friends. What a gorgeously intimate
concert where I actually felt closer to Neil Young than I would have been just through his music. This movie
documentary concert film had me captivated and enriched by Neil Young’s musical catalog of new and old songs. I
was practically singing heartfelt along to “Four Strong Winds” and “Comes a Time”. These were songs that I heard at a
certain period of my life where I was in a transitory state of mind, and Neil Young’s songs captured that moment for
me. And he’ll forever be with me throughout my life.
Neil Young: Heart of Gold: “The auditorium is like a music church”… “I’ve got this brain aneurysm”… “Empty Nest”
Songs Radio Station.
“Neil Young: Biography”: “Rock’s ultimate survivor: Neil Young”… “Music is his whole being. Music is what he
is”… “His dark, difficult songwriting broke all the rules of song-writing”… “The 47 faces of Neil Young. There’s all
these layers to them”… “He was playing stuff with his guitar that was geysers and volcanoes erupting”… “At first
glance, Neil Young seemed least liking for rock and roll survival. Emotional and physical trauma haunted him
throughout his life”… “He was the poster child for the self-absorbed artist. He sabotaged his career to follow his
creative muse”… “He’s intensely private and guarded”… “Intense, driven, and focused, Neil dreamed of bigger
things”… “An awful number of people told him at his first recording session that he couldn’t sing”… “Songwriting
became his tool for exploring his loneliness and desperation”… “There was a darker edge to Neil than there was to
others, and young girls found that intriguing”… “The pain from his marriage’s breakup bled into his next album, ‘After
the Gold Rush’.”
Neil Young: Don’t Be Denied: “I only care about the music”… “He doesn’t care about having a hit song”… “I think I
was just different”… “There were some good musicians who couldn’t step outside and take a chance… got left
behind”… “Crazy Horse doesn’t have anything but soul – it’s all coming from the soul”… “There was a chemistry with
Crazy Horse that allowed me to go places I never would have gone before”… “How many sensitive songs can you
write?”… “I just see the pictures in my eyes, It’s like a mental orgasm”… “I’m recording and moving on”… “I put out
a record that nobody wanted. Yet I succeeded by moving on what I was previously doing. I wasn’t dragged down by
the success”… “He sticks so close to the muse”… “Maybe other people will relate to this death that occurred to one of
my friends”… “The radio stations thought the song “Hey Hey, My My” was distorted and wanted a new copy. But
that’s how it is – distorted”… “I wasn’t in a box, and I wanted to establish that”… “Trans was computers mixed with
old school”… “I saw my albums as pictures in the gallery”… “Some of the songs are meant to piss people off.”
CSNY: Déjà Vu: “We’ve gotten into this crazed political situation”… “Neil’s in charge”… “Songs about the cost of
war”… “Our audience has always expected a certain reality and honesty from us”… “We’re not trying to make the
audience leave with warm, fuzzy feelings. The responsibility of this show is to make the audience feel. Period”… “The
people have got to reclaim this government”… “Listen, we’re trying to tell you that the government is telling you one
side of the story. But listen to the story from my point of view. We’re trying to make people think and form their own
opinion. We’re trying to open a dialogue, stimulate people to think about things. The government will lead you to
believe that everything is fine”… “The music is about feelings”… “If it rings true with me, it’ll feel true with other
people”… “He’s obviously passionate about this”… “Choir of a 100 voices”… “A song about soldiers who don’t come
home to their families”… “Someone has to articulate what people are feeling”… The difference with the Vietnam
generation and the Iraq generation is that there was a draft for the Vietnam War that united the young people against
the war. They were being forced to kill and possibly die… “We’re bring history back”… “Artists have always taken a
political stance. I don’t know where you’ve been”… “I’ve already banned The Dixie Chicks from my household”…
“Terrorists tried to blow up an airline from the London to the U.S. …But Neil Young says it’s no big deal and we’re
overreacting”… “I think Republicans can be respectfully against the war”… “My definition of good art is if it makes
you feel something. And it could be anything: triumph, fear, anger, love”… Conservative Atlanta concertgoers walk
out when “Let’s Impeach the President” is played… “Neil Young can stick it up his ass!!”… “I’d like to knock his
teeth out! He’s a stupid son-of-a-bitch!”… “You may not realize it, but the government is smarter than you”…
“Topical tunes weren’t career-threatening novelties. What a rarity! A concert that sends you home thinking, feelings,
and rocking”… “When I was in the military, I wasn’t allowed to have an opinion”… “There’s a lot of people that are
ignorant of what’s going on”… “Everyone stays mad at someone else”… "From the CSNY tour, here are a pair of
presidential flip-flops for you"… "This was the information I wanted to see. So I made up my own TV news station"…
This movie could very well be the most scarily comedic movie of the year. Think about it: people actually getting
offended because they went to a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young concert that featured political protest songs?!?? Huh?!
How shocking! How unexpected! That's like going to a Mexican restaurant and complaining that the food is too hot.
Perhaps some people just wanted happily nostalgic 60's protest music memories rather than a rude awakening to the
real world we're living in. And some of these people refused to accept that some "entertainers" are actually artists as
well who have opinions and a voice that hasn't be co-opted by corporations and their image consultants… "I DON'T
WANT TO BE TOLD WHAT TO THINK BY FOUR AGING HIPPIES!!"… "I think it's going to be a forgotten
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war"… "You can't ever be healed and done with if you've ever gone to war"… "I want to show compassion for my
fellow soldiers"… Liberals making the best patriotic, flag-waving film of the year… "I would never have been able to
do this without you guys"… "They just don't want us to see these bodies coming home"… "They were to solidify their
history of speaking out on important issues at critical times."
Neil Young: Fork in the Road: What really strikes me about Neil as a role model is that he dresses like an ordinary
person. Dare I even say he dresses a bit in the same fashion I dress as well. He wears old shirts with holes in them,
jeans, and sneakers. There's nothing pretentious about him. He's got no face lift. He's just a real person. Even one of his
music videos is just him paddling on his kayak while lip-synching to one of his songs. It's sheer simplicity is what
makes it stand out so damn much. It's intimate. It's just making a video with a consumer grade video camera in one
take. Nothing fancy about that. And yet it matches the music so damn well. It's just as raw and real as the imagery. By
"Shakey Pictures".
Neil Young - 1971 - Swing in mit Neil Young: "Do you feel alone?" -"I don't know. I write about how I feel inside"…
"I think talking about it helps"… "When I write a song, it's like having a mental orgasm"… "I've written so many songs
lately. I've never felt so free as I have right now."
Neil Young: Centerstage 1992: Acapella version of "Tonight's the Night" was extra scary and intimate. "It sent a chill
down my spine."
Neil Young Trunk Show: “Sad movie that makes you cry”… “Scenes from a concert”… "No Hidden Path"…
"Ambulance Blues"… "Mellow My Mind"… "Like a Hurricane"… "The Sultan"… More raw footage-like, fly-on-thewall documentary from behind the scenes… Pegi Young: Vocals/ Vibes. Artist at Large: Amber Young. Inspiration:
Ben Young.
Neil Young: Journeys: Take a car ride with Neil Young… Microphone camera!... "It's so peaceful out here"… Spit on
the microphone camera lens… "Walk With Me"… Filmed and edited like a Jonathan Demme home movie
documentary of Neil Young.
Quotes from a Neil Young interview: “Every one of my records, to me, is like an ongoing
autobiography”... “Everybody gets fucked up sooner or later”... “There’s more feeling in the off-key singing in
“Tonight’s the Night”... “Music (and art) lasts... a lot longer than relationships do”... “They (CSNY) were in the
studio for a long time and started nitpicking (sounds like what’s been happening at the center)... “I feel
magnificent. Now is the first time I can remember coming out of a relationship, definitely not wanting to get
into another one. I’m just not looking. I’m so happy with the space I’m in right now. It’s like spring. I’ll sell you
two bottles of it for $1.50.”
“While Neil Young is a fine songwriter and an excellent guitarist, his greatest strength is in his voice. Its arid
tone is perpetually mournful, without being maudlin or pathetic. It hints at a world in which sorrow underlies
everything; even a line like “you can’t conceive of the pleasure in my smile” (from “I Am a Child”) ultimately becomes
painful to hear. And because that world is recognizable to most of us, Young’s singing is often strangely moving”…
“But when one understand these songs, one begins to perceive the exciting possibility that perhaps Young is rock &
roll’s first (and only?) post-romantic. That he knows something that we don’t, but should. Indeed, I suspect that Young
took one of the longest journeys without maps on record, never even slowed up at the point of no return, but somehow
got back anyway, a better man with all senses intact. When nearly overwhelmed by marital difficulties and the death of
friends, he apparently looked into himself and managed an instinctive or willed act of Jungian purification that put him
somewhat safely on the far side of paradise, if not paradox. I’m not saying he’s happy, but who the hell is happy? For
Young, being a postromantic probably means he still loves the war, but knows exactly how and where to invest his
combat pay – he may lose it, but never hopelessly. Romanticism is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. Too homicidal”… “The autobiographical “Thrasher” (the
threshing machine as death symbol) follows, and it’s about rock & roll destructiveness, too - this time in the guise of
the easy living that can lead to artistic stagnation. But even as the singer chronicles the downfall of many of his friends
and fellow musicians, he makes the decision that it won’t happen to him”… “With “Pocahontas,” Young sails through
time and space like he owns them… While “out of the blue and into the black” is a phrase that’s filled with mortal
doom, “into the black” can also mean money, success and fame, all of which carry a particularly high price tag. “My
my, hey hey,” Young sings, the line both fatalistic and mocking, “Rock and roll is here to stay”… “Music can be like
therapy. It’s like getting parts of yourself out, which I used to do all the time.” –Excerpts from “Neil Young: The
Rolling Stone”.
"Music can be like therapy. It's like getting parts of yourself out, which I used to do all the time. But I was at
a point in my life where I really closed off my emotions about a lot of things I didn't understand. I just shut down the
whole program and did things that were more on the surface level, because it was safer. Now I feel time has healed
whatever was bothering me so much. I feel more open, and I can write songs that are more directly involved with what
I'm thinking." –Neil Young, 1989.
Like a Neil Young song, you have to be in a certain mood to really enjoy or appreciate my work,
considering that most of it is personal and subjective. Neil, I’ve got the “Love Art Blues”, too. “Why must I
choose between the best things I’ve ever had?” I can’t easily have both love and art in my life. They pull me
in two different directions and, therefore, cause me my suffering. “I went a played too hard.”
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I’ve been reading a book on the music of Neil Young and have discovered a few things about
myself: I’m a committed artist and an inspired artist. I constantly work hard and work only when I feel an idea
needs to be expressed. I’m not creative all the time, though I try to be. I’ve been in two committed
relationships and left them with my insides hurting... I lost. Creating great art was my revenge. I make
“feeling-based” art. It’s best if the viewer is in the right emotional mood to accept it. “I’m not sorry I made the
music I did. I didn’t need the money. I didn’t need the fame. You gotta keep changing. Shirts, old ladies,
whatever. I’d rather keep changing and lose a lot of people along the way. If that’s the price, I’ll pay it. I don’t
give a shit if my audience is a hundred or a hundred million. It doesn’t make any difference to me.” Walk on,
Neil.
There are days when Neil Young’s wounded voice shined through into my soul. “Look out for my
love... look out for my love” from the ‘Comes A Time’ album.
Neil Young: the sonic van Gogh of my lifetime.
“It’s all one song!” –Neil Young.
Neil Young on drugs: “How would I have kept this together for so long if I was on drugs? It’d be
impossible. You could not do what I have done if you were into drugs. I mean, I used a few drugs. I smoked
a lot of grass in the Sixties, continued to smoke grass into the Seventies and dabbled around in other drugs.
But I never got hooked on... you know, never got out of hand with the harder drugs. I experimented, but I
think I’m basically a survivor. I’ve never been an alcoholic. Never used heroin.”
Out of an inner urge, I decided to go to Borders this evening and spend two hours reading a book
of quotes and opinions of Neil Young. How refreshing to read frankness and honesty from an artist who has
made it through the years without dying from drugs. “If I was on drugs all the time, I wouldn’t be here now or
have done all this work”... “If you turn off the pain, you turn off the music.”
I went to Borders and read a quote by Neil Young about how he doesn’t mind losing old ladies and
friends along the road - that if that’s the price one has to pay for change, he’ll gladly take it. Getting that kind
of advice from a fellow artist heightened my sense self-security in how my life has been going.
12-3-00: I listen to Neil Young because I identify with his electric and acoustic guitar work, his
melodies, his sometimes surreal, personal, and confessional lyrics, his deeply expressive and shaky voice,
and his immensely sincere emotions. He’s so beautifully human. I love his artistic flood of emotion.
Neil Young has had more #1 hits in my soul than any other musician.
There's a lonely Neil Young song playing in my head...
4-26-07: There is something about this “Neil Young: Rock ‘n’ Roll Cowboy: A Life on the Road: 19661994” box set I bought back in 2001 in Ft. Lauderdale that has affected my entire life. It is a series of bootleg live
recordings of the man, many of which are intimately acoustic and deeply emotional. These are recordings of Neil
Young at his most ideal: stripped down to a single musical instrument and his fragile, frail voice. It is the simplest
combination and yet these renditions and recordings of these songs have haunted me for years because they cut straight
to the heart. There is no studio polish here. The bootleg live tape recording hiss actually enhances some of the
recording. It just makes them seem as imperfect and delicate as Neil’s voice can be. There is just raw emotion and
heart. I must have listened to some of these disks over a hundred times or more while doing art. I can just get
transported away listening to their poignant beauty. The other revelation is that many of the songs on this box set are
songs he hasn’t even officially released yet on any commercially available album – and they’re absolutely some of his
best! “Love Art Blues”, “Give Me Strength”, “Evening Coconut”, “Sweet Joni”, “Everybody’s Alone”, “Love In
Mind”, “Traces”, “Hawaiian Sunrise”, and “Lady Wingshot” are just an evocative few.
"And who's all hung-up on that happiness thing? Who's trying to tune all the bells that he rings? And who's in
the corner and down on the floor with pencil and paper just counting the score? And who's trying to act like he's just in
between? The line isn't black, if you know that it's green. Don't bother looking, you're too blind to see. Who's coming
on like he wanted to be? Who's saying baby, that don't mean a thing, 'cause nowadays Clancy can't even sing." "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing" by Buffalo Springfield.
“Who's saying baby, that don't mean a thing, 'cause nowadays Clancy can't even sing.” –“Nowadays Clancy
Can't Even Sing” by Buffalo Springfield. People always told Neil Young (aka Clancy in the song) that he can’t sing.
“To singing the meaning of what’s in my mind… Who's saying baby, that don't mean a thing. 'Cause
nowadays Clancy can't even sing.” –“Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing” by Buffalo Springfield.
“Is my world not falling down? I'm in pieces on the ground and my eyes aren't open. And I'm standing on my
knees. But if crying and holding on and flying on the ground is wrong. Then I'm sorry to let you down, but you're from
my side of town and I miss you. Turn me up or turn me down, turn me off or turn me round. I wish I could have met
you in a place where we both belong. But if crying and holding on and flying on the ground is wrong. Then I'm sorry to
let you down, but you're from my side of town and I miss you. Sometimes I feel like I'm just a helpless child.
Sometimes I feel like a kid. But baby, since I have changed, I can't take nothing home. City lights at a country fair
never shine but always glare. If I'm bright enough to see you, you're just too dark to care. But if crying and holding on
and flying on the ground is wrong. Then I'm sorry to let you down, but you're from my side of town and I miss you.” –
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“Flying On The Ground Is Wrong” by Buffalo Springfield.
"This is the first dope/acid rock song I ever wrote. I was cashing in on psychadelics at the time. [Laughs] I
was more into jello than anything else." -Neil Young talking about “Flying on the Ground Is Wrong”, Dec. 5, 1970,
Carnegie Hall, NYC.
“I'll cop out to the change, but a stranger is putting the tease on.” -“Mr. Soul” by Buffalo Springfield.
“Is it strange I should change? I don't know, why don't you ask her?” –“Mr. Soul” by Buffalo
Springfield.
“There you stood on the edge of your feather, expecting to fly. All the years we'd spent with feeling
ended with a cry.” –“Expecting To Fly” by Buffalo Springfield.
“I am a child... I’ll last awhile... you can’t conceive the pleasure in my smile.” -“I Am a Child” by Neil
Young.
“It's so noisy at the fair, but all your friends are there. And the candy floss you had, and your mother
and your dad. Oh, to live on sugar mountain with the Barkers and the colored balloons. You can't be twenty
on sugar mountain, though you're thinking that you're leaving there too soon. You're leaving there too soon.
There's a girl just down the aisle. Oh you turn and see her smile. You can hear the words she wrote as you
read the hidden note. Oh, to live on sugar mountain…. Now you say you're leaving home 'cause you want to
be alone. Ain't it funny how you feel when you're finding out it's real.” –“Sugar Mountain” by Neil Young.
“He's a perfect stranger, like a cross of himself and a fox. He's a feeling arranger and a changer of
the ways he talks. He's the unforeseen danger - the keeper of the key to the locks. Know when you see him.
Nothing can free him. Step aside. Open wide. It's the loner… There was a woman he knew about a year or
so ago. She had something that he needed and he pleaded with her not to go. On the day that she left, he
died - but it did not show. Know when you see him. Nothing can free him. Step aside. Open wide. It's the
loner.” –“The Loner” by Neil Young.
“I think I'd like to go back home and take it easy. There's a woman that I'd like to get to know living there.
Everybody seems to wonder what it's like down here. Gotta get away from this day-to-day running around. Everybody
knows this is nowhere. Everybody, everybody knows. Everybody knows this is nowhere. Every time I think about back
home, it's cool and breezy. Wish that I could be there right now just passing time. Everybody seems to wonder what it's
like down here. Gotta get away from this day-to-day running around. Everybody knows this is nowhere. Everybody
knows… everybody knows.” –“Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” by Neil Young.
"Round and round and round we spin. To weave a wall to hem us in. It won't be long, it won't be long. How
slow and slow and slow it goes. To mend the tear that always shows. It won't be long, it won't be long. It's hard enough
losin' the paper illusion you've hidden inside. Without the confusion of findin' you're usin' the crutch of the lie, to
shelter your pride when you cry. Now you're movin' too slow and wherever you go there's another beside. It's so hard to
say no to yourself and it shows that you're losing inside. When you step on your pride and you cry. How the hours will
bend through the time that you spend till you turn to your eyes. And you see your best friend looking over the end and
you turn to see why. And he looks in your eyes and he cries." -"Round & Round (It Won't Be Long)" by Neil Young &
Crazy Horse.
“You take my hand, I'll take your hand. Together we may get away. This much madness is too much sorrow.
It's impossible to make it today. She could drag me over the rainbow and send me away.” –“Down by the River” by
Neil Young & Crazy Horse.
"This much madness is too much sorrow. It's impossible to make it today.” –“Down by the River” by Neil
Young & Crazy Horse.
“Be on my side, I'll be on your side. There's no reason for us to hide. It's so hard for me staying
here all alone when you could be taking me for a ride. She could drag me over the rainbow and send me
away. Down by the river, I shot my baby. Dead.” –“Down by the River” by Neil Young & Crazy Horse.
"I went into town to see you yesterday but you were not home. So I talked to some old friends for a while
before I wandered off alone. It's so hard for me now but I'll make it somehow. Though I know I'll never be the same.
Won't you ever change your ways? It's so hard to make love pay when you're on the losing end. And I feel that way
again. Well, I miss you more than ever. Since you've gone I can hardly maintain. Things are different round here ev'ry
night. My tears fall down like rain. It's so hard for me now but I'll make it somehow. Though I know I'll never be the
same. Won't you ever change your ways? It's so hard to make love pay when you're on the losing end. And I feel that
way again. -"The Losing End (When You're On)" by Neil Young & Crazy Horse.
“Hello woman of my dreams. This is not the way it seems. Purple words on a grey background. To
be a woman and to be turned down. Old enough now to change your name. When so many love you is it the
same? It's the woman in you that makes you want to play this game.” –“Cowgirl in the Sand” by Neil Young
and Crazy Horse.
“Hello Ruby in the dust. Has your band begun to rust?” –“Cowgirl in the Sand” by Neil Young and Crazy
Horse.
“If you're looking for me, you'll find me resting in the shade of the mountains and trees… beneath the cool
summer breeze. And I don't mind if you stay, everybody's alone… everybody's alone. People talking to me, someone
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saying that I'm not the same. That's not so easy to be. But when I'll learn to be free, I wonder if I'll miss the pain.
Everybody's alone… Everybody's Alone.” -“Everybody’s Alone” by Neil Young.
“When the dream came, I held my breath with my eyes closed. I went insane, like a smoke ring day
when the wind blows. Now I won't be back till later on, if I do come back at all. But you know me, and I miss
you now.” -“On the Way Home” by Neil Young.
“We are only what we feel.” -“On the Way Home” by Neil Young.
“There is a town in north Ontario with dream comfort memory to spare. And in my mind I still need a place
to go. All my changes were there. Blue, blue windows behind the stars, yellow moon on the rise. Big birds flyin' across
the sky, throwin' shadows on our eyes. Leave us helpless, helpless, helpless. Oh, babe, can you hear me now?” "Helpless” by Crosby, Still, Nash, & Young.
“Country girl, I think you’re pretty, got to make you understand. Have no lovers in the city. Let me be your
country man. Got to make you understand, got to make you understand, country girl...” -“Country Girl” by Crosby,
Stills, Nash, and Young.
"Four dead in Ohio! Four dead in Ohio! Four dead in Ohio!" -"Ohio" by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young.
“Sailing heartships through broken harbors, out on the waves in the night. Still the searcher must
ride the dark horse, racing alone in his fright. Tell me why, tell me why? Is it hard to make arrangements with
yourself, when you're old enough to repay but young enough to sell? Tell me lies later, come and see me. I'll
be around for a while. I am lonely but you can free me, all in the way that you smile.” –“Tell Me Why” by Neil
Young.
“Well, I dreamed I saw the knights in armour coming, sayin' something about a queen. There were
peasants singin' and drummers drummin' and the archer split the tree. There was a fanfare blowin' to the
sun that was floating on the breeze. Look at Mother Nature on the run in the nineteen seventies.” –“After the
Gold Rush” by Neil Young.
“I was thinkin' about what a friend had said. I was hopin' it was a lie.” –“After the Gold Rush” by Neil
Young.
“All in a dream, all in a dream the loading had begun. Flying Mother Nature's silver seed to a new home in
the sun.” –“After the Gold Rush” by Neil Young.
“When you were young and on your own, how did it feel to be alone? I was always thinking of the
games I was playing. Trying to make the best of my time. But only love can break your heart. Try to be sure
right from the start. Yes, only love can break your heart… What if your world should fall apart?” –“Only Love
Can Break Your Heart” by Neil Young.
“I have a friend I've never seen. He hides his head inside a dream. Someone should call him and
see if he can come out. Try to lose the down that he's found.” –“Only Love Can Break Your Heart” by Neil
Young. Is he talking about himself? ‘Cause I know he’s talking about someone like me.
“Old man lying by the side of the road with the lorries rolling by. Blue moon sinking from the weight
of the load and the building scrape the sky. Cold wind ripping down the alley at dawn and the morning paper
flies. Dead man lying by the side of the road with the daylight in his eyes. Don't let it bring you down - it's
only castles burning. Find someone who's turning and you will come around. Blind man running through the
light of the night with an answer in his hand. Come on down to the river of sight and you can really
understand. Red lights flashing through the window in the rain. Can you hear the sirens moan? White cane
lying in a gutter in the lane. If you're walking home alone, don't let it bring you down - it's only castles
burning. Just find someone who's turning and you will come around.” –“Don't Let It Bring You Down” by Neil
Young.
“Lover, there will be another one who'll hover over you beneath the sun. Tomorrow see the things
that never come today. When you see me fly away without you. Shadow on the things you know. Feathers
fall around you and show you the way to go. It's over, it's over. Nestled in your wings my little one is special
morning brings another sun. Tomorrow see the things that never come today.” –“Birds” by Neil Young.
“Now that you found yourself losing your mind, are you here again? Finding that what you once
thought was real is gone, and changing? Now that you made yourself love me, do you think I can change it
in a day? How can I place you above me? Am I lying to you when I say that I believe in you? Coming to you
at night I see my questions… I feel my doubts. Wishing that maybe in a year or two we could laugh and let it
all out.” –“I Believe In You” by Neil Young.
“When you dance, do your senses tingle? Then take a chance? In a trance, while the lonely mingle
with circumstance?” –“When You Dance You Can Really Love” by Neil Young.
“So long woman I am gone. So much pain to go through. Come back maybe I was wrong. Bad fog of
loneliness put a cloud on my single-mindedness. I dream of sweet caress from you.” –“Bad Fog of Loneliness” by Neil
Young.
“His music kills me - and I mean that as a compliment” (upon hearing Neil Young’s “Harvest” album
being played on the radio tonight).
“Think I'll pack it in and buy a pick-up. Take it down to L.A. Find a place to call my own and try to fix
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up. Start a brand new day. The woman I'm thinking of - she loved me all up. But I'm so down today. She's so
fine she's in my mind. I hear her callin'. See the lonely boy, out on the weekend, tryin' to make it pay. Can't
relate to joy, he tries to speak and can't begin to say. She got pictures on the wall - they make me look up
from her big brass bed. Now I'm running down the road trying to stay up somewhere in her head.” –“Out on
the Weekend” by Neil Young.
Did I see you down in a young girl's town with your mother in so much pain? I was almost there at the top of
the stairs with her screamin' in the rain. Did she wake you up to tell you that it was only a change of plan? Dream up,
dream up, let me fill your cup with the promise of a man. Did I see you walking with the boys, though it was not hand
in hand? And was some black face in a lonely place when you could understand? Did she wake you up to tell you that it
was only a change of plan? Dream up, dream up, let me fill your cup with the promise of a man. Will I see you give
more than I can take? Will I only harvest some? As the days fly past, will we lose our grasp or fuse it in the sun?” –
“Harvest” by Neil Young.
“I fell in love with the actress. She was playing a part that I could understand.” –“Man Needs a Maid” by
Neil Young.
“To give a love, you gotta live a love. To live a love, you gotta be "part of." When will I see you
again?” –“Man Needs A Maid” by Neil Young.
“I want to live. I want to give. I've been a miner for a heart of gold. It's these expressions I never
give that keep me searching for a heart of gold. And I'm getting old. I've been to Hollywood. I've been to
Redwood. I crossed the ocean for a heart of gold. I've been in my mind, it's such a fine line that keeps me
searching for a Heart of Gold. And I'm getting old.” –“Heart of Gold” by Neil Young.
"Twenty-four and there’s so much more. Live alone in a paradise that makes me think of two... Love
lost, such a cost, give me things that won’t get lost. Like a coin that won't get tossed rolling home to you...
Lullabies, look in your eyes. Run around the same old town. Doesn't mean that much to me to mean that
much to you. I've been first and last, look at how the time goes past. But I’m all alone at last, rolling home to
you." –“Old Man” by Neil Young.
“I caught you knockin' at my cellar door. I love you, baby, can I have some more. Ooh, ooh, the damage
done. I hit the city and I lost my band. I watched the needle take another man. Gone, gone, the damage done. I sing the
song because I love the man. I know that some of you don't understand. Milk-blood to keep from running out. I've seen
the needle and the damage done. A little part of it in everyone. But every junkie's like a settin' sun.” –“Needle and the
Damage Done” by Neil Young.
“Someone and someone were down by the pond. Looking for something to plant in the lawn. Out in the fields
they were turning the soil. I'm sitting here hoping this water will boil. When I look through the windows and out on the
road, they're bringing me presents and saying hello. Singing words, words between the lines of age. Words, words
between the lines of age. If I was a junkman selling you cars, washing your windows and shining your stars. Thinking
your mind was my own in a dream. What would you wonder and how would it seem? Living in castles a bit at a time.
The King started laughing and talking in rhyme. Singing words, words between the lines of age. Words, words between
the lines of age.” –“Words” by Neil Young.
“Soldier, your eyes, they shine like the sun. I wonder why. Soldier, your eyes shine like the sun. I wonder
why. Jesus, I saw you walkin' on the river. I don't believe you. You can't deliver right away. I wonder why. Jesus, your
eyes shine like the sun I wonder why.” -“Soldier” by Neil Young.
“Will your restless heart come back to mine on a journey thru the past. Will I still be in your eyes
and on your mind?” – “Journey Through the Past" by Neil Young.
“When the winter rains come pourin' down on that new home of mine, will you think of me and wonder if I'm
fine? Will your restless heart come back to mine on a journey thru the past? Will I still be in your eyes and on your
mind? Now I'm going back to Canada on a journey thru the past. And I won't be back till February comes. I will stay
with you if you'll stay with me, said the fiddler to the drum. And we'll keep good time on a journey thru the past. When
the winter rains come pourin' down on that new home of mine, will I still be in your eyes and on your mind? Will I still
be in your eyes and on your mind?” -“Journey Through the Past" by Neil Young.
“Sweet Joni from Saskatoon. There's a ring for your finger. It looks like the sun, but it feels like the moon.
Sweet Joni from Saskatoon. Don't go, don't go too soon. Who lives in an old hotel, near the ancient ruins. Only time
can tell, time can tell. Go easy, the doorman said. The floor is slippery, so watch your head. This message read. Sweet
Joni from Saskatoon. There's a ring for your finger. It shines like the sun, but it feels like the
moon. Sweet Joni from Saskatoon. Don't go, don't go too soon.” –“Sweet Joni” by Neil Young.
“Son, don't be home too late. Try to get back by eight. Son, don't wait till the break of day `cause
you know how time fades away. Time fades away. You know how time fades away.” –“Time Fades Away” by
Neil Young.
“Will I finally be heard by you, L.A.? Uptight, city in the smog, city in the smog. Don't you wish that
you could be here too? Don't you wish that you could be here too? Don't you wish that you could be here
too?” –“L.A.” by Neil Young.
“Woke up this morning with love in mind. It was raining outside by my love still shined. Kept me
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warm till my plane touched the sky. And I've seen love make a fool of a man. He tried to make a loser win.
But I've got nothing to lose I can't get back again.” –“Love In Mind” by Neil Young.
“I checked in to school. I wore white bucks on my feet when I learned the golden rule. The punches
came fast and hard ling on my back in the schoolyard. Don't be denied. Well pretty soon I met a friend. He
played guitar. We used to sit on the steps at school and dream of being stars. We started a band. We played
all night… Well, all that glitters isn't gold. I know you've heard that story told... But I'm a pauper in a naked
disguise - a millionaire through a businessman's eyes… Oh friend of mine. Don't be denied. Don't be denied.
Don't be denied. Don't be denied. Don't be denied. Don't be denied. Don't be denied.” -“Don’t Be Denied” by
Neil Young. His voice is ragged beyond emotion. It’s like he’s tapping into the emotion of the lyrics “don’t be
denied” with a greater, rawer power than anyone else could possibly achieve. I heard one of the best songs
I’ve ever heard in my life today, and it was “Don’t Be Denied”. It’s simply hypnotic.
“Young’s father, Scott, had divorced his wife Rassy when Neil was in his early teens, resulting in a
move from Toronto to Winnipeg and a change of school. The teenager was deeply unhappy at Earl Grey
Junior High School Where he enrolled in 1960s and where he was mercilessly bullied. All of these events
are chronicled in the unusually direct “Don’t Be Denied”.” –From “Journey Through the Past: the Stories
Behind the Classic Songs of Neil Young” by Nigel Williamson.
“I hear some people been talkin' me down. Bring up my name, pass it 'round. They don't mention
happy times. They do their thing, I'll do mine. Ooh baby, that's hard to change; I can't tell them how to feel.
Some get stoned, some get strange. But sooner or later, it all gets real. Walk on, walk on, walk on, walk on.“
-“Walk On” by Neil Young.
“They do their thing, I'll do mine. Ooh baby, that's hard to change. I can't tell them how to feel.
Some get stoned, some get strange. But sooner or later it all gets real. Walk on, walk on, walk on, walk on.”
–“Walk On” by Neil Young.
“See the sky about to rain, broken clouds and rain. Locomotive pull the train, whistle blowing
through my brain. Some are bound for happiness, some are bound to glory; some are bound to live with
less, who can tell your story?” –“See the Sky About to Rain” by one Neil Young.
“You can really learn a lot that way; it will change you in the middle of the day. Though your
confidence may be shattered, it doesn't matter.” –“For the Turnstiles” by Neil Young.
"I'm a vampire, baby, suckin' blood from the earth. Well, I'm a vampire, babe, sell you 20 barrels worth." "Vampire Blues" by Neil Young.
“Though my problems are meaningless, that don't make them go away. I need a crowd of people,
but I can't face them day to day… 'Cause the world is turnin', I don't want to see it turn away.” –“On the
Beach” by Neil Young.
“Good times are coming, but they sure are coming slow.” –“Vampire Blues” by Neil Young.
“Motion pictures on my TV screen, a home away from home, livin' in between; but I hear some people have
got their dream. I've got mine. I hear the mountains are doin' fine, mornin' glory is on the vine, and the dew is fallin',
the ducks are callin'. Yes, I've got mine. Well, all those people, they think they got it made; but I wouldn't buy, sell,
borrow or trade. Anything I have to be like one of them. I'd rather start all over again.” –“Motion Pictures” by Neil
Young.
“Well, all those headlines, they just bore me now. I'm deep inside myself, but I'll get out somehow.
And I'll stand before you, and I'll bring a smile to your eyes. Motion pictures, motion pictures.” –“Motion
Pictures” by Neil Young.
“You're only real with your make-up on; how could I see you and stay too long?… She needs
someone that she can scream at; and I'm such a heel for makin' her feel so bad. I guess I'll call it sickness
gone; it's hard to say the meaning of this song. An ambulance can only go so fast; it's easy to get buried in
the past when you try to make a good thing last.” –“Ambulance Blues” by Neil Young.
“Well, I'm up in T.O. keepin' jive alive, and out on the corner it's half past five. But the subways are empty
and so are the cafes. Except for the Farmer's Market, and I still can hear him say: “You're all just pissin' in the wind.
You don't know it but you are. And there ain't nothin' like a friend who can tell you you're just pissin' in the wind.” –
“Ambulance Blues” by Neil Young.
"All the towns people gather around. They've come to see what's going down. Although no one hears a
sound, there's another poor man falling down. Falling down, falling down. Falling down, falling down. On this noisy
shore, standing at the edge of you. Could those dreams of yours be true? Or did you, did you, did you pushed it over the
end? How much time did you spend? Pushed it over the end." -"Pushed It Over The End" by Neil Young.
"Here's another bummer for you. Hey, it's my trip!" -Neil Young on the live bootleg recording "Citizen Kane
Junior Blues" from 1974.
“Believe me when I tell you that a love true isn't hard to find. 'Cause I found mine and
she's so fine like a lifeline from across the sea. None of the neighbors remember names. They
only see the faces with destinations still unnamed. It's hard to leave the traces for someone to
follow.” –“Traces” by Neil Young.
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The tortured roughness of the music was a needed antidote to Neil Young’s “Tonight’s the Night”.
“Tonight's the night, tonight's the night. Tonight's the night, tonight's the night. Bruce Berry was a working
man. He used to load that Econoline van. A sparkle was in his