I’m still reeling from meeting Lynda Barry and soaking up a little bit of the crazy energy she exudes. (Best was that I got a nice e-mail from her, and the subject line was: KICK ASS DRAWING MAN!) I was reading an old interview from a while back, and somebody asked, “do you have any advice for young people?” And this was her answer.
President Garland has announced his recommendation that the Western College Program be eliminated as an academic division at Miami University. Read the full text. Obviously, this wasn’t unexpected, but it strikes me as a spineless move, announced during final exams, when students have little time and energy left to be heard, and right before Jimmy goes on a permanent vacation. The whole thing makes me sick.
Did you know that Screamin’ Jay Hawkins fathered almost 75 children? That he was the middleweight boxing champion of Alaska? That he used to come out of a foggy coffin onstage with tusks in his nose and a cigarette-smoking skull named Henry? That he was born in Cleveland and died in Paris?
*** from an interview with Screamin’ Jay
I see no necessity to apologize for the imperfections of this or of any similar imagery. Analogies of this kind are only intended to assist us in our attempt to make the complications of mental functioning intelligible.—Sigmund Freud, talking about his dream diagrams
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I think I might use this someday as the epigraph for one of my comics. I collaged it onto the front of my sketchbook, with a few changes:
Clive Thompson made the great point, “your tools help determine how you think. So long as Freud used realistic modes of drawing, he was hemmed in by the dictates of straightforward physiology. To ponder the abstracts of human behavior, he needed to turn to abstract comix.”
Read some more about Freud’s drawings.
The B pipe on my Honda needed replaced, so I sat in a Starbucks all morning and drew the people passing by. I liked the drawings so much, I thought, what the hell, why not make them a comic?
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