Day 132 of a Month Long Writing Practice

Tomorrow I begin eleven days without internet access, eleven days where I don't catch up with other peoples concerns, jokes, links, lunches. I was wondering what I'd do about my writing and drawing daily routines. Well, here is the deal. I may still write, if I do I'll write on paper. I may still draw, if I do I'll draw on paper. I won't be uploading anything. The paper will just pile up - if I actually use it. I may not.
    After eleven days I will have access to the internet again. Do I take this pile of paper - if it exists - and translate it to pixels ? Do I scrap the paper and restart writing on the screen ? We'll see. Frankly, I don't really care one way or the other. I consider this project a success. I've written things, a handful of people have read some of the things I've written. I'm not keen to remind anyone that there is more here to read. People are flooded with information anyway. Chances are, I will rope in my efforts and energies and put them to use creating something of substance. Frittering away energy is something I've done for much too long, like eating when stress starts to rise within me. Like surrounding myself with acquaintances instead of solid friends.
    So, see you later, here or somewhere else. This has been day 132 of a daily writing practice.

Abandon Ship

In a few days I will take vacation with my family. We will go to cabin country in Ontario and visit with cousins. We will cook together and take care of each other's kids. During this time I will not have internet access. I will most probably abandon any of my daily writing and drawing practices. Writing long hand in some notebook for eleven days may happen but i'm not counting on it. I could, I suppose, do just that and when home again, transcribe it all and upload it. It's an option. I'm thinking that this may be a convenient time to stop all this nonsense and when I get back to reality, simply dive into my graphic novel project. It's a nice thought in any case.
    I guess I could draw a daily drawing out there on the shore of the lake. I could entertain the kids with the bunny drawings. They'll all ask for one anyway. I'll play it by ear, but know ye reader, that this is me starting to justify why I'm going to drop the ball.
    Picking up another ball is mandatory. I am obliged to do so. I simply hope I'm efficient about it. Time will tell.

The Book

I'll continue trying to read Ishmael Reed, Stan Gooch and Stephen Jay Gould. I'll be tempted with that new pile of books downstairs, Dick Hebdige, Joseph Campbell and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and a few more.
    Fantasy trilogy is done and I may want more. Something decent. Not a ten book dynastic wank-off.
    Between fantasy, folklore, myth, pop culture, paranormal, theory, sociology I have it covered. A little history of science, the occasional witch blog, Black or Native American cultural studies, crappy comics, pamphlets and arcane poetics. I wish I could merge all this in what I myself make. maybe I do and I don't notice.
    I tried to buy art supplies today, some nice bristol board to cut into panels so I can start drawing. I know there will be duds, wasted paper, crappy third attempts, aborted sequences. But that's ok, that means I'm working. Right now all I have is the taste of blood in my mouth.
    The art supply co-op near me had nothing I needed paper-wise. Not for this project. I bought four six by eight wooden panels for painting because I was there and I should have some such on hand when the feeling strikes. Wood over canvas because I scrape and gouge.
    I have to go downtown now. I always knew I had to go downtown. That art supply shop near me has great stuff but never what I need. Once they were out of white acrylic paint. Good job, guys.
    I'll try again tomorrow, downtown. The problem with that is if I do I'll get home later and there is stuff to do around the house. There are radiators to remove, parquet flooring to cut and glue down, expanding foam to stick between the walls and spray.
    Lots to do. I'll find the time to goof-off too I hope.
    It's all going in the book.

No Dwarf Lord

Thankfully the Dwarves were saved in the nick of time and found their rightful place on the side of the Light. There will probably be strained relations for a while in certain quarters but overall things should smooth themselves out.
    If I had to write in a Dwarf king I'd go on and on about the plaits of his beard, the colour of this hood and how often he thumbs the notched blade of his formidable axe. I'd mention his belt and jangle bits, his array of stalwart companions and his drinking horn. He'd probably carve something during my telling, some fine wonder in stone, something that emits light cleverly, in some unknown way.
    Would this king and his people live in some cavernous hall under the mountain ? Probably. Where else could dwarves live ? Can they be forest Dwarves ? I don't think so. They're all about rock and earth and stone and metal-smithery.
    Maybe my king would take some human to be his queen and then all hell would break out in the Dwarf meeting halls. She'd have to be pretty tough, I guess. Maybe she'd have nimble fingers, crafty and all that. How else would she win over the people she means to rule ? She'd probably have to find some lost Dwarf treasure, some item that the first kings crafted back in the days when the mountains were first hollowed out or something. Maybe it would be better if she herself made something that matched the skill of the ancients.
    I couldn't do any of this. I don't think so. Not with Elves either. No Dark Lord, no return of the great hero, no small fry redeemed to a hidden glory. No rings, no volcano, no gathering of the armies, no ugly mutant bad guys with hard consonant names. No fantasy novel.
    Maybe some conceptual writing.

My Fantasy Novel

My fantasy novel will include a map of the terrain. I'll try not to make the sea in the west. I won't mention anything about anyone going west as some sort of step-in for nebulous death. I won't have swans or giant eagles. I may have elves. If I don't have elves, I won't have radiant, wise, ancient beings of light. I'd rather just have elves than some race of frost people the reader will respond to with 'why didn't he just have elves instead of these non-elf elves ?'.
    The trilogy I'm reading now has too many near-misses of Tolkien and King Arthur. King Arthur makes sense because he actually makes an appearance. Middle-earth and all that show up as if there was no other template available to the author. Even the names echo names found in LOTR but without the cohesion.
    My fantasy novel will be a trilogy but a short one. I want kids to read it but I may mention stuff that school boards wouldn't like. There will be a map and there will also be something I found very helpful in the trilogy I'm finishing up now, a list of characters in the front of the book. Great idea. I need to go back and see who the Dark Lords' first lieutenant is versus the Ancient Power of the Forest.
    My fantasy novel will not have a dark lord that must be defeated by the end of the book. In fact, there will be no dark lord at all. There may be evil and darkness and a deep dark evil but he won't live in a tower in some barren land and he won't have slave armies of gross sub-humans that can easily be slaughtered without misgiving by our heroes.
    My fantasy novel certainly will not have characters, in a moment of sober reflection, face the sea and sing. No one will do any singing in my fantasy novel. If they do, you can bet your shiney behind that I will not include the lyrics. If someone wants to sing they better just sing and get it over with. Like so : "Ranoth, heading back to his chambers after his appointment as Second Guard to the Queen, went by way of the armouries. Through the quiet turns of the stone corridors, he hummed to himself at a volume that was sure to disturb no one."
    I probably won't have any ships in my fantasy novel because I don't know anything about ships and I don't need anyone to hoist sails or stand on the prow as opposed to the non-prow.
    Anyway, it'll be a fun book to read once I get around to writing it. So far all I've got is what I don't want it to be.

Tone Poem

It may have been late last night or early this morning when a forgotten phrase re-entered my thoughts. Tone poem is a musical term, I'm not sure if I knew that. I'm shamefully unschooled in proper classical music and its tendencies. A tone poem, I just found out, refers to some piece of music that takes as it's inspiration a poem or a painting, something that once was considered unsuitable to write music around.
    Since my interest in the term came with an ignorance of its meaning, I was free to consider what it may mean to me and my creative process. What a privilege! Instantly I saw an extended mood or tone being explored -in comics, for example. Panel leading to panel, all working out a sense of something rather than a plot. This is done constantly in comics and I have indulged in it as well. It came to me, I will accept, as a reminder to reconsider this approach to making comics.
    Shifting sequential images do not necessarily have to show action. Abstract comics have strung together tableaus of line or form evoking movement or change without showing much else. That's an extreme example. Good ol' regular story telling comics can use multiple landscape scenes or a roving camera eye over details to paint a picture, set a mood, etc.
    I am relishing the idea of slow comics, panels morphing slowly, action taking a back seat. Of course, what one is showcasing better stand up to a plodding movement. Would it work ? Is it gimmicky or wanky ? Maybe tomorrow I'll finally go buy my paper and supplies and start preparing myself for actual work and not whimsical considerations.

Me, Myself & I

Little bearded heads, simply drawn, speaking text, unpanelled, 6 or more to a page, narrating action that isn't seen, memoir, opinion. Subtle differences in the shape of the face and expression of the features moves the reader's eye along. The text is without balloon, loose next to the drawing, short bursts. The shape of the face can change radically, the head can reference these changes in the text, formalist experiments that are easy to read. The head can refer to other cartoons, other characters can burst in and talk back to the head. Other characters can blaze a trail ahead of the bearded head and tell other tales.
    Two bunny creatures, names withheld for the time being speak in snippets and solo words, rife with inside jokes and wry nods to each other. They engage in a half telepathic dialogue, finishing each other's sentences, riffing and making word plays. They are simple contour drawings, text spoken by each critter directly above. They form sentences rather than panels, sometimes they are living in discrete spaces, two heads a panel, four panels a page, maybe more.
    A finely rendered little ceremonial magician embarks on a quest. Detailed pencil work, replete with smudging and erasing as graphic tools, four panels to a page, each panel originally drawn at four by six inches. The world this character lives in is a small town, plenty of greenery, parks and old brick walls. His home has many rooms, hard wood floors and ritual objects. Furniture is zen hippie. Unlike the other two proposals above,
he has two books to his credit, one full length graphic novel the other a collection of shorts.
    Do I here 'stop inventing', ie: instead of launching into unknown territory, I make my next graphic novel using characters and a cartoon universe that already exists in print, reinforcing the brand, as you'd say. The temptation to somehow weave all proposals into one work sounds good in theory (maybe) but may also be a disaster in reality. Better the straightforward production, low on razzle dazzle and high in storytelling.
    I apologize for using this forum to outline and clarify my intentions regarding graphic novel projects. It is useful for me to do so. This is a journal of sorts, and I'm writing simply to maintain the habit and by chance, maybe hone my skills. This next big project in comics is much on my mind and I need to clarify my many conflicting thoughts about it. Scribbled notes aren't cutting it anymore, I have many of those. This process of writing about what I may do puts my thoughts in order, one after the other. I'm banking that at night, while I sleep, the proper decision will surface.

My first full length graphic novel was published by a house unfamiliar with the form and unfamiliar with how to sell it. Granted, it was a silent book and possibly quite oblique for people who don't make a point of reading comics. The book that followed it employed the same character and was a small run of three hundred copies. It was a collection of shorts that possibly didn't have enough breathing room between them and so came off crowded and possibly confusing. My very first comic book which came out years earlier than both of the ones mentioned above was a collection of radically different strips that may have made a groovy wtf reading experience but also didn't give the reader enough of any one thing.
    This upcoming and so far hypothetical fourth book cannot be doomed to obliquity. It would be good if it was easily read, simply enjoyed and provoked wonder enough to be reread. I am forced to admit that by over planning I get anxious and that if I simply trust the process and begin the final work straight away, a decent enough story will emerge. My one recurring issue is that I am starting to think that text in the body of the book may enable a wider audience. I am not convinced that silent books by my hand are not dismissed as too difficult to read or to 'get'. In my experience, many folks don't 'get' my work whereas the very few really 'get' it. For what's it's worth, I'd like more getting to happen.
    I have a possible publisher lined up and I'd like to provide something that they will feel confident is a book they can reasonably sell. Anything too inaccessible I may as well publish myself in a tiny run rather than blow a chance at wider distribution with something that doesn't sell or is limited to a small audience. At the same time of course, I am incapable of making a teen soap drama.
    Thanks to anyone who actually read this over long and fully naval gazing post. I am becoming overly self conscious about how often the word 'I' pops up in these missives.

Before Work

I've always had a problem with what can be called branding. I like a lot of different things and have had a hard time corralling all those things into the same personality, or more accurately, into the marketing of that same personality. My artistic tendencies are varied, I'm at peace with all my takes and all my interests but the art world, it is said, needs things cut and dried.
    So I like making little books and I also like making larger ones. I have also been driven to understand the necessity for solid narrative. My complaint would be that I have a desire to incorporate all my interests in one and the same art project. How do I make a book that relies upon narrative yet also incorporates a myriad different styles and techniques ? There is the rub.
    This artificial problem only exist in the planning phase of any larger project. Once the work gets under way, things fall into place and what the story demand, the story gets. In the planning phase a veritable buffet of options buffets me about - there must be an abstract sequence, there must be some text, there must be full classic cartoon style for a few pages, there must be collage, there must be free form, there must be must be's. The list goes on and I stand paralysed, in front of reams of cheap paper scratched with half-starts, notes, sketches, thumbnails.
    This happens each time and signals the fact that I have to really start working on the project. I dream big, fold outs and cut aways. I want every facet to be fully represented. This is an ego game. I'm proud of myself. I like that I explore divergent tendencies in the visual arts. I want props for this. I want to make work that is unassailable. What I want is meaningless of course if the work never gets off the ground because I dream too big to accommodate a daily work routine.
    I see a pilgrim, moving through landscapes, shifting landscapes. I see interactions with creatures and magic. I see language games and psychological puzzles. I see formal structures deteriorate into shambles of noise and abstraction. I see abstraction build itself up into cohesive meaning. I see redemption through a willingness to engage with mystery. I see all these things and I feel like snapping my pencils.
    The only way any of these visions, this one overarching vision, will be manifested is if I get the good paper for the final copy, sharpen my pencils, treat myself to some new smudge stick or eraser, consolidate my notes into one pile and just dive in by drawing a panel. One random panel, probably of my character walking. Another panel will follow it and soon enough the notes will be forgotten and I will be on my way.
    I forget each time that I must trust my process. My process, roughly put, is devised between anxious planning and straight forward work. The work itself always, and I mean always, shows me the way. It shows me how to incorporate my love for gibberish or chakras, for lost details and shifting t-shirts. Before I know it, when I'm actually working, all my loves and all my desires make a cameo or even get featured outright. I'm in the storm before the calm, when ideas are whizzing about threatening to take themselves elsewhere, to some other artist who will honour them. I have to trust that they will come around when needed, that i simply have to get my paper cut to the size I need and start drawing a little character about to embark on a massive journey.

Fiction

My first attempt at prose fiction was a couple of pages of fantasy lit, something about a young person moving through the market place. He had a name that I made up and everything. It didn't last. I was rerouted into poetry and lyrics for a number of years.
    What I could call my second attempt revolved around a character loosely based on me. It was to be fantasy lit as well but with all the tropes of psychedelic subcultural urbanism thrown in. He may have made it into ten pages tops, but in my mind he was way bigger than that. He was my Hero. Young, curious, adventurous. That's about it, he wasn't fleshed out. No family to speak of, no origin story, just a boy in a context. The context was mostly empty urban spaces, loading docks and parking lots. I've discussed my fetish for those places in another entry here.
    Two young male characters, fleeting but satellited by feelings and associations.
    Since those guys, I developed a recurring character for my drawn narrative fiction. He's a little kid and maybe not really a he. He has a boy name, he has 'boy' in his name but I'm still not sure. Maybe just a little kid, gender aside for the moment. Now, I've been writing about myself, some memories, some attitudes and opinions and I'm not what one would call a young man anymore. I'm not an old man either. I'm in the middle, I'm middle-aged. I find that I think I've already exhausted my memories, at least the ones I'm comfortable writing publicly about. I've already decided to leave my sex life out of it, to spare the guilty and innocent alike. I've decided to not get into any hairy details about my family life. This writing exercise is more about practise and daily discipline than about airing dirty laundry, mine or not.
    It stands that I've made some small false starts with fiction, here in the context of this blog. I write a line or two, notice I am struggling and there is no ring of truth about it and hit delete. One reason is that I'm starting cold, I don't yet have some hero percolating in my brain. The two characters first mentioned lived inside me before they ever emerged. The next guy will probably take a page out of everyone's book, aborted teen fiction and graphic novel. I don't make up steady characters. I just dwell on attitudes and fragmentary moments. The next step may be to consciously build up a character or two, actually draft out somebody's life.
    The next graphic novel I'm considering may feature 'me', some floating bearded head going on and on about words and identity. But that aside, if I were to seriously try my hand at straight up fantasy fiction, I'd have to venture a bit further than my own front door. At least, I think I'd have to.
    This place is becoming my launch pad and scribble sheet. I am ordering my thoughts as they occur to me and doing so in public - meaning, in a place someone may stumble upon them, unlike in my indecipherable notes and stacks of paper.
    So here I find myself, a myriad of potential projects poking me with their will to live. The strongest ones involve drawing, either 'billy heads' or 'bunnies' without he text being mostly strings of absurdist bumper stickers, in-jokes that are clear to me and maybe inaccessible to someone else. Narrative tends to occur my accident and I'm wondering if that just won't work anymore. Maybe it's time to actually plan some sort of actual story, fill it in with action and characters and see how they improvise.
    It's daunting because it seems like work. I tell myself to just begin inside my head with scenarios but it's not happening, I don't make it happen. I may have to start writing things down somewhere else, secretly, and hope something gels together. I may have to start drawing panel after panel of graphic narrative and see what comes of it. These things make me worried and get me excited at the same time, but mostly worried.
    My fantasy is to pull off a solid young adult fantasy novel, like the kind I enjoyed reading, the kind I still enjoy reading. I just don't know if I have to cross the street to write it or if it's already written and I have to exhume it. And if I have to exhume it, which I feel is most likely, first I have to find where it's buried, and that may take some dirty work.
    I hope you'll follow me along for this ride. I cannot guarantee that the pieces to follow here will not be fiction.  

Building Blocks

What makes a story ? This question has been raising itself every so often, butting into my consciousness. I am never particularly satisfied with any of my attempts at an answer. I know a story when I hear one or when I read one or when I see one. I don't even think about it. When I try to think one up, though, it seems to be only a part of a story, like a word is only part of a sentence. If someone asks me to tell them a story, I freeze, go all formal, worry about beginning middle and end. I forget that a story can really be anything. A word, a sentence or a paragraph.
    Maybe even just a letter.
    A moment is only part of a day but a story can be built around a moment. This is where maybe I get tripped up, the fractal nature of story.
    Every word in any text can be a portal that leads to some other world. Imagine is every word here was a link leading to another page. And so on. We'd never get to the end of those thousand and one nights. We'd evade a beheading with sheer distraction. We'd also wear ourselves out.
    Story is one of those things that the world is made of. Our identities are stories we tell ourselves, stories other people slap on us, stories we can't shake, stories that tie us down or even liberate us.
    We tell our mate about our day. We tell our friends about the guys at work. We tell strangers about our secret affairs. We tell ourselves that we are cute or dumb or fat or poor or lonely or happy. We often are set on loop, repeating the same old stories about ourselves, about our parents. We lock people in with words describing them. We can rewrite history literally by changing words, by switching meanings, by making the good guys bad, by turning villains into heroes.
    I've rediscovered mythology. I took a long detour away from conscious recognition of how it underwrites the world. I got caught up in matters at hand, so to speak, in politics, in popular opinion versus the lone voice in the wilderness. I took sides, rooted for the underdog, scowled at the bully with his status quo. It took me a while but I think I may have returned home and I think the path there is paved with myths. Old old stories, told in poetry, told of the gods and the worlds and the animals and the ancestors.
    What makes a story ? Better to ask what the world is made of. The world is made of stories.

And Baby Makes Writing And Drawing Happen

This is the fifty-sixth instalment of a daily writing practice. I started with the intention of doing it for one month. I'm now nearing two. It was been a good thing. Sometimes I have no idea what to write about but to date I have yet to skip a day. This exercise has allowed me to hone a skill long desired but generally dormant. I've wanted to do this for a long time but never made the time for it, never showed up to the office, so to speak. Now I am showing up and even doing some work.
    Six months ago my son was born. I never really imagined that being a parent would be part of my life but alas, it is so. This parenthood has forced me to face several pressing issues in my life, one being my penchant for putting things off until the boiling point. With a baby one can't really change the diaper later or make some toast for your hard working partner later. One gets out of bed and jumps into action at a moment's notice. One does things now in groggy states, in wakeful states, no matter.
    When I embarked on a daily writing habit, I wasn't sure what would happen. Several things did. The first thing I noticed was a severe release of pressure. Anxiety long slow-cooking in me and raging out at inopportune times was slowly dissipating. I was not fully released from it's grips of course but I was palpably helping myself. I was doing something good for me that didn't involve hedonism. I found that I was organizing my thoughts and feelings. I was expressing myself, first with memoir and later with personal essay. I reached into my memories and dragged old stories out, nothing earth shaking, nothing dramatic. It felt good, though. It was still a release. I'm sharing the occasional link on social networks and am getting the very occasional page hit or compliment. This is practice. If I pull off a year, I'll have more than enough raw material for some sort of book. If I don't have a book, I'll have a bunch of stuff I wrote.
    Two weeks ago I decided to add another small task to my already over full plate. I started a daily drawing routine. I would cut some four by six inch piece of card and draw a cartoon bunny on it with pencil. I would use a smudge stick to render it. When the drawing was finished I'd stamp my name on the back side, sign it and scribble the year. Then I'd slip it into a plastic collectors bag meant for manga books. I've sold two of these things for forty dollars each. This feels like I've already written about this. I cannot real whether I have or not and the last thing I'll do is slog through previous blog posts to see if I have.
    The drawing is keeping my hand limber. Bunnies are easy and fun to draw and come in a variety of moods and styles. It's all pencil so far, which I enjoy. It's less committal than ink and lends itself to fast techniques of shading.
    So I have a baby, a business that I am not neglecting, a new writing routine and now a daily drawing one. I don't go out as much anymore, I certainly am not drinking or getting high anymore. I have time, I have energy. I'm trying to work towers a plan that will continue to change my life for the better. So far so good.

Watching The Clock

I'm tired. I worked all day and now I'm sitting with my machine attempting to write something to fulfill my daily writing commitment. I already fulfilled my daily drawing commitment but I chose an easy route, a simple line drawing, ragged outline, cross hatched back ground. Short and sweet. Yesterdays drawing was finely rendered. I shaded slowly and subtly while an acquaintance entertained me with stories of old men, service jobs and sociability. Today, I pounded out my drawing while at work so it wouldn't be on the list along with my text project once I got home.
    I'm forcing this one out, hence the self referential cop-out of writing about writing. One thing I told myself upon embarking on this project was to remain, for the most part, not too concerned with quality. If the primary motivation for starting a daily routine is the slaying dead of procrastination and a secondary motivation being simply to keep the wheels greased, one cannot start getting tripped up with notions of quality. One shows up at the office, so to speak, and one begins and finishes the task at hand. I have put off so many creative gestures because of a variety of nebulous reasons that to skip a day of writing because of having nothing to say would set me back horribly.
    An easy way out of an empty head is to start with the same old crap of discussing why and how you cannot write. This acts as a springboard. The case now is that once rolling I'm not going to go back and edit out my hesitations or make it seem like there was never an issue regarding today's task. I am still tired and still uninspired. I don't want to get into Easter stories, lamb bodies roasting in back yards. I don't want to get into family pressure during holidays, church, ritual, not belonging, not feeling particularly plugged in to the biggest holiday in the Hellenic year. I won't get into what happened at work today, how many stacks of paper I sorted, whether the sales were decent or not, if any visitor sparked my interest or if anything special occurred. I may list off negatives but i'll stay on course and continue writing about how little i have to say. My first impulse was to reiterate the personal myth angle. I even bought a book this morning about global myths. I'll fall asleep half way through the introduction.
    I'm tapping out letters and words. My eyes are stinging. My thoughts are dull. I need to wash my face. The cat seems hungry. She's coming around which is unlike her. The baby is finally asleep. The weather is beautiful but I'm inside. A restaurant would be great, a plate of bad meat and a soda, beer would steam roll me. Here I am and I'm done. Short and bitter. Jagged lines, quickly wrought, nothing much by way of message. There is always tomorrow. On a journey through the mountains, there must be days that aren't recalled, days that went by simply as a sequence of footsteps. Maybe a hawk spotted or a near stumble through gravel but otherwise a chore not forgotten because it was never absorbed in the first place.
    See you later.

Working Title

My story veers towards disaster and switches course. The disaster is never something too dramatic. It is simply the slow dissolution of my dreams. I dodge bullets by adjusting my dreams to my reality and continuing.
    I have always assumed success of some sort. Fame, money, status. All these things were for me to choose, flirt with and ultimately reject for a path of contemplation, art making, study and wisdom. Sometimes I think I may have to forego the idea of the roundabout route and head straight for the goal. I am pulled towards the luxuries of status as I am making towards a simple life here on the middle path. As a fifteen year old I declared that wisdom was my aim. I then started in earnest on a path of accumulated social attention. Some people think I'm famous because I know a lot of people and I get my name out there, so to speak. I publish and exhibit widely. I'm a chatterbox. I'm a local scene stalwart. I'm a natural networker with one catch, I don't know how to 'use' my connections. I don't get paid for introducing people to each other. I am behind the scenes, match maker, glue. Has any of this lead me to wisdom? Kind of.
    A few years ago I realized that maybe I should have went for the cash instead.
    At this point I realize I have done little for my future except plant a thousand seeds. I'm unsure which ones have actually taken root. My mother warned me about planning for my old age but who listens to their parents ? The seeds I planted are mostly arty ones, books published, art work shown, press kit organized, classes taught, students inspired. I have a bookcase full of publications that my work has appeared in, approximately four feet of shelving. I am now looking for the process that will activate these blocks of paper, reassemble them, Transformer style, into a printed robot that will go out there and get me rewarding and well paying jobs.
    My story always assumed that some big shot would knock on my door, offering me the deal of the century. That grace would swoop down and kiss my resumé. That rock stars would flock to hear my tales of transcendent wisdom. My story is being rewritten as we speak. The assumptions are drying up and blowing away like so many ninety eight pound weaklings. I still can't do the splits like I hoped to as a child. My superpowers are negligible. My riches come in friends and snacks, which is great but no country cottage will come of that anytime soon.
    It's at this stage in the game that I'm snapping awake to life on earth sans fantasy. I'm finally discovering work. My procrastination problem just may be subsiding. What did this to me ? The time honoured cliché that turns boys to men - having a kid. Since that happened six month ago, and since several months before the big day, I have been running ragged. There's no 'do it later' option. I can't 'hold on a minute' with a baby and his mom, who both need something now. Right now. So I'm up early. I'm up and out of bed performing a task. There is no lead up, warm up, test drive. Get up and go. So I go. So I do other stuff while I can. Rinse plates right away. Adopt a daily drawing regimen. This is my forty ninth daily text. Quality can kiss my ass. I don't have time to shape and craft. I express, I check for typos, I miss some, I upload onto the fucking internet. Done. Next.
    My story shifts with the shifting of dreams. Ego gratification has changed. I've tricked myself into actually working towards my goals instead of assuming they will crash through my ceiling like errant fortean ice. The story now includes a change of scenery and a new cast of characters. I think it'll be a trilogy, a best selling one.

Day 48

I don't think everyone has written their own origin story. Even worse, many have had their own story hijacked by trauma. Every child is on their way to understanding the world, cobbling together meaning. If that process is interrupted by being wounded, one's story take a radical turn. One is stripped of innocence and one has clouds and ghosts and deep hurt in place of wonder.
    I have always known of the privilege I had having a good childhood. I was a sensitive kid, crying easily and often but I was comfortable, well fed and well loved. I was surrounded by caring adults. I was close to my older brother. He would tease me though, daily it seemed and we would fight. His tactic was slow creeping verbal pokes. Not abuse, far from it. More like the Chinese Water Torture. He pushed my buttons and got a huge kick when I exploded. We would chase each other around the house, me inflicting way more physical damage on him than him on me. He would tease, I would shriek and pinch, focusing as much power as I could into that small space between index finger and thumb, clenching my jaw for added effect and wincing. It's amazing I never drew blood. He would laugh and laugh at my efforts to hurt him which made me see red and jump up and down on his ribs. He'd get up laughing hysterically and would chase me to the bathroom where I'd lock myself in. A good place to get a breather. We both soon realized the door could be unlocked by inserting a souvlaki skewer into the small hole of the outside doorknob and pushing out the button that locked it.
    My brother and I were a year and four months apart, very close regardless of the drama. I still consider my childhood to have been good. I've even used the word idyllic but am aware enough now that if I were to use it and recount the aforementioned episodes, people would think I was denying something primary. I'm still working all kinds of things out, my relationship to my parents and brother, my own insecurities and perceived failings, my issues surrounding food and sex, the list goes on. I think what I consider great about my childhood was that I more than often was allowed to just play and daydream without interruption. Sure there were scuffles and the occasional blow out but there was never any genuine fear. Things went back to peace easily. My solo adventures with my action figures and cars, in the dirt under the stairs, in the driveway, at the base of the three pronged tree beside the house, in the park next door are memorable and happy. And many. We played together too, sitting and building models and drawing quietly, stuffing our faces with candy and reading any comic book that featured a giant gorilla on the cover.
    I was allowed to build a slow myth, added to daily. Day dream bleeding into day dream and continuing at night. My playtime was around the clock. Toys and art during the day and dreams the rest of the time, telling myself stories, setting out on epic quests. The story built upon itself and lasted many years. As a twenty something I was shocked to realize that I had been secretly harbouring a fantasy since childhood. Deep down I had buried the conviction that with adulthood will come super powers. This was forgotten early on and jolted me awake as a young adult. It did not come to pass, the world was amazing but not that amazing. Though I still held wonder I was often hit by the mundane struggles of burgeoning adulthood. My reveries took a turn towards bitter political concerns and social hierarchies, bands and girls and friends and heartache. My demeanour though was generally happy, to such an extent that one friend dismissed me as shallow simply because I wasn't depressive. I was happy. I found excitement in most things. I was extremely social. I held that as a chemical make-up can account for someone's depression, perhaps one can account for my buoyancy. All too simple. My self characterizations turned into cartoons, maybe I was shallow ? Question after question occurred to me. I demanded my friends outline any faults they perceived in me. I carried doubt in my shirt pocket, genuinely sceptical about anything and everything. I made it a habit to study objects from multiple perspectives at once, trying to hold simultaneous points of view concurrently. I was graced by unbidden waves of ecstasy coursing up my back. I continued to build my story. Fantasy and reality merged seamlessly, it would sort itself out in due time, right now, on the surface of this planet I'd indulge my imaginations.
    My story is coalescing now in my mid forties. I am seeing an over arching theme emerging. For the first time I'm attempting to pull it out of myself with words.

Text As Art

My relationship with text as art has one of it's origins in science fiction and fantasy movies and literature. I was smitten by the various tongues of Middle-Earth, not enough to learn Quenya or Sindarin but enough to marvel at the fluidity of the script and to mimic it with my junior calligraphy set.
    As my interest in SF&F deepened and crossed paths with the psychedelic experiments of Rick Griffin and other sixties poster artists, I took to writing out my cosmological models using an altered Latin alphabet in an English stilted and grandiose. Think Temple Ov Psychick Youth with more hobbity hippie in it. My infatuation with medieval alchemical diagrams and Invisible College communiqués added a pinch of poignancy to the punch.
    I loved the mystery of a language that couldn't be read. I also enjoyed the act of writing devoid of any obligation towards meaning. Perhaps filling pages of meaningless script acted as a stand in for wanting to realize actual finished narrative. It would be years later when I accidentally stumbled via invitation into the international movement of Asemic Writing, a practise of scripting out gibberish, gestural mark making and pretty much anything that looked like language but wasn't.
    In hindsight there are two distinct early origin points that I must reference. One was my struggle and ultimate inability to competently use the Hellenic Alphabet. As a young hyphenated Canadian, I went to and soon after dropped out of Greek school. The ubiquitous presence of material lying around the house that I couldn't access surely informed my later love of mysterious scripts. The other origin point was a particular memory of sitting on the floor between the stacks of our small high school library, possibly in grade nine, and leafing through a book on talismans and amulets. The stark black and white graphic quality of round arcana struck me. These little drawn blobs were beautiful. They spoke everything and nothing, eggs you cannot crack but also can't help rolling in your palms never wanting them broken.
    As a young person of maybe twelve or thirteen I would draw any number of things. Heroes and monsters, Don Martin swipes from Mad Magazine, rock band logos on my pencil case and these things that I referred to as 'designs'. I still am a bit amazed that I had the presence of mind or even intelligence to answer the question of 'what is that?' with 'it's a design'. Pointe Finale, no further explanation forthcoming. Simple as that. No idea where I got the concept. These designs were abstracted forms, organic and graphic, rounded, succulent, obsessively contoured. They evolved into a sort of art that I would make that after the age of fifteen I would reserve and sign with a special pen name that resonated with meaning for me. I would never even consider signing a cartoon with this name. It was for stuff that evidently came from some other planet. Conversely, my new secret name allowed me to draw things radically different than what I usually drew.
    As I grew older I nurtured my love for logotypes and I still treasure books of these designs. It all finds it's denominator in stark black and white. I never had time for books showcasing the 'new' logotypes of the eighties and nineties, replete with drop shadows, gradations and even -gasp- full colour. Atrocity. Bad design.
    High contrast black and white, that was for me. Science Fiction & Fantasy. My mother tongue. Alchemy and sigils. Psychedelia. Logos. Asemic writing. These all coalesced in me with my discovery of the photocopy machine as art tool. Xerography changed everything for me. Photocopying my drawings for friends' band posters led me to experiment with static noise, enlarging and reducing images, rummaging through the waste paper bins, keeping and endowing scraps of graphic noise with a special status akin to poetry. The thing is that I kept this stuff to myself, I kept a collection of these eight and a half by eleven abstractions. The flyers I would design would rarely feature these photocopy effects. I was timid.
    When I found myself accidentally wading through the constant give and take of mail-art in the late eighties and early nineties I also found that I reserved that special nom de plume for my postal activities. Mail-art introduced me to the arcane seals and stamps of exotic liminal locales like Zaumland as well as the hard graphic visuals of the industrial music subculture. I also found that the poems, unreadable and arcane, that I was making via photocopy were readily shared with a greater world but kept away from my local art making. I was split in two, Billy in Montreal who drew erotic squashes, psychedelic doodles and hyper bunnies … and this other person, an entity that sent out and in turn received mysterious languages in the mail box.

Books And Records

I repeat myself. I've told certain stories and even non-stories so often to so many people I have forgotten what I've said to who and in what context. I walk down a street with my partner, we pass a house and I say So-and-so used to live there. I know, she responds, you've told me. And not once, I've probably mentioned it every time we pass the damn place. It's not like I even had the best times there, it's simply personal trivia, and that means there's a lot of it.
    Our friend Joe tells me and another pal the same crazy stories. We know we yell, and laugh. He scowls and mutters about how he bores us with the same old stories. We love those same old stories and we love Joe so it all works out.
    I'm trying to write a block of text everyday and so far I've gotten through forty days. I started with recollections of my childhood but now I have forgotten what I have already written. I don't want to slog back through my archives to see if I've mentioned a certain event. The one that sprang to mind today was when my brother brought home certain albums when we were teenagers. How our eyes lit up when the stylus hit the vinyl. The records that most visibly affected us were the ones you would think, The Velvet Underground, The Stooges, The MC5, typical teen rock blow out. We would come home after perusing the second hand book and record shop. I'd hit the books and John would dig through the records. Most often he would just take his records to his room where the stereo was and listen on his own, maybe with me hovering around the door. Once in a while the listening was a collective agreement. Have I told you this story before ? How our eyes lit up when we first heard the first chords of some certain album ? Have I told you how John would look for records and I would bring home slim dog eared volumes of poetry ? I loved that so much, being fourteen and browsing second hand books. It must have been 1983 or so, we rediscovered a shop that our big cousin brought us to in downtown Montreal years before. His name is John also and he took his little cousins on a tour of certain spots, McGill campus with it's sculptures and this store. We must have been under ten. That was a great afternoon.
    Well, as budding long hairs we found that shop again and I'd veer left to the books and my brother would go straight to the records. Silently we'd browse in our own corners. Sometimes I'd have to wait for him and sometimes he had to wait for me. If I dared buy an album it was one that was somehow associated with the fantasy books I loved. I brought home Gentle Giant and King Crimson, occasionally something more obscure. Progressive rock was everywhere in those days, every second hand album under five dollars, I'd usually spend three bucks. One book I still have, a book that has stayed with me and has changed the way I look at books cost me forty cents. It's a small anthology of concrete poetry, beat up and resonating with charm. John didn't care much for what books I bought, but he was taken by my enthusiasm and though he wasn't much of a reader back then he would hold a book in esteem if I couldn't shut up about it.
    I have told some of these stories before. I've bored younger people to tears about having had to gamble money on a record. I've told you before about books and rock and my brother. I'll tell you again. My friend Joe says I should draw these stories of me and my brother and our forays into rock music and weird art. Drawing stories is not like telling them straight up with words. It's tedious and I don't feel like it right now. It's enough I've made it to forty days with a daily writing habit. Let me get through eight months and I'll see what I want to draw. I'll be ready then too, to do something I've always been kind of ashamed to do, and that's draw the same drawing over and over again. Scratching the itch. I can't wait for that. Just take my favourite motifs and shamelessly work then until I reach clarity.

Perfection

After a while it seems inevitable that I'd write about writing, write about not knowing what to write. Stick a mirror in front of another one and watch that tunnel go. Floundering on dry land, belly full, head empty. Not writer's block, that's too easy. And probably just a ploy, one among many to bask in frustration instead of release. Release happens when expectations are cast aside. Blocks occur when there is an unspoken or unrecognized assumption about a goal.
    I have often though about the perfectionism of others and how I myself was spared this affliction. Just recently I was asked if maybe I was actually a perfectionist. It would explain why I shy away from grand projects, why I talk more than do, why I procrastinate, that I'm idealistic and impatient and happy with piecemeal offerings, short bursts of frenzied activity though I dream of well wrought craft. Maybe I am a perfectionist. Maybe I so want to razzle dazzle that I'm afraid to even start lest I fail. But I do start, and I do release work into the public sphere. I'm no hermit with my art. Sometimes I even approach the realms beyond banality.
    Too often though in this life I would imagine some rigorously executed project, how amazing it would be, this three dimensional glass mandala I would build, layers of nesting stained glass spheres, veined in gold and dotted with marbles, all supported by a hand carved stand of the most exquisite design. Sure buddy, write it down because we all know that's not your deal. It isn't. It has taken me decades to relax into the reality of what I am versus what I could be. I could be anything. Anyone could. But why ? We all have the capacity to explore areas in sport, art, science, thought but we don't necessarily do. We pick our battles. I found out that the great schemes of my youth were simply proposals, it would be great for my glass sphere to exist. It would be great to acquire the requisite skills to build it. I know  I won't. Not left to my own devises. If I were to embark on a project of building something complex and three dimensional it would be building a house not a wicked piece of contemplative art.
    I long ago realized that the book is the perfect vessel for any expression I may wish to voice. Any abandoned childhood dream can be easily rephrased as a proposal and left at that. That twenty foot chrome peach pit I designed, built and sold to the state of Georgia ? Oh, that was just an idea. I'll just jot it down on a napkin and that will be that. My Pixar screenplay ? Well, I may get around to writing a two page treatment but that's about it. I'd love to redesign the stagnant corners of my hometown but I may have to be satisfied with the quick sketch and a few lines describing my idea. We'll see.
    What to write about ? What not to write about ? For now, anything goes. This is an exercise. It deflects perfection and settles for settling. Just string a few words together, snap out some ideas and see how it stands. It doesn't have to be diamond quality. It has to be ok. It has to be for now. The great Canadian novel, the perfect science fiction short story, a great YA graphic novel, a long poem encrusted with my every poetic tendency, the scathingly brilliant piece of conceptual writing no one saw coming, all this and more, throw a rock opera into the mix. Let these beasts crawls slowly out of that first murky ocean and see how they take to firm ground, flippers turning to feet. Let every step be small and definite. Let the masterwork be crafted with occasional spastic gestures. Let perfection erupt spontaneously from naive ramblings and honest attempts. World without end.

Day 31 - Approaching A Corner

The recurring dream goes something like this. I'm embedded in some darkness, an organic mass. I manage to emerge out of it onto a number line (an elementary school math tool used to teach fractions). I count to infinity and end up on the top of a tower, bright and clear, so high up above the clouds. I immediately find myself in the murk again. I have to count to infinity again. I wake up screaming.
    Screaming, agitated, crying, scared, shook up. I may have had this dream twice, maybe three times. I've considered going to hypnosis to see if I can recall more. I have told it so often to myself and others that I fear a broken telephone has set in, a memory of a memory, infinite regress.
    I must have been five the first time, by seven the last time.
    Number lines. Imagine a ruler of ten segments. Draw an arc from the start of one segment to the start of another. Do that the whole way across. Draw an arc spanning two segments. Draw that the whole way across. You'll have five of those arcs. Draw an arc spanning five segments. You'll only need two arcs. Now imagine if each segment was subdivided into ten. Arcs aplenty. You can go on forever. Counting to infinity, I guess.
    When I was older I was drawn to mythology and later symbolism. I read a bit about motifs found all over the place in human history. Art, stories, architecture, dreams, myths. Lots of overlap. I read enough to know that my dream was text book symbolism at it's basic. Dark, cold, wet, organic to start with, Light, airy, angular & crystalline (the rooftop was diamond shaped). I emerged horizontal, I ended up vertical. Here we go again.
    I've interpreted it to my own satisfaction at times through out my life but have often missed the crux, literally, of the story. How did I, the roving point of view that was me in the dream, for there were no figures, turn the bend from my horizontal number line and start climbing the tower ? That's the missing part. Where the X and Y axes meet.
   
    •••

In 2012 I completed my first graphic novel, Inside Outside Overlap. It used this dream imagery as a spring board. It was clear that this recurring dream was the story I needed to tell. I had poked around with some poetry and graphics before but never a project of this size devoted to this topic. As far as I was concerned, this was the only topic to tackle. This puzzling dream, often thought of, came to be my story. At least my first story.
    In the comic my character uses ritual and meditation to enter an inner world wherein he finds a dormant version of himself covered (made?) with goo. He dives into the cesspool and begins the arduous task of digging through the mire, pulling the sludge off until a clarity is revealed. This leads to a crystallization and voilà, our hero is made peaceful.
    I haven't been able to pull this off. My sludge is chipped off at a rate of a flake a month if not a year. I'm not shoveling the shit out of me fast enough to reach catharsis. My meditation practise is still nil, despite my age-old yearning to integrate one into my life. Too often for a healthy mind to deal with, have I wondered what benefits such a routine may yield. I wonder more than actively explore this domain.
    I have slid into mundanity these last many years. Fourteen, I'd hazard. Before that I would perform ritual, pray to deities one and all, change my mind like I'd change a shirt. I felt initiated into the mysteries with each step. Of course with the years I concretized and calcified, gained weight and developed nagging health issues. My thyroid slowed down. My bowels rebelled. My skin said fuck you to my hands. My middle-agedness jumped out of the bushes and beat the shit out of my skinny rock star delusions about who I thought I was always going to be.
    Here I am today, the last day of my self-imposed daily writing routine and I don't know where to go. I can pack it all in, like Greek school or boxing or yoga, and continue the gnawing interior welt that has dogged me since I awoke into adulthood. I can banish the murk by embracing what I seem to fear most, stepping confidently into the light of a daily balanced routine. I can abandon that clarity and sink again into the morass of my many broken dreams. I can go upsy-daisy and down-under a thousand more times before I die. I don't want to wake up screaming every time I hit the squishy starting point again. I don't want to keep starting over. I don't want to count to infinity again.     I'm going to get to the crux of this thing, turn that damned corner, shoot to the top of that tower and stay there.
    You coming along ?

How I Got Here

It's been almost a month since I committed to writing a small text every day and uploading it onto a web log reserved for text. I have been making art all my life having drawings first published in elementary school. By university, though I drew often, I self identified as a writer.
    I participated on my college newspaper as assistant entertainment editor and joined my university literary magazine as graphics editor and junior poetry editor. It was there that I was confronted with the world of poetastering in all it's undergraduate nuance. I was surrounded by very confident young poets who made a point of loudly declaring what was and what was not a poem. I realized that by the standards displayed by my fellows, everything and nothing made the cut. My own poems were essentially glitter rock operas, rejected Transformer era Lou Reed lyrics and psychedelic guitar solos jammed with a thesaurus full of paisley dewdrops. None the less, I was a writer and I enrolled in the study of literature to enhance this love of words.
    That I alone of my fellows preferred a copy of Robert E. Howard to Ezra Pound in my pocket did not escape their notice. I got the gumption one day to show my poems to a young man a year or two my elder who after a quick perusal fed me the line that would haunt me for years to come : stick to drawing. Those three simple words made my writer self screech to a halt. I was hurt, of course, but more than that I took it to heart. I did already receive praise for the shitty juvenilia I was drawing at the time and saw no reason to stop collecting those easy compliments. But I wasn't impressing anyone with my poetry.
    I continued to write semi-secretly, mostly either purple stuff or forays into conceptual text work. Concurrently I was experimenting with concrete poetry and was enjoying that very much. I did not share this work with those in my local literary community, reserving it for strangers via international post. From the offices of the literary magazine at school I swiped a choice issue of a Canadian lit journal devoted to concretism and have developed a collection of these rare books ever since.
    So I drew. I drew posters for poetry readings and illustrations for the literary reviews. I knew writers and involved myself in small press. I started on comics and got published. My drawings and visuals were spread far and wide. My words, though, were written on folded up sheets of ragged paper in my jean jacket pocket, mostly bumper sticker remarks, song lyrics, slogans and band names. Short form writing is good for those in transition. I transitioned for years. I am still transitioning. I did some secret journalism by writing an English column for a Greek community newspaper. I submitted long hand and someone at the paper typed it up and typeset it. Invariably every single column was botched by typos and strange formatting issues. I have nothing to show for those efforts.
    I won a writing grant from Ottawa for a graphic novel. My comic book was mute, silent, wordless. I was now considered, according to the grant issuing body, a professional writer. I didn't use any words. This paradox allowed me to relax a bit. I also told the story of the 'stick to drawing' advice to a senior member of the local literary community. He asked, Where is that guy now ? What has he done ? He reminded me that I was still around, being active in the scene. This steeled me and I gained another bit of confidence. I submitted short prose pieces to small run zines on music and subcultural themes. This exercised the muscles. I gained more confidence when I found myself at a giant strip club at a high school friends stag party. There on stage, in his underwear, ridden like a horse, his own belt in the hands of a bronco busting stripper was my once confident poetic detractor.
    I stuck to drawing. I'll keep at it. I've rediscovered text. I'll stick to that too.