angels don't get the lung cancer. So they don't worry about it.

When my father died, I started to smoke. I like to think it started out slowly, but I had been a casual smoker while he was sick, and when it was all over, I started to smoke, hard. Somewhere around a package a day. This was a mechanism of distraction, a smokescreen.

Nice metaphor. Subtle.

Every night after work, I would go home and shower, and then I would go out for coffee. This was back in the old days when you could still smoke in restaurants...something future generations will never know. I would sit there for hours, sometimes preferably alone so I could write, draw, whatever. Sometimes not alone, but I would still draw through conversation. I created so many things. So much of it useless, some of it not.

I conceptualized an entire film there, and storyboarded it out, even as we were filming, and filmed it we did. I have a shoebox full of footage two feet away from me, overflowing with some forty hours of footage, and a two inch binder somewhere packed full of scribblings and script.

I finally have a computer to edit it on, and I just need to start. I fear, somehow, though, that I cannot edit together the same sort of film that I thought I was making back then. Life and children and age have conspired together to change the way that I see the world and the past, and ultimately I wonder and perhaps worry that the shoebox full of tapes next to my feet is no longer relevant. What if I have only two minutes of importance amongst that 40 some hours? It scares me somewhat, this daunting task of sorting through my old psyche.

Perhaps it was more the action of committing the things to tape that was the therapy, the meaning, rather than a finished film. Perhaps the few years it took to write and film it were its true purpose, the memories of a thing, rather than the thing itself. Almost as if the actions required to create something become the final result, and completely unrelated to the finished work. The act is the art. I guess any art can be said to be made up of the efforts it took to create it, though in this case, and at this point in time, the effort is all there is.

Somehow this feels unfair though to everyone else who sacrificed of themselves to help create it, and I suppose for their sake, that it would be a failure, wrong even, to not at least shape it into something. They did after all, blindly follow me down that road, with not one of them knowing what we were doing. Even now, none of them could tell anyone what we made...only me. And now I fear that I may no longer know, or cannot know, being so far away from it, both in mind and in time. I don't know that I ever properly thanked the people who helped so much, volunteered. You know who you all are, and if I owe you money, then please disregard this. I said nothing pertaining to you. You are dead to me, and you shouldn't be reading this. Leave this site immediately. As for the rest of you...

...you are also dead to me, and if you think for one damn second that ANY of you are going to be listed in those rolling credits then you are bloody well wrong. There's only gonna be ONE effing name up there and that's going to be MINE, if I even decide to do anything with it.

I may just roll those tapes up one by one in a big fat cigarette, and then smoke them until I'm blind. THEN what?!? Who's going to edit the film then, BITCHES?!?

WHO?!?

That's RIGHT.....I am.

I'll be blind, and have smoked all the footage, and ALONE on all the award lists.




(except for you, sweet wife...thanks for all your help, I never could have done it without you. I love you.)

sight and its ability to include you.

Today I wore glasses all day. They are glasses of the "incorrect prescription" variety, and as the day wore on I began to feel disconnected from the things around me, almost as though I wasn't completely there because my eyes were failing. I felt noticed, certainly, but in my subconscious, I was fading, my brain losing its sense of location, of physicality. I am by no means blind, and this prescription is wrong, but not entirely wrong. I just found it odd how we adapt to changes in our perception, however slight. To be blind, I think, must be akin to being unanchored, invisible. I have heard of the compensation of the remaining senses, but sight...

(contemplative pause during which the author attempts to hardscrabble even deeper, and comes up against an unending deposit of granite dipped in concrete.)

(Also said author needs to trim his beard.)

for this is perhaps the only truth.

Pencil on paper. And perhaps the only thing we shall ever truly know for sure. Except for the fact that my wife is applying hateful pressure towards the removing of my beard. I also know this...

I also know this.

(sidenote) I believe my beard is destined to attend at least one Christmas banquet, and, to that end, has expressed no small amount of interest in just such an event. Feel free to introduce yourself to my beard if you, by magic, happenstance, or pure fate, happen to find yourself in its presence. Give it a hug, and it will not spurn such an advance, no matter how platonic.

the recordist. written and illustrated by no one. no one at all.

This was something I started with the intention of it being a joint venture between three. I wrote and illustrated the first chapter and then handed it off to writer/artist number two to do the second chapter. Said writer number two, either through lack of motivation, or a crushing self doubt, kept chapter one for at least a year and in the end produced, he claimed, "nothing that could be shown." "In all good conscience, " he pleaded, "I cannot show what I have done to any being that has eyes, or soul." He shook me as he said it. "It's shit, " he wept, "It's all complete shit, and I hate myself and you for asking it of me..." He fell to the ground as though in state of seizure, pants around his ankles and wept great tears of regret into the hem of my granulated trousers, the bloodied taste of earth and failure fresh on his particulated lips."


A perfect ten of inexplicable and ridiculous failure. Secretly though, I was relieved. During that year, while all the waiting was coming to pass, I had written and drawn some side comics starring those characters from MY chapter one, and was now enjoying them immensely. I found myself wanting no longer to share, and desiring only a selfish hoarding of these characters and the credit all to myself. It was, as it stands now, advantageous only to me, and I wish I felt bad about it. I do not. You will meet these characters soon enough, and know them as "octopus", and "the bird lady." Can't wait until you do.

Cheers.

Also thank you to my failure of a one-time potential artistic collaborator. No longer, my friend, no longer. Though 'tis a pity as he has, by far, one of the quickest and most intelligent of the wits that any man can possess.

In which we battle the forces of perspective and realism...and lose.

Here's a planning sketch for a thing I am working about. This will be physically large when it is done. If you want it, just ask. I also will be physically large, inexplicably, or perhaps not so.

I enjoy elephants, and elephants tied to long pieces of string being pulled by girls standing on rough perspective guidelines I THOROUGHLY enjoy, thus this composition. I trust you do as well. There is a group being started as we speak.

Please join us:

SUPER FANS of ELEPHANTS tied to LONG PIECES OF STRING being PULLED by GIRLS standing on ROUGH PERSPECTIVE GUIDELINES

niceberg.

This is a niceberg, and is exactly everything that you think it is. Niceberg. That's right. Its nice. I spent alot of time this weekend not doing artwork, and I was pretty miserable about it. Realistically though, this is one of those things that you have to either take in stride, or drown in alcohol. I am taking it in stride. It is like holding a newborn. You can't make the newborn do what you want, go to sleep at a certain time, sleep all night, not scream while you are on the phone. The more you think about all the ways that the baby is hindering you from a task, even if its brushing your teeth, the more frustrated and angry you will get with him, even though he is in no way setting out to make you feel that way. He's just being a baby. You have to devote yourself to holding the baby, put the baby first, and abandon all other desires in order to achieve the serenity necessary to not DO anything else. This can also apply when you have a full time job that isn't exactly your passionista. You have to let everything else go. This is how I am with art. I need a damn long runway to get in the air, but it is possible. Sometimes, however, you just have to let it all go, and be a dad.

Wouldn't trade it for the world.