Tuesday, Jan 16, 2018 | Adventure, Art, Big Thoughts, Cartoons, Death, Drawing, Fun, Lynda Barry, Play, Writing |
Title: Finding Footing
Captions: I ran with Heather this morning. It was snowing. The snow was so deep we couldn’t find our footing. We talked about our words of the year: fire and fresh. At home, I put unmelted snow from my hair on Annie’s forehead.
(What I like about this cartoon is the image of the snowflake that appears in each panel. It creates a visual motif that links the pictures with the text. The “on” should be “onto” but when writing in pen, mistakes get made and they’re permanent. So be it.)
The joy of embarking on a new project is the mystery of what its process will unearth. It’s too early into the cartooning project to guess what’s yet to be learned by doing it. What I’ve noticed so far is that already I have a sense of how many words can fit into each panel. Brevity and clarity are paramount. Thematic clarity is valuable, but sometimes a scattered cartoon, written and drawn in haste, can have its charms.
Title: Time-Challenged
Captions: This particular cartoon is very time-challenged. Things that happened today: Forgot to pick up Angus from work … Tuned out during scripture reading at church … Walked backward into the cold wind with Calvin.
(This cartoon was written and drawn in almost exactly 10 minutes, which I think is the absolute minimum amount of time required.)
Some days I’ve drawn two cartoons, one on a political subject, and the other more personal. For the purposes of keeping the project streamlined, I’m allowing myself to post only one cartoon each day (on Facebook and Twitter); so far, I’ve chosen the personal over the political. The political cartoons have gone into blog posts instead. I don’t feel that I’ve settled on a drawing singular style, yet. I like that. I like the freedom to experiment with both subject matter and style.
Title: Is It Like Climbing A Mountain Of Snow?
Captions: What happens if I don’t feel like drawing? Is it like climbing a mountain of snow to get to campus? Like doing the dishes and vacuuming? If I just show up, just do it, just keep going, it will happen?
(This was the one day so far that I really didn’t feel like cartooning. I’m glad that I did. It’s a good reminder to just show up and do it, even if you don’t feel like it; good advice for life in general, for writing in particular.)
Questions I’m mulling: What makes a good cartoon? What’s too personal, in terms of subject matter? Would these cartoons be of interest only to family and friends? Is it possible to find the universal in the daily? (Of course it is! The question, really, is how?)
Title: Messy House
Caption: “My house is messy,” Asmaa said, and I said, “I won’t look.” But she wanted to show me. On the coffee table, a pan of butter, markings where dough was rolled out. She brought me a plate of baklava. “Too sweet?” “No!” I ate three.
(Most of these cartoons pair random scenes from the day with largely unrelated captions, and I enjoy discovering how these two dissimilar things respond to each other, but for this one, all the scenes drawn come from the story described in the text.)
Something interesting I’ve observed: that cartoons have the capacity to envelope sad, difficult narratives in a way that eases the pain, I think. Something I think about quite a lot is how to write about trauma without traumatizing the reader. I see in cartooning a possible means of tackling challenging subjects in non-traumatizing ways. Cartoons remind me of poems, a bit.
Title: This Day
Captions: This day has almost crushed me, yet it hasn’t been hard, objectively. I felt close to collapse, inside and out. I felt swarmed inside by anxiety that was almost pain. Yet, I did all of the things.
(Here, I think the scenes from the day soften the description of depression/anxiety in the text.)
Things I like about this project: I get to draw everyday. It’s an opportunity to reflect on my day, and pay attention to it in a different, unusual, creative way. It’s also an opportunity to invent thematic coherence and narrative out of the raw material of life. Life is raw. We humans, we have a tendency to pattern. Pattern may be illusion, but it is powerful. Pattern brings comfort — order to disorder, shape to chaos, coherence to uncertainty.
Title: Suddenly I Felt That I Understood
Captions: Today, I baked bread and I read Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook. In it, she quotes a line from Emily Dickinson… “After great pain, a formal feeling comes —” Which suddenly I felt that I understood absolutely.
(The drawing of my hands kneading bread dough didn’t really turn out. But now you know what that panel is all about. Kind of looks like two islands separating in the middle of a lake … or, I don’t know; what do you see? I’m trying very hard not to re-do any “mistakes” in the cartoons, but rather to accept them as speaking from or to some secret part of myself I couldn’t otherwise reveal.)
xo, Carrie
Friday, Jan 12, 2018 | Art, Feminism, Fire, Politics, Spirit, Stand |
This is a rant. Art is not sacred. The way we treat each other is sacred. Real change demands structural change, radical, revolutionary. No artistic vision is worth the sacrifice of another’s dignity.
Today on our early morning run, Heather and I talked about structure. How humans hew to structure, even if it’s not serving us well, because that is our nature. Real change demands structural change; true on scales both macro and micro, societal and individual. I wish I had the tools and knowledge and education to do something that would support wide and deep systemic change. Or maybe that’s not how systemic change occurs. Maybe it’s more radical and revolutionary. I believe in policy, and the power of policy to affect change, but unless it’s applied, policy is worthless and sometimes worse than worthless — because it provides a mask to corruption while pretending to hold the system to account. Why didn’t they report earlier? Why are they coming out now? They should have gone to police. This is a case for the courts, not the court of public opinion. It’s nothing but unsubstantiated gossip. Fill out the paperwork, go through the proper channels, and we’ll get back to you.
Yeah, this is a rant.
This morning, I heard a snippet from a radio interview: a woman arguing that the penalties against the former director of Soulpepper theatre in Toronto were too harsh — He built the company! His artistic genius! (Full disclosure, one of the complainants in the civil case against him was a high school friend, though we haven’t been in touch for many years.) To the woman on the radio, I raged: You’re arguing that artistic vision is worth the sacrifice of people’s safety. You would protect a man whose behaviour at work harmed people — because he was a good fundraiser??? Because the art was good??? This is skewed morality.
Art is not sacred. The arts are not sacred.
The way that we treat each other as human beings is sacred, or should be.
For the second day in a row my old friend Kristin is on the front page of Canadian newspapers, one of four women accusing a director of sexual abuse. In our high school production of Anne of Green Gables, she played Diana to my Anne. We had so much fun. Kristin absolutely sparkled with wit and comedic talent. I am so proud of her bravery now.
I have a theory. Power may indeed corrupt and absolute power may indeed corrupt absolutely, but many who seek power are already corrupt, particularly in systems in which corruption, in its many forms, is rewarded: think manipulation, harassment, bullying, and other norm-flaunting, disrespectful, selfish and narcissistic behaviour. Those more inclined toward self-reflection, those who don’t want to harm others for their own profit (or be harmed), who don’t want to lie and self-inflate and backstab and cheat to “play the game” are weeded out of the system, deemed weak, losers, failures. The powerful believe their behaviour is normal.
Maybe we all do — until we don’t.
Let’s say that time is now. Let’s find ways to circumvent the system until the system changes.
I repeat: Art is not sacred. Neither are artists. The artistic process has never needed to be destructive, harmful, cruel, violent, vindictive, ugly, competitive, or vicious in order for good art to exist. Don’t be fooled by the propaganda.
Bottom line: If you’re hurting people in the process of making your art, you’re doing it wrong. You never earn the right to be an asshole. (Also, side note: nobody needs to see your penis.)
xo, Carrie
Monday, Jan 8, 2018 | Art, Big Thoughts, Fire, Meditation, Peace, Spirit, Word of the Year |
New ritual: I begin my desk-time by lighting a candle. The expectant flare of the match and comforting flickering flame marks a small opening moment to help me begin. The candle, which I almost felt ashamed of purchasing (impulse buy; no reason why; it was on sale), is suddenly useful, a tiny reminder of the word I’ve chosen to meditate on for this year: perhaps as a guide, perhaps as warning. Even the tiny flame of a single candle is mesmerizing, its movements mysterious, its light enticing.
FIRE.
The word fire initially drew my attention because I was thinking of creative fire, of passion, of burning brightly in pursuit of art. Which sounds howlingly pretentious, I realize. But I felt comforted by the image that accompanied the word: of a furnace, deep inside, glowing with steady bright heat.
Fire is dangerous, as elements are. I pictured, too, a fire that burns across a prairie, leaving behind blackened space, but also a place for new growth in fertile soil — not a wasteland, after all.
Fire is sacred, precious, life and death. Without it, we would be hungry and cold in the dark.
A fire either is, or is not. When I blow out this candle, its flame vanishes. What keeps a fire alive? It needs oxygen to burn, and energy. It devours fuel. Some fuel burns bright and quick, while other fuel burns slow and steady. But in time, all fuel will run out and must be replenished.
You can’t leave a fire untended. It will burn out, or burn out of control. Either way, it needs attention.
What fires am I tending now? What feeds my fire?
I think of the story of the Little Match Girl, which I adored as a child of melodramatic bent. How the brief flame of each lit match gave the girl temporary comfort and relief — and visions of warmth and plenty — even while she froze to death, shoeless, in the street. Fire as illusion of heat.
Fire as passion, fire as creative, fire as necessary; fire as destructive, fire as hungry, fire as all-consuming, insatiable.
I fear this word and yet it draws me. What would happen if I let my fire burn? What does that even mean? Do I know?
One last image that keeps coming around: Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem “First Fig.”
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night.
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends —
It gives a lovely light!
xo, Carrie
PS The cartooning project continues, day by day. I’m posting a daily cartoon on Twitter and Facebook, and plan to use some here too, in future posts.
Friday, Jan 5, 2018 | Friends, Meditation, Spirit, Stand, Word of the Year, Work, Writing |
My word of the year for 2017 was STAND. As an exercise, partway through the year, I looked up all the meanings and synonyms for the word, and wrote them onto an index card that I carried around in my purse until at some point it turned into this stained and crumpled piece of paper you see above. The definition filled the entire card, in tiny letters, both sides.
1. v. To be upright, to be on one’s feet, to rise to one’s feet
2. v. Put, place, set
3. v. Take a position
4. v. Support, uphold, argue, champion, defend
5. v. Be present, remain, stay, exist, persist, continue, prevail, hold
6. v. Endure, abide, sustain, remain, last, bear up, carry on, withstand, suffer, submit to, face, weather, stomach, persevere
7. v. Be
There’s more, too. Of course STAND is also a noun with several meanings, including: position; kiosk; and a group of trees.
It was my original intention to explore meanings #3 and #4, above. I was going to take a stand and protest and speak out. But instead my year leaned heavily on #5 and especially #6. The many meanings of STAND expanded. The word took the shape of a tree in my mind, rooted with a strong spine, a good word and a good image for a year that rippled and buckled with unexpected heartache and news difficult to digest (most of which I’ve chosen not to write about on this blog, because it is either too personal or not directly my own story to tell).
STAND came to feel like a necessary, useful word, easy to incorporate into my thinking. I finished the year with greater confidence and inner quiet, at least about my writing. The word, and especially the image of a tree, seems to invite patience and calm, to look at the world and one’s own desires and human failures from a wide-angled view, as from a tree-top. In retrospect, I think I strived for less this year but nevertheless did the work I wanted to do. What more can a person ask for? It’s going to be hard to let this word go.
But it’s time to choose a new word, for a new year. I’m meeting with a group of friends tonight to share our new words. (I will share my word with you after I’ve shared it with them.) The bar is high. I’m a bit afraid. What hidden part of myself is seeking illumination?
To be continued …
xo, Carrie
PS If you choose a word of the year, please leave your word for 2018 in the comments.