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Sunday, January 4, 2009
The Shoegazer Returns
A New Year Begins, And Our Narrator Makes A Pledge
I have been trying to write this column for what seems like an eternity.
I've tried splitting it up into pithy and unconnected segments, which sounds like a good idea. After all, if I can't think of something I can spend a whole column talking about, surely I can think of four or five things I can spend a few hundred words talking about, right? Apparently not.
I've tried incorporating some kind of visual element, like a numbered photo of my workspace, and work off that. Talk about the stuff I've been reading or working on. Workable in theory (I've done it before), but it just doesn't seem like the right answer.
And then what happens is every week or so I'll read something by Chuck Klosterman or some really great blog and think to myself, "Man, I wish I could do something like that," and then simultaneously I'll think to myself, "You CAN, dingbat, you have a column! John Roshell made an amazing logo for it and everything!"
And then I sulk for a few days and still can't think of a thing to write about.
Meanwhile, my work trundles on. I keep posting installments of The Rack that I (mostly) haven't written, making deadlines only barely, yawning through day jobs, starting half a dozen side projects and getting nowhere with them.
This isn't to say I feel like a neglected cast-off when it comes to my extraordinarily fine work on The Rack. I love working on it, and I love that its strict schedule has forced me to become a much better artist. That's totally great.
I just miss writing. My New Year's Resolution was to do a whole lot more of it and something like, say, a weekly column about creativity is most likely a fantastic place to start. So I opened MS Word, still with no idea how to approach it or what to write about, and just started typing.
And would you look at that. I got 300 words out of it.
What I think I need to do most, in terms of getting the most of this column, is just pay more attention. There are so many things I look at and read and play each week that are absorbed by my brain, and all too little of it can actually be funneled into my main creative outlet: Drawing A Webcomic. Before I got the crazy idea to draw stuff, which had to have been about six or seven years ago now, I had a much more receptive outlet: My Writing. I'd write stories about all kinds of stuff, with moments and characters influenced by all sorts of things.
These days stuff just sits there. I'll start working on something, a comic project, or the detective novel I started several years ago, and I'll knock a few pages out, but nothing consistent. The consistency valve in my brain is almost always devoted to getting the latest strip in on time and looking presentable. Which is its own challenge, believe me.
So that's my current dilemma in a nutshell. And what could be a more fun way to spend a year than to follow my on the rocky path towards creative self-fulfillment? After all, now all the pieces are in place. I've got a webcomic that catches hundreds of eyes a day. I've get a bunch of projects that, if they were only worked on, have the potential to be just as interesting and successful. All I need is the motivation.
My work partner on The Rack, Kevin Church, got me a heck of a Christmas Present. It's a fully poseable action figure of the eponymous star of Kiyohiko Azuma's Yotsuba&!, pretty much the single best Manga you'll ever read (and one of the best comics ever, period). The coolest thing about it is that she comes with two changeable heads. One is a beaming, classic Yotsuba, overcome with unbridled enthusiasm. The other is a blankly disappointed and angry, pupil-less Yotsuba. So what I do is switch to Angry Head when a strip is due, and have her point her water gun at my desk chair (Did I mention she comes with a tiny water gun that fits perfectly in her hand? She does. And it's awesome.) And she stays that way until the latest strip is uploaded. When it's done, I switch to the beatific Yotsuba and point the gun skyward, a celebration of accomplishment.
So the plan is to use this column as a motivation for that other, neglected half of my creative life. After all, if I force myself to think about what influences me and how I work, then it stands to reason that I will be more significantly influenced and compelled to work.
It's kind of poetic that when I last visited this column, I devoted most of it to an examination of The Wire's Chris Paltrow and Snoop Pearson. Now, too many months later, they're once again gracing the television sets of a hungry nation, scoffing the haphazard techniques, in one instance, of West Coast thugs.
I'm sure I'll be talking about the show again before too long. I've actually given a whole lot of thought to the way the show handles a multi-character narrative. It's pretty remarkable how every single scene feels essential, even as it jumps from one character to the next. It never meanders, and nothing feels unnecessary. It's the kind of show you can follow along with and map out cleanly, scene by scene. McNulty Is Reassigned. Bubbs Leaves Sister's Basement For Work. No fat. As much as I love the television show ,i>LOST (and I love the television show LOST), there are entire plot lines (Tree Frog, anyone?) that feel tacked on and unnecessary, not to mention individual scenes. So when a series can continue that narrative relevance for an unbroken streak of four plus seasons, you start to pay attention. Sounds like something worth spending a whole column on, doesn't it?
Well, here's to 2008, and a similarly unbroken streak of relevance.
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April 22, 2008:
February 4, 2008:
November 20, 2006:
A Comic-Con without the Captain
