lettering

warning:  contains honest depictions of states of mental health some might consider distressing

lettering

i abhor lettering.  i say this both as a comix artist & an ocd person.  i hate hand lettering.  i view it as absolutely essential to a certain type of comic book work, however, and i hand letter all my own comix.  i just hate lettering because it's time-consuming & it involves rehearsals & warmups & practice.  i know i sound like a whiny teenager but sometimes my fine motor control sucks since the accident & it makes me impatient with myself

i hate lettering because it's a Job, in comix, and not always the most stimulating one.  sometimes you only need one type of lettering for a given project.  it gets monotonous pretty fast, writing everything all out by hand.  i can.  i keep journals.  but yeah.  lettering

all my coworkers at every restaurant job i've ever worked has asked me to hand letter the goddamned signs.  not to draw things for them on the chalkboards.  just write out all 77 craft beers.   "sure.  don't give me anything creative to do.  let me write today's shitface special" i would mutter, rifling through the shot glass full of chalk

lettering

after i ran away from home at 18-- a sentence you may hear altogether too often from me, sorry --i dedicated innumerable months of my life to reprogramming certain tendencies i was taught in infancy, specifically my handwriting.  every night after work i would sit down with a legal pad and rehearse.  i re-conditioned myself to write upper & lowercase As, Gs, Qs, Ks, Ts etc entirely differently.  

because i am ocd.  i didn't know it at the time.  but i should have

when i am very stressed i have dreams about practicing lettering

my first recurring dream occured three nights in a row, and it was just a running scroll passing across my completely paralyzed field of vision.  (i have sleep paralysis sometimes.)  on all three nights, the scroll would inscribe itself:  arcane, unknown characters would imprint themselves as the scroll rolled mercilessly.  i went to school completely exhausted every day.  i was terrified of whatever was happening to me and began to dread sleeping.  but then it stopped.  make of that what you will.  i was 17

and, this is not even a joke.  there was the very first time i dropped acid, at 18.  i saw, crawling over every surface-- exactly how your ordinary, un-concussed* wannabe raver & skater rat might simply hallucinate pretty colours  --lettering!  everywhere, sliding over & simultaneously somehow beneath every surface, on skin and countertop and clothing, the entire environs: lettering

* because of course at 12 i'd had a concussion.  dropped headfirst onto a rock from the very top of a jungle gym on the playground.  when i woke i didn't remember arriving at school so they send me home

the last time i had a nervous breakdown, when i had been several weeks homeless & chose to sacrifice money for a hotel room for just one night--  because life in the graveyard had become intolerable, what with the hysterical barks of humorless laughter from the adjoining woods --i sat clutching edge of the bed, both hands hammerlocked to the seams of the mattress, trying to keep myself from looking at the ceiling, where just seconds ago i had seen the whorling & swarming of letters

lettering, man

i do not enjoy it.  but i practice it habitually.  it's just one of those things.  i don't take pleasure in it the way i do drawing.  it is just a thing i made myself learn how to do.  everyone tells me i have nice handwriting.  i dunno

but LOGOS

i LOVE them

because i get to fuck with lettering.  i get to spindle & reimagine & mutilate & break lettering

my favourite mag of the early 90s was RAYGUN because half the articles were purposefully impossible to read.  i love fucking with language on that level.  stretching the possibilities of what a design may imply and the limits of typography.  shit is key.  logos are all about brevity & BAM and out.  impression & individuality.  that's such a relief

with logos i don't feel crazy the same way hand-lettering a comic does

anyway.  these are the thoughts of a man with OCD & an autodidact, and this essay does not have a particular point beyond putting all my dumb maundering thoughts on a subject in one particular place, since art is therapy as much as anything

art saved my life

so i must grudgingly admit lettering has, too

...which's tantamount to admitting to myself that being crazy has been beneficial

which i guess is the point of the blog?  i should stop typ