"please raise your right hand"

scrying the shelves / oracular consultation

These days-- these post-drug, post-drink, post-derangement days --reading is a straightforward affair.  Like consulting an oracle, or the "books" of the tarot.  You go to a book because you know you need something from it:  the need is yours, and the reading is For You.  One goes for divination as much as inspiration or straight-up knowledge.

It wasn't always so unmysterious.  There was a time, away & over my shoulder, in the rearview, that derangement & literacy were glove over hand.  The first time I did acid was seventeen.  With wages earned at Ace Electronics I bought a couple tabs from Layne Milwood, that band kid everyone wanted to befriend, and early one September night holed up in my claustrophobically cramped bed with my headphones on, the 'Fixed' remix by Coil on repeat as I read Al Columbia's 'Tar Frogs' and whatever else was in that issue of Deadline Magazine that perv at the CD shop, Carl, sold me.  Those were not good tabs.  It was lowgrade acid, if it even was acid.  I recall at some point that the norwegian wood paneling of my room began to flow & pulse like tides of pollen in mud puddles, but there wasn't much-if-any action beyond that.  Jitteriness.  Anxiety.  A sense of being too tightly sewn into my own skin.

To be honest, I got better results from sleep deprivation.  Which was my go-to for derangement, as it was cheap and also my natural state.  Sleep deprivation, it adds a paranoid cast to people's faces, makes how they perceive you more interesting: livens up conversations by letting folks talk loudly without moving their lips.  Sleep deprivation makes you feel like you're telepathic, and in low light conditions, really kicks out the jams.  I remember my first real dance with the stuff had me full-on hallucinating; sneaking out to the woods to study the shadows of animals gliding and pouncing through the dark...  Good times.

Sleep dep was a drag on my C to D average, though, and took too long to trigger.  I'm pretty sure the idea came from the paperback edition of 'Dale Cooper:  My Life, My Tapes'.  Insomnia wasn't my natural state, at the outset.  After a while fucking with my brain chemistry in this fashion, however, being nocturnal became a habit.  I don't think it did me any favours when it came to reading comprehension or retension, though.  Pretty sure it did the opposite.  Trying to retain information with a sleep deprived brain is a little like trying to make a tape recording with scotch tape over the recording head on a reel-to-reel: the encoding is faint as fuck if not partly absent.  So while I read anything I could get my hands on--

(and there was a lot to read, growing up, from sci-fi to horror to "adult comix" to architecture to occultism to engineering to my parents' separate, discrete Secret Libraries of hardcore smut & hippy-dippy witchlore.  My parents were the kind of people who built their own bookshelves.  Every house we lived in had ever-expanding sets of shelves, in distinct contrast to the amount of living space available.  But back to the previous paragraph)

--keeping that data available in my mind was a struggle.  It would take my developing some OCD and a tendency, in my twenties, to read every book twice in a row, to make it possible to Know What I Was Talking About.  If my memory failed me, usually, I'd bluff.  Which is why my test scores were abysmal.  Probably.  There was the PTSD nobody recognized somewhere in the mix, too.  At any rate, all the components for a half-bright artfag's development were in place:  a bibliophile with brain problems & a recreational interest in neurochemistry.

At that stage of my life pot wasn't really a thing.  I'd tried my parents' stash, once, and didn't dig it.  It wasn't until after running away, in my mid-twenties, that I got into that nasty shit, and even then, not habitually.  Nope, mostly it was books & being On The Natch crazy.  I developed an oracular faith in books; they became my muse & my offboard memory, part of my daily creative process.  Somewhere between that first taste of acid and the time I ran away it became common practice to read two to three books at a time.  Not that my reading tastes were particularly elevated.  I gravitated towards trash, until some sort of personal snobbery developed.

Anyhow.  Some two years after bailing from the nest, and plummeting into the depressingly workaday world of being a kitchen drudge, I tried acid again.  The tabs were free, this time, a gift from my room-mate & co-worker, Chris Beck.  By this time I was into my Burroughs worship, so after hours at our coffeeshop we all dropped.  While my idiot friends did their "Whoaaaaa" thing listening to Skinny Puppy by the blue neon of the Galleria's signage, I read The Ticket That Exploded.  At some point Chris looked over, incredulous.  "Are you reading!?  You're on LSD, and you're... reading?"  So maybe it was ever-so-slightly his fault when the typesetting spilled off the paper and into the oily fractal patterning that slid over and through every surface, from my sallow skin to the denim of my JNCOs to the checkered tile floor.  Maybe I wouldn't have developed that particular hallucinatory default, where I see words materially inveigled everydamnwhere.  'Environments speak to you,' as Ol' Uncle Bill sez.

It's happened since.  Without the influence of mindmelting technologies.  But putting that aside...

Reading is the practice.  Without chemicals for casual inspiration, the shelves are where I gravitate.  Mine, or anywhere in the world.  If there's a book I go for it.  And when I can't get myself to focus on the book I'm in the middle of--  I'm halfway through 'The House of Impossible Beauties' by Joseph Cassara  --my brain will drift onto other authors.  Usually those I've found most inspirational.  Over decades, my shelves have become a repository not simply for fiction but lived experience.  Particularly lived experiences of writers whose lives are most unlike my own.  Because I don't read just to get out of my own head:  I do it to enter others' minds & times.  It's the finest escapism I know.

Escapism, and research.  Because it's a resource!  And a necessary part of having that resource handy is making sure there will always be surprises.  If I hit a dead end with a project, I don't want to go to the fucking internet to figure out a solution.  I'd rather consult the oracle(s).  Like last night.  In the Ds, under Duras, there's a translated collection of Marguerite's journalism & essays, titled 'Outside'.  Clearly I've never sat down to read it end-to-end, because if I had the presence of an interview with Francis Bacon wouldn't have surprised me.

Most useful, libraries.

I'll post excerpts from the interview, later.  But it was revealing.  Because there's a writer who's never done art, asking the most incisive questions of a notoriously self-taught & curiously chaotically disciplined artist.  It's almost as though they were holding a miniature seminar for me.

Stating all this in light of my recent decision to go 100% sober again.  It's not the easiest road to be on, in this life.  But it's necessary for body & mind.  Because, fuck, have you SEEN Francis Bacon's studio?

sleeplog - 1o2125

Four hours sleep.  Woke to sensation that I'd been clenching my jaw so hard my teeth felt it.  Three o' bloody clock.  When I'd curled up to rest, had been talking to Sig about supplements that would help memory.  That, and eating properly.  I've developed a terrible habit of skipping breakfast under the pretext that I'd just eat at work, and then skipping that because from the moment of arrival at the bakery, I'm hustling & grinding.

Apparently tossed & turned so much I managed to push my pillow off the bed.  Sig told me yesterday that I've been "sleep-biking" again--  a recurrent thing where I'm either walking or cycling in my dreams.  I never remember doing either.  The sleep-biking had been in remission; the last time he remembered me doing it was three or four months ago.  I know, for myself, that I'm sleeping more soundly & continuously than, say, a year ago.

Dreams?  There were.  None of your business, suffice it to say they weren't anxiety-driven, nor unpleasant.

Right ankle seems to be healing properly.  Fifth day in a row at the bakery.  I'll be glad to train the newbie and be done ASAP.  Guess I'll ride the bike in.  With any luck today I can return to the drawing table.  I've got an idea for the final portrait in the Burroughs folio...

breaking ground on inked linework (refinement)

 

defining the style of linework for the finished product.  tonight's not going well.  i know what i need to fix.  having a lot of mental health trouble right now.  it's very noisy in my head.  trying to focus through.  not easy.  persistent ideation, disrupted sleep patterns, etc.  interview tomorrow.  hope it flies

 

the real problem with ocd is knowing when to quit.  because when i don't i burn the soup

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 second time i dropped acid, at 18/19.  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