"I think that every person, whether they play music or don't play music, has a sound - their own sound, that thing that you're talking about." -OC
Ornette's Dasein
I heard something recently about Ornette Coleman thinking that it's impossible to create abstract notations for the actual music played, that each performance was so specific to the time and place it occurred that to create a map of it is to rob it of some of its substance. I really don't know much about Ornette Coleman (I really like his 1960 record "Free Jazz"), but that idea applies to how I've been thinking about comics lately. I'm as much in love with the vernacular of comics (Batman's cape, zipatone, various emanata, goofball plots, etc). as I am with how they're employed to tell a story. It may be that being brought up reading comics causes Kirby machinery to be incredibly thrilling on a visceral level or possibly that Kirby uses his visual motifs in a way that perfectly expresses his sublime worldview and that this is one of the strengths of comics. The peculiarities of the actual expression add as much information as the diegetic aspect of what is being expressed.
"I think that every person, whether they play music or don't play music, has a sound - their own sound, that thing that you're talking about." -OC
"I think that every person, whether they play music or don't play music, has a sound - their own sound, that thing that you're talking about." -OC
10 comments:
strong desire to write 'fuck comics' ... not sure why.
As opposed to other media or as opposed to my blog post?
i love your blog post. as opposed to itself. is comics worth preserving? at least sound goes away. isn,t it strange krby is still floating around the collective unconscious?
reading brian chippendale's blog, don't comics seem silly? the idea of 'comics comics' at least? celebrating a culture, a heritage ... what! why? nostalgia? 'comics comics' equals hetcher flanks equals zach braff. a dead horse floating in the mainstream.
Yeah- I also really hate comics most of the time. I'm pretty conflicted about Kirby or Ditko, guys like that. In some ways their visionary perspectives are just thrilling, but I can't really get anything out of the content. But those aren't the comics I try to make. I'm totally into the idea of "the image," but mostly the stories and subject matter are so shitty or dumb that I can't actually read them. I may be into the drawings or formal aspects, but that's it. I still find that all that bilge leaves a residue of cultural associations that I find exciting, and other folks like Öyvind Fahlström or Jim Nutt have mined this to make some pretty good stuff. I think, though, that good comics can be made that recognize the power of visuals and don't treat the drawings only as linguistic symbols, and looking at how lush and mysterious some of the classics were (possibly not so mysterious when they first hit the scene, but time adds a veneer of distance, right?) inspires me. Celebrating the culture in a fannish way seems ridiculous, I agree. In many ways I don't think any of this stuff is worthwhile. I'm ambivalent, and I don't want to get mathematical and think in terms of good/bad binaries. On the other hand, I love how idiotic Fletcher Hanks' drawings are and that he was intentional about this. There really isn't a point in adding to the detritus, but I (not the ideal me, but the vernacular one with an actual history that the web of culture seeped into) can't stop myself!
"fuck comics" = fuck everything. America is old and so are "comics."
Yes! The old shit's part of our DNA, like it or not!
it's a new comic everytime you read it to me
on the bus
at a deathbed
after werk
on the can
i can allways wander off into a new thought/idea
likeing things is no reason to justify it to anyone expecially the creator of said art
i'd just like to say that ditko is with it
read his new comics
theres a lot of haters & detractors
but they'r just wearing there poser'ness on they'r sleeves they don't actually know what they'r say'n
just mimic'n some tired old blow off
kill it all if you can
but remember you have obsessions just like the rest of us no need for shame or excuses
i love a grip of dumb shit but not for laughing at
because dumb is great
thinking is what gets most of us neck deep in shit creek
your life sucks because you are not a bird
sage advice... And, yeah, I really do like Ditko's newest stuff. It's totally his obsessions laid bare, feverish in a robotic way.
Nothing to do with comics (with what?) but I have to recommend Coleman's "Skies of America" even though all my jazz-nerd friends hate that "Third Stream shit" I think it's stellar, STELLAR
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