“I had to, like, open the bruise up and let some of the bruise blood come out to show them”
Steve Reich
I had a ‘monk’-like phase where I would feel frustration and emotions and I would hold this energy inside me and only let it ‘come out’ via drawing. By ‘cumming’ into drawings/comics I could share something raw inside me with others.
Relationships, especially sexual relationships, are cathartic. ‘Bruise blood’ 'comes' out. Art at this time, for me, is like lazy masturbation, something done out of habit / boredom.
If we do not create out of necessity then why create at all? I value objects (books, zines, images) because I believe I am holding something very personal to someone. I imagine there is an aspect of catharsis which is quite literal. When I hold a book I am holding a fetish object / a lock of hair / a synecdoche. The object is like a chia pet, seeded by the author and watered by the reader.
If blood letting is an act of catharsis then death is the ultimate catharsis. In sexual relationships there is a desire to lose individuality, to break down interpersonal barriers, to let ‘it all’ ‘come out’. Sex is a struggle against these boundaries, a physical struggle to escape one's one bodily confinement. The 'little death' is a small break in the barrier. The 'big death' erases the barrier.
Do we make art for others or do we make it for the other - that imagined other whom we never meet. Do we make art for the living or for the dead?
Do we invest in people?
Do we invest in objects?
Where do we put our seed?
"I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it."
Ernest Hemingway
Images via Sam Gaskin and vvork
25 comments:
"I always read that the great fighters never had sex before fights... I think the best thing in life is to, um, abstain from sex- after abstaining from sex, and then having sex, I think that's the best feeling in the world - after abstaining from it." -Mike Tyson
hey blaise, do you ever think that maybe you want to make things that make other people happy? or go in some kind of direction others might consider 'shallow' but your talents might be more apt for-- something like a Blankets style graphic novel, a nickelodeon/cartoon network show? I mean, I dont necessarily see that stuff in your work but maybe you need a different perspective on how you make things? maybe you worry too much about what your art means as an object (i.e; 'alt', 'underground') rather than making something and feeling good about just making it.
looking at one of your blog posts recently, where you posted an old story, you werent always doing these "meta" things, and maybe you werent meant to? who knows. I could be wrong, I'm not you and I dont know what your tastes are, but not everyone is meant to make stuff that looks like CF/Gary Panter, or follow their career trajectory or be lumped into their school. Sometimes you have to find the stuff you CAN make and see how someone like CF fits into that, and how what you learned from CF can make that something new but still honest to yourself.
I donno. big questions that could be big answers to even bigger questions.
jason: i think i agree with mike tyson
anonymous: i do not want this comments thread to turn into this again. My personal blog is more suitable for this sort of discussion.
relating back to the post at hand, i feel some people are more 'craft' oriented and these people create things for specific people. i personally struggle with this orientation. i like making things for a nonhuman 'other' like the internet.
humanism vs religion
could have been the title of this post
'craft' isn't synonymous with 'technique', though, to be clear. these things are subjective, but Peter Saul or Gary Panter for instance aren't technique driven but are certainly driven by an appreciation for the narrative and craft of painting.
and I would disagree that your work is for the internet, unless you mean audiences on the internet (which are more or less nonhuman)? to me, if something that's made is kind of made "for" the internet, it kind of implies something that is "viral" in it's multiplication rate and submits itself to the void of the internet that way-- kind of like spyware. new 'garbage', shit that comes up everywhere and literally forces it's way in. like shepard fairey but for the internet instead of lightposts and backpacks.
the internet doesnt have to imply a 'viral' nature, or 'shit' being spewed left and right. it can allow a comfortable anonymity or a place for the creator to give generously towards a whole other than himself, without specific social direction (other than the direction towards his or her specific site, on which 'posts' are made).
i object to blaise's incessant references to ejaculation.
however, i approve of his interest in catharsis, christ and cartooning.
dont you cartoonists like to plan out everything in advance? shouldn't catharsis, to you, mean the space between your thumb and forefinger, around a fragile nib?
i prefer to work in the world of light, and occasionally, magic.
i prefer to literally bedazzle my viewers, with the off-shoot of a bruise being spread and bled, for the benefit of only my closest relatives, should they choose to observe such a spectacle.
i agree with you all, in one way or another.
but anti-sex talk i can't abide.
one must always make love,
before and after partaking in the 'creative act'.
it's good to go to school, then draw comics on your school break (catharsis from academia).
it's good to devote yourself to people and objects, then through relationships and making of comic books, discover who you really are.
fucking hogwash.
Maybe it is a matter of the satisfaction we receive in return? This is a really broad and stupid example, but if the number of comments received on one's art blog < number of awesome orgasms...sometimes I feel like it is hard to remember that it is okay to do things like watch TV sometimes, and then I will forget that I need to stop watching TV. Also, is it seed that we invest, or just time/energy? Or does seed=time/energy, or is it something else?
Also, yes, I definitely make art for the "other", the ? & the Mysterians of the e-universe.
A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating. You're there now doing the thing on paper. You're not killing the goose, you're just producing an egg. So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I've heard about it. I've felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I'd much rather go fishing, for example, or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, "Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write." There's no difference on paper between the two. -Frank Herbert
Sometimes I feel like Tyson/Blaise, but most of the time I feel like Frank Herbert. Though my own output is fairly measley, I have to always work, work, work to not feel like my life is a vaccuum I'm getting sucked into. There are lots of days where I feel like hell and have seemingly no juice to spurt, but these're often really productive days. When I'm feverish, in a frenzy, caffeineated to the gills with my eyeballs popping out of my head, I make masterpieces that mostly seem idiotic the next day. It's like how Bukowski'd stay up late in drunken reverie, write, write, write, and then throw most of it away the next day. I feel like time is the best sorter of merit. Waiting for divine inspiration is too Romantic. If you work, work, work, you'll maybe wear out, but you'll sometimes produce "Six and Six" or "The Living End."
A stroke, a page, a quick dab, a shudder, a return always.
Besides a weird system of lists that I constantly updated, my primary creative output in high school consisted of drawing the imagined spread-legged bodies of various female classmates. The bodies were drawn from the top edge of the page down so the headless necks could be matched up with the appropriate girl's yearbook picture.
I still regret the day I bundled up these masterworks with my floppy disks of porn and threw them out in some anonymous pizza restaurant's garbage bin.
Major oversight for posterity.
i at one time made a comic for "someone else" who i had created in my mind
but i unfortionatly created an asshole reader with no real soul or artistic sencibilitys
so i could dominate they'r common complaints
perhaps try'n to justify myself to my bullies
i don't wish to do this ever again
i don't feel so worried about what an audience members inteligence or taste is
if i can create something that i can dig then it will find it's place with others who share that "unknown" taste or feeling that stokes my longing to make some art
i reccomend you not take any job who requires you to alter your hair & like wise for your art
about the art as cum thing
interesting to me because it fits allmost too well with the author reader relationship
but is there a piss art and shit art
and are they so bad
chuck barry was into piss and shit so it' been said
cathartic art may very well be these other functions place
i don't find cumming to be cathartic but piss&shit are quite often for me
you can control your bodys waste by controlling what you put in it
when i see art i don't like it can stay with me
and i'd gladly get it out if i knew how
many songs i hate run through my mind in the mournings and i don't ever understand where they can be relocated to
all the "good" stuff from food is keep'n us going and the trash is dragging our bodys down
i think there is something good in doing art mechanically at times
these things should come out
but we don't often find folks tot'n around pictures of they'r turds in there wallets as often as they'r kids picture
a sketch book makes a fine toilet for art
not all art must be a "portfolio" piece
I am a total shitter
into your throat
i blacked out on nye and i did not experience catharsis (despite vomitting / chipping a tooth)
it was not as romantic as i had hoped ... blacking out separates you from your experience
it's not even like death or dying (no nye reincarnation)- it carries no weight whatsoever except a sore throat / headache the next day
damn that was a good comment:
'dudes,
i don't put my seed anywhere.
i don't even have seed.
but i wish the best for the apparent majority of you, and look forward to seeing you pound away with renewed vigor in the new decade. i would not hesitate to hope for every one of you that you will one day reach a point where you will always be cumming into things, 100% of the time.
thanks.'
Don't worry, you'll grow out of it.
is getting E.D. a sign of growth
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