No. 1

i should start by saying i have a terrible track record when it comes to keeping journals
never finish one, years between entries
i’m on the net too which you think would make it easier somehow
facebook logs going back years cataloging every little thought
but that’s not informed writing, it’s arbitrary and fleeting
which is okay

but sometimes your brain wants more than 140 tiny possibilities to say something
and i haven’t really ever had that
thoughts just pass and go and get forgotten without any record most of the time
so maybe i thought i’d try out preserving the ones that seemed nice

for example today i was thinking about art
i do that a lot
though not as often as an art student should maybe

i was thinking of the word art
like how it used to be interchangeable with the word craft
it wasn’t a word that dictated value, just a word to refer to the
dedication
application
skill
effort
and now they are quite separate

i think that art should have nothing to prove
that you shouldn’t waste time picking out what is and what isn’t
because everything is art
and nothing is art
and all that’s left is deciding if it’s effective (good) or if it still has a way to go (so give it time)

i suppose i worry about it because i want to make comics for a living
and of course we are all enlightened folks
we know comics can be art
just look at Maus
it won a very nice award
and everyone agrees Sandman is excellent
and Watchmen was very good too (skip the movie)

there have been so many people for a very long time telling us why comics is
(yes is because comics is the word or a singular medium as strange as that sounds, like painting)
worth making, reading, sharing, discussing, and Scott McCloud has the best books out there on the subject
but to me it still feels like i have to convince people
even though no one has said anything outright to me

maybe if i was in an art school that would be different then
they have majors dedicated to illustration and comics and animation
in places like california
but i decided to come to my overpriced liberal arts school to learn Chinese as well
(学习中文比我原来学中文的概念艰难）
i probably messed that sentence up
it’s been a while since i’ve done any Chinese for class
long story
anyway

i did not think i was good enough to go to art school then
actually i don’t think i’m good enough now
but maybe i’m hard on myself, it’s hard to get perspective on that
sort of why no one takes pictures of the back of their cameras
the same reason no one can see the back of their eyeballs i guess

but i was talking about art
(told you i was bad at this journal thing)
and maybe that’s why i fell in love with lomography
(the actual story is that neil gaiman wrote a blog entry about it and then i tried it and liked it and now i have three cameras and that’s the story)
i don’t feel pressured to make every shot art
because the experience of capturing that moment
(snatching light from a moment and then keeping it as that moment grows more and more separate from the moment you currently live in how magic is that)
seems like art itself
and you can’t capture the way things look from your eyeballs
but if you could then what would be the point (one day we will all have phones in our ears and cameras in our retinas which will be boring but on the upside perhaps we will also have jetpacks)

i read dave mckean’s essay on photography in/as comics
it was much more thoughtful than this with lots of better references
but dave mckean is god, so of course it is very good
but i think i would like to give him my actionsampler to see what he does with it
here’s something i’ve done with it

well there you go
i hope you like these
and i hope you like comics

written by yarnlass on 2010-11-04