My Friends,
It is a huge thing to try to find your voice, and an even bigger thing to actually find it. Truth is your voice evolves with you, and when you are in tune with who you are, and what you love it becomes something exquisite. When your pain is grinding you down, be it grief, regret, or just the pain of being alive it… well that voice changes. You end up listening to Stabbing Westward, Nine Inch Nails and watching way to many news broadcasts. Living on the venom this world can secrete instead of the nobility, and wonder.
All of that being said there is still artistic merit to those feelings, power in that voice as long as you can focus it, and not allow it to greif you into the stone age. There really is nothing worse than loosing someone you care about, to life or to death both suck, and both leave you feeling, well not feeling whole. I have learned it is important to let yourself feel it, talk about it, normalize it, and you can find yourself on the path to healing a lot faster. That is something we all need, oh man healing faster. The thought of it… being healed.
That existential stuff is a dwell I am finding myself in lately. Right now I am assembling the things I need to get the latest issue out. The book is at the Printer actually and I am waiting on that big set of white boxes to light up my life and get here. I can hear my son practive the guitar in the other room, and I love hearing him process and practice it. Seeing and hearing my children grow there is a lot of healing there. It helps you ride out the thoughts of the past. Dinner is on the stove, my daughter is reading on the couch. Today I bought her lunch and got a hug.
The nasty though is still there. It still crows away at that emo part of my skull that never sees it coming.
I share this today for a few reasons. This first is because there are times when my thoughts do a lot of things, both good and bad. Like all of ours do. our voices are such powerfull tools to direct all of that energy. In this case I have been focusing on a lot of things lately. Memories, missing limbs, missing friends, missing sisters… Travis Gibb reached out to me and asked if I was up to helping he and Bret Juliano bring the new Cthulhu vs Fairy Tale to life.
The timing had me focused at the time with missing my sister Toby, She had this affect on me growing up, I believe she was the very first person to explain artistic voice to me. It was to inspire courage in my and quite clumsy. Her elequence is not really the issue. Telling me I had a voice, at all is the point. It doesnt exactly make sense to an 8 year old, but her voice was there long after, and eventually it was understood.
Growing up I tended to modify how I behaved to the friends that I had. Normal for a lot of us I am sure. She just wanted me to find my way.
While I was thinking about her voice, and her message to me Travis and Brett came calling, and late one night I began Brett’s script. There is a certain amount of trust there so visually there was little to no direction. To be honest I prefer that. Writers who do not trust their artist are as vile as the morons using AI to replace us. Their lack of control and need to have their thoughts realized, bleh me no likey. What I do like is someone who trusts me.
As a resu;t I thought to myself that I wanted to try the style I do things in my notebooks when it is just for me. I dont usually plan on printing or publishing that art so its loose, and shaded. Like I said its what I do for me, and is heavily based on what I did when I was younger. I dont tend to show it often because I had a comic creator tell my younger self it was awefull and could never sell a book. Even now those words still stick there even though was hack and I have learned a bit of a Deuche.
To my life is messy, and art should reflect that in an asymetrical way. Balance exists on in perception and I really dont go for perfection. or the appearance there of. The feedback I got was great so far, and I am feeling the need to keep using it, to build on it and let my voice speak. Fuck the hacks, and the others who like to shut people’s voice down like that. They were not as brave as she was.
Being Brave
James