Okay. I have 2 essays to write but instead I feel like writing another blog post…. I haven’t thought about neocities in a hot second. That’s mainly because I’ve been so busy and the Dr. Strangelove shrine was like somewhat of a big project so I’m feeling a little html burnout. And a continuing lack of inspiration. I see such cool websites and designs and layouts on Neocities or Pinterest that I really love but once again I have no like actual content to fill these pages with. And then when I do get an idea for something to make a page about I have no idea how to design the page. Well whatever. I like this because I don’t have much like nagging at me to update my site because I see so many like abandoned sites all the time and I truly do not care about like view or follower count. So who cares!
I’m actively avoiding writing one of my essays right now. I have til the 28th to complete it so I’m not really worried but I could be like creating an outline for it or literally anything but I really just don’t feel like it. It’s a research paper about Watergate. I chose Watergate because it’s one of the most hilarious things that’s ever happened. But also like… if Watergate happened today not a soul would give a damn and that’s the craziest part to me. Richard Nixon resigned over something that MAGA would be defending Trump for doing. Which is like OBVIOUSLY. But still something to think about. I still need to watch ‘All the President’s Men’ since it’s like THE Watergate movie. So far the only thing I’ve seen is ‘Dick’ from 1999 which is about two teenage girls who become friends with Richard Nixon and end up being Deep Throat and revealing the secret tapes to the world. And Bruce McCulloch from the Kids in the Hall plays Carl Bernstein. It’s a really wonderful movie.
Today I bought a pair of Vietnam-era jungle boots from the weirdest military surplus store in the world. It was super cramped with just like absurd amounts of stuff all crammed into this tiny store in floor to ceiling shelves and racks and it was all run by two guys and my friend and I were the ONLY people in the store. The guy running it kept following us around and asking if we needed help looking for anything. He saw I was looking at boots and asked what size I was and when I told him I was a 10 he looked down at my feet and said “No you’re not”. He told me my shoes were made from horses and that I’m actually a size 8. So I bought size 8 combat boots for maybe more than I would’ve liked to pay. But he was very kind and I’m extremely socially anxious so I felt bad. And also he looked giddy after I bought them. So that made me smile. I regret nothing!
I recently finished reading ‘Slaughterhouse Five’. AMAZING BOOK!!!! I tried reading ‘Cat’s Cradle’ some time ago and I just couldn’t get into it for whatever reason but I knew I couldn’t give up on Kurt so easily and also Slaughterhouse Five is like his most iconic books so. Y’know. But I loved it so much! I’ve probably only genuinely attempted to write two fiction stories in my life so far because I’m not very naturally good at it and it’s not something that I really find a lot of interest in… BUT as I was reading the book I weirdly noticed a lot of my own like writing style in Vonneguts writing. Which, obviously Kurt Vonnegut is a far better writer than I but it was kind of jarring. He writes very… bluntly? He uses a lot of short and matter of fact sentences I guess. He’s poetic without using super flowery language. He gets his point across. I like this style of writing a lot. It reminds me a lot of David Byrne’s lyricism too, which I treat like the bible. Just all very straightforward in its language and structure.
I’m allowing one short paragraph to mental stuff that’s been bothering me just to get it out of my system. School is always constantly keeping me as busy as possible and I hate it because all of the work is starting to feel more and more pointless. And whenever I’m not busy with school work I get these random sharp prangs in my chest of anxiety about all the school work I could be doing or am going to have to do. I’m in this weird kind of paradox where I hate school so much BECAUSE I love learning but I just despise the stress of maintaining good grades. I want to write essays and have discussions and learn without the constant anxiety.
Here’s another thing I’ve been thinking about. Even though I think trying to find some kind of all encompassing purpose to life is pointless, I’ve currently been feeling like everything I do is kind of purposeless! But that’s also because I yearn to do things and create things for other people and all of my hobbies are entirely for myself. Which isn’t a bad thing at all. I just don’t feel very productive sometimes. And I’ve had this argument in my head a thousand times, but truly really genuinely sometimes I NEED to feel productive or else I lose my mind. And certain things I do for myself feel productive which is great! But sometimes I’m unhappy with the outcome of these creative projects and so It doesn’t feel productive at all and I end up feeling frustrated and pent up. I want to start making zines. I want to start making comics. I want to start making zines with comics… But the trouble with that is the same trouble I have with websites: I HAVE NOTHING TO PUT IN THEM! I can draw and I like to draw and I want to draw. But I don’t know WHAT to draw or WHAT to write comics about. The thing I admire about artists like Robert Crumb (despite his low-life behavior) is the fact that he almost treats comic writing and drawing like his diary. His sketchbooks are his diaries and his comics are his webblog I guess. I really love that because I’m a very visual person and it’s hard for me to fully understand something unless I can visualize it. And a problem I run into all the time is trying and failing to express things through words. But pairing words with drawings fixes this! You can express all the emotion and situations you need with the drawings and then it gives your dialogue the exact tone you need it to have without all the complexities of diction and tone and mood with writing long paragraphs. It’s all very blunt. I like bluntness. Robert Crumb is interesting to me in this way because I think he’s a perfect example of why “seperating the art from the artist” is a stupid phrase and a stupid thing to try to do. Robert Crumb is a creep and because he treats his comics like his diary they reflect his creepiness to an uncomfortable degree. You can’t separate the art from the artist because all art shows some reflection of the artist who made it. In Crumb’s case it’s just a little more. Apparent. But anyways, famous pieces of art are often defined by who created them y’know? When you study art you don’t just study the work itself you study the artist’s entire life because their life gives you some of the most important context to their work! And again some art is obviously more personal than others but it all comes from the heart no matter what y’know. I think separating the art from the artist is a silly way to think and just comes from people who want to listen to “problematic” musicians without feeling guilty or like some moral failing. HEY. No one actually cares by the way. Everyone just wants to feel morally superior to eachother all the time. I’m pissed off by it more and more every day. Anyways coming back from that tangent: I’ve loved Robert Crumb’s work from the first time I saw it. His artstyle is so distinct and obviously his use of cross-hatching is genuinely masterful. I mean you’ve probably seen some of his more cartoony-styled work but his realistic portraits and other illustrations are incredibly stunning. I used to hate cross-hatching just as a stylistic choice but his work made me fall in love with it. I use cross-hatching in all of my drawings too now… it gives the illustration some grit and texture that kind of makes all of it feel a little grimy. One of the things I hate the most in comic and illustration is the fixation on neatness and perfection. Whenever I was younger I would watch digital speedpaints on YouTube and just get incredibly irritated watching them draw the same line 30 times until it was perfect. Some of my favorite drawings are wobbly-lined doodles with pen on paper, not sketched out beforehand or anything just straight off the dome. This is how Crumb does it. This is how a lot of comic artists do I guess. When you just have this constant urge to draw things you can’t worry about technicalities and cleanliness. I also think at some point in the process of learning to draw all the technical stuff starts coming so easy to you that you don’t even have to think about it anymore. I also remember as a kid being in awe watching Kohei Horikoshi (creator of My Hero Academia) draw his characters with no sketch, starting with the hair and just kind of working his way down. I’m thinking now that maybe my fixation on this skill specifically comes from my other obsession with improvisation and looseness. I feel very tight and knotted up all the time, always planning out my responses to things like videogame dialogue options and all that business. so. Obviously it makes sense that I would be obsessed with people who have the ability to just let loose! Whether they be witty or spontaneous or infinitely creative. I envy it severely and im endlessly fascinated by it! I’m reminded of this one little conversation from the movie Naked Lunch:
“So you can't rewrite...'cause to rewrite is to deceive and lie… and you betray your own thoughts. To rethink the flow and the rhythm and the tumbling out of the words… is a betrayal. And it's a sin, Martin. It's a sin.”
“I don't accept your, uh… Catholic interpretation of my compulsive, uh… necessity to rewrite every single word at least 100 times. Guilt is -Thanks. Guilt is the key, not sin. Guilt re not writing the best that I can. Guilt re not, uh, considering everything from every possible angle. Balancing everything.”
“Well, how about guilt re-censoring your best thoughts? Your most honest, primitive, real thoughts… because that's what your laborious rewriting amounts to, Martin.”
“Is rewriting really censorship, Bill? Because I'm completely fucked if it is.”
“Exterminate all rational thought.
That is the conclusion I have come to.”
TANGENT 2 OVER. I wish I could use comics to reflect myself the way Crumb can. But he’s also some kind of freak of nature. So who knows.
Separate paragraph but still related. I also love Allison Bechdel. She’s the master at writing interesting and realistic characters. I mean Dykes to Watch Out For I think is one of the best comic series there is. I love Bechdel’s artwork so much but I think the thing I like most about her comics is her writing and characterization. The perfect comic to me is a combination of Bechdel’s writing and Crumb’s artwork. And Watchmen-style coloring. I don’t have much to say about Watchmen except for the fact that I LOVE the use of colors in each panel. Anyways. I take inspiration from all these places but I just have absolutely no idea where to really put it. Back to my original original point: I want to draw comics but I have literally nothing that inspires me enough to draw comics about. And don’t tell me that I can make comics and zines about literally anything because this is all that they tell you and I’ve heard it a trillion times and it does nothing to help me. Of course I know that I can do whatever the hell I want that’s just meaningless to me if I have nothing that I want to do. Ideas either come to me on the spot or I have to spend ages trying to uncover them. And usually I end up waiting longer for the former to happen than just putting in the mental effort and time of sitting down to brainstorm. When it comes to zine making everything I try to do just ends up feeling kind of forced I suppose and then I end up hating the final product because it didn’t come from the heart. I come up with a topic for a zine in my head that would be cool and then I sit down to make it and I realize I actually have no ideas and nothing to write about. And I know zines don’t have to have writing… but I like them better when they do… Actually on that note I did want to make a ‘Zine Rack’ page for this site that would just be scans of all the zines i’ve collected so far. Similar to and directly inspired by grossgirl94. And I guess internally my other plan was to also feature zines that I had created here too. BUT well I haven’t created any zines!
My yearning to create zines also comes from this yearning to actively participate in my local punk scene. Going to shows is fun and obviously showing up for the events that people organize is just as important as anything else but I still feel this kind of disconnect with the community. A lot of this I’m well aware comes from my unrelenting social anxiety which is… kind of hard to fix… but I’m working on it…. Beyond that I’m still kind of trying to figure out where that disconnect comes from. The people that make up the community are so beautiful and unique and similar to me in ways that my classmates or family members can’t satisfy. And yet….! I still feel this overwhelming alienation. And right now I think that comes from what I feel to be a lack of participation. Which I guess sounds stupid because even showing up is participating. But I think the issue is I go to shows and end up feeling like a ghost. Just kind of lurking around very aimlessly while the bands set up and the floor clears out as everyone disperses to mingle about and make their own noise with eachother. It is my fault and I know it! I know I can’t talk to people so my next best solution is to participate in a way that I feel more comfortable with. I can make things. All I do is make things. I want to share my made things with other people. I can’t communicate the way I want to through conversation so I want to do so through art and writing. I want my making things to have a purpose. And if everything I make is exclusively personal then I can’t share these things with other people. Half of the fun of making art is being able to share it with others. Not seeking simple compliments or likes or views or any of that but because I want to have a conversation with other people without having to talk. That’s the thesis statement of this blog post and I think of my whole creative existence.
I feel like the most frustrated person on planet Earth.
If you read all of this I love you. If you didn’t don’t feel guilty because I understand just like Jesus and I love you too.
- Germ