Oh. I love this!!!! EVERY TIME, LYNDA BARRY. EVERY TIME!
thenearsightedmonkey:
Will 2012 be a good year for you? Marlys asks the crystal ball on your behalf and it answers…….
SHAPES TO DRAW WHEN YOU ARE TRYING TO FIGURE OUT A PROBLEM.
yes!!! i needed this today.
Lynda Barry sketchbook page
Do Writers, with a capital W, look down on her students? “Absolutely. I have a real chip on my shoulder about that — the idea that some things aren’t art. It’s from growing up poor. You run into that your whole life — people of my background and education can’t participate.
“Why does it matter?” she asked. “It’s like me saying, ‘I’m beautiful.’ Compared to other women, I’m not. But who does it hurt for me to say so?”
I feel like all I ever do is re-blog Lynda Barry’s posts. But anyway. If you are in Madison, you really need to GO TO THIS MONDAY NIGHT SERIES. “Passing Strange” is one of my favorite plays. I am hella jealous of all the people who get to go hang out with THE AMAZING STEW.
What song is carrying itself through The Near-Sighted Monkey’s mind today? This song: ARLINGTON HILL by STEW from PASSING STRANGE. It’s a ride she just won’t get off of. What is it about a song that makes you need to hear it over and over again? What makes a song play over and over again in your mind? Where is it playing?
Special to those in the Madison, Wisconsin area, Stew is the University of Wisconsin’s Artist in Residence for Fall semester. He’s teaching a class called “Stew’s Music Factory” AND he’s bringing in artists every week HIS MONDAY NIGHT MIND BLOWING SERIES THAT IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC! (Thank You University of Wisconsin-Madison!) See the schedule by CLICKING HERE, then make plans to get to Madison, WI on MONDAY NIGHTS TO DIG THE MAGIC ACTION! Write a paper on it! OK! BUT! If you do not live driving distance to the Madison WI area we are so feeling sorry for you right now.
“We could talk about BANANAS.”
“A Word With Chester,” from Sifl & Olly, found on Lynda Barry’s blog. I very much appreciate that she also loves Sifl & Olly.
The Near-Sighted Monkey bows before these sock puppet maestri.
From Lynda Barry’s blog. I love this. True story: I found Barry’s work in the Y/A section of the Ingleside Library when I was 10 because a librarian thought it was for children, because it was comics. Finding her work at that age was actually one of the best things that has ever happened to me. Her work was major solace for me as a kid. When I re-read it as an adult, everything had new layers & perspective, and I fell in love all over again.
Lynda! Barry! haz! a! tumblr!
1. Lynda Barry haz a tumblr!
2. According to said tumblr: “During Spring Semester of 2012, Lynda Barry will be the University of Wisconsin’s Artist in Residence on the Madison campus. She’ll be teaching a writing and picture-making class called, “What It Is: Manually Shifting the Image” which will meet twice a week. The class will be open to both graduate and undergraduate students from all academic disciplines. No artistic talent is required to be part of this class, but students should have an interest in memory, images, how the brain works, and what the biological function of the thing we call ‘the arts’ may be. To find out more visit:http://www.arts.wisc.edu/artsinstitute/IAR/barry/”
Dudes, HOW CLOSE am I to figuring out a way to enroll at the University of Wisconsin (for at least a semester?), subletting my studio for the Spring of 2012, and living in Madison for a few months to take this class with her? SO CLOSE. SO VERY VERY CLOSE. No really I am serious!
I guess where there is a will there is way?
3. I wonder if she’d like my Magic Cephalopod tattoo.
So! This is my HELLA BOSS new tattoo, pix of the tat in progress, and the original Lynda Barry illustration that the tattoo is based on. The work was done by Mikal Gilmore at New Rose Tattoo in Portland. She did an amazing job, and I could not be more pleased.
I got this tattoo somewhat spur of the moment, but I have been thinking about this particular tattoo for months, and about getting a Lynda Barry-inspired tattoo for years. It feels very right.
And for those of you who are wondering why I just got a giant hot pink cephalopod on an ocean stage holding a purple fountain pen in their leftmost tentacle tattooed onto my left arm (not that I need to explain it, but I like tattoo stories):
* Lynda Barry is probably my favorite writer and artist. I have whole-heartedly adored her work since I was 10, and I found her book Come Over Come Over in the YA section of the otherwise pretty ramshackle Ingleside Library.
* The Magic Cephalopod is a concept/creature Barry talks about in her awesome book on writing & the teaching of writing, What It Is. The Magic Cephalopod is a sort of guide & mascot for writers.
* I wanted The Magic Cephalopod to be visible as a writer & a performer — hence the pen & the stage (the stage is in Barry’s original drawing, the fountain pen & ink pot are not).
* Also, I am left-handed (hence the leftmost tentacle). And I can’t actually write with traditional fountain pens b/c the nibs point the wrong way for lefties, but I love the look of the things. Also, it’s a Magic (left-tentacled) Cephalopod, it can write with whatever the hell it wants, right?
* Also, I really like hot pink.
* Also, perhaps most importantly, I believe in joy & silliness. :)
In Praise of Jive-Ass Fakers
A chapter of my novel is due next week.
I’m having the same freak-out I have every time I show new work to people. The one where I start to panic about my abilities, and think of myself as (as Lynda Barry so eloquently puts it in her comic “Lost and Found”) a “jive-ass faker who can’t spell and doesn’t even know what ‘story structure’ is.”
I can’t find a link to “Lost and Found” to put here, but it’s in the book One! Hundred! Demons!, which you should read. Now. It’s okay, I’ll wait while you go get it from the library.
To summarize: Barry talks about growing up in a household with three books. She talks about reading them over and over as a kid, and getting other reading material and inspiration from weird, unexpected places: Lost & Found ads, Wanted ads, “Hints from Heloise,” “I Am Joe’s Lung” from Reader’s Digest, etc. She talks about having no “formal training” as a writer, and how that sometimes trips her up around her writing and her own sense of her abilities. There’s a wonderful flashback scene to high school, where she has an encounter with a creative writing teacher named Mrs. Snobaroo.
In short, the comic takes a perfect and very precise jab at literary and academic elitism. I read it at least fives times as I was preparing for Our First Teachers. It kept me grounded and reminded me to not pull that shit with my students, ever.
“Lost and Found” is a piece I identity with very deeply, even though there’s a lot in it that I can’t identify with because my experiences growing up were so different. I can’t identify with the lack of books, for example. Both my parents’ had Masters’ Degrees in Literature (though, weirdly, neither of them ended up being academics). My parents are old-school hippies, bohemians who love to read, and who read pretty strange stuff. I grew up in a household with hundreds of books, a household with an entire shelf devoted to beat poetry. (An interesting side note: The first sexually-explicit writing I ever read wasn’t a dirty magazine somebody found on the playground — it was from my parents’ poetry shelf. My first porn was Allen Ginsberg… Which probably explains a lot about me, now that I think about it.)
At this point, I also can’t identify with the lack of “formal training.” I took creative writing classes in high school. I went to college, and to a snooty expensive elitist liberal arts college at that, and I studied writing there. The whole reason I even have this novel chapter due is that I’m getting an MFA! Not that I think that an MFA or majoring in creative writing as a undergrad teaches someone to be a writer. But I’m ostensibly learning about things like “story structure” in this program.
And yet. When I have new work due, I lay awake at night with a voice going around and around in my head. The voice usually says something like this: “Where do I get off calling myself ‘a writer’? I just write like how my friends talk! Sometimes I confuse ‘its’ and ‘it’s’! Fiction my foot, my work is like 7% fiction the way my foot is 7% of my body*! I write about my life! Who even wants to read about my grandma? Or my mom? Or me? I’m a jive-ass faker who doesn’t even know what the hell story structure is, where do I get off even being in graduate school?!?”
Of course, after I’ve worked myself into a nice, anxious lather and calmed myself down, I remember that my favorite writers write how they talk. (Like Lynda Barry, for one.) I remember that I don’t need to be “formal” to be elegant or eloquent. And I remember that a lot people have told me that they actually do want to read about my grandmother. And my mom. And me.
The trouble is, anxiety is not rational or reasonable. Of course I still freak out. Of course, some days, I’m still not convinced my writing matters. So I’ve decided that if I can’t make the voice go away — if, no matter how hard I try to shut it up, my brain is still gonna yell “NYAH NYAH NYAH, JIVE-ASS FAKER!” at me on occasion — I’m gonna do my best to embrace jive-ass fakery as a good thing.
To that end:
Jive-Ass Fakers are creative. Jive-Ass Fakers break the rules. Jive-Ass Fakers are brave. Jive-Ass Fakers are vulnerable, and recognize vulnerability as a strength, especially in art. Jive-Ass Fakers are resilient. Jive-Ass are smart. Jive-Ass Fakers are resourceful. Jive-Ass Fakers take risks.
What else do Jive-Ass Fakers do?
*Thanks, NCN. ;)
