The funk

"Today I put pen to paper to..." do absolutely nothing.

I turned down a request for a drawing yesterday. This makes an interesting bookend to the happiness I felt in the fall, when a local group requested some of my work and I cheerfully complied. They ended up ditching me for someone better known, and never paid me for the piece that they did use, but that's not the cause of the funk.

The funk needs no invitation. It relies on no inspiration. It just settles in and blankets everything with a thick layer of dust. The dust is made of particles of every setback and obstacle, every disappointment, grief, and sadness.

Among the billions of humans crawling the Earth, waste no time on those whose weaknesses make them fall and die. Feel justifiable anger about those who are struck down by the actions of greed and prejudice, but anyone who just runs out of energy is easily replaced by someone more fitted to survive.

The funk is like the winter as it affects wild animals. A particular weakened individual might make it through to spring, if no predator finds it. If the weakened one can keep trudging forward, foraging minimally, greater light and warmth might save it. But let one blop of snow fall a little too heavily on it or in front of it, or let the cold wind rake it for just too long, or a carnivore spot it and give chase, and the story ends there.

Functional depression is just that: functional. In that condition, a person can go through the motions of daily routine and continue to work, but that's the limit. It may be beyond the limit for someone whose job calls for too much spontaneous energy or complex thought.

I turned down the request for artwork because I haven't picked up a pen in months. What used to be a compulsive habit has deserted me. I don't want to tell someone that I will produce for them when I don't know if I can, or how long it will take me. Interesting ideas occur to me, but the habit pattern is broken, like almost all of my other habit patterns: exercise, music practice, exploration, interest in the future.

Enough spark remains to warm me almost to the point of enthusiasm at times. Food brings comfort, so cooking seems worth the  effort. Music was a comfort, but suddenly I ceased to progress and started to lose whatever scraps of ability I had managed to compile. "Don't be afraid to make an awful noise," a generous and kind professional musician and teacher told me. But now that seems to be the only kind of noise I can produce. I'm on the verge of quitting my weekly music group because everyone else is capable of producing so much better sounds. Why should I mess up everyone's evening? The group's teacher can use my money, but the shared goal is the music that I'm butchering. Poof goes another refuge from solitary darkness.

The biggest problem is time. I have a job that I used to enjoy. Now I'm just good at it. I need it to earn income to keep myself fed and sheltered. But, as the business I work for struggles for its life, I cannot fill the blank spaces in the work day with my own ideas anymore. I have to look as if I am busily engaged in things when there are no actual productive things in which to be busily engaged. For the peace of mind (relatively) of the poor bastards writing the checks, I have to fill every moment with something, even if it's just carrying a clipboard around and looking thoughtfully at some pile of clutter that used to serve a function when more people needed what we do and sell. And then it's time to go home and feed myself, do whatever domestic chores demand my attention, and fall into bed.

You need to learn to kill your dreams early enough in your life to come to grips with the reality of survival. Survival itself is victory. If you haven't amounted to anything by the time you're in your late 20s, it ain't going to happen. You blew it. Find something useful to do and crush out your imagination. That shit about how it's never too late? It's just that. Shit. You're burning daylight. Get busy.

Having used drugs and alcohol, I can tell you with certainty that they don't work. You may pass time in oblivion, but when you emerge from oblivion the things that sent you there will be waiting, and they have not been on vacation while you were away. I am fortunate that my consumption habits have never managed to take over my life. That's a lucky accident of my own physiology, not a commendable result of my iron will and strong character. For the benefit of all I report on the ineffectiveness of chemicals to truly banish the funk, to save anyone else from repeating the experiment. But in a way that makes it worse. There's nowhere to hide. There may, however, be somewhere to run. Physical activity can banish the funk, if you can get into it on a routine enough basis. It will be a struggle.

This fall, I resumed a regular schedule of really trivial physical exercise -- just a few light weights and some stretching -- that improved my outlook considerably. Something blew me out of the groove, probably the holidays and expanded work hours. I look now at a few hours or a day or two to myself and see a chaotic pile of everything I wished I had done for the past 40 years. See earlier reference to killing your dreams. But it's hard to know exactly when to put a bullet through their head. It's so irrevocable. You will be tempted, as I have been, to reanimate the corpse many times as the years pass. You'll fall for that bullshit about how it's never too late. I really want to. But I look at the work of people who did settle in and focus, and I see how wrong I am to believe that any other way can work.

The exception, I suppose, is writing. The verbal diarrhea never quits. Whether it's worth reading is another matter. I have been putting together words since I could hold a pencil. You can write whatever you're feeling and thinking, even if what you write is, "I feel like shit and I would jump off a bridge if that didn't seem like it would require too much energy."

When the funk lifts, it leaves us embarrassed by the feelings of uselessness and despair that had so recently seemed like the only reality. It can seem like a responsibility, to be that flat-affect character incapable of pleasure. Everyone is used to you in that role, so why disorient them? Besides, you know that sorry bastard is only off taking a piss behind a dumpster and will be back to inhabit your skin as soon as whatever sparked your unseemly bout of euphoria goes away. It even provides a nifty gateway to further self contempt, because you aren't even world class at depression.

For the moment, I have baked goods and cats. Much of winter lies ahead.

Help in the studio

Ordinarily I will have one cat helping me at my drawing table. This is the primary reason I use dry coloring and toning materials rather than wet washes and paints. That and the fact that I can leave dry methods at any point for other interruptions and use them easily in the field. Lame, I know, since intrepid painters and dip-pen artists have been working in adverse conditions for centuries. But being a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy I believe in a margin of safety.


Because I've been working in the studio more than usual lately, the cats have decided to increase their efforts as well. They've put on a double shift on my table now in case I thought I was actually going to get a lot of work done.

Proving my wisdom, they are lying right in the middle of what would be a cooling puddle of colored water if I'd risked doing brush work.

What do you call two exhibition halls full of cartoonists?

In this case it was called the Maine Comics Arts Festival.

My friend Jamie had half a table at the event, which was held this past weekend at the Ocean Gateway in Portland, Maine. I went over on Sunday, meeting my associate George over there with his wife Delores.

Portland is a great little city. My favorite part is that I can sneak in a side entrance until I don't feel like driving any farther and park for free on Sundays. I won't tell you how its done because I don't want the route to get crowded. Suffice to say it's not the obvious one, but it's quite direct. Metered spaces are free on Sunday, so I can ditch the car and walk, which is my favorite way to get around the tight confines of a downtown area. I could have parked near the venue for free. I just wanted the walk.

Not knowing what to expect, I brought a drawing kit, a camera and my netbook in case I had the opportunity to sling some ink with anyone. It turned out that horizontal space was scarce and the place was crowded, so I lugged that dead weight just for the exercise. I did get to show a few sketches to some people.

Jamie is very well informed about our cartooning world. I wish I was as outgoing. The next best thing is knowing him, though, because he made sure I didn't miss anything good that he'd found.

George is another asset. A lifelong traveler, he quietly observes his surroundings and is not afraid to strike up a conversation. He spotted Jeffrey Lewis, who is a musician first and a cartoonist as a sideline. Big G saw the CDs and asked Jeff about himself. As a result we both bought some music. Turns out that one of Jeff's musical collaborators is a friend of my musical friends and teachers Seth and Beverly. Jeff probably didn't know that, but when I started putting ones and zeroes together on the Internet after I got home the connection soon surfaced.

Jeff's CD turns out to be a grin a minute and great to cartoon to. Maybe that's because I know all the connections. Still, anything that helps me stay happily at the drawing table for more than a few seconds is welcome. For some reason I find it very hard to settle down and draw compared to the hours I'll spend on a piece of writing, or sawing cacophonously at the violin in hopes of improvement.

Jamie said George and I should be sure to check out Mike Lynch, a genuine professional gag cartoonist who sells to real magazines like Reader's Digest, Playboy, the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business review and others. That was an excellent tip, because Mike turns out to be an extremely nice guy. Maybe I only think that because he busted out laughing at one of my drawings. Every little bit helps.

I had brought two books of Nordic skiing cartoons George and I had drawn during our time at the Jackson shop. When I told Mike it was a collaboration he said he'd noticed the two styles. Nordic Confidential I and II were just hacked together in a mix of rough sketches and more finished renderings, just to get the material out.

George also spotted the title "Bikeman" at one exhibitor's table. The writer and artist there is Jon Chad, who also turns out to be connected with the Center for Cartoon Studies, where I met Jamie at their one and only gag cartooning workshop in 2006.

When I asked Jon if he was a cyclist, he declined to identify himself as such. As we talked, though, he said, "I love my bike. I love taking care of it and going places on it." I bought the two issues he had left of his Bikeman comic. It's not so much a graphic novel as graphic serialized fiction. While I would spell more meticulously and perhaps make different decisions in the drawings, I totally agree with his affection for his bike and the simple joy of going places on it. To me that is the essence of biking as opposed to a specific specialty in cycling as a sport or "lifestyle."

The Center had a lot of table frontage at the festival as well. I did not try to stop Robyn Chapman in mid flight, but it was nice to see her nonetheless. She seemed like a magical creature when I went to cartoon camp in 2006, popping up all over the neighborhood in White River Junction at moments when I needed help or guidance. At the festival she was doing portfolio reviews for aspiring cartoonists.

Time and again we tell each other: just keep cartooning. It's good to hear it.

Cartooning: The Original Social Media

My friend the talented and prolific cartoonist Jamie Smith wrote in his blog recently about how he likes to work in public spaces like cafes because the background noise of people helps him concentrate.

As often happens with Jamie's observations, it made me realize something: cartooning is inherently social. As also so often happens, I feel like an idiot for not realizing it sooner and incorporating the principle years ago.

It makes perfect sense. Who is the cartoonist? The doodler draws in the back of class and hands the sketches around for the reward of laughter. Even the most awkward social outcast who draws will try to find someone with whom to share it. Fine art might or might not be snooty, but cartooning is always looking for a friend.

Writers have been known to haunt cafes and bars, too, but their art takes more time to absorb. A cartoonist has the unique ability to dash off a sketch that can be appreciated in seconds, but viewed over and over.

A stand-up comedian can snap off a hilarious observation, but repetition might make it tiresome to the performer or the audience. For the cartoonist, the panel or page can be as fresh as when it was new. If the material doesn't depend on a topic that goes stale, every new viewer can enjoy it at full potency. The cartoonist can draw in a room alone or with a handful of people, but the product can be reproduced and distributed almost infinitely.

When I moved to the woods in 1987 I did not fully appreciate how the isolation of rural life would affect my ability to work. I have the same need for social contact that any cartoonist has. When I lived in a small city I liked to go out into it to watch people. I didn't need to meet them, just to have them around. Then I got pulled off into outdoor writing, which is a strange name for the genre, if you think about it. I did do a lot of the writing outdoors, but the term refers to writing about activities conducted outdoors. The craft required that I do these outdoor things. I wanted to know if they were really a good option for the working class compared to the more expensive and destructive pursuits marketed to them. The answer turns out to be yes and no. By the time I came back around to my original goals I was already here with a snug home and an income that looks better and better as other sectors of the economy topple.

A recent public radio segment I heard featured some people interviewing for jobs at a call center. The salary was $20,000 a year. The company they were applying to work for has very strict policies. One applicant came in with very businesslike attire and years of experience to try for this job that pays what would barely be a living wage in many parts of this country. Seriously, try to have a halfway decent place to live, a somewhat reliable used car and regular dental checkups for $20,000 a year in the Baltimore-Washington area. Forget trying to live in a truly nice place and have a solid vehicle and maybe a family for that kind of money. So my steady trickle, which has actually managed to exceed call center money after all these years, doesn't seem like such a stupid choice.

Jamie mentioned that some other cartoonists have said they run the radio or have the TV news on in the background. I get drawn into the broadcast, which can be good for generating ideas, but hard when I'm trying to follow through on one of them.

Ideas flow when I'm supposed to be doing something else. The social context of work or school provides the base level of activity that stimulates the brain and offers the promise of someone to laugh as soon as you finish and show them your work. In Jackson I could often do good finished renderings. In Wolfe City I can't. I drag home bedraggled scraps of scratch paper with scribbled doodles and notes and hope I will have the energy to overcome my media paralysis and actually finish some of them on my so-called "days off."

Web publishing offers the possibility of a worldwide audience. The tricky part is hooking up cash flow to this exposure. You also have to avoid getting sucked into the vast array of truly fantastic passive entertainment and educational material on that same worldwide buffet. Your odds of being seen are really no better than if you scrawled on the wall of an alley in a second rate city on the skids. The difference is that the city can now be anywhere in the world, with the correspondingly greater number of lost pedestrians who might stumble into your seedy neighborhood and appreciate your doodle. Unless they leave a comment, the social aspect is conspicuously lacking. And processing and responding to those comments requires another chunk of your time.

Home alone today with cats climbing on me or my table, I have to try to get some work done.