More Artists and Projecting Pain
Thursday, June 02, 2005
How’s about some more artists? I like throwing artist out there, easiest way to do my daily plugs. Kristen – fun, fun, fun illustrations. Retro feel with a modern, sexy twist. The Pencil Haus – all three of these guys are great but Jared’s stuff is just cool as all fuck – one to watch. Chris Tessmer – some of his work leans a little too far to the manga side of things to excite me but the rest of it is so goddamn delicious that I have no qualms with using words like “delicious” to describe it.
_____________________________
I do have some more early art to share with you guys and I'll just dump them throughout the story, in between paragraphs. For those of you that are new here, I recently stumbled across a collection of art and stories from the 8th grade, a time when I took myself way too seriously and wrote (and drew) unintentionally funny pieces of crap. So far I posted my Poetry Portfolio, anti-drug short story, comic-book illustrations and a Hulk Hogan vs. Dan Quayle story. Before I get into my story for today, here’s some Wesley Snipes for your ass (again, I was 13/14 for all of these and I know they're not good, laugh all you want).
After the 8th grade I kept in touch with Mrs. Friedman while I started to write my novel. That’s right, at 13 years old I decided to write a novel and it was as good as you expect a novel to be when written by a thirteen year old. I would post pieces of it with this story but I don’t have it. After writing over a hundred pages, typing actually, I decided I didn’t like it and I threw it away. 100 pages of potential comedy gold in the Fresh Kills Landfill.
The book was weird from what I remember, the first in a trilogy about an evil messiah and God’s hunter sent to kill him. It starts with the hunter as a kid, fitting into society, growing up under the care of some secret cult and eventually falling in love with the woman who’s carrying Satan’s spawn. A bit heavy-handed but fuck it, I was fourteen at this point.
Second book followed the Satan spawn doing a reverse Jesus. Third book was the final showdown. Thinking about it now, it seems like the kind of plot certain comic companies would hype up as their big summer project. I did my research, too. I’ve always been a huge religious nut, I would sit down and read bible stories like they were Hardy Boys. I started getting into the Apocrypha (Macabees remains my all time favorite bible story) and the Dead Sea Scrolls in Junior High and branching into Islam and religions not derived from Judaism. This is what I did for fun the second half of Junior High. Well, this and play the baritone and occasionally hook up with 16-18 year olds (here and here).
Half-way through writing it I got a new computer, a Tandy, complete with a printer. The typewriter went into mothballs. Before the Tandy it was my Apple IIc that we got used off of a friend of the family. The Apple was good for playing King’s Quest, Logo, Beachhead and this game where you were a pig in some elevator and had to shoot balloons; I think a wolf was involved as well.
I was such an awkward dork with the Tandy (any computer, really). One time my uncle came over and my mom yelled at me to come out and say “hi”. I stomped into the living room and with all the attitude a young teen can muster up I said, “I’m busy mom. I gotta reset my scribe.” Reset my scribe. I was putting paper in my printer.
But with the Tandy I was able to save my work, go back and edit it; which I never did. Even now I have to force myself to edit my own work. I usually save that kind of work for “other people”. This website, if anything, has been great for teaching myself discipline.
Speaking of discipline I’m all over the road with this story. It’s not even really a story, just a stream of conscious of sorts. I will say this; I eventually resurrected my novel in college. I felt like this time I was more prepared for it and I really dug into it. Got to about 200 pages this time and I have to admit, it was pretty good. I felt bad, though.
WARNING: This gets a little depressing.
Ah man, this is one of the tough ones. I was dating R when I wrote the story and I based a character on her. R and I were weird; I was so in love with her for the first year we were dating. The year and the half after that should have never happened. I think we can both say that in retrospect. There were a few good times but we just weren’t happy.
So as the relationship with R started going south, the character I based on her did as well. She was originally my leading lady, the strong and dynamic female character. She was being forced to mother the hunter alongside a man she despised, at first, but they were falling for each other as time passed. But, as the book went on, her character started deteriorating. She left the male lead, got hooked on heroin and ended up getting HIV. I never wished this shit on R, but I can’t deny I was projecting bad things onto her. I would always tell myself that it was how the character evolved; it was a great dynamic for the story. The character was no longer R; she was just my starting point. All bullshit, of course, and the story fell apart because of it.
In retrospect the correlation was clear. And the thing is, if I was projecting negative feelings onto her that’s fine. It’s not the healthiest outlet but what can you do? It was the method I went with that kills me. Three of my family members died of AIDS. Two of them I didn’t get to see to closely but for one of them I had a front-row seat; it was bad. And that pain and that suffering – that’s what I projected onto her.
It’s funny; I threw up a link to Post Secret a couple of weeks ago. Recently I’ve been seeing a lot of people saying that many of the secrets were fake, too over the top. Well here’s one of my secrets and if I sent this in on a postcard (I projected death and disease onto my ex-girlfriend because I couldn’t break up with her) I’m willing to bet it would be as fake looking as some of the others. Maybe since I’m throwing my whole life out here for people to read it seems more real when I drop shit like this, but I believe every one of those secrets on that site. We’re all capable of some pretty fucked up shit, especially when things are falling apart and all we want is an out.
_____________________________
I do have some more early art to share with you guys and I'll just dump them throughout the story, in between paragraphs. For those of you that are new here, I recently stumbled across a collection of art and stories from the 8th grade, a time when I took myself way too seriously and wrote (and drew) unintentionally funny pieces of crap. So far I posted my Poetry Portfolio, anti-drug short story, comic-book illustrations and a Hulk Hogan vs. Dan Quayle story. Before I get into my story for today, here’s some Wesley Snipes for your ass (again, I was 13/14 for all of these and I know they're not good, laugh all you want).
After the 8th grade I kept in touch with Mrs. Friedman while I started to write my novel. That’s right, at 13 years old I decided to write a novel and it was as good as you expect a novel to be when written by a thirteen year old. I would post pieces of it with this story but I don’t have it. After writing over a hundred pages, typing actually, I decided I didn’t like it and I threw it away. 100 pages of potential comedy gold in the Fresh Kills Landfill.
The book was weird from what I remember, the first in a trilogy about an evil messiah and God’s hunter sent to kill him. It starts with the hunter as a kid, fitting into society, growing up under the care of some secret cult and eventually falling in love with the woman who’s carrying Satan’s spawn. A bit heavy-handed but fuck it, I was fourteen at this point.
Second book followed the Satan spawn doing a reverse Jesus. Third book was the final showdown. Thinking about it now, it seems like the kind of plot certain comic companies would hype up as their big summer project. I did my research, too. I’ve always been a huge religious nut, I would sit down and read bible stories like they were Hardy Boys. I started getting into the Apocrypha (Macabees remains my all time favorite bible story) and the Dead Sea Scrolls in Junior High and branching into Islam and religions not derived from Judaism. This is what I did for fun the second half of Junior High. Well, this and play the baritone and occasionally hook up with 16-18 year olds (here and here).
Half-way through writing it I got a new computer, a Tandy, complete with a printer. The typewriter went into mothballs. Before the Tandy it was my Apple IIc that we got used off of a friend of the family. The Apple was good for playing King’s Quest, Logo, Beachhead and this game where you were a pig in some elevator and had to shoot balloons; I think a wolf was involved as well.
I was such an awkward dork with the Tandy (any computer, really). One time my uncle came over and my mom yelled at me to come out and say “hi”. I stomped into the living room and with all the attitude a young teen can muster up I said, “I’m busy mom. I gotta reset my scribe.” Reset my scribe. I was putting paper in my printer.
But with the Tandy I was able to save my work, go back and edit it; which I never did. Even now I have to force myself to edit my own work. I usually save that kind of work for “other people”. This website, if anything, has been great for teaching myself discipline.
Speaking of discipline I’m all over the road with this story. It’s not even really a story, just a stream of conscious of sorts. I will say this; I eventually resurrected my novel in college. I felt like this time I was more prepared for it and I really dug into it. Got to about 200 pages this time and I have to admit, it was pretty good. I felt bad, though.
WARNING: This gets a little depressing.
Ah man, this is one of the tough ones. I was dating R when I wrote the story and I based a character on her. R and I were weird; I was so in love with her for the first year we were dating. The year and the half after that should have never happened. I think we can both say that in retrospect. There were a few good times but we just weren’t happy.
So as the relationship with R started going south, the character I based on her did as well. She was originally my leading lady, the strong and dynamic female character. She was being forced to mother the hunter alongside a man she despised, at first, but they were falling for each other as time passed. But, as the book went on, her character started deteriorating. She left the male lead, got hooked on heroin and ended up getting HIV. I never wished this shit on R, but I can’t deny I was projecting bad things onto her. I would always tell myself that it was how the character evolved; it was a great dynamic for the story. The character was no longer R; she was just my starting point. All bullshit, of course, and the story fell apart because of it.
In retrospect the correlation was clear. And the thing is, if I was projecting negative feelings onto her that’s fine. It’s not the healthiest outlet but what can you do? It was the method I went with that kills me. Three of my family members died of AIDS. Two of them I didn’t get to see to closely but for one of them I had a front-row seat; it was bad. And that pain and that suffering – that’s what I projected onto her.
It’s funny; I threw up a link to Post Secret a couple of weeks ago. Recently I’ve been seeing a lot of people saying that many of the secrets were fake, too over the top. Well here’s one of my secrets and if I sent this in on a postcard (I projected death and disease onto my ex-girlfriend because I couldn’t break up with her) I’m willing to bet it would be as fake looking as some of the others. Maybe since I’m throwing my whole life out here for people to read it seems more real when I drop shit like this, but I believe every one of those secrets on that site. We’re all capable of some pretty fucked up shit, especially when things are falling apart and all we want is an out.
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posted by Jason at
12:19 AM
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