Arising and Passing
Midway in the course of our life, I found myself within a dark wood...
“Midway” for Dante was thirty years old. This is my last blog post of my thirties.
According to 14th Century Italian literature, I’m past my prime. Entering the autumn of my life.
Today is the Fall Equinox, Twenty Twenty Three. Page 54 of FLOLAS is coming along. I have it sketched and inked, and I’ve even started the most laborious part - the actual painting. However, I have a day job that has been particularly busy lately and then I got some freelance work (see above - special credit to Fefisbf) that’s slowed me down. I think I should have it much closer to finished in the next week, but if you’re familiar with my work at all, you know that it takes me a very long time.
I think after I finish Song One I’ll take a stab at animation again. That was originally my goal when I was a bright eyed youth - I wanted to become an animator. Can you imagine though? If I we’re animating this thing? How long that’d take?
Infinities of Time have passed.
And I’m only on Page 54.
Something I’ve been thinking a lot about since my last blog is simply the nature of Time itself, and us as conscious beings, passing through it. That sounds like a whoa, deep bro kind of thing to think, but I mean it in the simplest way. I think about that bright eyed hopeful twenty one year old version of myself and wonder what ever happened to him. Not in a longingly sort of way either, I just mean that Time necessarily changes you. Time and Experience, both. I had the experience of learning that:
Animation is very hard to do.
It takes forever even if you are good at it.
In order to make superior work, you need a team of people.
Teams of Animators are very expensive.
And Ultimately - I just want to tell a story exactly the way I want to tell it.
So a comic book serves that purpose well. I haven’t given up on the idea of turning this thing into an animated series - not at all. All that’s happened is that I have learned and accepted the enormity of the task and have set a game plan to chip away at it. Who knows - perhaps AI tools in the next few years will greatly assist independent art like mine. I can totally see that becoming a thing. It already is, sure, but I’m more interested in interpolation tools for Photoshop, etc. FLOLAS will absolutely still be the subject matter, I’d just like to bring it to life in ways that only motion can achieve.
I also discovered while studying animation that I have a very technical mind that demanded to be acknowledged just as much as my artistic pursuits. Computer tinkering work is not just more lucrative than drawing a weird comic book on the Internet, it also innately springs forth by my very nature. Lately, for instance, I’ve been buying cheap little Android and Linux based handhelds and installing different firmware and mods - ya know, like for fun. I like the idea of having a minimalist arcade in my living room with every imaginable video game system at the ready - look man, I’m a giant nerd.
In Meditation, they teach you to focus on the breath until you get into a fugue or floe state and you simply notice the phenomena occurring - raw sensory input. It’s very relaxing and simple and is often confused as something more profound. You simply sit still and let the world occur around you. Something you’ll notice once you start a practice is how often thoughts arise, then pass away.
All things do this. Sensations rise into consciousness, they’re noticed, pondered, and then they fade back into the unconscious. To hold onto them would only bring suffering. That is the nature of suffering actually: trying to hold on.
I think about the impetus to write this particular blog, and the girl that inspired it. I saw her recently and she’s so different now that she’s practically a different person. The girl that I knew and that drove me so mad no longer exists. The same way that the younger version of myself no longer exists. Sure, we’re both still alive, but even though it’s only been six years or so, the nature of our existences has so fundamentally changed. We have both died and been reborn. Multiple times even. Like leaves turning red and orange, falling off their limbs.
Dying into the Earth - Reborn as nutrition for the roots.
Breathe in - let it rise. Breathe out - let it pass away.
All things do this. They pass away and leave nostalgic ghosts. I now long for things that happened in 2008, or even a couple of years ago. Hauntings of things I can’t return to, but only have faint imagery dancing through my mind. Surely, rose colored, no doubt, but omnipresent, tucked away for easy access, no longer real, no longer arising, but long ago passing away into memory. A haunting.
Breathe in - let them pass, into memory of moments past.
Breathe out - let them die; and be at peace with the passing.
Let them become nutrients for the roots.
