by Jas Faulkner It all started with one of those thrift store finds that moves you to dust off and rekindle an old interest. I was there to do my biweekly stuffed animal grab for Niklas Lidstrom -aka- Destructo the Wonder Shih Tzu when I saw they had cobbled together roughly fifty dollars worth of calligraphy supplies into a ziploc bag and with the asking price of five dollars. This is probably a good place to hit the pause button and admit that I’m a big old typography nerd. It was a love of letters and alphabets of all kinds that pushed me to major in graphic design at one point in my overlong undergraduate career. I am still a sucker for typography books
Miscellaneous Archive
When ever I’d ask my father what he was doing, he’d answer, ‘writing How to Win Friends and Influence People.’ As a kid, I’d no concept of what that meant–the entire idea of winning friends was beyond me–didn’t they just show up? And how did you ‘win’ them anyway? Like at a carnival game–shoot enough ducks and you win a stuffed friend? And the word ‘influence’ was not in my child’s vocabulary. This phrase and several others–when I’d be hungry and say so–’eat some salt and you’ll get dry’ and if asked the same question about activities my father was engaged in–’playing Tiddelly Winks with man hole covers’ became something rote in my mind, not real. It was a surprise when I found that a
by Jas Faulkner Why do people draw in books? A friend of mine borrowed my copy of the script for Monty Python and the Holy Grail for a scene study class. She returned it with thanks but a grumpy rejoinder about the copious scribbling along the margins. After listening to more grumbling, I finally broke it to her that the bizarre creatures were actually printed in the book. They were the handiwork of the film’s animator and co-director, Terry Gilliam. She had every reason to believe that the artwork was mine. However, she had no idea that Gilliam, and for that matter the rest of the artists often still known as Monty Python, had been influences for decades. My father passed his adoration of the Pythons
I awoke to a friend on a writer’s list asking us to support author Charlaine Harris, of the Sookie vampire/mystery books, because someone in Germany who read the final title in the series posted a spoiler online. On Ms. Harris’ facebook page, there are a 1,369 comments. Most, from my quick calculation, positive towards Ms. Harris and the series, but far too many are not just angry, but furious about how the author ended the book. Because Sookie, the protagonist, doesn’t go off happily into the sunset with their romantic choice. The fans have invested so much of their emotions into Sookie’s world, they have forgotten that she doesn’t exist, except on paper and in an excellent writer’s imagination. It says a great deal about
If Van Gough had Prozac, would he have explored creative worlds only he saw? If Tennessee Williams had been born in a time where homosexuality was universally accepted, would he have poured out A Streetcar Named Desire? If Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, every other depressed tortured writer and artist had Effexor, or Wellbutrin or any other anti depressant, would their genius have existed, at all? I ask this because I can’t understand how one works at writing or art or anything that requires so much energy and attention, and be wired in a way that causes melancholy. And yet, that very pain seems to have been the catalyst for amazing works, stunning words, pictures. If Van Gough had been given the choice between creating, or less agony,