Motivation
I guess you've also seen those annoying tweets from bozos declaring that if you don't emerge from lockdown having learned Esperanto, run a minute mile and founded a FTSE 100 tech company you're a lazy, worthless sack of meat who lacks discipline and "just didn't want it enough".
I hope they immediately stood on a piece of lego in their bare feet after typing such nonsense. It also made me think about motivation. Why get up everyday and do what you do?
The obvious answer is money.
(* Here I am cashing in another royalty check.)
Also ambition, revenge, spite and other noble feelings.
Then there's posterity. The idea that the art will outlive the artist. A hopeful shot at the eternal. That future generations will admire the artist's unique insight into the human condition. Well, if it's a form of immortality you're after, I wouldn't rely on as ephemeral a form as the comic book. Even a hardback comic book.
Nope. Posterity is out of my hands.
My inspiration is simple: I can make stuff up or I can watch daytime TV.
Those are my choices.
Viewed in such stark, cosmic, existential terms I'll always choose to fail at drawing a horse rather than watch an episode of Loose Women.
That and making stuff is fun.
I only have so much mental space (and time) to pursue obsessions outside of the comic medium. Over lockdown I've made room in the old noggin for a new one.
The rat.
Our house backs onto a canal so we get the occasional visit from a water rat. However, this time the vermin has decided to settle down. I've been recording this saga for posterity over the last few weeks at my Patreon. Each morning, cup of tea in hand, I venture out to look for signs of rat activity. It's slowly dawning on me that in this battle of wills the rat is the smarter opponent.
The next thrilling instalment will be up tomorrow.
* Bitter sarcasm.
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Bonus feature:
“Who do you think you are, Pauline Kael?”
Welcome to the infrequent I Watched a Movie section in which I finally get around to watching movies long after they have lost any cultural relevance.
The Quiet Place.
Entertaining as long as you don't query the premise too hard and you accept the plot gymnastics in setting up the obvious question: why on earth would you bring a baby into this world? All good fun. And suspenseful. I found the most subversive aspect of the story was how pretty it was. Dystopia has never looked so bucolic. Grain silos and corn fields, distressed wood barns and pine forests. It was all tea dresses and attractively Scandy wooly jumpers. There was no squalor. No one was squatting over a hole to take a dump. It looked like some survivalist whack job had Martha Stewart round to gussy up their Idaho bunker before the Elle Decoration mob arrived for a photo shoot. I'm looking forward to buying my copy of Prepper Decor from Conde Nast any day now.
“Don’t mention the toilet arrangements.”
I'm guessing you've all already seen The Quiet Place?
Blue Ruin.
This, on the other hand, had my heart rate elevated nearly all the way through. The central character is an inept, damaged schlub out for revenge. He's ill-suited to the task and already traumatised. You get a bit of body horror thrown in for good measure which was convincing enough to make me avert my eyes. I had a similar reaction during director Jeremy Saulnier's next movie, Green Room. The baddies are quickly sketched in Deliverance types but it's worth a watch if you don't mind having your fight-or-flight instinct triggered for an hour and a half.
“Lockdown: Week Eight.”