...the cringe...
...tankertown season one : ludder osses...
“I never thought for a second that anything I ever did was going to make someone cringe. That never occurred to me.”
-Larry David-
I moved to California in 2004. I went West to make music. To make noise and be noisy. To be in a band and understand life as a man.
Getting here required change. I sold all my records for gas and rent. I left a job teaching in the city for no job learning nothing in an alley. Half a decade in Chicago had taught me mainly to eat late night pizza and smoke all natural tobacco. Moving to the Big Sunny meant some unlearning.
Living here requires change. You will be different after you enter. California, the idea, is all surf and sexy. Or, if you are of closet mind, here is hell, where the heathens skinny dip in fire and lie. I left the Windy City young and furniture free. I left looking for a promise I couldn’t keep. I came here dreaming and stay here existent.
Moving is like a haircut, you feel different when you are done, but nothing has really changed but your hair or home. Given the opportunity I decided I would make one major addition and subtraction to my life. The 24 foot long green moving van crossed the tumbleweed cactus poked border of Nevada and I made my mind up to quit smoking and start drawing.
I traded stick breaks for paper and pen. Now all I got is a bucket of 18 year old art. This art can’t drink, can smoke, and will work for minimum wage or an unpaid internship. This art can go to war. For two years from 2004 to 2006 whenever I felt like firing up, I would instead draw *whatever*. And *Dear Garfield* I do mean whatever.
The joy of loss might be gains. I give up something so that I might do something else. Right now I could be sleeping, but instead I write. Tomorrow I should be working, but instead I’ll pretend to work. You get the picture (if not I can draw it for you…poorly…).
What I am about to share I am not sure I should. In fact I showed this to multiple friends first to ensure it was even worth showing.
I call it Tankertown. The title was taken because I liked the tone of talking T’s. Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta! All alliteration — always. I called it a comic. I look at it now and call it cringe.
This art was my id. Now it is my ish. My ick. My oof. My ouch. I can’t look back at any of these drawings without small weirdly erky-erks. The art seems childish and mistaken. Angry and confused. Boring and basic. Ugly and hidden and covered in so so so much I don’t know. I really don’t want to show you them, but then again I kind of do. And I’m going to. Cringe.
If nothing else these are honest and me-at-a-moment.
A diary of being twenty-something and scrubbing through trying to figure out what I was figuring out. Maybe they’re just a smoke break. A reflection of a trying human trying to be human. I could keep it stuffed in a cabinet for one hundred years to become moth cheese and rat bed, or I can put it here and forever never look back at it. I’d like to say how far I’ve come, but I’m not sure I’ve moved anywhere at all. The green truck is back in Chicago taking a nap. I’m here in Oakland typing.
Don’t look back.
Look back.
Cringe.
(reaches for a pack of cigarettes…deep breath…)
TANKERTOWN YEAR ONE : LUDDER OSSES
SECTION 01 : ORIGINALS
SECTION 02 : SPACE MISSION
SECTION 03 : CONFESSION
SECTION 04 : PUDTYE
SECTION 05 : SCYTHE
INTERMISSION
SECTION 06 : STRESS
SECTION 07 : NATURE
SECTION 08 : ETCETERA
SECTION 09 : FIN/APPENDIX
Thanks to Shanna & Sarina for helping give these words a bit of polish pre-publish.
This is my earliest online writing. I drew all of these before, during, or after the endless shows I was playing, hosting, and attending back in the back times. These were originally serialized and distributed weekly as part of the No Doctors blog (2005-2006). Originals are micron on card stock. They are in a shoe box somewhere if you are interested. Right next to some unrolled American Spirit.
Here's what I want from you after this issue. A essay on how a person finds their style. This occurs to me because everything you create is so inimitably you. Seeing these drawings really brought that home. Whatever you put out is not duplicatable by anyone else. So that's the question. How does someone else do that? Could you train them? Are there practices? Or is that just your style?
Wahooooo! Yeah, CansaFis!!! Thank you for sharing this work.
The total conviction and commitment in these drawings is off the chart. You poured yourself into them, you didn't hold back, you followed through, you gave not two fucks about commercial viability, you didn't force anything into a (dumb) grid. As a result, they are drawings as much as comix panels, sharp and shiny with particularity, truly and joyfully strange. To my delight, your famous wacky word play is right there! Seeds of current you in past you.
On the emotional level: When I make something that embarrasses me, when I cringe, when I want to hide something, it's a sign that I surprised myself, that is, foiled my own possibly lame expectations, I accidentally busted a container.