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Thursday, March 13, 2008
What the Hell am I doing?
I've heard that you cannot claim to any wisdom unless you've lived at least 25 years on this planet. Well, I'm more than three months away from that milestone but something hit me that I thought could perhaps count as wisdom. It might change the way I live life, including how I look at comics.
I use to think it was self-evident that the more you analyzed something the close you were to getting to "The Truth" about something. I would value the discussion about a piece of work as much as if not more than the work itself. When I got back into comics earlier this decade there were plenty of people on the Internet excited enough by the output of Grant Morrison and Warren Ellis a "graphic novel intelligentsia" cropped up. The departed website Ninth Art is an example. Sequart carries on the tradition. Most of all it was the wave of blogs appearing that impressed me. I loved the idea that the experience of reading New X-Men would continue after I've finished an issue. Digesting the rhetoric inspired by the book was as important to me as the book itself.
While I still enjoy reading good criticism I didn't realize at the time was that this need for analysis of comics was a benign symptom of an otherwise serious problem I had (or have, even if I'm fighting it). I couldn't appreciate something unless I've given it intense thought for days or weeks on end. If I've written my review for New X-Men and read everyone else's then I haven't really read the book at all. Then on Tuesday, while I was at work doing nothing specular at all, it hit me. Running something around in your mind isn't necessarily going to help you understand it better. In fact, it could severely distort the object.
Constant analysis can lead me to misunderstanding, not understanding.
Perhaps that should be "constant bad analysis." I didn't know it at the time but I was dooming myself to a life of Solipism. Everything around me wouldn't be real if it doesn't correspond to the narrative in my mind. I bring this up because if I didn't stop the series you would have seen a new chapter in Razbliuto. I thought that series would become some kind of therapy. Now I'm glad I aborted it because it would have most likely continued the harmful mindset. To take these people and put them in a story, which means leaving some facts out and placing emphasis on others, was the nadir of shutting out any objectivity. I wasn't doing myself any favors.
Now I wonder how much of current existence is due to succumbing to overactive thinking. I've earned a B.A. in English Literature from a curriculum that was based around analyzing and reviewing. I regret not challenging myself and trying something different instead of just continuing what I was already doing. I really have lived a life where I could get anything I wanted. I grew up in an upper middle class suburb in America. I'm a white male (half-Jewish, but let's be honest that's not a major barrier to success). I have supportive parents. I chose of all the options in front of me to live a life based around pop culture. I don't want to change that but I have to admit to myself that one of the reasons why I made the choice was it because I wanted something easy. I thought since it felt easy it must be right. But without any challenges you can't really accomplish anything.
I still like reviewing comics, books and film but my desire to create comics, books and films is greater. I can probably depend on a life where I manage to wake myself out of an obsessive stupor ever so slightly to churn out a movie review for some local publication. The rest of the time I can spend cataloging the contents of my long boxes or adjusting my Netflix queue. But what feels right is creating something new. That's what I want but I have to push myself towards it. I have to be be brave enough to be uncomfortable. Staring down at a blank page is not comforting. For too long I've done it for a few minutes and then said "maybe later..." I have to stop thinking about it and just do it. For too long consciousness has been like a dark cave I can hide away in. But that has to end.
Yeesh, that was kind of heavy. Here's Bat-Mite to cheer everyone up:
Permanent Link: 1:02 PM |
3 comments
Comments:
I definitely relate to what you're saying. I'm afraid of the same thing.
But it's too early to tell right now, ask me how I feel about reviewing pop culture detritus in a few years.
# posted by AaronM : 5:55 PM
Matt Fraction wrote a similar piece for his last Savant issue before he jumped feet first into creating full-time.
# posted by Seth : 5:43 AM
As someone who lives inside their head basically all day, I'm not sure how credible my opinion would be given my ... rather dubious lifestyle, but...
If you need to get out of your head... exercise is a good one; bungee jump; yoga; get over yourself and take one of those "meeting girls" boot camps like your friend recommended; take a dance class; get injured by a stripper; go to the beach.
Your 20's aren't the wisdom years; they're your awesome years (if I can quote NPH). the 20's are the Lab years, to go to the lab and try things and fail and have raw materials to build wisdom out of later on, when you need it. If you're keeping yourself from trying and failing by poking at things from the sidelines, being Internet Loudmouth, yeah, that's ... that's *bad*. Make stuff, instead.
But ... I guess what I wanted to sit here and babble is: if you're worried about "overactive thinking", you might want to go get some dumb in your life, and not just switch out one form of introversion for the other.
# posted by Abhay : 7:09 PM
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