* DISOBEY (10/26/2003)

There's a biographical movie about R. Crumb that I like.  R. Crumb and
C. Crumb drew comics to escape the incredible disaster that was their
childhood.  R. Crumb became a famous alternative comic book artist.
C. Crumb became progressively more insane, and eventually took his own
life.  C. Crumb's downward spiral is measured for a time by his comic
books.  The characters start talking more and more.  The word balloons
crowd out the characters.  Eventually there are only words.  The words
get smaller and smaller, crowding themselves out of the page.
Finally, the comics are page after page of tiny cursive scribble.  A
single loop like a short cursive "l" over and over again for tens of
pages.  It has an intense and unique beauty.  There is something to
handwriting that lends a subtext to what is being written, a subtext
that cannot be otherwise communicated.  C. Crumb was trying to find
that, but he ran out of text to hang it from.  His obsessive squiggles
are like graceful facial expressions without speech.

My own handwriting is at times a product of my own disastrous
childhood.  I write in block capitals like a draftsman because that is
how my father writes.  His handwriting fascinates me.  The character of
it reveals him.

When I was in high school, the first and only article of clothing I
owned that made me feel cool was an army jacket.  I can't remember his
name, but there was an artist in the class before me who was
especially kind to me.  We cut gym class together for an entire
semester.  We would go to a coffee shop down the block from school
called "Texas Weiners".  I would give him cigarettes and we would
drink hot cheap coffee.  For that semester, it was the only social
contact I was capable of.  Although we never became close friends, his
patience with my adolescent repugnance was genuine.  He may as well
have saved my life as far as I was concerned.  He was an excellent
artist and a drummer.  His own childhood was a disaster.  He would
write the names of his favorite punk bands on his leather jacket in
whiteout stolen from a teacher's typing desk.  He left our high school
with his family or guardians or whatever before he graduated.  His
friends were sad.  I gave him my army jacket.  Nothing was written on
it.  It was the most meaningful thing I could do to mark his leaving.
I was desperate to somehow remain connected to him.  I had absolutely
no other connections.  No other army jacket ever seemed to fit or look
as good as that one, although I've since tried a few.

My latest army jacket is too big and missing its lining.  I took it to
a party last night, and spent the evening writing the word "DISOBEY"
over and over again on it in block capital letters with a large
sharpie marker.  DISOBEY is my favorite paradox, and also makes this
new pretender to the army jacket throne instead a monument to
childhood disasters.