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Sarah Laing's Blog, page 6
March 7, 2017
Shipwrecked!
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Apologies for the double-posting today, especially those of you who are on my email list. I respond very well to parental pressure, and since my dad was giving me shit for not delivering on my one comic a week promise I’d made over on Patreon, I thought I’d post two to make up for it!
Sore toe
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I was really grumpy for a week when my toe was sore. It was weird – or perhaps completely obvious – how out of sorts it made me feel. It had the strange effect, similar to when you’re wanting to be pregnant and it seems everyone has an egg belly, that everywhere I looked I could see limping people, people on crutches, people struggling to walk through pain. And I realised that I hadn’t really been noticing them before – it was my own pain that was making them apparent. I think that we all want to believe that we have great empathy, that we can imagine what it’s like for other people, but in fact we can’t, fully. There’s always some kind of membrane, a spider web nest between you and the other person’s experience. Which is probably why I like novels and personal essays so much – you can feel like you are seeing another’s life without the membrane, that this is the insight you were lacking.
Still, I think we’re fooling ourselves a little. Not that I think we can’t imagine another’s experience, but that there will always be that gap. That gap is important though – it keeps us curious, it keeps us reaching and reading and changing. I gorge myself on articles on the internet. I listen to podcasts* as I colour comics and do the housework. I fill myself to the brim with information and some of it sticks, most of it dissipates. I long for the clarity the podcasts bring, but mainly my thoughts jumble about, willy-nilly. My sore toe – it’s not so sore now. The joint aches when I walk but not when I’m sitting still. I know I will forget what it’s like to live with acute pain and I am pleased about that. It’s unbearable, but many people bear it.
(*Of course, if I wasn’t trying to find a decent podcast in the first place I never would’ve sprained my bloody toe!)
February 22, 2017
Oysters & pearls
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Thanks for indulging me – I mostly think the funny misshapen things are far more interesting than the perfectly formed things. This comic was prompted by all the little ideas that had been irritating my brain, but hadn’t formed into proper comics yet. The proper comics will come but they need more time! I am working on a longer comic at the moment – one that the kids can read (no swearing! No nudity!) and I think that is also getting in the way of me writing a comic this week. I am such a serial monogamist when it comes to creative work.
Following up on reviews, I got a lovely celebrity endorsement this week:
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You can read the full article here. I have to get my hands on Gilda Kirkpatrick’s Astarons comics for my kids – I bet they’d love them.
February 13, 2017
Reviewing Mansfield & Me
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I’ve got a few reviews lately, and I’m going to head over and update my reviews page. One of my favourites is in the Overland Journal, by Michalia Arathimos.
“In Mansfield and Me you will find many pretty things: landscapes and flowers and historical literary figures. You will also find birth, sex, blood, rock and punk, artistic rejection, motherhood and mercilessly real depictions of relationships.”
Adrian Kinnaird also reviewed M&M on his NZ comics blog, From Earth’s End.
“It’s a remarkable ode to creativity and a personal journey to achieving one’s ambitions. If you love great memoirs and want to experience one that’s a bit unconventional but highly entertaining, this is the one for you.”
And here’s one by Melinda Johnston, over on The Spinoff.
“The struggle to find a place in the world, to reconcile sexual identity, and to find a working balance between ambition and everyday reality are all successfully realised.”
Like I say, nice reviews, no declarations of my genius, dammit, but I suppose there’s always the next book. Or else I can recognise my desire for validation as a sick addiction that I have to let go of!
February 12, 2017
Weather
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When I started this comic, the world was engulfed in fog and it was raining horizontally. I have proof over on my Instagram account! But now it’s sunny, albeit windy. Four seasons in one day! Wellington has made me a weather bore. And how can that man not believe in climate change?
February 9, 2017
No depression in New Zealand
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I was reminded of this particular repressive trait this week, when Bill English took a phone call from Donald Trump and reported that he did not upset Trump at all, and they chatted amiably for 15 minutes. English did mention that he had some concerns over the U.S. immigration policies, but climate change never came up. He seemed so proud of his restraint, but was this something to be proud of? I am always alarmed at how ferocious New Zealanders are inside their cars, how if you cut in front of them they will scream and swear and contort, completely out of proportion to the misdemenour. They are encased in metal and glass, a smooth glinting exterior – you can’t hear a word of what they’re saying – but inside they’re going mental, flecking their windscreen with spittle.
I fact-checked this comic after I drew it, and although this is my memory of events, my mother tells it differently. Her mother did finally admit that Nana had hung herself, 7 years after the event. My mother knew at 9 – “little pigs have big ears” – but her parents denied it. What she learnt from her aunt almost 30 years later was the reality of living with bipolar disorder. Nana would be depressed, or elated, spending way too much money on goods that my grandmother would have to secretly return. Nana drank too much, Grandad kept a fancy woman in Whanganui. Nana left him and had to work as a housekeeper. They were Catholic – this was a big deal. My grandmother kept this all a secret from her children. Such things were the family shame, not to be talked about.
Right now I’m reading Michael Chabon’s hybrid novel/memoir, Moonglow. It took me a while to get into, but I’m fascinated by how memoir bleeds into novel writing, and how so much of a life can be invented and embellished. I’m also fascinated by how a particular understanding of a person turns out to be a lie, and how that realisation almost unhinges the project, but ultimately Chabon decides to continue. I am always excited when my mother tells me stuff about my family that seems like a novel, but then somehow I never quite remember it right, and the novelistic details of lives compound, crystallising themselves into something entirely new.
If you want to listen to the No Depression song, you can find it here. And if you want to get your very own bag, you can buy it here.
Also, please consider supporting me on Patreon! Every little bit helps!
January 31, 2017
Worms!
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Do you guys feel this way? Like every time you look at the news or Twitter or Facebook it feels like the world is on fire, and more terrible things are happening? And like it’s really hard to figure out ways to make it stop or to make things better? I took Gus off to the Wellington branch of the Women’s March on 21 January, but it was small in comparison to the international marches, and nobody seemed to know what we were protesting against. Still, it felt good to take part in an historic moment, even if the real historic moment happened the next day in another country.
ActionStation have very helpfully made a list of things we can do to help refugees – I’ve done number 1 and 2, which are quite easy.
January 19, 2017
Lassitude
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A strange lassitude has overtaken me these holidays – I have become used to doing not very much. Every day I try and order the house a little, instilling systems so that it will remain tidy for the rest of the year, but somehow it remains disordered. I found a box of old photographs and managed to put the best ones in an album, but I still haven’t labelled them, nor have I managed to throw the bad photos out. I am no good at minimalism.
January 12, 2017
Teenager
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Another despatch from the school holiday trenches… I totally sympathise with Otto, of course. I went through an equally self-conscious phase. Not only were my parents a huge embarrassment, I was also supremely uncomfortable in my body and felt like everyone was looking at how mistakenly I was put together. The difference, of course, was that I grew up pre-internet and gaming. I even grew up without a TV, although I used to hang out at my neighbour’s to watch all the shows I was missing. The worlds inside games are so very compelling and so much more dramatic than our suburban surroundings. And in case you’re wondering, that Team Fortress 2 he’s playing. God they’re good at perspective drawing in those games!
Of course, I do have this regret – why does he not want to read books? I read him so many when he was young, and his bookshelf is stuffed. Why does he not want to go skateboarding, draw comics or hang out with his friends in real life? I am reminded of something my mother used to say – how she imagined, when she had a son, that he would wear waistcoats and play the violin. My brother never wanted to play the violin. And our children don’t always turn out the way we imagine they might.
January 9, 2017
You could write a comic about this
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Karl Ove Knausgaard has written a crazy long autobiographical novel – 3,600 pages long, in six volumes. I’ve only read the first two so far. I sometimes get into trouble writing comics about conversations I’ve had, and making judgements that perhaps haven’t been wise, but you wonder what kind of trouble Knausgaard got into for the intense scrutiny he placed on his family and friends.
Sometimes I think I should swap to made-up comics – you have quite a lot more leeway, and you don’t get into nearly as much trouble when you overstep the mark . Of course, friends and family are still a bit nervous, imagining a character might be based on them. But there’s something fascinating about real life, and the little things that happen around you. Knausgaard somehow makes going supermarket shopping and chopping vegetables enthralling.
As you can probably tell, I am going through an exploratory drawing stage. The more I draw, the worse I feel at drawing, but perhaps, as my sister points out, I am just being more ambitious and trying to do more with my drawing. After finishing Mansfield and Me, I was completely sick of my thick, brushed outlines, but I also didn’t like the pigment liner drawings of my early comics, especially since the ink ran out of my pens so quickly. Right now I am still trying to master the dip pen, but there are an awful lot of splatters and somehow, yesterday, I managed to spill two small bottles of ink, one of them over my sneakers. Anyway, I am hoping that by the time I start on my new project – maybe February – I will find my voice again!
