Intersection of the bleakness of Black Friday with the bleakness of Thanksgiving and the rediscovery of Burrough's "A Thanksgiving Prayer", 1986, which strikes me, now, as searingly subversive for the mid eighties, which I remember as a time of conformity. The ending of the prayer in the third frame, the first frame a quote from Burroughs on his "Cut-Ups" approach to writing, lifted from the Dadaists, if my understanding isn't from a fractured timeline.
Of course, the collage style that he's referring to here is central to this strip, and so this is all quite close to my heart: a disjointed understanding of how things fit together; broken conventions for communication; deep cynicism for the American culture and the future of the human race. Thanksgiving, as well, is a perverse holiday for me: it is my favorite day of the year because, for the last several decades at least, it is the one day that I can manage to have no contact whatsoever with another human being. Bliss.
Frames one and three seemed too overt and that bugged me at the time. But looking now, I see a simplicity in this week that I find very soothing. The second frame is so clear and direct, and yet somehow not cliched. I don't know how it works as well as it does. I guess there's a duality in it: on the one hand it's the cause of the disruption in the other frames, but it's also so clean and uncluttered that it doesn't seem threatening.
The final frame a shift from the realm of ideas to a visceral warning, a photo of a real place that once existed. It's of William Burroughs in Paris, 1959, "Danger II", by Brion Gysin.
Happy with this one because it's so clean. It all just works and it doesn't convey the usual feeling of being cluttered. And fuck me if that Thanksgiving Prayer isn't right on the money.
Intersection of the bleakness of Black Friday with the bleakness of Thanksgiving and the rediscovery of Burrough's "A Thanksgiving Prayer", 1986, which strikes me, now, as searingly subversive for the mid eighties, which I remember as a time of conformity. The ending of the prayer in the third frame, the first frame a quote from Burroughs on his "Cut-Ups" approach to writing, lifted from the Dadaists, if my understanding isn't from a fractured timeline.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the collage style that he's referring to here is central to this strip, and so this is all quite close to my heart: a disjointed understanding of how things fit together; broken conventions for communication; deep cynicism for the American culture and the future of the human race. Thanksgiving, as well, is a perverse holiday for me: it is my favorite day of the year because, for the last several decades at least, it is the one day that I can manage to have no contact whatsoever with another human being. Bliss.
Frames one and three seemed too overt and that bugged me at the time. But looking now, I see a simplicity in this week that I find very soothing. The second frame is so clear and direct, and yet somehow not cliched. I don't know how it works as well as it does. I guess there's a duality in it: on the one hand it's the cause of the disruption in the other frames, but it's also so clean and uncluttered that it doesn't seem threatening.
The final frame a shift from the realm of ideas to a visceral warning, a photo of a real place that once existed. It's of William Burroughs in Paris, 1959, "Danger II", by Brion Gysin.
Happy with this one because it's so clean. It all just works and it doesn't convey the usual feeling of being cluttered. And fuck me if that Thanksgiving Prayer isn't right on the money.