HELD UP Book One, Chapter Three Written and Illustrated by Jimmy Riordan
SOWSEAR SOWSEAR pp
Shaman Pig is copyright Anna Rau
A QUARTERLY COLLECTION OF COMICS AND OTHER GRAPHIC NARRATIVES COMING IN AUGUST FROM RABBIT RABBIT PRESS. EMAIL RIORDANJIMMY@GMAIL.COM FOR INFO OR IF YOU WANT TO CONTRIBUTE To FUTURE ISSUES.
SOWSEAR
R R
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This Morning.
y awn
Anchorage, Alaska
writ ten and illus trat ed by jimm y riord an
First Prining June 2013
Publish ed Quarte rly by Rabbit Rabbit Press
Two days ago.
bzzz bzzz
bzzz bzzz
Hello.
You’re already out front? OK... I’m almost there.
Good to see you!
Yeah� you too. What’s up?
Huh? Oh� its nothing. Its just...
�
... I dropped one of my gloves on the way over here.
Want to go back?
“Anyway, It could be anywhere.”
No. Maybe I’ll find it when we leave. So what’s this you’ve been doing? Putting souls into music boxes?
”Transposing consciousness into music.”
”Yeah that.”
Basically...
”...the idea is� ...”
They appear to be still, but are always moving I follow you so far.
tand that ” You unders every solid thing is actually a bunch of atoms, right?”
So the same is probably true of the metaphysical self.
“It can’t be seen. But its always changing. Its a sort of frequency.”
The question is how do we record these frequencies? What I call the reflective self.
-- I was really thinking about the soul.
Consciousness, Memory�... taking it and turning it into something�...
So then I interviewed psychologists, philosophers, shamans. I looked at The Keirsey temperament test...
... the Harvard morality test, Kinsey
sex test...
I Combined this with some long answer questions and the heart beat�...
And used the results to make” a sort of metaphisical portrait...”
...and I ”kind of made this big mash up.”
... Something I could transpose into musical notes.
And from that I created a score for a music box.
So when the music box isthe “yed pla it ends up creating same frequency...�” ...as the person’s soul.
...the same resonance...
With what it meant to have our souls played this way�...
Me and this other person became sort of obsessed with each other.�
...but to have them transposed together. A music box that was both of us.
Our souls entwined.
This is where MTS Gallery was, right?
Yeah... I haven’t been over here since they bulldozed the building.
So� anyway, � well then it all just fell apart with this other person. You know�...
And as a ritual I took the music box.�..
It became a metaphor. These two souls at this one time� . ..
... attached it to a weather balloon...
� ... and sent it up into space.
...our metaphysical bodies ...
Transcen
dence.
f
And once it hit the stratosphere The lack of gravity sucked the resonance� - this music - out into space...
Then the balloon pops...�
...where it st forever among theaysts ars.
...and the physical body falls away.
Can you still give me a lift to the airport later?
No problem. I’ll be back in a couple hours.
It was good to see you. Thanks for the ride.
if i could get my hands on that rabbit i would cook him up for dinner.
I’m trying to catch a rabbit. i have just the thing.
the instructions say to set the tar baby out in the open.
hello!
hello.
it is called a gum doll!
then all i have to do is wait.
how are you today?
my name is rabbit. what’s yours?
if i could get my hands on that rabbit...
i’ll take it. how much? how much do you got?
here he comes. i had better hide.
didn’t your mother
I’ll show you!!
teach you any manners?
let go of me or...
you think your funny? well...
blah, blah, blah, blah...
is that a bee?
OK� I’m almost ready. I’ll Meet you out front. Consciousness.
It is often described as the difference between being awake and being asleep.
But this is not entirely true.
Consider your dreams.
Sequenced experiences.
They too are conscious.
than Albeit less coherent e. lif g kin those of your wa
MARG NOTES: “Hare knew that he could only be happy in a shelter that was exactly the same at this moment as it had been the moment before. Out of this came his love of order and stillness.” – LRdL The cover illustration is derived from this quote. It is also a slogan that artist Jesus Landin Torrez lll has adopted and has used in his artwork extensively since the 2009 Marginalia show. More on Jesus later (Notes pg 6-14, 19, 20). The third chapter of Le Roman du Lievre focuses on Hare’s origins. We get to know a bit more about his character, exemplified in his cautious behavior. In Held Up I have taken this as an opportunity to look into the origins of our protagonist. We witness him prepare for his trip and are introduced to the environment, some of the ideas, and people that Le Roman du Lievre, Marginalia and this story came from. 2-4: In the final hours of working on this issue I made a few large changes. As I was writing the previous bit about room for ambiguity in comics, the point at which the narrative is just clear enough to keep the reader going, I realized I had crossed over to the other side. Too many ideas in too small a space. The story was nearly unreadable. So I changed some illustrations and cut out a bunch of the text. Leaving the pictures to tell the story. I mention this here, because one of the sections cut was largely responsible for the issues location, overall theme and mood. While planning this issue I was interested in the concept of psychogeography, how we change our environment, and more importantly how it changes us. I was also playing around with mapping, trying to draw a map of Anchorage (the town of my birth as well as the location for this issue) from memory. Pgs 3 and 4 were originally comprised of such maps and the introductory text alluded to some of these ideas.
“Each generation reworks their landscape to speak to them of themselves. And in turn (consciously organized or not) these landscapes shape the emotions and behavior of the individuals living within them. Imagine yourself walking down a familiar street. By habit you choose the path of least resistance. Step off this path. Forge a new route. Why do you choose one direction over another? Have you become more aware of your surroundings? Do you notice as the atmosphere changes from block to block?” In the end having an introduction like this back to back with a discussion of consciousness and the soul was a bit too much. I will post some of the original drawings and links to information on the subject at the blog, as I do think it is a worth while topic. Also, maybe I will be able to work some of it into the collected version of Book One when it is completed early next year. Or I might rework the first 4 page, taking the emphasis off of the map, flight path, and bird’s eye view. 4,5: Part of this story takes place at the Anchorage Museum. Outside the museum there is a statue by Anthony Gormley titled Habitat. Its boxy form is said to apply an urban grid to the human body/form, which seemed relevant to the idea that the physical structure of a city could affect the mental structure of its inhabitants. (Though, as a city anchorage is lacking in such a grid, largely defined by the natural environment and its reliance on the automobile). 6,7: For the 2009 Marginalia exhibit Craig Updegrove designed a poster depicting Saint Francis making a shadow puppet of a rabbit (see following page). This is referenced at the beginning of the glove transformation sequence. 6-10: As mentioned in issue 2, copies of Held Up 1 were included on the merch stand at the Anchorage
Museum as part of their recent Arctic Flight exhibit. Artifacts from Roger’s and Posts crash were included in the show. I thought it would be interesting to set the early part of this issue at that exhibit, making a visual note of this coincidence, possibly explaining why Post and Rogers were on our hero’s mind. 6-11: While working on Marginalia Appendix G I spoke with participating artist Anick Gosselin. She introduced me to the glove bunny. Anick provided me with hand drawn instructions for the process (see below), which I used to guide me through the designing of this sequence. 6-14, 19, 20, The bearded character in this story is based on the artist Jesus Landin Torrez lll. The dialogue is derived from a transcript of a conversation I had with him in which he explained a project he had been working on. It is seriously edited from the
original to make it fit. If you are curious about the ideas presented in it you should look him up and check out his website (www.jesuslandintorrez.com). I will try to post more about him and his project on the blog. The beginning of a souls being transcribed to music can be found on the following page. I will also post video and other drawings by Jesus on the blog over the next few weeks. Jesus participated in the marginalia exhibit. He drew the 3 words Love, Order and Stillness from the text of LRdL (specifically chapter 3) and created a pamphlet and mantra from them. He has continued to work with this text in a variety of ways over the years. Again, I will try and post links to more about all of this on the blog. 12: MTS Gallery is where the Marginalia exhibit took place. It is also the setting of the pi�ata “flash
back” from last issue. 12,13: MTS was located in the neighborhood of Mountain View, which is where the beginning of this drive takes place. It is also one of the oldest neighborhoods in Anchorage. In 1989 Mountain View was names USA Neighborhood of the year. Just recently a study came out stating that it is the most diverse neighborhood in the country. Neither of these things matter to the story, but I thought they were worth mentioning. 16, 17: This 2-page dream sequence is a loose retelling of the Brer Rabbit Tar Baby story in a Peanuts inspired newspaper comic style. I chose to change the name of the Tar Baby to Gum Doll (a character in African legend that the Tar Baby was based on) so as to avoid the story being read in terms or race. Some how a bottle of Brer Rabbit Molasses (Was the tar baby made of molasses?) ended up as a piece of ephemera in the Marginalia exhibit and catalog. Similarities between Uncle Remus and Saint Francis had also been discussed on the blog preceding the exhibit. These panels are intended to mirror the sock bunny narrative and give a bit more context to the clump spirit character and further the comic’s investigation into memory through metaphor. In my research into the Tar Baby story I came across the above mentioned Gum Doll myth and the Native American Tar Wolf story. I will post links to these stories and to some interesting reading about the concept of the Tar Baby on the Blog. Also, while
searching the internet I came across a few old Brer Rabbit Molasses ads, as a result I have started putting a bit of molasses in my coffee in the mornings and have discovered the delicacy that is molasses and milk. I recommend both. 18-20: The sequence with the dog carrying the rabbit is based on the introduction to a story written by Alaskan poet Bruce Farnsworth. The original story was his contribution to the Marginalia exhibit (writing it out in its entirety in the margins of his copy of LrDL) and included in Appendix G. The introduction was also included in the catalog and performed at the Marginalia opening reception in the fall of 2009. 18-21: While researching this issue I read Introducing Consciousness. The text from these pages is a rewording of a part of that book: “Sometimes consciousness is explained as the difference between being awake and being asleep. But this is not quite right. Dreams are conscious too. Dreams are a sequence of conscious experience, even if these experiences are normally less coherent than waking experiences. Indeed, dream experiences, especially in nightmares or fantasies, can consciously be very intense, despite their lack of coherence�or sometimes because of this lack. Consciousness is what we lose when we fall into a dreamless sleep or undergo a total anesthetic.” – David Papineau 21: Ted Stevens International Airport.
Next Issue:
This is how a watermelon can be both a fruit and a vegetable.
Back Cover: Feel free to contact me with questions and other feedback through the project blog, website (www.leromandulievre.com, www.leromandilievre.wordpress.com), or at riordanjimmy@gmail.com dk
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