Sketch #4 and #5

More art from my graphic novel

I never know how much to share from my graphic novel. I feel skittish about it, like if I approach this project in the wrong way, too loudly or too quickly, I will startle it, and it will dash back into the woods where I’ll never find it again. Like anything in its infancy, it’s fragile. Or so goes my logic.

I’ve asked myself if anyone will be interested in these images before they’re situated in their larger context. I’ve also asked myself if anyone will be interested in the larger context. I could keep going with my laundry list: Am I over-explaining my art? Am I weakening the final product by displaying these drafts? Won’t it be embarrassing to have these up if, heaven forbid, I abandon the whole thing?

But when I push these anxieties aside, I’m left with the feeling that it’s nice to share things from this project with my audience. Both my readers and this graphic novel are important to me, and sharing sketches makes the project feel more real before I have a proposal to send out to publishers. I like the rhythm I’m establishing of drawing and sharing. It helps me keep plodding along with the massive to-do list of making a book like this.

Anyway, these are from the chapter I’m working on that centers Catholic school.

One of the reasons I decided to go with a graphic novel format is that there are things I want to say in this book that work better with images. This chapter is about non-communication, rooted in my experience as a kid who was in his own world all the time and confused by what was happening around him.

It’s terrifying and frustrating to feel like people are trying to talk to you, but the language is failing. Language, I’ve come to believe, is just about everything. To feel outside of language is to feel outside of life. I was in a non-reality, behind a thick pane of rippled glass where I could make out the blurry shapes of other people, but couldn’t reach them. That’s what a good deal of my childhood felt like.

I didn’t know how to talk to people. I didn’t know how to behave. I cried at every little thing, felt scared all the time, and would clam up whenever anyone asked me what was wrong. It was like I was in a fog, and neither my classmates nor my teachers could reach me through it. I retreated into a private world with a private language, where images and words were assigned secret meanings, a language of one, utter linguistic isolation.

Catholicism was like a dizzying kaleidoscope to me, its many rules and sacraments and intense imagery all conspired to frighten me even further. When I think back to that terrifying time, it’s all a blurry, chaotic mess of solitude and saints, perfumes and incense, adult hands smacking and grabbing and forcing me to do things a certain way. No matter how many times I got smacked with a ruler, I just couldn’t fall into the single-file line. I was just wrong.

What excites me about fusing my writing and my visual art is the potential to better convey how I actually think and feel. Like most people, it’s a tangled mess of words and images upstairs, and I’m very interested in the relationship between those two things, how they aren’t so distinct in the head, how they are both language, how language is the best tool we have to connect with each other, and how terrible it is when that tool breaks in your hands.

The confusion I experienced as a kid had a look and a scent to it. I know exactly what Catholic school smells like. In these drawings, I used frankincense to serve as a visual representation of that fog. I think mental states look a certain way, move a certain way, smell a certain way. That’s the beauty of this format, for me, and it makes the grueling hours worth it.

Thank you for your continued support! This week’s ¡Hola Papi! won’t be behind a paywall, but upgrading your subscription gets you both the paid-subscribers-only columns and more secret, special stuff from me. It’s also the best way to support me as I go about making this book. You’ll also be helping me with purchasing a thurible, a thing I want and need now.

JP