1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000 Downloaded from YTS.MX 2 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:11,000 [three bells] 3 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000 Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX 4 00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:15,000 DIRECTOR: Well, let's have a -- I'm ready to go when he sits down. 5 00:00:15,500 --> 00:00:18,120 PRODUCER: Speeding. Nine-one. [clapper] 6 00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:21,500 [WOODRING clears throat] 7 00:00:29,645 --> 00:00:31,765 Uh, I'm getting some kind of a buzz. 8 00:00:32,285 --> 00:00:34,445 -A buzz? -Yeah, well -- 9 00:00:35,146 --> 00:00:36,965 WOODRING: Oh, wait a minute, I hear it too. 10 00:00:37,485 --> 00:00:39,645 -Is it an airplane? -It's an airplane. 11 00:00:39,765 --> 00:00:42,285 -Or something.-Yeah, it's an airplane. 12 00:00:42,685 --> 00:00:45,765 [three bells] 13 00:00:46,865 --> 00:00:48,185 There it is. 14 00:00:48,445 --> 00:00:51,110 I'll take this opportunity to sharpen some pencils. 15 00:00:58,125 --> 00:01:02,365 Mind your ears. [electric pencil sharpener noise] 16 00:01:18,820 --> 00:01:24,325 So I -- I honestly can't remember, I'm not trying to belabor a point, but just if -- 17 00:01:24,445 --> 00:01:28,845 In case we use any of the Brahman stuff: What is Brahman? 18 00:01:31,460 --> 00:01:35,885 Brahman is... the ultimate reality. 19 00:01:36,100 --> 00:01:39,645 The sum total of everything. It's the cause of everything. 20 00:01:41,085 --> 00:01:45,485 One... it has many names in Sanskrit. One of them is Sat-cit-ānanda. 21 00:01:45,645 --> 00:01:49,485 Which means existence, knowledge, bliss. 22 00:01:49,780 --> 00:01:52,045 With the implication that they're the abs-- 23 00:01:52,230 --> 00:01:58,225 That... they are the absolute forms of existence, knowledge, and bliss. 24 00:02:00,020 --> 00:02:04,020 Brahman doesn't exist, it is existence. 25 00:02:05,340 --> 00:02:10,260 It doesn't think or know, it is thought and knowledge. 26 00:02:10,420 --> 00:02:13,940 There's nothing that exists outside it. 27 00:02:14,420 --> 00:02:17,620 And one of the ways they-- 28 00:02:20,140 --> 00:02:25,540 One of the designations or categorizations they make is that... 29 00:02:26,120 --> 00:02:31,480 They say that when it's inactive, they call it Brahman, 30 00:02:31,600 --> 00:02:35,450 and when it's active, it's manifested as... 31 00:02:37,200 --> 00:02:40,750 Prakriti, or... um... 32 00:02:41,620 --> 00:02:46,180 Actually, more accurately as the counterpart to Brahman, is Shakti, 33 00:02:46,800 --> 00:02:51,720 the female principle of creation... the universe, the physical universe. 34 00:02:54,000 --> 00:02:55,440 It's like... 35 00:02:56,640 --> 00:02:59,200 One of the analogies they use is they say... 36 00:02:59,320 --> 00:03:04,400 it's like a spider brings the web out of itself, and then it lives on the web. 37 00:03:05,200 --> 00:03:08,139 They say that Brahman brings the universe out of itself, 38 00:03:08,240 --> 00:03:11,320 and then it inhabits the universe as consciousness. 39 00:03:13,200 --> 00:03:16,375 My name is Jim, and I am a cartoonist. 40 00:03:18,920 --> 00:03:23,780 I've been told that I would be within my rights to call myself an artist instead of a cartoonist, 41 00:03:24,120 --> 00:03:26,996 since much of what I draw is not particularly cartoony 42 00:03:27,097 --> 00:03:30,195 in the generally accepted sense of that word. 43 00:03:30,800 --> 00:03:35,320 But I don't see that as a promotion. I'd much rather be a cartoonist. 44 00:03:35,600 --> 00:03:37,840 The cartooning tradition is magnificent, 45 00:03:37,970 --> 00:03:40,920 and I am honored to be considered a practitioner. 46 00:03:42,400 --> 00:03:44,640 What is cartooning? 47 00:03:49,440 --> 00:03:54,360 I'm not... I've pondered that question myself: What is cartooning? How does it differ from... 48 00:03:55,720 --> 00:03:57,600 ...any other kind of, uh... 49 00:03:59,200 --> 00:04:03,215 ...fanciful or imaginative drawing? I'm not sure what the distinction is. 50 00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:10,140 The word's definition, cartoon, is pretty straightforward. 51 00:04:10,640 --> 00:04:15,871 This is the Webster's definition. There's no synonym for it. 52 00:04:16,400 --> 00:04:20,400 Imaginative drawing, in an idiosyncratic style, 53 00:04:20,640 --> 00:04:22,800 with didactic intent, 54 00:04:22,920 --> 00:04:26,720 and a non-negotiable, built-in element of humor. 55 00:04:26,820 --> 00:04:29,600 If the humor isn't there, it's not a cartoon. 56 00:04:29,720 --> 00:04:34,439 By the way, those figures turned out to be true. [laughter] 57 00:04:34,540 --> 00:04:38,440 It's hard work... learning to be a cartoonist. 58 00:04:38,640 --> 00:04:41,339 Then it's hard work drawing the cartoons, 59 00:04:41,440 --> 00:04:44,019 and then it's hard work to make a living at them, 60 00:04:44,120 --> 00:04:48,520 and then you have to keep growing and keep developing, 61 00:04:48,640 --> 00:04:51,440 so you can keep saying and doing new things. 62 00:04:51,840 --> 00:04:54,939 The whole point of doing cartoons is to distort reality 63 00:04:55,040 --> 00:04:59,840 for editorial or entertainment purposes, so that... 64 00:05:01,600 --> 00:05:05,499 you can... impose your reality on the readers, 65 00:05:05,600 --> 00:05:09,840 and make them see and think the things that you want them to see and think. 66 00:05:12,640 --> 00:05:15,339 I should probably start this self-promotional puff piece 67 00:05:15,440 --> 00:05:19,499 with some drawings from my childhood, but I destroyed all of them years ago, 68 00:05:19,600 --> 00:05:21,140 so I don't have any. 69 00:05:21,320 --> 00:05:24,819 Or at least I didn't until recently, when my brother sent me a package of them 70 00:05:24,920 --> 00:05:28,820 he found in the ancestral home after my father's death. 71 00:05:29,440 --> 00:05:31,840 This was in that package. 72 00:05:32,000 --> 00:05:34,999 It is the very oldest picture I have that I drew. 73 00:05:35,185 --> 00:05:39,219 It's a drawing of a horrid, jabbering little man made of electricity, 74 00:05:39,320 --> 00:05:43,499 who used to come into my bedroom and terrorize me when I was a little boy. 75 00:05:43,600 --> 00:05:46,570 He told me his name over and over: 76 00:05:47,200 --> 00:05:50,720 Jiggety Jatters. The worst name. 77 00:05:51,415 --> 00:05:55,619 Seeing it again rekindled vivid memories of the disorienting hell 78 00:05:55,720 --> 00:05:57,690 my earliest years were. 79 00:05:59,320 --> 00:06:03,619 Simply put, I had a lot of perceptual problems, 80 00:06:03,720 --> 00:06:07,280 which I still have to some extent. When I was a little kid, 81 00:06:07,985 --> 00:06:11,840 I had a hard time telling the difference between dream and reality. 82 00:06:12,520 --> 00:06:16,539 I had a hard time telling the difference between animated cartoons 83 00:06:16,640 --> 00:06:19,015 and films and reality. They all looked the same to me. 84 00:06:19,140 --> 00:06:21,815 I have a condition called prosopagnosia, 85 00:06:21,915 --> 00:06:24,419 which makes it so that I can't recognize faces readily, 86 00:06:24,520 --> 00:06:27,339 which caused me all kinds of trouble when I was courting my wife. 87 00:06:27,440 --> 00:06:30,240 I knew who she was, but I couldn't tell what she looked like. 88 00:06:30,520 --> 00:06:35,449 I also, when I was a little kid, experienced real paranoia, which is no joke. 89 00:06:35,990 --> 00:06:39,600 And I had a lot of other perceptual problems. 90 00:06:39,720 --> 00:06:43,339 It was all kind of fun and stimulating and interesting to me, 91 00:06:43,440 --> 00:06:47,739 because I was kind of strangely tough-minded about it all. 92 00:06:47,840 --> 00:06:51,200 I didn't feel victimized by it, I didn't feel scared of it. 93 00:06:51,320 --> 00:06:54,819 I learned not only to accept being frightened, but to enjoy it, 94 00:06:54,920 --> 00:06:58,800 and to enjoy almost any unexpected and bizarre situation. 95 00:06:58,920 --> 00:07:00,045 For over a year, 96 00:07:00,145 --> 00:07:03,720 I went to bed certain that my parents were going to come in and kill me. 97 00:07:03,840 --> 00:07:07,320 It was sheer paranoia, and I liked it. 98 00:07:07,600 --> 00:07:11,150 I would go to bed at night, trying to stay awake as long as I could, 99 00:07:11,250 --> 00:07:14,419 and listening to them through the door, because I thought they were out there 100 00:07:14,520 --> 00:07:17,320 waiting to come in and kill me in my sleep. 101 00:07:18,520 --> 00:07:23,739 And one day I mentioned this to my friend next door, and he mentioned it to his mother, 102 00:07:23,840 --> 00:07:27,600 and she told my mother, and my mother went crazy. 103 00:07:29,420 --> 00:07:30,700 Crazy how? 104 00:07:30,800 --> 00:07:33,822 Crazy with, uh... 105 00:07:35,565 --> 00:07:41,020 ...anguish over me, volume two hundred, number... 106 00:07:41,021 --> 00:07:44,620 ...three thousand. It was just one more... 107 00:07:46,690 --> 00:07:53,075 ...straw on the burden that she had to carry of being disappointed in me. 108 00:07:54,800 --> 00:07:58,770 This is really not such a great thing to be talking about. 109 00:08:00,780 --> 00:08:04,120 There was something not quite right with my mind. 110 00:08:04,240 --> 00:08:08,939 Almost every time I closed my eyes, I saw... something. 111 00:08:09,040 --> 00:08:12,340 Sometimes it was a scary face that would not go away. 112 00:08:12,640 --> 00:08:15,600 Frequently it was a huge staring eye. 113 00:08:15,790 --> 00:08:18,240 Sometimes it was headless animals. 114 00:08:18,400 --> 00:08:22,520 Once it was a screaming golden lion being devoured by maggots. 115 00:08:23,440 --> 00:08:26,019 Sometimes these apparitions were benign, 116 00:08:26,120 --> 00:08:29,099 like the brightly colored, radially symmetrical shapes 117 00:08:29,200 --> 00:08:31,320 that hovered in the air over my bed. 118 00:08:31,600 --> 00:08:33,739 When I first heard about angels, I thought that 119 00:08:33,840 --> 00:08:35,880 these were what was being referred to. 120 00:08:36,375 --> 00:08:37,975 This is an image... 121 00:08:38,120 --> 00:08:42,699 ...it's a single-page compendium of memorable events, 122 00:08:42,800 --> 00:08:46,920 circumstances, props, and scenics from my childhood. 123 00:08:47,600 --> 00:08:50,520 When I was about five, 124 00:08:51,040 --> 00:08:52,419 I was lying in my bed, 125 00:08:52,520 --> 00:08:56,285 and a man came into the room with a big wooden crate on a handcart, 126 00:08:56,800 --> 00:09:01,320 and he stood it up, and the crate opened up, and my mother was standing in there. 127 00:09:01,600 --> 00:09:06,000 And she was naked, and she was covered with little red spots like chickenpox, 128 00:09:06,400 --> 00:09:09,600 and her hair was in her eyes so I couldn't see it, 129 00:09:09,720 --> 00:09:13,219 and she had this rictus grin on her face. 130 00:09:13,320 --> 00:09:15,840 And it scared me so much I put my head under the covers, 131 00:09:16,000 --> 00:09:18,120 and when I came out, it was gone. 132 00:09:18,640 --> 00:09:21,440 So, I went out to the kitchen and I asked her where the crate was, 133 00:09:21,600 --> 00:09:24,559 because I wanted it to play with. And she said, "What crate?" 134 00:09:24,660 --> 00:09:28,980 And I said, "The crate you came into the house in this morning. And where did the red spots go?" 135 00:09:29,200 --> 00:09:36,640 And we had another in a continuing series of painful conversations, 136 00:09:36,800 --> 00:09:40,920 where basically she just wanted me to tell her what the hell was wrong with me. 137 00:09:43,320 --> 00:09:46,830 -Did you often hear the refrain, "What's wrong with you?" -Oh, Jesus. 138 00:09:47,600 --> 00:09:50,240 I heard that, my mother screamed that at me, 139 00:09:50,400 --> 00:09:54,240 probably ten thousand times during the course of my life. 140 00:09:56,800 --> 00:09:58,000 She also screamed, 141 00:09:58,120 --> 00:10:04,699 "I am sick, sick, sick to death of you!" And that turned out to be prophetic, 142 00:10:04,800 --> 00:10:08,000 because she died at the age of forty-seven, of cancer, 143 00:10:08,120 --> 00:10:12,400 after a long, long process that involved... 144 00:10:14,000 --> 00:10:17,859 many surgeries, and... I mean, I can understand why my parents 145 00:10:17,960 --> 00:10:20,314 didn't want to put up with any nonsense from me. 146 00:10:20,415 --> 00:10:23,320 They really had a full plate. 147 00:10:25,320 --> 00:10:29,940 I think they had an expectation, because their lives were going really well, you know, it was... 148 00:10:30,080 --> 00:10:36,581 after World War Two. My dad had a good job in the aerospace/computer business... industry. 149 00:10:37,920 --> 00:10:39,307 And my mom was a housewife. 150 00:10:39,408 --> 00:10:43,548 They had a nice tract house in the hills of Burbank, and... 151 00:10:44,400 --> 00:10:45,954 everything was kind of going along. 152 00:10:46,055 --> 00:10:48,539 They went out and they heard Bobby Darin at nightclubs, 153 00:10:48,640 --> 00:10:50,699 and went dancing, and they had a great old time, 154 00:10:50,800 --> 00:10:53,339 and then I came along and kind of put the kibosh on all that, 155 00:10:53,440 --> 00:10:56,419 because I was a weird kid, and that isn't what they wanted. 156 00:10:56,520 --> 00:10:58,509 They wanted Beaver Cleaver. 157 00:10:58,610 --> 00:11:02,949 In fact, my mother even compared me unfavorably to Beaver Cleaver, 158 00:11:03,050 --> 00:11:06,000 and asked me why I couldn't be more like him. 159 00:11:06,640 --> 00:11:09,619 I was just a weirdo, and they just didn't like it. 160 00:11:09,720 --> 00:11:13,739 I was interested in monsters. I was interested in the Three Stooges, and... 161 00:11:14,047 --> 00:11:15,819 ...cartoons and things like that, 162 00:11:15,920 --> 00:11:18,920 and I didn't know how to act, and I didn't know when to shut up. 163 00:11:19,040 --> 00:11:22,185 And I don't think I did shut up very much. I was a real talker. 164 00:11:23,200 --> 00:11:28,000 But... you know, it just became an established fact. Oh yeah, you know -- 165 00:11:29,965 --> 00:11:32,520 So-and-so is smart, so-and-so is talented, 166 00:11:32,640 --> 00:11:35,720 so-and-so is ath... athletic... 167 00:11:36,000 --> 00:11:39,265 Jimmy, he's just... I don't know what he is, he's a nut. 168 00:11:39,366 --> 00:11:42,720 There's something wrong with that kid. There's something wrong with that kid. 169 00:11:43,720 --> 00:11:45,320 Oh, Jimmy. 170 00:11:48,120 --> 00:11:50,400 Oh God, Jimmy, no! 171 00:11:51,040 --> 00:11:53,295 Not... oh, Jimmy. 172 00:11:53,720 --> 00:11:57,630 I'm mostly sorry that my parents had such a rotten time of it. 173 00:11:58,120 --> 00:12:01,899 That's my major concern. I got through everything okay, they didn't. 174 00:12:02,000 --> 00:12:04,885 They deserved better than what they got out of life. 175 00:12:07,290 --> 00:12:10,240 But in a way, that wasn't anybody's fault. 176 00:12:10,400 --> 00:12:12,199 I was a little kid in the fifties, 177 00:12:12,300 --> 00:12:16,520 and I've only recently realized how terrified my parents were. 178 00:12:17,200 --> 00:12:22,920 You know, they lived under the shadow of nuclear annihilation. 179 00:12:23,040 --> 00:12:25,899 They thought that bomb was going to fall any afternoon. 180 00:12:26,000 --> 00:12:29,219 They taught their children that that bomb was going to fall any minute. 181 00:12:29,320 --> 00:12:31,374 They wished they had a fallout shelter. 182 00:12:31,475 --> 00:12:36,419 They were afraid that Russian soldiers were going to parachute out of the sky and take over Los Angeles. 183 00:12:36,520 --> 00:12:40,299 They had just managed to attain a really glorious way of living, 184 00:12:40,400 --> 00:12:43,840 and then along came all these monsters that wanted to destroy it. 185 00:12:43,940 --> 00:12:45,840 Here came Little Richard. 186 00:12:46,240 --> 00:12:48,000 That, they didn't need. 187 00:12:48,120 --> 00:12:52,939 Here came civil rights marches, and beatniks, and communists. 188 00:12:53,040 --> 00:12:58,000 They were scared to death of communism, rock and roll, homosexuality. 189 00:12:58,400 --> 00:13:03,440 I think their chiefest fear was that I was gay, and they had no reason to think that. 190 00:13:03,540 --> 00:13:07,840 I never manifested anything like that, but if they... 191 00:13:09,200 --> 00:13:13,219 ...saw me looking at a magazine and there was a men's underwear ad on it, 192 00:13:13,320 --> 00:13:15,440 they would say "Why are you looking at that?" 193 00:13:15,690 --> 00:13:19,499 I'd go, "What?" "You know what I'm talking about." "No, whu-- whu--?" 194 00:13:19,600 --> 00:13:23,815 I didn't know what they were talking about. I was just a little kid, you know. I had no idea. 195 00:13:24,000 --> 00:13:29,000 I remember in those days, everybody referred to the Beatles as "The Boys." 196 00:13:29,440 --> 00:13:31,099 "Oh, what will The Boys do next?" 197 00:13:31,200 --> 00:13:34,780 "The Boys really seemed to enjoy their trip to America." 198 00:13:35,160 --> 00:13:38,539 And one time when I referred to the Beatles as The Boys, 199 00:13:38,640 --> 00:13:43,339 my mother thought that I was expressing an appreciation for boys in general, 200 00:13:43,440 --> 00:13:48,520 and she just unloaded on me for saying it, and I had no idea why at the time. 201 00:13:49,180 --> 00:13:54,215 They were afraid of everything that made the 1950s the pivotal time that it was. 202 00:13:54,520 --> 00:13:58,019 And I guess they were hoping that I would be some kind of comfort and joy to them, 203 00:13:58,120 --> 00:14:00,674 but instead I... it's like I had absorbed everything bad 204 00:14:00,775 --> 00:14:02,939 that was happening and was reflecting it back at them, 205 00:14:03,040 --> 00:14:06,139 so they gave me a lot of grief. My dad brought home 206 00:14:06,240 --> 00:14:10,419 this 8-millimeter silent cartoon called Boy Meets Dog. 207 00:14:10,520 --> 00:14:13,499 It was in black and white, the version I had. And in this cartoon, 208 00:14:13,600 --> 00:14:17,339 the mean father, who won't let the little boy keep a dog, 209 00:14:17,440 --> 00:14:22,939 gets badly punished by this machinery which has been built to punish mean fathers. 210 00:14:23,040 --> 00:14:26,699 And I liked that so much that he took the film away and destroyed it, 211 00:14:26,800 --> 00:14:30,699 because he didn't want me to get any subversive ideas like that. 212 00:14:30,800 --> 00:14:35,099 So that's how tightly wound up my folks were, and how concerned they were about me. 213 00:14:35,200 --> 00:14:38,419 They wouldn't let me watch the Three Stooges, or read Mad magazine, 214 00:14:38,520 --> 00:14:43,200 or Famous Monsters of Filmland, or anything like that. And... 215 00:14:43,600 --> 00:14:47,899 ...it's a painful reminder to me of how much grief I caused my folks. 216 00:14:48,000 --> 00:14:53,600 That's the only thing that I regret about the whole miserable situation, 217 00:14:53,720 --> 00:14:56,215 is that... it was rough on my parents. 218 00:14:57,320 --> 00:14:59,739 Now, obviously all of these things that happened to me when I was a kid, 219 00:14:59,840 --> 00:15:04,699 (the apparitions, the hallucinations, the voices) there's not... it's not unique to me. 220 00:15:04,800 --> 00:15:07,239 Lots and lots and lots of young people have got that, 221 00:15:07,340 --> 00:15:09,499 lots and lots of young people have it worse than I had it, 222 00:15:09,600 --> 00:15:12,685 and lots of people have worse when they grow up. 223 00:15:13,040 --> 00:15:17,189 But... the people who have it and outgrow it, tend to want to put it behind them, 224 00:15:17,290 --> 00:15:19,670 because it doesn't do them any good in their life. 225 00:15:19,797 --> 00:15:25,200 I decided early on that these sizzling, decal-like images 226 00:15:25,575 --> 00:15:28,229 were what I wanted. I wanted things that had that charge. 227 00:15:28,330 --> 00:15:30,659 I wanted things that horrified me and 228 00:15:30,760 --> 00:15:32,539 knocked me off my feet and filled up my mind, 229 00:15:32,640 --> 00:15:37,099 and seemed to indicate something... immense waiting in the wings. 230 00:15:37,200 --> 00:15:40,200 That was it for me, that is precisely what I wanted. 231 00:15:41,200 --> 00:15:44,139 There's a book... I just happen to have it right here... 232 00:15:44,240 --> 00:15:48,240 The Golden Book of Science, that my folks gave me when I was about eight. 233 00:15:48,400 --> 00:15:52,139 And this book... you can see how dog-eared and beat up it is. 234 00:15:52,240 --> 00:15:54,939 This book was my Bible, for years and years and years. 235 00:15:55,040 --> 00:15:58,539 I would look through this book, and look at these pictures, and hear music, 236 00:15:58,640 --> 00:16:01,320 at some of the vistas contained in here. 237 00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:05,199 Ulti-- I guess what it really did is it opened my eyes to the power of art, 238 00:16:05,300 --> 00:16:09,619 because this guy obviously put a lot of work and a lot of soul into his pictures. 239 00:16:09,720 --> 00:16:13,600 He tried to make them as good as he could, and he tried to make them loving. 240 00:16:13,720 --> 00:16:16,699 I responded to that in a kind of over-the-top way. 241 00:16:16,800 --> 00:16:19,040 I thought it was a mystical document. 242 00:16:19,600 --> 00:16:22,119 There's a picture of a sliced watermelon in here, and... 243 00:16:22,275 --> 00:16:24,985 when I used to look at it, I would hear a flute playing. 244 00:16:25,085 --> 00:16:30,920 And I thought: "Oh yeah, there's something idyllic and melancholy and sweet about this particular thing." 245 00:16:31,600 --> 00:16:36,299 Sometimes those things just had a kind of a glowing resonance 246 00:16:36,400 --> 00:16:38,419 that made me feel,oh, I've found a clue, 247 00:16:38,520 --> 00:16:42,139 this is a sign on the trail pointing in the direction that I want to go to. 248 00:16:42,240 --> 00:16:46,400 Something synced up with my idea of what it should be, I would say: "There it is!" 249 00:16:46,520 --> 00:16:50,419 And I would become a student of that thing, or that artist, or that sensation. 250 00:16:50,520 --> 00:16:52,699 And the more I looked at those things and got into them, 251 00:16:52,800 --> 00:16:55,200 the more I found the answers that I was looking for. 252 00:16:55,320 --> 00:16:58,400 And then there was this guy, Boris Artzybasheff. 253 00:16:59,040 --> 00:17:03,440 I remember seeing this in Life magazine when I was a little boy. 254 00:17:03,840 --> 00:17:10,400 His style and his approach went right into my DNA. He was a superb technician, 255 00:17:11,320 --> 00:17:15,219 and probably what is equally obvious is that I completely ripped off his 256 00:17:15,320 --> 00:17:17,720 rendering style for my own work. 257 00:17:18,400 --> 00:17:22,619 You can see that he doesn't adhere to the laws of light and shadow 258 00:17:22,720 --> 00:17:27,439 and reflected light and variegated light that a normal illustrator would use, 259 00:17:28,540 --> 00:17:33,899 and it really makes it his own. To me, he was a profound, spiritual prophet. 260 00:17:34,000 --> 00:17:38,819 I found messages in his work that I used to ponder over. 261 00:17:38,920 --> 00:17:42,999 I used to analyze his work as if I was looking at... some... 262 00:17:43,173 --> 00:17:47,739 ancient cultural artifact related directly to my field of interest. 263 00:17:47,840 --> 00:17:50,419 But, again, I think I projected a lot onto it. 264 00:17:50,520 --> 00:17:55,519 I don't think he was intentionally creating metaphysical roadmaps of the mind, 265 00:17:55,925 --> 00:17:57,600 ...which is how I took it. 266 00:17:58,800 --> 00:18:00,700 Does it have to be intentional? 267 00:18:02,000 --> 00:18:06,819 No, I don't think it has to be intentional, but if you're looking for... clues, 268 00:18:06,920 --> 00:18:10,340 and evidence, and a sense that other people actually know something, 269 00:18:10,440 --> 00:18:12,240 you want it to be intentional. 270 00:18:13,720 --> 00:18:15,600 You don't want it to, uh... 271 00:18:15,720 --> 00:18:19,359 You don't want people to be sort of accidentally pushing your buttons 272 00:18:19,460 --> 00:18:21,738 without knowing that they're doing it. You want them -- 273 00:18:21,839 --> 00:18:23,469 You want to be able to go to them 274 00:18:23,570 --> 00:18:28,400 and feel... that they have been down a road that you want to go down. 275 00:18:28,520 --> 00:18:30,400 Or at least that's how I feel about it. 276 00:18:31,440 --> 00:18:33,200 That's a scary image. 277 00:18:38,800 --> 00:18:40,165 So is that. 278 00:18:41,440 --> 00:18:44,190 But this picture is a kind of a talisman for me, because 279 00:18:44,290 --> 00:18:47,499 I remember looking at it, and my mother saying: 280 00:18:47,600 --> 00:18:50,539 "Don't look at that thing so much, you don't... you know, it's not... it's not okay." 281 00:18:50,640 --> 00:18:52,440 "Communism is not a joke." 282 00:18:53,045 --> 00:18:54,985 And I..."But this drawing's so funny! 283 00:18:55,085 --> 00:18:57,739 It's really scary, and it's really funny." 284 00:18:57,840 --> 00:19:03,201 And that scary/funny thing is the dichotomy for me. It's what I really like. 285 00:19:07,630 --> 00:19:09,539 I have one painting here that I'm proud of, that 286 00:19:09,640 --> 00:19:12,120 nobody has seen much of, and that is... 287 00:19:12,800 --> 00:19:16,120 this guy here, the so-called Dork from the Black Lagoon. 288 00:19:18,640 --> 00:19:22,740 That was in a show, and it was priced at eight hundred dollars, and nobody wanted it. 289 00:19:23,440 --> 00:19:27,320 There's... there's a propensity in your artwork to make the frightening a bit goofy. 290 00:19:28,520 --> 00:19:30,920 Yeah, I guess so. I can see that. 291 00:19:32,800 --> 00:19:34,240 Well, why not. 292 00:19:35,290 --> 00:19:38,700 There's enough genuine, grueling... [laughing] 293 00:19:39,200 --> 00:19:42,800 ...unrelievedly grim, frightening things out there. 294 00:19:43,171 --> 00:19:46,120 I don't see the need to add any more to it. 295 00:19:51,040 --> 00:19:53,440 I've always had this interest in... 296 00:19:54,240 --> 00:19:57,219 ...peering into things, taking things apart, 297 00:19:57,320 --> 00:20:00,400 looking into things, trying to figure out what makes things tick. 298 00:20:00,520 --> 00:20:05,589 And the sense I've had that the world is a deep well of mystery, 299 00:20:05,690 --> 00:20:08,419 and that the point of life is to explore it and discover it, 300 00:20:08,520 --> 00:20:12,539 and not simply stay on the surface, is the thing that runs through all my work. 301 00:20:12,640 --> 00:20:17,989 It's the thing that runs through my life. My work is really an accurate reflection of my major life's interest, 302 00:20:18,090 --> 00:20:22,379 which is to explore beneath the surface of things. 303 00:20:22,480 --> 00:20:26,370 That's driven practically everything I've done all my life. 304 00:20:26,480 --> 00:20:29,739 When I was about four, we had this black and white television, 305 00:20:29,840 --> 00:20:33,230 and I saw Bimbo's Initiation, the Fleischer Brother cartoon. 306 00:20:33,755 --> 00:20:36,119 And it changed my life. 307 00:20:36,240 --> 00:20:41,610 I felt that it was a documentary about a side of life that interested me. 308 00:20:42,100 --> 00:20:44,699 And I wanted to go to that world. 309 00:20:44,800 --> 00:20:47,539 I felt like it was a travel poster, or a...a... 310 00:20:47,640 --> 00:20:50,750 a commercial for this world that I wanted to be in. 311 00:20:56,000 --> 00:20:59,899 I mean, I was just a little kid, and I had terrible perceptual problems. 312 00:21:00,000 --> 00:21:03,139 I couldn't really tell what I was looking at a lot of the time. 313 00:21:03,245 --> 00:21:05,759 I couldn't tell what people meant when they spoke a lot of the time. 314 00:21:05,860 --> 00:21:08,480 I had a hard time recognizing faces. 315 00:21:08,785 --> 00:21:12,299 I had dreams that sometimes continued when I was awake. 316 00:21:12,400 --> 00:21:17,600 I had hallucinations that I thought were real, and that I thought other people had. 317 00:21:18,120 --> 00:21:22,320 So I was kind of adrift in the sea of messed-up perceptions. 318 00:21:22,420 --> 00:21:26,019 And when I saw something that looked sane and straight and normal, 319 00:21:26,120 --> 00:21:30,319 and seemed to point to an island of refuge, like Bimbo's Initiation did, 320 00:21:30,420 --> 00:21:33,619 I thought: "This is it. This is my way out of this place." 321 00:21:33,720 --> 00:21:37,219 "I don't have to live in this world of red-faced, screaming adults, 322 00:21:37,320 --> 00:21:41,739 and children I can't relate to, and toys that don't interest me, 323 00:21:41,840 --> 00:21:46,519 and... subjects that don't interest me. I can simply go and live with Bimbo, 324 00:21:46,620 --> 00:21:50,120 in Bimbo's Initiation-land." And that's what I wanted. 325 00:22:10,120 --> 00:22:12,120 This drawing is called... 326 00:22:13,040 --> 00:22:14,240 Play Date. 327 00:22:14,920 --> 00:22:18,840 I never... I never set out to be an artist, is the thing. 328 00:22:19,135 --> 00:22:20,770 When I was a little kid, 329 00:22:21,200 --> 00:22:24,599 people would ask me what I wanted to do, and I would never say "Oh, I want to be an artist", 330 00:22:24,700 --> 00:22:29,499 because I had no idea what that even meant. And I was so bad at drawing, 331 00:22:29,600 --> 00:22:33,099 my ninth-grade teacher sent me home with a note for my parents, 332 00:22:33,200 --> 00:22:36,164 gently suggesting to them that they should discourage me 333 00:22:36,265 --> 00:22:40,240 from trying to draw and paint, because I just didn't have it in me. 334 00:22:40,520 --> 00:22:44,419 And I can see why he felt that, because at the time, I... I couldn't. 335 00:22:44,520 --> 00:22:47,169 I mean, there were a few artists in my junior high school and high school, 336 00:22:47,270 --> 00:22:49,219 and I was far and away the worst. 337 00:22:49,320 --> 00:22:54,890 My parents didn't, you know, ever talk about sending me to art school or anything. 338 00:22:55,040 --> 00:22:59,270 They just thought I was going to end up in the gutter. My father wanted me to be a blacksmith. 339 00:23:00,659 --> 00:23:05,099 He thought that... that was probably the right career for me, to be... 340 00:23:05,200 --> 00:23:09,019 pounding on hot metal in the back of some desperate, filthy shed somewhere. 341 00:23:09,120 --> 00:23:11,680 He thought that was my true milieu. 342 00:23:12,845 --> 00:23:14,539 Even after I was married and had a kid 343 00:23:14,640 --> 00:23:17,619 and was working in the animation industry, and making good money, he 344 00:23:17,720 --> 00:23:20,419 suggested that I learn how to be a blacksmith, 345 00:23:20,520 --> 00:23:24,640 so that I could resort to that when this fluke... 346 00:23:24,800 --> 00:23:28,120 of making a living as an artist fell through. 347 00:23:30,090 --> 00:23:33,570 I didn't really know what an artist was until I was in high school, 348 00:23:33,810 --> 00:23:40,610 and I went to a massive retrospective of Dada and Surrealism at the L.A. County Art Museum. 349 00:23:40,770 --> 00:23:45,690 This is the catalog for it, this big Dada and Surrealism retrospective. 350 00:23:46,210 --> 00:23:48,909 And I had no idea what Surrealism was. 351 00:23:49,010 --> 00:23:53,170 I'd never heard of Salvador Dalí, or Max Ernst, or any of those guys. 352 00:23:53,570 --> 00:23:56,234 All I knew was that I had these things that I was trying to express, 353 00:23:56,335 --> 00:24:00,489 and then I found myself in a room filled with the greatest hits of Surrealism. 354 00:24:00,590 --> 00:24:03,070 Right at the beginning there's a painting by...uh... 355 00:24:03,570 --> 00:24:06,509 Giorgio di Chirico called The Song of Love. Very famous painting. 356 00:24:06,610 --> 00:24:10,490 It's got a plaster bust and a red rubber glove hanging from a thumbtack. 357 00:24:10,610 --> 00:24:15,469 I saw that, and I just was like "God! Can you do this? Is this all right?" 358 00:24:15,570 --> 00:24:21,810 The Great Masturbator. That picture really knocked me for a loop when I saw it. 359 00:24:22,370 --> 00:24:25,189 I felt I had discovered someone who really understood me. 360 00:24:25,290 --> 00:24:27,869 That just went straight into my central nervous system, 361 00:24:27,970 --> 00:24:31,285 and I thought: "You can do anything. You can break any taboo, 362 00:24:31,385 --> 00:24:34,610 you can say any horrible disgusting thing you want, 363 00:24:34,770 --> 00:24:38,610 and it can be fantastic." It's not disgusting. 364 00:24:38,770 --> 00:24:40,989 It's like a laboratory for thought and feeling, 365 00:24:41,090 --> 00:24:43,309 and a way of plunging in as deep as you want to go. 366 00:24:43,410 --> 00:24:45,200 There are no limits and no restrictions. 367 00:24:45,300 --> 00:24:48,100 And the amazing thing was, this stuff was venerated. 368 00:24:48,370 --> 00:24:51,650 This wasn't the work of some lone nut working in his attic, 369 00:24:51,750 --> 00:24:53,600 stuff that would be swallowed up by the sands of time. 370 00:24:53,700 --> 00:24:55,469 This guy was a venerated master of art 371 00:24:55,570 --> 00:24:59,589 for doing these creepy, crazy, pathological, crack-brained things. 372 00:24:59,690 --> 00:25:03,979 I mean, Salvador Dalí was a huge figure in my life. He was a role model for me. 373 00:25:04,080 --> 00:25:10,250 I wanted to be a version of myself that was that... brave, and bold, and out of it. 374 00:25:10,350 --> 00:25:14,509 What I didn't have, that Dalí had, was the moral courage to stand up and say: 375 00:25:14,610 --> 00:25:19,069 "This is me. This is the way I am. I'm great. You're gonna take it and like it." 376 00:25:19,170 --> 00:25:21,210 That you could be a freak and an oddball, 377 00:25:21,320 --> 00:25:24,080 and that you didn't have to run around slinking in shame about it, 378 00:25:24,180 --> 00:25:27,589 that you could stand up and you could do things that other people thought were... 379 00:25:27,690 --> 00:25:29,589 ...would have been terrible if other people had done them, 380 00:25:29,690 --> 00:25:33,940 but if you were a great eccentric artist, people thought they were fantastic. 381 00:25:34,210 --> 00:25:38,109 I mean, look at William Burroughs, you know. He was a predatory pederast. 382 00:25:38,210 --> 00:25:40,509 He shot his wife, and he... 383 00:25:40,610 --> 00:25:44,669 treated his son so atrociously that he basically ruined his life. 384 00:25:44,770 --> 00:25:49,010 But people love him, they admire him. They think he's wonderful. 385 00:25:49,290 --> 00:25:53,380 If he wasn't a great artist, he would just be a standard, run-of-the-mill prick. 386 00:25:55,170 --> 00:25:58,909 Same with Dalí, you know. He did a lot of really unsavory things, 387 00:25:59,010 --> 00:26:00,789 and people stood up and applauded him. 388 00:26:00,890 --> 00:26:03,989 I thought that was great! That's why I wanted to be an artist. 389 00:26:04,090 --> 00:26:07,589 I thought: "I can turn all of my defects into some kind of professional asset." 390 00:26:07,690 --> 00:26:13,010 "I can... I can be what I am, and not hide it. I can amplify it." 391 00:26:13,410 --> 00:26:17,309 That was it! The gates opened. I thought: "This is for me." 392 00:26:17,410 --> 00:26:20,210 "These are my kind of people. This is what I want to do." 393 00:26:20,370 --> 00:26:23,625 Unfortunately, I still couldn't draw. I had the ideas, 394 00:26:23,725 --> 00:26:26,890 but it took me forever to figure out how to put them into action. 395 00:26:27,410 --> 00:26:29,469 I draw constantly when I was a teenager, 396 00:26:29,570 --> 00:26:32,770 and just as constantly I threw out what I drew. 397 00:26:33,290 --> 00:26:36,610 Looking at this, you can see why I didn't want to keep them around. 398 00:26:37,010 --> 00:26:39,970 I guess I was about seventeen when I did this. 399 00:26:40,345 --> 00:26:44,770 Every drawing I attempted in those days ended in frustrated scrawls. 400 00:26:45,170 --> 00:26:48,490 The Inkhand theme was something of a talisman for me. 401 00:26:48,610 --> 00:26:53,310 Inkhand was what I called the longed-for ability to use a pen fluently. 402 00:26:53,670 --> 00:26:57,309 I probably made nine thousand drawings with the word "Inkhand" 403 00:26:57,410 --> 00:27:00,610 scrawled across them, in fury at my ineptitude. 404 00:27:00,890 --> 00:27:03,410 It was an incantation, a mantra. 405 00:27:03,690 --> 00:27:05,869 Since I believed I was a born master, 406 00:27:05,970 --> 00:27:08,890 it irked me to no end that I couldn't draw worth a damn. 407 00:27:09,010 --> 00:27:14,715 I had to be an artist because all I ever wanted to do... was to express my total dedication... 408 00:27:15,820 --> 00:27:20,210 to the examination of these experiences that, I felt... 409 00:27:21,170 --> 00:27:23,885 ...even though they were incomprehensible, were also... 410 00:27:24,610 --> 00:27:26,155 transcendental. 411 00:27:33,170 --> 00:27:34,490 I guess... 412 00:27:35,290 --> 00:27:40,490 I guess I'm not really sure what these various things have actually been, 413 00:27:40,610 --> 00:27:44,210 or how to categorize them. I know I've had a lot of hallucinations. 414 00:27:45,970 --> 00:27:52,143 I've only had one that I thought had any deep, personal significance for me, 415 00:27:52,244 --> 00:27:58,000 and that was that big green frog creature I saw on the movie screen at the Glendale Junior College. 416 00:27:58,100 --> 00:27:59,140 After high school, 417 00:27:59,240 --> 00:28:03,210 I briefly attended Glendale Junior College, but I didn't do well at it. 418 00:28:03,390 --> 00:28:07,890 I took an art history class that included an overview of ancient architecture. 419 00:28:08,060 --> 00:28:15,069 Watching slides of Assyrian, Abyssinian, Egyptian, and Persepolitan ruins put me into a ruminative trance. 420 00:28:15,170 --> 00:28:19,970 And then, after the last slide, the screen went... white. 421 00:28:20,745 --> 00:28:22,370 The classroom was silent. 422 00:28:22,770 --> 00:28:26,770 The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I knew something was going to happen. 423 00:28:27,410 --> 00:28:30,410 And then I had an amazing vision. 424 00:28:30,610 --> 00:28:35,990 This frog appeared on the screen, shooting up from the bottom and settling down into this pose. 425 00:28:36,210 --> 00:28:41,069 And when I saw it, I felt such a blast of emotion 426 00:28:41,170 --> 00:28:45,510 that I could feel the soles of my feet and the palms of my hands sting 427 00:28:45,610 --> 00:28:48,010 with the blood rushing through them. 428 00:28:48,470 --> 00:28:50,789 I should perhaps mention that at this point in my life 429 00:28:50,890 --> 00:28:53,410 I had never taken drugs or been drunk. 430 00:28:53,785 --> 00:28:57,189 I was so startled, I yelled and tipped my desk over backwards, 431 00:28:57,290 --> 00:29:00,509 badly scraping the shin of the woman sitting behind me. 432 00:29:00,610 --> 00:29:03,410 I left school, and I never went back. 433 00:29:03,690 --> 00:29:05,309 It wasn't just seeing something, 434 00:29:05,410 --> 00:29:11,045 it was more of a full-body, full-mind, full-awareness event. 435 00:29:11,150 --> 00:29:13,309 And it really, really stayed with me. 436 00:29:13,410 --> 00:29:16,509 I went home and I drew that frog over and over and over again. 437 00:29:16,610 --> 00:29:19,469 I'll bet I've drawn that frog ten thousand times. 438 00:29:19,570 --> 00:29:21,310 Do you still get that feeling from it? 439 00:29:21,970 --> 00:29:27,601 No, unfortunately, because like almost everything else in my life, 440 00:29:27,702 --> 00:29:32,425 age has dulled the edge of it. But it still means something to me. 441 00:29:32,525 --> 00:29:35,989 I still like to draw it. I still like to look at it and think about it, 442 00:29:36,090 --> 00:29:39,555 and I still feel... that it's somehow... 443 00:29:39,990 --> 00:29:43,290 ...a... friend of mine, or an asset in my life, or something. 444 00:29:44,090 --> 00:29:46,040 So what did you do after that? 445 00:29:47,970 --> 00:29:53,010 I, uh, got a job as a garbageman, for the city of Glendale. 446 00:29:54,610 --> 00:30:00,310 And that paid me a working man's salary, even though I was just a kid. 447 00:30:00,490 --> 00:30:03,570 So I rented a place to live, and I... 448 00:30:04,370 --> 00:30:08,890 ...got stinking drunk every single night of the week, 449 00:30:09,190 --> 00:30:11,970 and I was so healthy in those days that I could... 450 00:30:12,964 --> 00:30:17,290 turn in absolutely hammered at three in the morning, 451 00:30:17,410 --> 00:30:22,269 and get up at six... bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and fresh as a daisy, 452 00:30:22,370 --> 00:30:24,980 and go riding around in the back of a truck. 453 00:30:25,540 --> 00:30:27,709 -Did you do artwork during that time? -Oh, yeah. Yeah. 454 00:30:27,810 --> 00:30:29,720 Well, I tried to do artwork. I... 455 00:30:30,635 --> 00:30:34,490 I was still trying to be an artist, but I didn't really know how to go about it. 456 00:30:35,410 --> 00:30:38,789 Suddenly, in 1978, when I was twenty-six, 457 00:30:38,890 --> 00:30:42,890 I finally produced the sort of drawing that I had been striving to create. 458 00:30:43,290 --> 00:30:45,589 I called it: Barnyard Trouble. 459 00:30:45,690 --> 00:30:47,570 When I was done with this picture, 460 00:30:48,210 --> 00:30:49,709 it was such a big moment for me, 461 00:30:49,810 --> 00:30:53,589 because I had been able to complete it, and I was infatuated with this image. 462 00:30:53,690 --> 00:30:56,389 I couldn't take my eyes off it, I would look at it for hours. 463 00:30:56,490 --> 00:30:58,789 And I was amazed that it happened, because it made me realize, you know, 464 00:30:58,890 --> 00:31:03,355 I've been working so hard and so blindly towards this, and it's true! It works! 465 00:31:03,910 --> 00:31:05,869 I mean, I was headed in this direction for a reason. 466 00:31:05,970 --> 00:31:08,490 I've created these things that mean a huge amount to me, 467 00:31:08,610 --> 00:31:12,210 and I'll bet if I keep doing them, they'll mean something to somebody else. 468 00:31:13,210 --> 00:31:37,655 [musical interlude] 469 00:31:37,855 --> 00:31:40,509 Having no idea how to build a career as an artist, 470 00:31:40,610 --> 00:31:43,810 I decided to self-publish what would now be called a zine. 471 00:31:43,970 --> 00:31:48,269 It seems like a simple idea, but the formula eluded me until 1981, 472 00:31:48,370 --> 00:31:50,669 when I put out the first issue of JIM, 473 00:31:50,770 --> 00:31:54,490 a sixteen-page Xeroxed "autojournal", as I called it. 474 00:31:54,890 --> 00:31:57,869 It had drawings and written pieces, and ads in the back 475 00:31:57,970 --> 00:32:01,589 for things like the Fortune-Telling Stinkbug and the Weasel Silhouette, 476 00:32:01,690 --> 00:32:04,289 all of which I dutifully made and sold. 477 00:32:04,390 --> 00:32:06,400 But it did not have any comics in it. 478 00:32:07,410 --> 00:32:11,189 Round about 1985, Gil Kane introduced me to Gary Groth, 479 00:32:11,290 --> 00:32:13,189 the co-owner of Fantagraphics Books, 480 00:32:13,290 --> 00:32:16,370 which was publishing the best comics coming out at that time. 481 00:32:16,610 --> 00:32:19,690 Gary offered to publish JIM if I would put comics in it. 482 00:32:20,370 --> 00:32:22,909 Everything in the series was straight autobiography, 483 00:32:23,010 --> 00:32:27,170 recording, as it did, things that occurred to me, either while asleep or awake. 484 00:32:27,690 --> 00:32:31,589 Fantagraphics Books has been my publisher since 1986. 485 00:32:31,690 --> 00:32:33,989 They've released fourteen volumes of my work, 486 00:32:34,090 --> 00:32:38,670 most of which are concerned with this cartoon character called Frank. 487 00:32:39,945 --> 00:32:41,989 I first drew him in 1988, 488 00:32:42,090 --> 00:32:46,725 after I'd kicked the idea for him around in my mind for six months or so. 489 00:32:47,170 --> 00:32:49,410 What I wanted was a cartoon character, 490 00:32:49,510 --> 00:32:54,749 a generic anthropomorph that was the equidistant synthesis of all cartoon traits. 491 00:32:54,850 --> 00:32:59,309 A cartoon character who was not a caricature of any kind of animal or human being, 492 00:32:59,410 --> 00:33:02,610 and who was capable of absolutely anything. 493 00:33:03,260 --> 00:33:05,140 This is what I came up with. 494 00:33:05,290 --> 00:33:09,870 This is the first drawing ever made of that character, long before he had a name. 495 00:33:10,460 --> 00:33:12,269 And this is the second drawing of him, 496 00:33:12,370 --> 00:33:16,370 which was used as the cover of the aforementioned JIM magazine. 497 00:33:16,870 --> 00:33:20,500 A friend's mother saw this and said, "You have to name him Frank!" 498 00:33:20,750 --> 00:33:22,210 after her cat. 499 00:33:22,590 --> 00:33:25,790 So that was that. His name became Frank. 500 00:33:26,470 --> 00:33:29,049 In every Frank story, he gets up in the morning, 501 00:33:29,150 --> 00:33:32,369 and as soon as his eyelids open, he runs out of the house, 502 00:33:32,470 --> 00:33:35,270 and he is thrilled at what he sees. 503 00:33:36,190 --> 00:33:38,990 Frank's world is called The Unifactor. 504 00:33:39,390 --> 00:33:42,249 It is a closed system of motivated cause and effect 505 00:33:42,350 --> 00:33:46,190 where everything balances out and resets in the medium-long run. 506 00:33:47,270 --> 00:33:52,249 The Unifactor also subjects its residents to terrible and frightening experiences, 507 00:33:52,350 --> 00:33:56,750 whether for fun or for some deeper unknown reason, who can say. 508 00:33:58,470 --> 00:34:01,450 The Unifactor is the main character in these stories. 509 00:34:02,870 --> 00:34:07,670 Like, in the same way that... God is the main character on the Earth. 510 00:34:08,590 --> 00:34:13,990 And it's not really a direct one-on-one representation-- symbolic representation of that. 511 00:34:14,150 --> 00:34:17,890 It's a literary construct, or an artistic construct. 512 00:34:18,190 --> 00:34:23,169 And I think sometimes it feels to us like life is having its way with us, 513 00:34:23,270 --> 00:34:27,270 and I think it's a representation of that more than anything else. 514 00:34:28,870 --> 00:34:33,689 The Unifactor is doing this stuff, God knows why, but it's doing everything, 515 00:34:33,790 --> 00:34:37,790 and it controls the situation the way it wants to be controlled. 516 00:34:42,000 --> 00:35:30,160 [musical interlude] 517 00:35:32,725 --> 00:35:35,670 I can't... meditate. 518 00:35:36,070 --> 00:35:38,470 I try, but I just can't do it. 519 00:35:38,590 --> 00:35:44,490 But I can get myself into what I call a sticky mood pretty easily, 520 00:35:44,745 --> 00:35:50,244 which is a warm, gray, gluey, 521 00:35:50,345 --> 00:35:53,270 semi-conscious... --I'm going into it right now-- 522 00:35:55,270 --> 00:35:59,370 ...state, which is very receptive. 523 00:35:59,500 --> 00:36:02,470 So, when I'm writing a Frank comic, 524 00:36:02,870 --> 00:36:05,689 what I will do is I will go off to some quiet, secluded place, 525 00:36:05,790 --> 00:36:08,870 and I'll sit down with my notebook, and I'll invoke that mood, 526 00:36:08,990 --> 00:36:11,585 and I'll write a phrase. I'll write: 527 00:36:12,470 --> 00:36:18,750 "Frank is throwing rocks... at a... hot-water heater." 528 00:36:19,490 --> 00:36:21,550 No. Nothing. 529 00:36:21,720 --> 00:36:25,430 Okay, "Frank is peeling potatoes." No. 530 00:36:26,350 --> 00:36:29,300 "Frank is pitching a tent." No. 531 00:36:30,190 --> 00:36:33,550 "Frank is sitting in his room reading." Okay. 532 00:36:34,090 --> 00:36:36,570 This is one of the very first Frank comics, 533 00:36:36,835 --> 00:36:38,889 and it was written in the process I'm describing. 534 00:36:38,990 --> 00:36:41,835 Okay, Frank is sitting in his room reading. Okay, good. 535 00:36:42,250 --> 00:36:51,385 What gives me the go-ahead, when I consider an idea, is that it has a kind of a spectral glow to it. 536 00:36:51,550 --> 00:36:56,070 So, and then I come up with another line. He... Frank... there's an earthquake. 537 00:36:57,270 --> 00:36:58,350 Nothing. Um... 538 00:37:00,070 --> 00:37:02,870 Manhog comes charging... charging into the house. 539 00:37:03,950 --> 00:37:05,100 No. 540 00:37:05,550 --> 00:37:09,950 A dried leaf blows in the window. Mm... That's got it. 541 00:37:10,190 --> 00:37:13,849 So, put that line down next. Frank is in his room reading, 542 00:37:13,950 --> 00:37:15,645 a dried leaf blows in the window. 543 00:37:16,470 --> 00:37:19,550 Next one comes easier: He looks out the window. 544 00:37:19,950 --> 00:37:24,089 At a certain point, everything I come down with glows, 545 00:37:24,190 --> 00:37:27,689 and I don't think about what they mean, I don't think about where the story is going, 546 00:37:27,790 --> 00:37:30,905 I don't think about whether it is a story or how it's going to wind up. 547 00:37:31,005 --> 00:37:33,520 I just do it until something happens, 548 00:37:33,620 --> 00:37:36,070 then I realize: "Oh! We're back where we started." 549 00:37:36,350 --> 00:37:38,750 And that's it. Then I have the story. 550 00:37:38,870 --> 00:37:43,390 This is the book that I did the work in for the book that became FRAN. 551 00:37:43,950 --> 00:37:49,390 And there's a lot of tortured agonizing over the story. 552 00:37:49,950 --> 00:37:52,769 You can see I carried this thing around for a year, 553 00:37:52,870 --> 00:37:55,849 and filled it up with notes, 554 00:37:55,950 --> 00:37:59,270 mostly documenting how frustrated and unhappy I was 555 00:37:59,390 --> 00:38:02,350 at not being able to come up with anything. 556 00:38:03,550 --> 00:38:05,449 And this is a book I'm working on, 557 00:38:05,550 --> 00:38:09,310 or this is my workbook for the... the current story. 558 00:38:11,390 --> 00:38:14,350 And it starts off kind of nice and orderly, 559 00:38:14,470 --> 00:38:16,750 where I set out my task for myself, 560 00:38:16,870 --> 00:38:22,190 but as it goes on and I fail to find the elements that I'm looking for, 561 00:38:22,590 --> 00:38:29,550 it just sort of degenerates into a nasty scrap heap of half-finished sketches. 562 00:38:33,520 --> 00:38:35,790 Telling silent stories is difficult, 563 00:38:35,950 --> 00:38:38,889 because you can't have a label that says "He goes to the store". 564 00:38:38,990 --> 00:38:41,289 You have to show him leaving the house and going to the store. 565 00:38:41,390 --> 00:38:42,990 You have to draw a lot of extra stuff. 566 00:38:43,150 --> 00:38:46,249 I wanted these stories to be beyond time and place, 567 00:38:46,350 --> 00:38:50,750 and if the characters had spoken, that would have tied it to this time and this place, 568 00:38:50,852 --> 00:38:55,035 and to the particular kind of idiomatic English that I use. 569 00:38:55,670 --> 00:38:57,849 Having no words means that anybody, 570 00:38:57,950 --> 00:39:01,969 in any country, at any time, can get the same thing out of these stories as anybody else. 571 00:39:02,070 --> 00:39:03,650 That means a lot to me. 572 00:39:06,590 --> 00:39:10,990 So, in other words, it's a... it's a slow and painstaking process. 573 00:39:11,150 --> 00:39:13,270 It's hard to come up with these ideas. 574 00:39:13,390 --> 00:39:18,190 You mentioned that... the difficulty. Is it that you don't enjoy it? 575 00:39:18,590 --> 00:39:23,049 No, I don't really enjoy it. It's... It's hard work. It's hard work. 576 00:39:23,150 --> 00:39:25,270 I kind of enjoy it more when I can... 577 00:39:26,590 --> 00:39:30,070 ...when I know what I'm going to do, and I can just sit down and draw it. 578 00:39:30,190 --> 00:39:31,550 But in a situation like this, 579 00:39:31,670 --> 00:39:34,369 where I'm having to draw every panel four and five times, 580 00:39:34,470 --> 00:39:37,449 and work out the composition, and get the flow right, 581 00:39:37,550 --> 00:39:39,169 and the postures right, and the hookups right, 582 00:39:39,270 --> 00:39:41,100 and the continuity right, and all that stuff... 583 00:39:41,200 --> 00:39:43,670 It's just work. And it's frustrating. 584 00:39:44,990 --> 00:39:47,969 And in the case of a page like this, by the time I have it all penciled out, 585 00:39:48,070 --> 00:39:53,169 it may be so marred from drawing and erasing, and drawing and erasing, 586 00:39:53,270 --> 00:39:55,790 that I'll just have to trace it onto another page. 587 00:39:56,590 --> 00:39:59,270 So it can take me a week to do a single page. 588 00:39:59,550 --> 00:40:02,590 But it's a lot of work for the results, I think. 589 00:40:03,590 --> 00:40:35,350 [musical interlude] 590 00:40:36,350 --> 00:40:39,150 I have a similar process for doing the drawings that I do. 591 00:40:39,270 --> 00:40:42,870 I keep a notebook in my pocket at all times. 592 00:40:43,150 --> 00:40:45,150 I fill up one of these things every month. 593 00:40:45,270 --> 00:40:49,470 I've got a bookcase with well over a hundred of these things, 594 00:40:49,790 --> 00:40:52,070 and I use them for idea batteries. 595 00:40:53,150 --> 00:40:58,310 But as I was saying, if I need an idea for a project, whether it's a commission-- 596 00:40:58,470 --> 00:41:01,670 See, I said that wrong too. Goddammit, I'm getting self-conscious. 597 00:41:02,350 --> 00:41:04,649 -Let's try that again.-Let's... let's... it's not a speech. 598 00:41:04,750 --> 00:41:07,849 It's not a speech, but I don't want to... but I'm making it sound like a speech, 599 00:41:07,950 --> 00:41:10,470 because I'm being self-conscious. So I'll just say... 600 00:41:10,590 --> 00:41:13,150 Well, let's talk... well, let's talk about your dreams for a little bit more. 601 00:41:13,390 --> 00:41:15,790 -My dreams?-The dream theater. The movie theater. 602 00:41:15,950 --> 00:41:18,579 [Frustrated noise] 603 00:41:18,741 --> 00:41:23,289 So is it... is it a... it's a movie theater just for you, it's the single seat on top of a pedestal, 604 00:41:23,390 --> 00:41:25,270 and there's nobody else in the theater...? 605 00:41:25,390 --> 00:41:29,449 Yeah. I don't know if it's a movie theater just for me, but it's a theater... that is... 606 00:41:29,550 --> 00:41:33,289 ...reserved for who... for one person. One person can go in there, 607 00:41:33,390 --> 00:41:36,169 and they ascend to the top of this column, where there's a chair. 608 00:41:36,270 --> 00:41:42,249 And there's a big, wrap-around movie screen, and films are shown there continuously 609 00:41:42,350 --> 00:41:46,470 that are relevant to different situations in different ways. 610 00:41:46,590 --> 00:41:48,350 And I see films about... 611 00:41:48,990 --> 00:41:53,390 biology, and history, and technology, and myself. 612 00:41:53,550 --> 00:41:56,317 And I have gotten lots of ideas in that place. 613 00:41:56,418 --> 00:41:58,249 And do you keep a record of those ideas? 614 00:41:58,350 --> 00:42:04,719 Yes, I do. In fact... because ideas are the hardest things to come by in this process, 615 00:42:04,820 --> 00:42:06,550 I started keeping... 616 00:42:08,190 --> 00:42:12,070 ...these, these little pocket-sized Moleskine sketchbooks. 617 00:42:12,990 --> 00:42:16,750 This is my current one. I try always to have one of these things on me. 618 00:42:16,870 --> 00:42:25,090 This bookcase here is full of 'em. This goes from 2004 to 2015, so it's about ten years. 619 00:42:25,270 --> 00:42:29,169 And when I need an idea, what I do is I just get out one of these books, 620 00:42:29,270 --> 00:42:32,990 and I usually haven't seen what's in them for years and years. 621 00:42:34,870 --> 00:42:38,070 I go through them, and I look for... 622 00:42:38,870 --> 00:42:41,150 something that will be useful to me. 623 00:42:46,470 --> 00:42:49,449 This one... got wet. [laughs] Maybe on purpose. 624 00:42:49,550 --> 00:42:52,889 Sometimes when I do a drawing I don't like, I just get it wet, 625 00:42:52,990 --> 00:42:57,270 so that it will be somewhat obliterated, but there will be a sort of a trace record of it. 626 00:42:58,870 --> 00:43:02,350 Here's three little vignettes. Okay, look at this. Look at this one here. See? 627 00:43:02,750 --> 00:43:05,849 Here's four distinct images. 628 00:43:05,950 --> 00:43:07,790 I've drawn these two as large drawings, 629 00:43:07,950 --> 00:43:09,790 but I haven't done either of these. 630 00:43:10,990 --> 00:43:12,890 But I could! 631 00:43:13,270 --> 00:43:15,169 And in fact I need to make a drawing, so... 632 00:43:15,270 --> 00:43:19,390 ...what I would do is I would pick one of these two, because they'll do. 633 00:43:20,350 --> 00:43:24,240 And then I would just pencil it up and ink it, and there would be the picture. 634 00:43:24,781 --> 00:43:26,910 So you can see how easy it is. 635 00:43:28,325 --> 00:43:30,709 -What do you think? Do you think that would make...? -Sounds good. 636 00:43:30,810 --> 00:43:34,080 Which of these two do you think would make a better picture, this one or this one? 637 00:43:36,955 --> 00:43:40,845 I kind of like this one, because he's being wafted on a cloud of smoke. 638 00:43:41,510 --> 00:43:44,590 Interesting. They don't... So you didn't do all of them together? 639 00:43:44,750 --> 00:43:48,134 It looks like a... it's not a triptych, but what would it be... a quadrych? 640 00:43:48,235 --> 00:43:49,790 Well, it's... it's just four drawings. 641 00:43:49,950 --> 00:43:52,590 I just drew these four squares, and then I put four pictures in them. 642 00:43:52,750 --> 00:43:54,889 But they're all very similar, in terms of Frank. 643 00:43:54,990 --> 00:43:57,581 Well, they're... they're... yeah, they are, but that I think is just a coincidence. 644 00:43:57,682 --> 00:44:00,870 I wasn't trying to do anything in particular, I was just... 645 00:44:02,070 --> 00:44:05,269 just as an exercise, just decided to do four Frank pictures. 646 00:44:05,370 --> 00:44:07,720 But yeah, he's at his ease in all of them. 647 00:44:08,124 --> 00:44:11,270 Maybe I did have something else in mind, I can't really tell. 648 00:44:11,950 --> 00:44:16,990 I can't really remember why I've drawn most of the things I've drawn. 649 00:44:17,150 --> 00:44:21,600 And... sometimes if I can't find anything I want in here, 650 00:44:21,700 --> 00:44:25,310 because I sort of have to feel a resonance with what's in them... 651 00:44:26,590 --> 00:44:30,709 ...I will go to another source. I have other sketchbooks, 652 00:44:30,810 --> 00:44:34,060 I have... boxes of loose drawings, of paper. 653 00:44:35,150 --> 00:44:39,520 Whenever I get a pad of paper, I... here, let me show you something. 654 00:44:40,190 --> 00:44:44,590 This is characteristic. I buy one of these pads of cheap paper, 655 00:44:44,715 --> 00:44:46,590 and I number all the pages, 656 00:44:46,990 --> 00:44:50,792 and then any... any time I need to do a sketch for anything at all, 657 00:44:52,170 --> 00:44:54,249 I do them in this book, 658 00:44:54,350 --> 00:44:57,550 and because I'm keeping absolutely all of the pages, 659 00:44:58,590 --> 00:45:03,950 I try my hardest to make them worth doing and worth keeping. 660 00:45:04,470 --> 00:45:08,070 This is a drawing that I did of a huge frog, 661 00:45:08,190 --> 00:45:12,089 kind of lurching up onto the land and swallowing people by the handful, 662 00:45:12,190 --> 00:45:14,070 and the people are loving it. 663 00:45:15,550 --> 00:45:17,870 But I decided to do something else with it. 664 00:45:17,990 --> 00:45:21,390 I decided to have the frog coming up on the shore 665 00:45:21,500 --> 00:45:25,435 and disgorging people into the landscape, 666 00:45:25,790 --> 00:45:27,969 and they're happy to be there. 667 00:45:28,070 --> 00:45:33,220 So... I guess they are immigrants... fleeing some terrible situation. 668 00:45:33,790 --> 00:45:36,449 So, if I can't find something in one of these small books, 669 00:45:36,550 --> 00:45:38,350 I have bunches of these too. 670 00:45:38,750 --> 00:45:41,270 These are all sketchbooks in here that are full of ideas. 671 00:45:41,390 --> 00:45:44,170 These drawers are full of sketchbooks that are full of ideas. 672 00:45:44,470 --> 00:45:47,289 That box there is full of drawings and sketches, 673 00:45:47,390 --> 00:45:51,320 and there's boxes and boxes of sketches and drawings in the other room. 674 00:45:52,190 --> 00:45:56,945 I've got so much of this stuff, and so little of it ends up in finished form. 675 00:45:57,670 --> 00:46:00,795 I'd like to think they would mean something to somebody somewhere. 676 00:46:01,550 --> 00:46:06,350 I mean, I'm devoting my life to creating these things, I'd hate to think it was pointless. 677 00:46:08,150 --> 00:46:10,685 But I know it probably is. 678 00:46:11,130 --> 00:46:14,570 It's just a pastime, something to keep me engaged. 679 00:46:15,130 --> 00:46:18,290 You don't feel at times that there's some... 680 00:46:19,370 --> 00:46:22,349 ...meaning that you're delving into, or revealing, or...? 00:46:25,829 Oh, I feel that all the time. I feel that everything I do has some meaning. 682 00:46:25,930 --> 00:46:29,930 Almost everything. I mean, I draw some stupid, arbitrary stuff, obviously. But... 683 00:46:30,482 --> 00:46:34,730 most of the time, I feel like I'm doing something that's worthwhile, to me. 684 00:46:35,759 --> 00:46:38,869 I'm really not trying to create entertainment, 685 00:46:38,970 --> 00:46:42,649 as much as I'm trying to present ideas and... 686 00:46:42,759 --> 00:46:46,349 situations that I think are fraught, and worth considering, 687 00:46:46,450 --> 00:46:49,615 worth thinking about. And for me, they're fun to contemplate. 688 00:46:50,170 --> 00:46:53,429 I mean, I look at this little drawing here of Frank, it's just a sketch, 689 00:46:53,530 --> 00:46:55,549 and I'll have to do it because I made him too big, 690 00:46:55,650 --> 00:46:58,050 I'll have to erase that, so here it goes. 691 00:47:00,250 --> 00:47:03,244 I made him too big. I have to make him about a quarter of an inch shorter, 692 00:47:03,345 --> 00:47:06,330 so that he'll be in his scale with his antagonist. 693 00:47:08,330 --> 00:47:10,869 But I like that drawing of him standing there full of knives. 694 00:47:10,970 --> 00:47:15,130 I think that's a nice image. He's standing there, he's not hurt, he's a little surprised, 695 00:47:15,250 --> 00:47:19,165 and he's got knives sticking out of him like porcupine quills. 696 00:47:20,050 --> 00:47:23,770 That's an interesting point that you raise, though, in terms of... 697 00:47:23,930 --> 00:47:26,330 he's not really hurt, just surprised. 698 00:47:26,450 --> 00:47:28,749 That seems to be kind of a feature of Frank, that 699 00:47:28,850 --> 00:47:32,749 he's rarely really injured by anything in the Unifactor. 700 00:47:32,850 --> 00:47:34,330 Nobody is. 701 00:47:34,730 --> 00:47:37,949 Nobody is. It's like a science-fiction story where nobody can die. 702 00:47:38,050 --> 00:47:41,549 The thing about the Frank stories is that whatever happens in them, 703 00:47:41,650 --> 00:47:45,650 at the end of the story, everything has to be reset back the way it was. 704 00:47:47,650 --> 00:47:49,930 The hammer never really falls. 705 00:47:50,450 --> 00:47:53,829 Terrible things happen, but they never annihilate anything. 706 00:47:53,930 --> 00:47:57,029 Which is the way I feel about life in general. 707 00:47:57,130 --> 00:48:01,370 I feel that... the hammer never really falls. 708 00:48:02,450 --> 00:48:06,430 Terrible as things can be, awful as people suffer, that... 709 00:48:06,550 --> 00:48:11,370 ultimate annihilation never occurs. It's all just play-acting. 710 00:48:12,450 --> 00:48:15,250 Which is... [laughs] I'm sure there are... [laughs] 711 00:48:15,350 --> 00:48:18,123 that must be insulting to people who have suffered terribly, 712 00:48:18,224 --> 00:48:21,170 and don't see it that way, and I guess... 713 00:48:21,390 --> 00:48:24,069 Maybe I shouldn't have said it, but it's... that's how I see it. 714 00:48:24,170 --> 00:48:26,730 I don't want to trivialize people's suffering, but... 715 00:48:26,850 --> 00:48:30,520 I really do believe that this is sort of a field of... 716 00:48:31,500 --> 00:48:36,330 illusion, where nothing is permanent. Nothing matters, really. 717 00:48:36,970 --> 00:48:38,970 You know, I guess I... I'm... 718 00:48:40,050 --> 00:48:42,149 I'm speaking in a highfalutin way 719 00:48:42,250 --> 00:48:44,749 about something I'm not really qualified to talk about. These... 720 00:48:44,850 --> 00:48:50,469 This is... a bunch of loose talk, and it should be considered as such. 721 00:48:50,570 --> 00:48:53,117 I don't really... None of the things I'm saying 722 00:48:53,218 --> 00:48:56,570 would stand up to serious philosophical scrutiny. 723 00:48:57,930 --> 00:48:59,940 It's mostly just because when I'm... 724 00:49:00,195 --> 00:49:02,850 when I'm sitting here doing this work, I have to... 725 00:49:02,970 --> 00:49:05,455 I kind of have to think about what I'm doing, 726 00:49:05,556 --> 00:49:08,747 and I try to get as much fun out of thinking about it as I can. 727 00:49:10,410 --> 00:49:13,030 So it's not a grounding for your spiritual beliefs? 728 00:49:13,130 --> 00:49:15,350 Oh, no. It has nothing to do with that. 729 00:49:16,050 --> 00:49:19,650 I mean, my spiritual... beliefs are... 730 00:49:22,330 --> 00:49:28,170 You know, that's... that's something that I'm just... moving around the periphery of. 731 00:49:28,330 --> 00:49:30,629 I have no real understanding of what I'm doing there. 732 00:49:30,730 --> 00:49:35,390 I understand what I'm doing here. I don't understand what I'm doing when I... you know... 733 00:49:36,570 --> 00:49:39,250 sit down in a devotional attitude. 734 00:49:39,370 --> 00:49:42,210 I don't know what that's all about. Something's going on. 735 00:49:43,370 --> 00:49:47,200 You can feel it. You can feel its influence in your life. 736 00:49:47,530 --> 00:49:51,029 It does something. It is something. But what it is, why it's there, 737 00:49:51,130 --> 00:49:54,450 what its relationship to me is, I have no idea. 738 00:49:57,650 --> 00:50:00,020 I'm going to end up having to do this page over. 739 00:50:00,170 --> 00:50:02,349 Are we too distracting? 740 00:50:02,450 --> 00:50:06,970 Well, no, it's not that at all, it's just that that's...[laughs] par for the course for me. 741 00:50:07,530 --> 00:50:10,529 I do... I frequently do pages over again, 742 00:50:10,630 --> 00:50:14,570 because it takes me so long to get to the point that I want to get at. 743 00:50:16,425 --> 00:50:21,370 This is a... sort of a more rendered sketch for The Nudist Colony picture. 744 00:50:22,970 --> 00:50:25,410 What's the idea behind The Nudist Colony? 745 00:50:26,850 --> 00:50:30,549 Uh... well, the... I just came up with that title. It was a little specious. I... 746 00:50:30,650 --> 00:50:34,400 This is a case of a situation where I had to do a picture. 747 00:50:34,520 --> 00:50:37,370 I had to work. I had to do something, and I didn't have an idea. 748 00:50:37,470 --> 00:50:40,850 And so this thing... just accrued. 749 00:50:41,230 --> 00:50:45,010 I drew this thing, and then I drew this guy hitting its nose with a hammer 750 00:50:45,110 --> 00:50:48,720 as if it was one of those ring-the-bell attractions at a fair. 751 00:50:49,645 --> 00:50:54,630 And then I just... put in the rest of it. It... it's kind of arbitrary, and... 752 00:50:54,830 --> 00:50:57,630 if it means anything at all, I don't know what it is. 753 00:50:57,750 --> 00:51:02,030 This is the first version of the image that I'm drawing in charcoal now, 754 00:51:02,950 --> 00:51:06,729 where the frog is shoveling people into its mouth, 755 00:51:06,830 --> 00:51:11,129 and clasping this woman with its bifurcated tongue. 756 00:51:11,230 --> 00:51:15,510 And the people like it. They enjoy the fact that they're disappearing into the frog. 757 00:51:17,230 --> 00:51:21,230 And this is the sketch... one of the sketches that I did for the charcoal drawing. 758 00:51:21,350 --> 00:51:23,230 At this point I had the frog 759 00:51:23,350 --> 00:51:27,409 with this kind of natural crown growing out of its head, 760 00:51:27,510 --> 00:51:31,540 kind of like a star-nose mole's nose. 761 00:51:32,150 --> 00:51:36,430 I called it an exit-wound frog, but then I decided to get rid of it. 762 00:51:36,550 --> 00:51:39,649 This is a sketch I did for a picture that I really like called 763 00:51:39,750 --> 00:51:42,550 Interfenestration on the Veranda. 764 00:51:42,830 --> 00:51:44,550 What's the idea of this one? 765 00:51:44,950 --> 00:51:47,250 Well, it's... it's pretty straightforward. 766 00:51:47,410 --> 00:51:50,255 This fellow is meditating. 767 00:51:50,830 --> 00:51:52,849 You know, there's a metaphor for meditation, 768 00:51:52,950 --> 00:51:57,409 which is that when your mind becomes like a completely still candle flame, that is... 769 00:51:57,885 --> 00:52:03,409 that is the effect you're trying to achieve in meditation, to still your mind. 770 00:52:03,510 --> 00:52:08,609 So this guy's doing it, and his... head, or mind, or consciousness, or something, 771 00:52:08,710 --> 00:52:10,729 is breaking through these dimensions. 772 00:52:10,830 --> 00:52:13,760 In the paintings there are different things to be seen in these... 773 00:52:14,280 --> 00:52:17,190 ...different dimensions that his mind is punching through. 774 00:52:17,630 --> 00:52:21,510 That's... he's sitting in front of a doorway, and so it's going through the door, 775 00:52:22,150 --> 00:52:26,150 but it's also going through the surface of the picture, 776 00:52:26,310 --> 00:52:28,030 into these other realms. 777 00:52:28,310 --> 00:52:31,910 The final painting was a little, tiny bit different in terms of layout. 778 00:52:32,710 --> 00:52:35,809 Do you have any care at all what happens to these posthumously? 779 00:52:35,910 --> 00:52:38,430 Well, I would not like them to be thrown away. 780 00:52:38,550 --> 00:52:41,009 I think some of them are finished enough 781 00:52:41,110 --> 00:52:44,310 and interesting enough that they would look good in a frame. 782 00:52:44,550 --> 00:52:49,230 And, you know, when you see, as you see here, maybe ten drawings for one picture, 783 00:52:49,350 --> 00:52:52,430 they are the ten that I thought were the ones worth preserving. 784 00:52:52,550 --> 00:52:54,430 I did many, many more. 785 00:52:55,230 --> 00:52:56,950 I'm not real deft. 786 00:52:57,605 --> 00:53:01,910 I've reconciled myself to the fact that I'll never be a virtuoso draftsman. 787 00:53:02,430 --> 00:53:05,409 I always felt that I should be able to do work as good as anybody, 788 00:53:05,510 --> 00:53:07,230 and of course I can't. 789 00:53:08,950 --> 00:53:11,529 But I... I feel like I should be able to. 790 00:53:11,630 --> 00:53:13,809 That's always been a big source of frustration to me. 791 00:53:13,910 --> 00:53:19,129 I always felt like I was a great virtuoso at heart, but I never was, and I probably... 792 00:53:19,230 --> 00:53:22,950 Now I guess it's too late to ever be that. I just don't have it in me, you know. 793 00:53:23,265 --> 00:53:25,350 Why would you say that about yourself? 794 00:53:26,150 --> 00:53:28,150 Well, you... you can see by looking through these sketches... 795 00:53:28,250 --> 00:53:31,044 ...how many times I have to draw things over again. 796 00:53:31,145 --> 00:53:35,649 How long it takes me to arrive at the right pose, the right balance, 797 00:53:35,750 --> 00:53:38,609 the right composition, the right line quality, 798 00:53:38,710 --> 00:53:42,950 the right fold patterns, the right face structure, the right... 799 00:53:44,510 --> 00:53:48,329 [sighs] ...everything. It's just... None of it comes naturally or easily. 800 00:53:48,430 --> 00:53:51,510 I have to do it over and over and over again until I do it right. 801 00:53:51,630 --> 00:53:54,950 And when you look all the stuff that didn't make it into print, 802 00:53:55,230 --> 00:54:00,030 and that I've thrown away, it's... I've done a lot more than that. It's a lot of work. 803 00:54:00,710 --> 00:54:06,150 And I guess I... I... no, I'm definitely proud of myself for doing all that. 804 00:54:07,350 --> 00:54:10,285 But I'm not particularly proud of the work itself. 805 00:54:10,550 --> 00:54:12,710 All I can see is what's wrong with it. 806 00:54:17,630 --> 00:54:21,910 I put a little tiny upward bend in that, just to give it a little interest. 807 00:54:27,350 --> 00:54:31,230 Again, if you imagine this drawing without Pupshaw, 808 00:54:32,030 --> 00:54:33,630 it's completely different. 809 00:54:34,430 --> 00:54:36,550 And the expression on her face... 810 00:54:40,430 --> 00:54:43,009 is some kind of a clue as to what is going on. 811 00:54:43,110 --> 00:54:46,710 But I notice that I made her body too long. That's odd. 812 00:54:50,710 --> 00:54:54,150 So, I'll push her back a little bit, condense her a bit. 813 00:55:03,630 --> 00:55:04,950 There we go. 814 00:55:10,710 --> 00:55:13,649 Now, normally, would... I'm looking at your pencil lines there, 815 00:55:13,750 --> 00:55:16,550 and they're pretty deep. Normally would you redraw this, then? 816 00:55:18,150 --> 00:55:23,910 No. No, because it's a soft pencil. It's not indenting the paper in any way. 817 00:55:24,030 --> 00:55:26,950 And there... I haven't done a ton of erasing on it. 818 00:55:28,150 --> 00:55:30,550 So the surface is still intact. 819 00:55:30,830 --> 00:55:33,910 This erase... these... these lines will come up... 820 00:55:34,550 --> 00:55:37,750 with an eraser. It may take a lot of scrubbing, but they will come up, 821 00:55:37,850 --> 00:55:40,150 and the paper underneath will be pristine. 822 00:55:43,510 --> 00:55:46,950 This is good. Now she looks more spooked. 823 00:55:47,110 --> 00:55:50,150 So the fact that Pupshaw looks... 824 00:55:52,150 --> 00:55:56,830 ...sort of defeated and flummoxed and unhappy with what's going on, 825 00:55:56,950 --> 00:56:01,630 completely changes the significance here. Because Frank... 826 00:56:02,710 --> 00:56:07,009 ...is so stupid that he'll fall for anything, 827 00:56:07,110 --> 00:56:10,030 and he'll get into any kind of trouble without knowing. 828 00:56:10,150 --> 00:56:13,009 She knows what's going on, and she doesn't like this. 829 00:56:13,110 --> 00:56:16,950 So there's something wrong with the situation here. 830 00:56:26,550 --> 00:56:28,430 One thing about Frank... 831 00:56:29,110 --> 00:56:34,710 is that he has a real appreciation for the institution of leisure. 832 00:56:35,630 --> 00:56:37,850 He can sit and stare... 833 00:56:38,875 --> 00:56:42,550 ...stupidly into the sky for hours... 834 00:56:43,750 --> 00:56:46,670 ...without doing anything. And that's something... 835 00:56:49,350 --> 00:56:51,649 ...I used to do, and I don't do it any more, 836 00:56:51,750 --> 00:56:55,540 because I feel like I can't afford to waste the time. And I think it's... 837 00:56:56,710 --> 00:56:58,185 ...hasn't been good for me. 838 00:56:58,550 --> 00:57:02,007 -Hasn't been good for you? -No. I think... 839 00:57:02,310 --> 00:57:08,630 ...disengaging your brain and simply falling into a reverie, or... 840 00:57:09,750 --> 00:57:12,430 ...sort of... Not even a meditative state... 841 00:57:12,950 --> 00:57:16,000 I don't know what else to call it, except for "leisure". 842 00:57:16,430 --> 00:57:18,250 You mentioned meditation. 843 00:57:18,510 --> 00:57:21,009 My initial thought when you were talking about it was... 844 00:57:21,110 --> 00:57:25,110 ...that it sounded like meditation, but... you differentiate it. 845 00:57:25,750 --> 00:57:28,310 Well, yeah. Meditation is concentration. 846 00:57:28,950 --> 00:57:30,030 It's work. 847 00:57:32,950 --> 00:57:36,250 The primary source of information 848 00:57:36,550 --> 00:57:39,809 that became the codified approach to meditation 849 00:57:39,910 --> 00:57:42,310 is a book called The Yoga Sutras, 850 00:57:42,830 --> 00:57:46,430 which lays out the process in scientific detail. 851 00:57:48,250 --> 00:57:51,350 You know, people sometimes say that they... 852 00:57:52,310 --> 00:57:55,929 ...you know, when they're painting or playing music or something, 853 00:57:56,030 --> 00:58:00,049 and they're focusing for hours at a time on it, that that's akin to meditation. 854 00:58:00,150 --> 00:58:03,409 But it isn't, because they're doing something that they want to do. 855 00:58:03,510 --> 00:58:05,110 It's not a discipline. 856 00:58:05,750 --> 00:58:08,250 Now I have to figure out how to render this lid. 857 00:58:08,350 --> 00:58:10,049 I don't know whether to do it with concentric circles, 858 00:58:10,150 --> 00:58:14,535 or with just plain old shade lines, but I'll just do that. 859 00:58:18,030 --> 00:58:20,550 I hate making decisions like that. 860 00:58:21,510 --> 00:58:22,950 Why is that? 861 00:58:23,110 --> 00:58:27,110 Because I never know if I'm making the right one. Frequently I'm not. 862 00:58:27,510 --> 00:58:34,135 One of the things that's hard for me to do is to attain line consistency. 863 00:58:34,710 --> 00:58:37,649 That's a real important aspect of ink drawing. 864 00:58:37,750 --> 00:58:39,750 The line work has to be... 865 00:58:40,430 --> 00:58:44,030 All the lines have to be harmonious in their relationship to each other. 866 00:58:44,150 --> 00:58:49,510 So if you have too thick a line in the distance... that's not good. 867 00:58:49,750 --> 00:58:51,230 If you have... 868 00:58:52,150 --> 00:58:55,824 ...lines that are too small and too close together next to lines that are 869 00:58:55,925 --> 00:59:00,515 thicker and wider apart, even though they create the same gray value, 870 00:59:00,810 --> 00:59:02,310 it doesn't look right. 871 00:59:03,630 --> 00:59:05,529 A lot of people would be surprised to hear, 872 00:59:05,630 --> 00:59:08,449 from those few shade lines on the lid of the jar, 873 00:59:08,550 --> 00:59:11,129 that that's such a difficult decision right there for you. 874 00:59:11,230 --> 00:59:14,710 Well, you know, see, the thing is I could have done it like this. 875 00:59:23,630 --> 00:59:27,410 And that would have been more in keeping with the rest of the inking. 876 00:59:27,530 --> 00:59:29,310 In fact, I think I'll change it. [laughs] 877 00:59:40,430 --> 00:59:43,750 Not everybody who draws has to turn their paper. 878 00:59:44,310 --> 00:59:49,209 I do, because I'm... self-trained, and I never learned... 879 00:59:49,510 --> 00:59:53,200 ...and I didn't develop all of those drill techniques. 880 00:59:53,300 --> 00:59:56,030 So this is... better, I think. 881 00:59:57,230 --> 00:59:58,850 All right. 882 01:00:00,950 --> 01:00:04,950 Well, I have this penciled to a point where I'm ready to ink it in. 883 01:00:06,295 --> 01:00:13,183 I do... most of my inking with these little Brause finger feder nibs here. 884 01:00:13,880 --> 01:00:18,310 People see this nib and they think it's a novelty item, but it's a great working tool. 885 01:00:18,430 --> 01:00:21,455 -There's only one maker of them, I'd guess... -Yeah. Yeah, they're Brause nibs. 886 01:00:21,555 --> 01:00:23,110 They're made in Germany. 887 01:00:23,500 --> 01:00:27,230 And generally speaking, they have to be special ordered. 888 01:00:27,650 --> 01:00:31,350 The palm of the hand here holds a lot of ink, and... 889 01:00:32,150 --> 01:00:34,839 ...sometimes, if I'm doing a certain kind of inking, 890 01:00:34,940 --> 01:00:38,030 where I need to do a lot of lines without breaking, 891 01:00:38,150 --> 01:00:40,550 I'll build a reservoir out of tinfoil, 892 01:00:40,830 --> 01:00:44,030 and wrap it around it, and it holds the ink in, 893 01:00:44,190 --> 01:00:46,710 like the peanut butter in a sandwich. 894 01:00:47,350 --> 01:00:49,935 And the point is sufficiently fine, 895 01:00:50,310 --> 01:00:53,249 that you can get a really thin line, and it's sufficiently flexible 896 01:00:53,350 --> 01:00:56,430 that you can get a really thick line. But it's stiff enough... 897 01:00:57,170 --> 01:01:00,310 ...that you have to lean on it in order to...to get the thick line, 898 01:01:00,430 --> 01:01:03,910 and that gives you more control. At least it gives me more control. 899 01:01:04,150 --> 01:01:07,009 I have this device here for looking at them, 900 01:01:07,110 --> 01:01:10,049 to see how worn down they are. 901 01:01:10,150 --> 01:01:13,809 I know exactly what I want that point to look like, and this one is perfect. 902 01:01:13,910 --> 01:01:17,510 This is... Bombay india ink. 903 01:01:19,510 --> 01:01:22,960 And the first thing I'm going to do, just to sort of get warmed up, 904 01:01:23,110 --> 01:01:26,580 is to do this little bush down here in the lower corner. 905 01:01:27,000 --> 01:02:03,910 [musical interlude] 906 01:02:04,030 --> 01:02:07,249 And this image here, which is called The Artist's Eye, 907 01:02:07,350 --> 01:02:12,920 if you were to get a copy of Vermeer's Allegory of Painting picture 908 01:02:13,020 --> 01:02:15,930 and compare it side by side with this one, 909 01:02:16,050 --> 01:02:20,030 you would see that it is a mirror-image reconstruction, 910 01:02:20,150 --> 01:02:22,550 element by element, of that painting. 911 01:02:22,950 --> 01:02:26,310 This picture was not so much inspired as it was concocted. 912 01:02:26,430 --> 01:02:29,510 I wanted to show the idea... 913 01:02:30,550 --> 01:02:34,329 ...that this artist here... it's called The Artist's Eye, 914 01:02:34,430 --> 01:02:37,680 and if you look, his eye looks like an oat. He's oat-eyed. 915 01:02:37,860 --> 01:02:43,110 And he's wanted to draw this creature here. This is the thing he has wanted to capture, 916 01:02:43,230 --> 01:02:47,110 and he's got some sketches relating to it here, and he's finally nailed it. 917 01:02:47,230 --> 01:02:49,510 And what he sees is this kind of porthole, 918 01:02:49,630 --> 01:02:51,809 he's looking at it through kind of a tunnel vision. 919 01:02:51,910 --> 01:02:57,345 He doesn't see this sort of horrible feminine creature here, 920 01:02:57,446 --> 01:03:01,910 that is cradling the thing and eyeing him with some kind of otherworldly lust. 921 01:03:02,030 --> 01:03:05,510 He doesn't understand what he's getting into. I guess the overall message 922 01:03:05,630 --> 01:03:09,510 is that artists frequently mess with forces they don't understand. 923 01:03:10,150 --> 01:03:12,430 That's the simplest way of putting it. 924 01:03:13,855 --> 01:03:16,255 It's a cynical picture. It's an anti-art picture. 925 01:03:16,375 --> 01:03:19,275 I was going to do a collection of pictures like this... 926 01:03:20,375 --> 01:03:23,675 package them up in a case, and call it The Case Against Art. 927 01:03:24,495 --> 01:03:26,555 But I only did a few before I realized 928 01:03:26,675 --> 01:03:29,795 it was a spectactularly non-commercial venture. 929 01:03:30,655 --> 01:03:32,025 So I gave it up. 930 01:03:35,855 --> 01:03:38,775 People ask me sometimes why I draw so many frogs. 931 01:03:39,455 --> 01:03:42,825 And aside from the fact that they're beautiful... 932 01:03:44,495 --> 01:03:45,975 which is the reason... 933 01:03:47,055 --> 01:03:50,330 If you think about it, frogs are actually wonderful 934 01:03:51,295 --> 01:03:54,604 symbols for a drawing. 935 01:03:54,705 --> 01:03:57,150 They don't look like people, 936 01:03:57,265 --> 01:04:00,954 but they can be made to be weirdly anthropomorphic. 937 01:04:01,055 --> 01:04:04,150 For something as unhuman as a frog is, 938 01:04:04,251 --> 01:04:09,295 they lend themselves amazingly well to stand-ins for human beings. 939 01:04:10,095 --> 01:04:14,345 And I would always rather show an army of frogs fighting than an army of people. 940 01:04:17,265 --> 01:04:19,175 It's occurred to me that... 941 01:04:21,695 --> 01:04:23,575 ...my life has been... 942 01:04:25,055 --> 01:04:27,075 ...maybe unusually... 943 01:04:29,695 --> 01:04:33,754 ...single in its trajectory. 944 01:04:33,855 --> 01:04:36,895 I've only wanted to do exactly what I'm doing right now, 945 01:04:37,055 --> 01:04:40,095 which is making this kind of picture, pictures which... 946 01:04:41,455 --> 01:04:43,455 ...are significant to me... 947 01:04:45,695 --> 01:04:47,055 ...and which... 948 01:04:48,255 --> 01:04:51,575 ...usually turn out to be significant to other people. 949 01:04:52,895 --> 01:04:54,495 Some other people. 950 01:04:56,510 --> 01:04:59,855 I guess the question is: Why do people have ideas? 951 01:05:00,860 --> 01:05:02,775 Why do people want to create? 952 01:05:02,895 --> 01:05:05,994 Why have I devoted my life to making pictures like this, 953 01:05:06,095 --> 01:05:10,274 instead of doing something more concrete and constructive and beneficial to mankind? 954 01:05:10,375 --> 01:05:14,430 It must have some significance, because so many people are drawn to do it. 955 01:05:16,520 --> 01:05:19,836 And if you believe in the Joseph Campbell theory of... 956 01:05:20,570 --> 01:05:25,290 ...universal spiritual meaning 957 01:05:26,495 --> 01:05:30,095 informing the myths and... 958 01:05:32,655 --> 01:05:34,375 ...fables of the world, 959 01:05:35,175 --> 01:05:40,154 there's no reason why that wouldn't pertain to this work, 960 01:05:40,255 --> 01:05:45,390 and other work where people are doing pictures 961 01:05:45,490 --> 01:05:49,354 that cannot be understood or explained even by the artist, 962 01:05:49,455 --> 01:05:52,655 but they're doing them simply because the impulse came to them. 963 01:05:53,455 --> 01:05:56,525 Maybe if you were to look at the work of... 964 01:05:57,975 --> 01:06:01,209 ...Kenneth Grahame, who wrote Wind in the Willows, in that light, 965 01:06:01,310 --> 01:06:04,794 you would see that as Joseph Campbell says, 966 01:06:04,895 --> 01:06:09,455 it's a roadmap to enlightenment, if you just look at it the right way. 967 01:06:10,355 --> 01:06:14,053 But you could read it into almost any other kind of a story as well. 968 01:06:14,154 --> 01:06:16,495 Maybe there's just really the one story, 969 01:06:17,055 --> 01:06:20,895 and it's something that's constantly being told in a million ways. 970 01:06:21,175 --> 01:06:25,175 And it's not just entertainment, or recreation, or for killing time. 971 01:06:26,080 --> 01:06:27,980 Maybe it's really deep. 972 01:06:29,840 --> 01:06:35,590 But I guess that gets down to the proclivities of the person who's looking at it. 973 01:06:37,110 --> 01:06:39,030 It's an interesting thought, 974 01:06:39,160 --> 01:06:43,743 that there is actually deep, deep meaning... 975 01:06:44,260 --> 01:06:46,545 ...in human creativity. 976 01:06:46,669 --> 01:06:50,469 That we create in order to bring ourselves closer to some truth 977 01:06:50,570 --> 01:06:52,580 that we can't reach any other way. 978 01:06:53,040 --> 01:06:57,260 But... the meaning of it is obscure, 979 01:06:57,380 --> 01:06:59,300 and has to be sussed out, 980 01:06:59,560 --> 01:07:04,760 and especially has to be seen through the lens of spiritual discipline 981 01:07:04,880 --> 01:07:07,160 which enables your mind to see it. 982 01:07:09,385 --> 01:07:11,139 It's a nice thought. 983 01:07:11,618 --> 01:07:14,939 It's nice to think that this just isn't all an exercise in futility, 984 01:07:15,040 --> 01:07:19,280 that there is meaning behind it, that meaning can be found it. 985 01:07:20,240 --> 01:07:26,080 Not in the literal interpretation of the work itself, but in the hidden symbolism of it. 986 01:07:26,760 --> 01:07:29,980 Maybe on some level we are all trying to help each other get... 987 01:07:30,080 --> 01:07:33,190 ...to a state of enlightenment, or deep understanding. 988 01:07:34,800 --> 01:07:37,859 I certainly can't tell why I'm doing this right now. 989 01:07:37,960 --> 01:07:42,920 I'm on automatic pilot. I'm just knocking out one picture after another, 990 01:07:43,135 --> 01:07:47,440 even though it's hard work and it doesn't really do much for me. 991 01:07:48,360 --> 01:07:51,590 I'm compelled to do it. It seems significant to me. 992 01:07:53,560 --> 01:07:56,259 But, for now, in the real world, in the here and now, 993 01:07:56,360 --> 01:08:00,259 there's just this tedious squeaking of the stump on this paper, 994 01:08:00,360 --> 01:08:03,930 as I move these molecules of carbon around. 995 01:08:04,200 --> 01:08:07,460 It's pretty mundane... at that level. 996 01:08:09,680 --> 01:08:14,240 And I'm wondering if I can sell this picture for enough money to make it worthwhile. 997 01:08:16,480 --> 01:08:19,470 In a way, that's pretty important too. 998 01:08:26,050 --> 01:08:28,080 I've always felt that there were... 999 01:08:30,245 --> 01:08:32,350 ...sort of two kinds of people. You... 1000 01:08:33,600 --> 01:08:35,900 You go out hiking, and you go up into the mountains, 1001 01:08:36,000 --> 01:08:38,810 and you come across some incredible vista. 1002 01:08:40,730 --> 01:08:44,259 You may feel overwhelmed by the beauty and the majesty of it all, 1003 01:08:44,360 --> 01:08:48,080 and you may regard it as sort of a... 1004 01:08:49,680 --> 01:08:51,929 ...you know, a heavy and beautiful experience. 1005 01:08:52,030 --> 01:08:56,380 But some people will fall down on their knees and thank God that... 1006 01:08:56,640 --> 01:08:59,310 for creating it, for putting them there, and... 1007 01:09:00,240 --> 01:09:04,760 ...say thank you for showing me this, show me more, this is a wonderful billboard, 1008 01:09:04,880 --> 01:09:08,779 show me the experience that it represents, bring me closer, I want to know more. 1009 01:09:08,880 --> 01:09:13,059 They address that environment as if it were alive and thinking, 1010 01:09:13,160 --> 01:09:17,179 and controlling itself, and presenting itself to them. 1011 01:09:17,280 --> 01:09:20,880 And they say: "Yes, yes, I see you, I venerate you." 1012 01:09:21,160 --> 01:09:23,840 Show me more. Show me more. 1013 01:09:35,040 --> 01:09:38,880 That picture is called The Holy Land. That's another Case Against Art picture. 1014 01:09:39,680 --> 01:09:42,880 In this case, Manhog has crept into this place, 1015 01:09:43,040 --> 01:09:48,080 in the dead of night, to vandalize it, or to in other ways enjoy it. 1016 01:09:48,260 --> 01:09:52,779 And he finds himself caught by the foot, and at the same time, 1017 01:09:52,880 --> 01:09:58,480 this nightmarish, fleshy, animal thing is coming down the hall to get him. 1018 01:09:59,160 --> 01:10:04,640 And Manhog's way of dealing with this crisis is to appeal to this work of art, 1019 01:10:04,760 --> 01:10:10,139 which appears to depict Manhog being born from the fetus of a piglet 1020 01:10:10,240 --> 01:10:14,059 and blossoming into all this ectoplasmic effluvia. 1021 01:10:14,160 --> 01:10:19,940 And he's about to make his escape from the museum in this... through these vents here. 1022 01:10:20,240 --> 01:10:24,880 But of course it isn't real. It's just a meditation upon it. 1023 01:10:26,760 --> 01:10:28,760 Somebody else's meditation upon it. 1024 01:10:28,880 --> 01:10:32,360 If he were to start meditating on it, maybe he would get results. 1025 01:10:33,040 --> 01:10:35,540 Instead of, you know, heading for the door, 1026 01:10:35,645 --> 01:10:39,512 he's trying to escape reality through art. 1027 01:10:40,080 --> 01:10:42,259 And the whole point of this picture was to point out that 1028 01:10:42,360 --> 01:10:46,640 that is a foolish attitude, and a waste of time. 1029 01:10:47,840 --> 01:10:50,780 So then you're not trying to escape reality through your art? 1030 01:10:50,880 --> 01:10:53,459 No, no, I don't... No! No, of course not. 1031 01:10:53,560 --> 01:10:57,579 You know, I've never... I... Some people say art is their religion. 1032 01:10:57,680 --> 01:10:59,960 I think that's semi-tragic. 1033 01:11:01,130 --> 01:11:02,890 Because it's a dead end. 1034 01:11:04,240 --> 01:11:06,240 Really, there's no escape. 1035 01:11:07,440 --> 01:11:08,550 No escape...? 1036 01:11:08,655 --> 01:11:13,179 No escape. The question I've asked myself, during the whole of my career, 1037 01:11:13,280 --> 01:11:18,539 is whether or not there is any correspondence between the way I perceive reality 1038 01:11:18,640 --> 01:11:21,680 and the way I express my ideas in my work. 1039 01:11:23,040 --> 01:11:25,890 There is a... a question I have as to whether or not 1040 01:11:26,000 --> 01:11:30,080 doing the work that I do is actually some sort of a path. 1041 01:11:30,760 --> 01:11:34,760 Maybe just by virtue of keeping my mind off of other tracks. 1042 01:11:37,025 --> 01:11:39,305 It's an elusive thought, but I feel that... 1043 01:11:41,160 --> 01:11:46,019 ...all these things that I thought that I was doing because they interested me, 1044 01:11:46,120 --> 01:11:50,690 and they stimulated me, and that I was doing simply because I was driven to do it, 1045 01:11:51,160 --> 01:11:55,320 may actually have some kind of interior meaning that is emerging over time,... 1046 01:11:56,080 --> 01:12:02,080 and that will actually benefit me, once I'm past my... 1047 01:12:03,160 --> 01:12:08,155 ...my usefulness. You know, when I have nothing to do but live and contemplate the past, 1048 01:12:08,760 --> 01:12:12,659 and prepare myself for the future, it may... be, I hope it will be, 1049 01:12:12,760 --> 01:12:17,829 that I've pre... that I've prepared myself for it, simply by... 1050 01:12:19,571 --> 01:12:25,240 ...developing and maintaining... my trajectory on this particular path. 1051 01:12:25,660 --> 01:12:39,850 [musical interlude] 1052 01:12:39,960 --> 01:12:42,259 I'm a strong believer in philosophy. 1053 01:12:42,360 --> 01:12:45,459 I think it's much easier to get through life if you have one. 1054 01:12:45,560 --> 01:12:47,739 Philosophical truths can be real, 1055 01:12:47,840 --> 01:12:53,160 where statistical and seeming other truths are not. 1056 01:12:54,360 --> 01:12:57,059 I've learned to pay a lot of attention to my subconscious, 1057 01:12:57,160 --> 01:13:02,860 and I've come to believe that it is the largest sphere in which I operate, 1058 01:13:03,040 --> 01:13:08,500 and that my conscious mind is a... a tiny and ephemeral fragment of it. 1059 01:13:09,462 --> 01:13:13,280 I really have stayed true to these impulses. 1060 01:13:13,440 --> 01:13:16,939 And the thing about art not being adequate 1061 01:13:17,040 --> 01:13:19,690 is the conclusion that I came to a while ago. 1062 01:13:20,480 --> 01:13:23,859 I wouldn't say that I was ever anybody for whom art was my religion, 1063 01:13:23,960 --> 01:13:27,074 but it was the most important thing to me, and I realized at a certain point, 1064 01:13:27,175 --> 01:13:31,059 I thought, you know, art has to take a back seat to something bigger. 1065 01:13:31,160 --> 01:13:34,130 This is my life I'm talking about, this is reality. 1066 01:13:34,640 --> 01:13:36,659 Spending my whole life in a room making pictures, 1067 01:13:36,760 --> 01:13:38,760 and letting that be the whole thing, that's not enough. 1068 01:13:38,880 --> 01:13:42,100 And I thought: "Okay, I've got to start trying to... 1069 01:13:44,595 --> 01:13:45,755 ...have... 1070 01:13:48,735 --> 01:13:50,490 ...something more than that." 1071 01:13:50,590 --> 01:13:55,365 And I thought: "You know, I... I want a religious framework. 1072 01:13:55,485 --> 01:14:00,060 I want to have some kind of a structure... 1073 01:14:01,148 --> 01:14:05,085 ...a brotherhood, a fellowship. I want to be around other people who want this too." 1074 01:14:05,205 --> 01:14:08,410 And I had no idea where to look for any of it. I thought: 1075 01:14:08,805 --> 01:14:12,094 "Since I'm living in a Christian country and I know something about Christianity, 1076 01:14:12,200 --> 01:14:15,785 and I know something about Christian mysticism, 1077 01:14:16,185 --> 01:14:19,505 I should just try to be a Christian." The idea of... 1078 01:14:20,970 --> 01:14:24,649 ...the possibility of there being somebody like Jesus Christ, 1079 01:14:24,750 --> 01:14:27,604 who is so different from every other human being, 1080 01:14:27,705 --> 01:14:30,404 that he's not really recognizable as a human being. 1081 01:14:30,505 --> 01:14:34,605 He's incapable of selfishness, He's incapable of pettiness, 1082 01:14:34,715 --> 01:14:37,784 He is incapable of a shabby act or telling a lie. 1083 01:14:37,885 --> 01:14:41,264 He does two things: he worships God, and he serves mankind. 1084 01:14:41,365 --> 01:14:43,784 That was an ideal that I instinctively believed in, 1085 01:14:43,885 --> 01:14:46,565 and so I embarked upon finding that, 1086 01:14:46,685 --> 01:14:50,200 and that's what I've been doing for the past thirty years. 1087 01:14:51,085 --> 01:14:53,085 I was in Los Angeles, 1088 01:14:53,885 --> 01:14:58,107 in 2011, I think, 1089 01:14:58,208 --> 01:15:01,102 because one of my books had been nominated 1090 01:15:01,203 --> 01:15:04,285 for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, 1091 01:15:04,405 --> 01:15:09,205 and they flew the people in to attend the ceremony. 1092 01:15:09,330 --> 01:15:14,864 And I was riding on a shuttle bus with one of the nominees, 1093 01:15:14,965 --> 01:15:17,205 who actually won. I didn't. 1094 01:15:17,365 --> 01:15:21,885 And she had written a book on autism, about which she was an expert. 1095 01:15:22,165 --> 01:15:24,464 And I was talking to her about that, 1096 01:15:24,565 --> 01:15:26,704 and I asked her to tell me something about autism, 1097 01:15:26,805 --> 01:15:32,064 and she told me that it was on a spectrum, and told me what people were doing to treat it. 1098 01:15:32,165 --> 01:15:34,965 And then she said: "When were you diagnosed?" 1099 01:15:36,565 --> 01:15:38,685 And before I could reply... 1100 01:15:40,005 --> 01:15:43,010 and I guess the reply would have been: "Diagnosed with what?" 1101 01:15:44,005 --> 01:15:46,565 I thought: "She's an expert." 1102 01:15:47,085 --> 01:15:51,885 "She thinks I'm autistic. Could there be anything to it?" 1103 01:15:52,565 --> 01:15:57,784 "You know, there might be. Something's up with me. Maybe I'm autistic." 1104 01:15:57,885 --> 01:16:01,764 "Maybe that's what this is, that I've been contending with my whole life." 1105 01:16:01,910 --> 01:16:04,285 "My God, I'll bet that's true." 1106 01:16:04,805 --> 01:16:08,064 And I've done a little bit of thinking and a little bit of looking into it, 1107 01:16:08,165 --> 01:16:13,604 and I've come to the conclusion that she very well may have been right, 1108 01:16:13,705 --> 01:16:16,005 and that I am a little bit autistic. 1109 01:16:16,685 --> 01:16:19,264 And it's kind of surprising to me 1110 01:16:19,365 --> 01:16:22,892 that I first had this idea 1111 01:16:22,993 --> 01:16:25,960 presented to me at the age of sixty. 1112 01:16:26,805 --> 01:16:32,405 You would think that word would have been brought up in connection with my behavior before that. 1113 01:16:34,005 --> 01:16:37,885 But on the other hand, maybe it was, once again, 1114 01:16:38,005 --> 01:16:42,165 the hand of providence keeping me from being afflicted 1115 01:16:42,405 --> 01:16:47,664 with a label that would have put paid to my process of self-discovery, 1116 01:16:47,765 --> 01:16:50,590 because if I had been told earlier in my life: 1117 01:16:50,691 --> 01:16:53,365 "Oh, you have a condition: You're autistic." 1118 01:16:53,485 --> 01:16:56,464 "And here's what it means for you. Here's what it means for your parents." 1119 01:16:56,565 --> 01:16:59,264 It would have given my parents a coping mechanism. 1120 01:16:59,365 --> 01:17:01,384 It would have given me something of an out, 1121 01:17:01,485 --> 01:17:04,965 because I could have said, "I'm autistic! Don't blame me!" 1122 01:17:05,365 --> 01:17:10,059 And it probably would have changed the course of my life, because instead of having that, 1123 01:17:10,160 --> 01:17:14,685 I spent so many years just trying to figure out what the hell I was. 1124 01:17:14,965 --> 01:17:18,304 This is my mother, and this is my grandmother. 1125 01:17:18,405 --> 01:17:22,064 They weren't professional models, but... they posed for a friend, 1126 01:17:22,165 --> 01:17:24,165 who put this poster together. 1127 01:17:26,565 --> 01:17:29,784 -Was it always in your house? -Yeah, we always... 1128 01:17:29,885 --> 01:17:33,120 We had a couple copies of it. My brother got one, and I got this one. 1129 01:17:36,705 --> 01:17:38,065 One time... 1130 01:17:38,805 --> 01:17:44,165 I was up at this place called Ananda Ashrama, and one weekend, 1131 01:17:45,605 --> 01:17:50,005 one Sunday, I was there, and there was a Catholic priest who was visiting. 1132 01:17:50,805 --> 01:17:55,765 And he was doing good works in Cambodia, 1133 01:17:57,365 --> 01:18:01,765 helping victims of the Khmer Rouge, at the risk of his life. 1134 01:18:03,205 --> 01:18:07,605 And he told the anecdote about... 1135 01:18:09,765 --> 01:18:14,685 ...Saint Francis embracing the leper. 1136 01:18:15,340 --> 01:18:19,664 And when he reached the punchline, 1137 01:18:19,765 --> 01:18:25,604 which is that he took this wretched, starving, 1138 01:18:25,760 --> 01:18:30,105 filthy leper in his arms and kissed him, 1139 01:18:30,565 --> 01:18:34,165 he looked into his face, and it was the face of Jesus Christ... 1140 01:18:35,705 --> 01:18:39,205 ...well, that's a... that's a bit of a chestnut, but... 1141 01:18:39,885 --> 01:18:44,805 ...when he told it, a mood sailed out into the room. 1142 01:18:45,765 --> 01:18:49,564 And I think everybody felt it. Certainly, when we walked out of there, 1143 01:18:49,665 --> 01:18:52,965 everybody was going: "My God! Did you feel that?" 1144 01:18:53,365 --> 01:18:56,500 This man... this man managed to convey, 1145 01:18:57,355 --> 01:18:59,794 through entirely occult means, 1146 01:19:00,005 --> 01:19:05,664 the sense of what it meant to experience communion with Christ, 1147 01:19:05,765 --> 01:19:08,855 and he transmitted it to everybody in that room. 1148 01:19:09,085 --> 01:19:11,365 It was a real heavy experience. 1149 01:19:12,165 --> 01:19:15,384 That's what I was looking for when I was investigating Christianity, 1150 01:19:15,485 --> 01:19:18,179 but I never found it until that time. 1151 01:19:18,280 --> 01:19:20,584 I'm sure that I was surrounded by people like that, 1152 01:19:20,685 --> 01:19:25,365 but it's hard to recognize a holy person when you're worldly, like I am. 1153 01:19:27,765 --> 01:19:29,605 I love this painting here. 1154 01:19:31,205 --> 01:19:32,505 Look at this guy. 1155 01:19:32,965 --> 01:19:37,730 He loves that ketchup, and he loves his wife for buying it. 1156 01:19:39,205 --> 01:19:41,264 What a world! So beautiful. 1157 01:19:41,365 --> 01:19:44,685 This of course is Sri Ramakrishna. 1158 01:19:45,765 --> 01:19:48,985 The story of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda is, 1159 01:19:49,085 --> 01:19:53,304 as far as I'm concerned, the greatest story ever told. 1160 01:19:53,405 --> 01:19:55,784 Vivekananda is the older, or the younger? 1161 01:19:55,885 --> 01:19:59,504 The younger. Sri Ramakrishna was a working priest at a temple, 1162 01:19:59,605 --> 01:20:02,565 and Vivekananda was brought to see him by a friend, 1163 01:20:02,685 --> 01:20:05,724 and Sri Ramakrishna recognized Vivekananda. 1164 01:20:05,825 --> 01:20:09,664 Vivekananda thought that Sri Ramakrishna was out of his mind for: 1165 01:20:09,765 --> 01:20:12,615 (A) having an acquaintance... a pre-acquaintance with Vivekananda, 1166 01:20:12,715 --> 01:20:15,485 and (B) regarding him as an exalted being. 1167 01:20:15,605 --> 01:20:19,899 He argued a lot with Ramakrishna when Ramakrishna would say: 1168 01:20:20,000 --> 01:20:22,664 "You will do the Mother's work after I am gone", 1169 01:20:22,765 --> 01:20:27,124 you are this, you are that... and then just as Sri Ramakrishna had foreseen, 1170 01:20:27,225 --> 01:20:32,185 Vivekananda went on to be the man who brought Vedanta to the West. 1171 01:20:32,305 --> 01:20:35,284 And he became the most eloquent exponent 1172 01:20:35,385 --> 01:20:39,385 of Sri Ramakrishna's being and teachings. 1173 01:20:40,705 --> 01:20:44,484 The stories surrounding Sri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, 1174 01:20:44,585 --> 01:20:48,305 and that whole scene, are just fantastic. They're so great. 1175 01:20:49,625 --> 01:20:52,324 I say fantastic as if that means that they're not true, 1176 01:20:52,425 --> 01:20:54,825 but, you know, they're all heavily documented. 1177 01:20:54,985 --> 01:20:58,204 There's no real doubt that things unfolded as described. 1178 01:20:58,305 --> 01:21:00,878 Although it could all turn out to be a phony, you know. 1179 01:21:00,979 --> 01:21:05,505 It could turn out to be that the whole story was contrived and none of it was true. 1180 01:21:06,705 --> 01:21:08,705 That would be... 1181 01:21:09,225 --> 01:21:13,004 ...a catastrophe for me. And I don't think it will happen, 1182 01:21:13,105 --> 01:21:16,724 but I have to acknowledge the fact that I'm capable of being fooled. 1183 01:21:16,825 --> 01:21:19,575 Especially in this realm, you have to test it constantly, 1184 01:21:19,675 --> 01:21:23,385 and be prepared to admit that you're wrong, and that none of it's true. 1185 01:21:23,785 --> 01:21:28,025 You have to be able to do that, in order to really... 1186 01:21:30,305 --> 01:21:33,385 ...be sure that you're being honest with yourself. 1187 01:21:37,105 --> 01:21:42,185 In one of your early stories, you talk about being given the Bhagavad Gita. 1188 01:21:42,305 --> 01:21:45,725 Oh, yes. It was the Hare Krishna Bhagavad Gita... 1189 01:21:47,385 --> 01:21:51,265 ...which is... just one version of it, 1190 01:21:51,385 --> 01:21:54,525 and it has a special emphasis... 1191 01:21:55,625 --> 01:21:58,025 ...meaningful to the Hare Krishnas. 1192 01:21:58,620 --> 01:22:03,074 I was warned off of that book with a spectacular vision 1193 01:22:03,175 --> 01:22:06,825 of something in the book that upset me so much... 1194 01:22:07,905 --> 01:22:12,705 ...that frightened me for a week just thinking about it. 1195 01:22:17,755 --> 01:22:19,875 A Lovecraftian thing. 1196 01:22:20,985 --> 01:22:23,515 Do you... can you describe it? You didn't draw it in the... in the comic. 1197 01:22:23,615 --> 01:22:27,944 No, I... I didn't draw it, and I... I don't think I could describe it, except to say... 1198 01:22:28,045 --> 01:22:31,570 You know, imagine an H.P. Lovecraft nightmare, something that... 1199 01:22:33,125 --> 01:22:37,105 ...you just would never, ever want to see, because it was just... 1200 01:22:39,125 --> 01:22:43,125 ...so bad and so wrong, and shouldn't exist. 1201 01:22:43,645 --> 01:22:46,904 It was like that. It wasn't so much what it was, 1202 01:22:47,005 --> 01:22:52,665 it was just the way that it struck me as being something I should never have seen, 1203 01:22:53,645 --> 01:22:56,225 and that I never wanted to contend with. 1204 01:22:57,105 --> 01:22:59,824 -And when you looked for it again? -It wasn't there. 1205 01:22:59,925 --> 01:23:03,525 I... I actually became pretty familiar with that book. 1206 01:23:03,690 --> 01:23:07,080 I didn't know how to find out anything about legitimate Hinduism, 1207 01:23:07,180 --> 01:23:10,045 and all I had was the Hare Krishnas, so I... 1208 01:23:10,725 --> 01:23:14,504 ...for a while, investigated the possibility of being a Hare Krishna. 1209 01:23:14,605 --> 01:23:16,266 I like their restaurants. 1210 01:23:16,410 --> 01:23:19,811 I love that satvic vegetarian food. 1211 01:23:21,110 --> 01:23:22,250 But... 1212 01:23:23,410 --> 01:23:27,380 ...I just couldn't be a Hare Krishna, even though I was attracted to Hinduism. 1213 01:23:29,610 --> 01:23:33,040 They take the traditional Hindu mythology... 1214 01:23:33,615 --> 01:23:37,659 ...very seriously, and at face value, so... 1215 01:23:37,794 --> 01:23:41,744 You know, they believe in a Hindu hell, and... and that karma will boil you alive 1216 01:23:41,855 --> 01:23:44,605 if you cook too many chickens. That kind of thing. 1217 01:23:46,045 --> 01:23:48,504 I think one of the terrible evils is the notion 1218 01:23:48,605 --> 01:23:54,000 that if you don't have a religion or practice religion, God will punish you, 1219 01:23:54,100 --> 01:23:56,205 or abandon you, or turn... 1220 01:23:57,525 --> 01:23:59,925 ...turn Its back on you. 1221 01:24:01,890 --> 01:24:03,245 I think that's a... 1222 01:24:04,725 --> 01:24:10,363 ...that's an evil, evil construction, that concept. 1223 01:24:20,865 --> 01:24:25,770 One thing that my subconscious tells me over and over and over again 1224 01:24:25,925 --> 01:24:28,605 is that the hammer, the ultimate hammer, 1225 01:24:29,125 --> 01:24:34,380 the hammer of annihilation... never really falls. 1226 01:24:34,845 --> 01:24:38,904 God plays rough, and the world is a place that is full of things 1227 01:24:39,005 --> 01:24:41,824 that are so awful they don't bear thinking about, 1228 01:24:41,925 --> 01:24:46,570 and ecstasies that are so vast that they can't be contained. 1229 01:24:46,845 --> 01:24:52,605 And this maddeningly irreconcilable situation that we all have to cope with... 1230 01:24:52,845 --> 01:24:55,245 ...it's the funny/scary thing, again. 1231 01:24:55,525 --> 01:24:59,105 It's the über-joke. It's the cosmic joke. 1232 01:24:59,645 --> 01:25:02,445 It's the great cosmic joke. 1233 01:25:06,205 --> 01:25:10,205 Vedantists say that Brahman... 1234 01:25:11,645 --> 01:25:14,845 ...is the ultimate reality, it's absolutely everything... 1235 01:25:15,645 --> 01:25:19,245 ...but that it is undifferentiated and unmoving. 1236 01:25:20,725 --> 01:25:25,360 The traditional philosophy says that Brahman is beyond... 1237 01:25:26,045 --> 01:25:29,645 ...comprehension. The human mind can never understand it, 1238 01:25:30,045 --> 01:25:32,325 which I call The Certainty Principle. 1239 01:25:34,445 --> 01:25:39,005 That no matter what happens, science will never be able to tell you 1240 01:25:39,245 --> 01:25:41,854 what Brahman is, where it is, 1241 01:25:41,955 --> 01:25:45,525 what it's made of, what it does, or anything. 1242 01:25:45,805 --> 01:25:49,250 The... the machinery does not exist 1243 01:25:49,378 --> 01:25:53,366 that can measure or describe Brahman. 1244 01:25:55,005 --> 01:26:00,800 It's totally beyond that. The only instrument on Earth 1245 01:26:01,405 --> 01:26:04,610 that can see and understand Brahman 1246 01:26:04,710 --> 01:26:07,915 is the purified human mind. 1247 01:26:12,700 --> 01:26:16,950 According to Vedanta, the mind is a part of the physical world. 1248 01:26:18,605 --> 01:26:24,045 The only aspect of your makeup, which is a reflection of Brahman, is the... 1249 01:26:25,005 --> 01:26:27,925 ...is your consciousness, your Atman. 1250 01:26:29,125 --> 01:26:30,700 One of the main... 1251 01:26:31,925 --> 01:26:35,245 ...reasons for embarking upon... 1252 01:26:36,605 --> 01:26:40,634 ...the path of Vedanta is to purify your mind, 1253 01:26:40,735 --> 01:26:43,925 so that you can experience your Atman. 1254 01:26:44,445 --> 01:26:48,020 You can experience that aspect of you which is eternal. 1255 01:26:48,205 --> 01:26:50,605 Vedantists believe that... 1256 01:26:51,805 --> 01:26:53,600 ...the physical world... 1257 01:26:54,605 --> 01:26:59,005 ...is a source of the energy that is your mind. 1258 01:26:59,805 --> 01:27:02,224 Not your consciousness, your mind. 1259 01:27:02,325 --> 01:27:05,125 How do they differentiate between consciousness and mind? 1260 01:27:05,805 --> 01:27:10,045 Well, your mind thinks, and your consciousness knows. 1261 01:27:13,125 --> 01:27:16,605 This physical universe is 1262 01:27:16,725 --> 01:27:19,805 ever-changing and temporary. 1263 01:27:20,445 --> 01:27:23,645 It came into existence, and it will pass out of existence. 1264 01:27:24,445 --> 01:27:28,997 But the consciousness that is responsible 1265 01:27:29,098 --> 01:27:33,645 for it coming into being, I mean, the consciousness, and the... 1266 01:27:34,725 --> 01:27:38,045 ...the omnipotent power of the absolute, 1267 01:27:39,245 --> 01:27:42,045 which is behind the creation of the physical universe, 1268 01:27:43,005 --> 01:27:46,145 is eternal and infinite, 1269 01:27:47,805 --> 01:27:49,095 and... 1270 01:27:50,605 --> 01:27:53,925 ...real, in a way that the physical universe is not. 1271 01:28:01,125 --> 01:28:05,805 The goal of a Vedantist is to live in the world without being... 1272 01:28:07,245 --> 01:28:08,760 ...run by it. 1273 01:28:12,725 --> 01:28:16,545 Without being manipulated by it, or frightened by it, or fooled by it. 1274 01:28:18,845 --> 01:28:21,525 -You know the word maya?-Yes. 1275 01:28:22,605 --> 01:28:25,370 Well, that would be the enemy of enlightenment. 1276 01:28:31,125 --> 01:28:34,845 And it's interesting to think that there are people who really have... 1277 01:28:36,445 --> 01:28:42,335 ...followed that path all the way to the end, and truly seen what is... 1278 01:28:43,245 --> 01:28:44,725 ...what is real. 1279 01:28:45,620 --> 01:28:51,445 And that that is an option that everybody has, to go down that path, 1280 01:28:52,045 --> 01:28:54,045 to turn their backs on all the things 1281 01:28:54,155 --> 01:28:57,005 that bring them temporary pain and temporary pleasure, 1282 01:28:58,725 --> 01:29:01,505 over and over and over again, and to... 1283 01:29:05,345 --> 01:29:06,945 ...to perceive the... 1284 01:29:10,845 --> 01:29:13,044 ...the whatever it is [laughs] that is beyond that, 1285 01:29:13,145 --> 01:29:15,125 -whatever it is.-The ineffable. 1286 01:29:15,245 --> 01:29:17,424 The ineffable. Which, you know, people who meditate, 1287 01:29:17,525 --> 01:29:20,325 they get little signs of encouragement along the way. 1288 01:29:24,845 --> 01:29:29,005 They have visions, or they... they see the famous white light, 1289 01:29:29,805 --> 01:29:31,405 or they... 1290 01:29:33,645 --> 01:29:39,415 ...have, you know, sort of extra... ...extra physical sensations, 1291 01:29:39,520 --> 01:29:43,805 and perceptions that tell them that they're on the right path. 1292 01:29:44,725 --> 01:29:49,125 Because people wouldn't do that, people wouldn't spend years meditating, 1293 01:29:49,525 --> 01:29:52,744 and pursuing these things, if there wasn't something in it. 1294 01:29:52,845 --> 01:29:54,605 It's too much work. 1295 01:29:55,645 --> 01:29:57,645 There has to be something... 1296 01:29:58,725 --> 01:30:03,024 ...that makes it worthwhile for these people who spend decades 1297 01:30:03,125 --> 01:30:07,645 doing this difficult work of practicing austerities, 1298 01:30:08,845 --> 01:30:11,005 or they couldn't possibly do it. 1299 01:30:11,925 --> 01:30:16,244 If I told... if, you know, if somebody suggested that you sit for a half an hour, or an hour, 1300 01:30:16,350 --> 01:30:20,205 or two hours every single day and try to focus your mind on something, 1301 01:30:20,845 --> 01:30:24,205 but there is no payoff, you wouldn't do it. 1302 01:30:25,125 --> 01:30:26,744 And if they told you there was a payoff, 1303 01:30:26,845 --> 01:30:30,725 and you did it for years and years and there was no payoff, you wouldn't keep doing it. 1304 01:30:39,805 --> 01:30:44,325 And it's plainly not for everybody. Not everybody is interested. 1305 01:30:45,005 --> 01:30:49,125 And I think in the long run, it doesn't matter whether people do this or not. 1306 01:30:52,180 --> 01:30:55,144 If you're not attracted to meditation or spiritual practice, 1307 01:30:55,245 --> 01:30:58,325 there's no reason for you to be interested in it. 1308 01:30:59,615 --> 01:31:01,245 If you are... 1309 01:31:03,525 --> 01:31:07,470 then probably nothing else will ever satisfy you. 1310 01:31:11,005 --> 01:31:15,245 There's an application to which form and color and... 1311 01:31:15,925 --> 01:31:18,478 ...the implication of something... 1312 01:31:18,579 --> 01:31:22,400 ...cosmic and rich going on... 1313 01:31:22,970 --> 01:31:26,845 ...that I have not figured out how to do. I know it can be done, 1314 01:31:28,445 --> 01:31:33,245 of course. But I... haven't figured it out. 1315 01:31:33,645 --> 01:31:37,645 That's sort of something I'm always trying to do. 1316 01:31:39,805 --> 01:31:45,245 I feel that there is something... something real behind all this, 1317 01:31:45,645 --> 01:31:50,980 and that the single-minded pursuit of it, over all these years, 1318 01:31:51,645 --> 01:31:54,045 is getting me closer to it. 1319 01:31:58,305 --> 01:32:00,345 I don't think there's anything... 1320 01:32:01,405 --> 01:32:05,210 ...innately heavy or spiritual in my work, 1321 01:32:06,205 --> 01:32:10,445 but there is something definitely innately spiritual in my... 1322 01:32:10,845 --> 01:32:14,890 ...approach to it, and in my approach to life. 1323 01:32:19,405 --> 01:32:23,925 And... as time goes on, I become more and more convinced... 1324 01:32:25,125 --> 01:32:29,245 ...that simply pursuing it with single-minded conviction 1325 01:32:30,325 --> 01:32:33,641 can lead to that ultimate 1326 01:32:34,300 --> 01:32:36,709 revelation to man. 1327 01:32:40,045 --> 01:32:49,245 [wind and chimes] 1328 01:32:51,245 --> 01:35:42,245 [end credits music] 1329 01:35:42,400 --> 01:35:45,700 English Transcription by Eli Bishop 1330 01:35:45,805 --> 01:35:49,105 Spanish Translation and Synchronization by Iván Payá 1331 01:35:49,210 --> 01:35:52,510 Subtitles - SUBTITULARTE 1332 01:35:53,245 --> 01:35:57,024 If you want, I can give you a quick glimpse of a painting that has been rejected. 1333 01:35:57,125 --> 01:35:58,445 -Rejected? -Yeah. 1334 01:35:58,605 --> 01:36:00,605 -By whom? -By me. 1335 01:36:00,845 --> 01:36:04,690 But you can only have the quickest possible glimpse of it. 1336 01:36:06,965 --> 01:36:10,445 I'm just going to turn it around once, so... catch it. 1337 01:36:11,245 --> 01:36:13,805 Because I'm going to paint over this. I'm not happy with it. 1338 01:36:15,005 --> 01:36:17,005 -Say when!-When. 1339 01:36:21,245 --> 01:36:22,845 When did you paint that? 1340 01:36:23,005 --> 01:36:24,485 Oh, a few years ago. 1341 01:36:26,725 --> 01:36:28,445 No freeze-frames. 1342 01:36:29,600 --> 01:36:34,045 There's something really nice about seeing a... a shore across the water, 1343 01:36:34,445 --> 01:36:36,810 realizing that you can't get there easily. 1344 01:36:37,195 --> 01:36:38,175 Hm. 1345 01:36:39,175 --> 01:36:48,065 [windchimes] 1346 01:36:48,175 --> 01:36:53,090 [WOODRING whistling] 1347 01:36:53,195 --> 01:36:57,395 [rustling papers] 1348 01:36:58,195 --> 01:36:59,975 Well, what do you want to do now? 1349 01:37:01,820 --> 01:37:04,820 SUBTITULARTE