FRACTURED AND LOVING IT.

....Three pages to go ladies and gentelmen. Then, I'll be two thirds finished. I'm resisting with every ounce of willpower to my name, the overwhelming urge to rush ahead and just get there.

Slow and easy, after two and a half years of sweat blood and tears, crippleing doubt, exstacic revelations and grinding tedium one would not want to trip at the finish line and have my dear old muse leave me for some graceless clod. Oh, no indeed.

The really strange thing is, that after all this time, ( the book had it's genesis during my work on the Wake.) I've just really discovered what it actually is. What would that be Michael you say?

Well now, lets just say, it's not what any one would expect, and probably not what anyone who knew me could imagine me doing. Even me.

Ok, right now, my whole arm hurts from inking and inking and inking. And I'm torn between thinking what kind of utterly savage reviews it will get and how disappointed everybody will be after shelling out good money to pay for about two hundred pages of me psychical wanking off.

Or, the enormous accolades and awards it will win. Right.

Sure.

I do in my more lucid moments think it just might be good enough to be proud of, and it just may make me enough to do another without worrying so much where the rent will come from.

But, then again, maybe not.

*sigh*

Just shut up he said to himself, and finish it. Throw it in the air and seen where it falls.

Now, I'm going to take a few Advil for this aching arm and try to relax.

Be kind to each other. It starts that way.

M.Z.

A LONE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS

...All John the baptist metaphors aside, (and we all know how he ended up, right?)......

Barry Windsor -Smith is a very nice man. Well spoken, honest and fiercely dedicated to being an adult in a retarded environment. He's also funny as hell. A craftsman, in the best sense, and artist of simply awe inspiring focus and intensity.

We started corresponding in the very last days of the millennium or there abouts. In many ways he is responsible for my continued life as an man of art. Without his advice, gentle kicks in the ass and concern, I well may have melted down into a very bad parody of myself.

I bring this up simply to point out there is , at least to my knowledge, a new interview with Windsor-Smith at his website that is pure Barry. If, as I do, you love the medium of comics I urge you to go there and read it....here's a taste.......

"Here, take a real step forward and break the chains of doom: DC, Marvel, Dead Horse, whatever’s left of Image, let’s challenge them all to change everything overnight or just admit once and for all that they are utterly incapable of preventing the demise of American comics publishing. Wipe clean their super hero schedules for just four weeks, and during that one month period publish comic books that are . . . let’s see . . . personal, that are sincere and honest portrayals of themselves. Or perhaps some person or persons that they know, or know of. Or the topic could be a whole nation, or perhaps their parents, or children, or themselves as a child, or what happened last week in a restaurant, or how they feel about a lost love, or a great writer, or anything at all that each individual creator or editor feels might be of interest to other people if your personal story or perspective was made available to them through the comics medium. If you can draw and write you can be the sole author; if you are just a writer or just a penciller seek collaborators like you always do. The golden words here are sincerity, honesty and openness and, given these gentle parameters, it will not matter one wit whether you cartoon as wonderfully as Travis Charest or string pearls [of prose] like Neil Gaiman. All you’ll need is an friendly editor to help you along, give advice and a bit of polish if needed. Imagine this: for just one month all of you laborers in the fields will step out of the pre-fabricated not-so-gilded cage of the comics corps of engineers to face the reality of . . . yourselves. It’s a dizzying thought, isn’t it? Scary! Could you do it and remain sincere at all times or do you envision a boy’s club joke fest like Not Brand Echh!, or those immature eccentricities largely initiated by Neal Adams in the early seventies?"

I laughed, I cried, I bought the tee-shirt.

Thanks Barry.

M.Z.

it's almost seven in the morning and I'm late for work.

m.z.

DO THEY HAVE BLUEBELLS IN IRELAND?

...Because that's where I want to be if they do.

A little semi-secret wish of mine: to buy an old farmhouse in Ireland with a bit of woodland and a bit out of the way. I indulge myself now and then by searching listing to see what's available. Found several the other day. But, that's of no consequence at the moment, just a vague, well, OK, actually, a very real plan for the future. Alas, this is now and I'm frying to many fish as it is, let alone trying to make the effort to move to another country, no matter how much it appeals and delights.

For instance, I've got six pages to go before the principal art is finished on "the Fracture of the Universal Boy". Then I've got to start at the beginning and do finish work, correct a few odd pages here and there, then get the script in it's finished form, then, do the finished design for the overall book.

Funny thing...due to financial necessity, I had to curtail work on it for several months, and when the time came to do the last chapter, I had a really terrible case of "stage fright" or something like it. You see, when I got within walking distance of the end it suddenly dawned on me how utterly final everything had become. It had grown up and had to stand on it's own two feet, separate from me. It was glaringly real. What had I wrought? was it all going to be moot and end up a cripple, unable to have a full, use full life of it's own? Have I wasted two and a half years for nothing?

I honestly can't say....but I do know the last chapter has been the most peaceful, and in it's way, the perfect ending to a story that at best is surreal, essentially anti modern, and perhaps far to individual to ever be anything but a curiosity.

Time, of course will tell.

And now, just a few random thoughts....

I'll say this again just because Karen has asked me to. She is no longer at eBay. That means you will not find any work of mine, from me personally there. She can be found under "Fhionn at Etsy".com. It's nicer there and so she says, a far friendlier place to sell.

I'm looking for a metal-smith, jewelry maker willing to trade for a commission to make a ring. I have an opal to set. You out there? If so, please write me. And don't even think of ripping me off buddy....I can and will sic the hounds of hell on you if you do.

I'm currently screwed up over a cut by Aphex Twin: "Heliophan"...it seems that it's a nonsense word, though one of some beauty. And I cannot for the life of me find a valid definition for the word.

Things like this drive me nuts.

I have approximately twenty five pieces for the one man show later this year, and I need a least ten more, possibly fifteen. And I need to matt and frame them all. *GAAHHH*

Sic transit gloria mundi .

Be kind to each other. Please.

M.Z.

It's five oh seven and I've been up since three twelve. Nap time for Michael later today.

*sigh*

m.z.

FOUR LETTER WORDS

I know, today you're supposed to spend a lot of money to have sex, right?

Well, there are billions of us, so one gathers there is a lot of that going on for free, mostly.

Love is not bought and sold. Not some tart who's name you forget in the morning.

And to tell you the truth, I'm rather glad I'm not a rose bush in a greenhouse somewhere.

Loving one another and showing it in small, but concrete ways that leave no room for interpretation is humanities greatest gift.

Be human, at least for today, and screw the rose thing. Just be real.

M.Z.

ps: less than eight pages to go on "the book".

m.z.

WRAPPED AND BURNT

Well. It's a wrap on the "Sophia Gnostica" series of works on paper.

I've spent the last two months in a haze of work, doubt, success and near delirium. Gentle reader, I can tell you from the bottom of my heart, that I'm absolutely exhausted. I just want to sleep for a few years. Read a good book or two, watch a few films I've been holding off of, or drive my car, with me in it over the edge of the world into a bliss of space.

In a day or two I'll be able to take up the keyboard and finally write with a clear head to a lot of you who've been so kind as to write me. Again, my apologies, but I simply could not bear to twist my head out of the creative space I was in. I've never worked so hard and felt so very inadequate to the task at hand.

In a shot while, as these things go, I'll be placing images in the gallery in the designated spots.

When that time comes, I hope you'll find something to ponder over and think upon.

That would make me happy.

Now, the artist dons his slippers and retires to his chambers.

M.Z.