i am not made for the big city. i've known this forever. but last week (may 4th-10th) i spent all of it in big cities. i went to frankfurt for a uni field trip, and then to [shudders] berlin for Comic Invasion Berlin. and i'm never doing all that again. that's a lie, probably. but i don't wanna have that many people around me again for a really long time.
in frankfurt, i immediately lost my watch. it unclasped and slipped off my wrist and slithered through the gutters into a drain. fortunately, i could later recover it with the use of some wire i went and bought specifically for this. still, the situation felt pointed.
what we were really in frankfurt for, was to meet and look at a bunch of graphic design agencies, and a couple of museum exhibitions. this was quite interesting, even to me as someone who's found they defo won't go into graphic design agency work primarily. highlights were: atelier markgraph, where the guy walking us around was very engaging and interested in us too, rather than juuust talking about what he and the agency are doing. that was nice. GABC had an office dog (and were very nice, personally). Very Very were the only women-owned agency on the list and had the most interesting work to me personally. at the Klingspor Museum we got a private tour/presentation of some gorgeous books from their archive and the current exhibition about type on textile, which was barely done being set up at the time. drooled a little at the Cranach Press edition of Hamlet they have there.
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| the aforementioned edition of Hamlet. do you know what i mean |
so, all that was awesome, if sometimes sort of tiring, as all days are where you have to sit through three 1-2 hour long presentations. and so many of the people talking were men, and so often they were like woww AI is so helpful we have to stay on top of AI i wish we had the resources to just learn about AI every monday for a couple hours. what if you shut up. what if i kill you with hammers. anyway. as a city, Frankfurt sucked. i hated it. it was so loud all the time and public transit is sort of ass? i kept not finding the railroad stations? nothing there has any kind of useful wayfinding system. city of design my ass. to be fair, maybe my judgement is clouded. it was a very overstimulating and socially exhausting few days. though, at least all the other students there with me were very nice, some of them people i knew and liked already. but i did none of the evening activities, on the one hand because i needed time alone (and time to work on my comic), and on the other hand because from what i understood, a lot of it involved going to bars and getting drunk, none of which is in any way my thing. not if i've already spent the whole day around people.
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| the very lovely GABC office dog, Micha |
i was happy to be out of frankfurt and on my own by thursday evening. but berlin scared me. an even bigger city, and an event that involved a lot more active participation on my part. but it was fine, actually. berlin was fine. however, i did only see like two places, because i was only either at my hostel or the Museum for Communication for CIB (or the underground train connecting the two). and i was alone, which always makes me feel less stressed because i don't have to keep track of other people, everything i do only affects myself, and i can do whatever i want without talking it over with others.
at CIB, i did volunteering the whole weekend. initially, i had just one shift saturday afternoon and i was grateful to have gotten additional shifts, including for setup on friday, because i would nawt have known what to do with myself for a whole day in berlin. would've maybe gone into nature. but i'm glad i could help with setup because that way i got to really know the whole layout of the festival and venue, which is what i had been worried about beforehand.
the festival itself was fine. i saw Anita Erling again, who joined last semester's storytelling/comic class at my uni as a guest student and is one of the winners of the Berlin Comic Grant this year. it was nice to see a friendly face. and i saw Paul Karasik give a lecture about making/reading comics, which was very helpful and fun, and incidentally the exact same lecture he'd given that thursday at my uni, which i had missed. nothing lost there. i also showed my comics to two publishers, which was like a humiliation ritual for me, and obviously nothing real came out of it but they both said my drawing skill is there. well, i sure hope it is. i just need a story for a proper graphic novel now. but for me, this can wait until after uni maybe, i don't really have time to dedicate my focus to something long rn, especially with my internship next semester (did i tell you i got an internship? your guy is spending five months learning bookbinding and getting paid for it too! yuppie!) otherwise, there were a ton of tabling artists but i didn't buy as many things as i thought i would (i bought 2 postcards, both from the same artist).
i spent a good chunk of the festival feeling like an imposter. this is something i've felt many times before. it's not a skill-related imposter-syndrome, really. it's more about passion? i often feel like i'm not passionate about the things i do and am interested in. it feels like i'm posing as someone who, for example, likes comics and wants to make comics, when in reality, i only really began reading comics every once in a while, and getting into drawing comics a few years ago, and i'm not even very good at reading comics and often prose just works better for me as a reader. and i can't really talk about comics in the ways i spent that entire weekend watch other people talk about comics. i don't know much about comics and i only kind of care to know more about them. at the same time it really just is my medium for storytelling. a beautiful symbiosis of prose, still image and film. it feels like more of a practical decision to be passionate about comics, sometimes, just cause it's the best, most natural way for me to tell stories, where my drawing skill, my love for writing, and the cinematographic way my brain kind of works meet. idk. i'll make comics and i'll keep making comics. and i like reading comics. and comic history and theory is as interesting as any media history and theory (interesting enough that i'm not bored learning about it, but not sooo interesting that i must actively seek it out). but i don't really care all that much about other people who make comics or like comics. idk. it's like. that's cool you do that, it's cool you're so into comics. idk what you want me to say. hungh. maybe i'm still just not suuuuper interested in people.
something else that bugged me about CIB (or me being at CIB) was that i didn't feel excited about any/most of the tabling artists' stuff. or not excited enough to buy anything, at least. but i think that's a me problem. a problem that is twofold. one is, i don't know how to be a person in this specific context. standing in front of an artist's table is crazy awkward. i'm never sure if it's okay for me to touch and flip through the wares (i'm SURE the general rule is it's fine. but you know me. unless i'm explicitly told it's fine, i WILL worry that it's not), i feel under pressure to buy something or express interest or generally engage, but i can't even talk to the artist because i don't know about what. i watch other people chat it up with each other and i don't know how they're doing it. i don't knowww there are no words in my headddd. it's excruciating. next time i go somewhere like this i need a friend there with me who likes to chat.
second thing is that i think the sheer mass of artists (and otherwise people) was just crazy overwhelming. spending your money on something that kind of interests you feels risky when there are so many other things that also kind of interest you and maybe yet unknown things that you'll love and definitely want but alas. you've already spent your money on that other thing. it's too much choice. and i don't think that's how buying art works for me either. i'm not (often/usually) an impulse, on-the-spot buyer with these things. usually, unless i'm immediately one-hundred percent sure i want it, which doesn't happen a lot) i'll see a piece of media, or art, and i'll bookmark it and i'll look at it again and again and think, hmmm i do really want this, and not buy it until the stars are perfectly aligned for me to maybe make the impulse decision to finally go through with the purchase. this makes markets and artist alleys difficult for me. and i always assume i'll relate to when people say, ohhh i'm gonna leave here with zero money and an armful of art, but i never do. which makes me feel like an imposter again. full circle moment.
anyway. i went back home on monday and it's been soooo good to be in my own space again. sharing the air bnb with my classmates in frankfurt was fine, but the hostel kind of sucked, every day a new man in there with me. two nights of violent snoring that i don't even know or understand how that's possible. and i'd forgotten my earphones at home. in contrast, the beautiful quiet solitude of my own four walls. if you know lilly ashton's art, that's how that felt like, i think. just a beautiful blissfull simple creature. mmmmm.
★⭑✴✦✸⋆🟊⭒✶★⭑✴✦✸⋆🟊⭒✶★⭑✴✦✸⋆🟊⭒✶★⭑✴✦✸⋆🟊⭒✶★⭑✴✦✸⋆🟊⭒✶★⭑✴✦✸⋆🟊⭒✶
i'll end here. actually, maybe a few updates:
i'm so close to finishing my uni comic. really, all that's missing is digitising the cover art and printing. it will be gorgeous.
same with my comic club comic, which is about ladybugs doing a summer ritual. except i still have to draw the cover art for that. doing that tomorrow.
comic club is doing well. we got a name now, and an instagram, if you care. it's fresh out the egg with nothing on there yet, but i'm sure we'll get to that. at the latest when the first issue is printed.
i'm still capable of crying, which i loved discovering when i finished reading Solange ein Streichholz brennt by Christian Huber a couple weeks ago. read my thoughts about that book (and all the others i've read this year) on my bookshelf.
i've been very off instagram and it's been awesome. i don't miss it at all, but like still having the ability to go on there. but some days i fully forget to check it, which makes me feel good.
my last days of using duolingo are upon us. 40 something days ago i tried out lingodeer and liked it and bought a year.long subscription. but i love incrementing numbers, so i've been holding off on leaving duolingo entirely and told myself i'd keep going until day 1400 of my streak. something inside me wants me to keep going until day 1500. maybe i will -- but in that case i have to up my lingodeer activity. we're learning this year.
people are setting off fireworks in my neighbourhood. what the fuck man.
ok that's all. been writing this for 2 hours. good night, people in my puter <3
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