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March 18, 2009 (5:21 PM) by Jim Campbell
I recently read an interview with Lynda Barry in the March 8 edition of the Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine. I didn’t really know her by name, but after reading the interview I certainly recalled having seen her work over the years. The article described her as a legendary cartoonist in the vein of R. Crumb and other groundbreaking artists of that genre. Her most famous comic was “Ernie Pook’s Comeek” which was circulated in over 300 papers in its heyday.
Ms. Barry has also written novels and recently published What It Is — a “how to free your inner writer” instructional book. Well, it’s not really a book, it's more a notebook of thoughts, scribbles, visuals and advice on how to locate and embrace your ideas. [I apologize if I have misinterpreted the crux of the book. I haven’t read it, and am taking the description from the Tribune article.] She uses the book during her writing workshop — which according to the article is “a two-day seminar called ‘Writing the Unthinkable,’ meant to remove the angst from creativity.”
For me, the most compelling passage from the article was Ms. Barry’s own description of the book and seminar: “What I teach with the book and the course is a physical activity, which is doodling when you're not writing, which itself should induce a state of mind. Which is getting yourself to the place you are when someone tells a joke. You're open, right? It's the place you go when your body's asleep and you can feel the dream starting to come on. I try and get calm so the ideas don't go away. I let it come slowly. Then as the ideas come I write slower. Which may sound counter intuitive! But you don't have to catch ideas. They're like the ocean around you."
Those last two sentences washed over me (no pun intended) with such a warm, familiar embrace that I read them over and over; each time ringing truer in my inner ear. Lynda Barry was describing how I’ve felt since childhood, since those days of watching Darrin Stevens nail an ad campaign’s pitch — McMahon and Tate’s ultimate “idea man.” All my life I’ve been swimming in Ms. Barry’s ocean. Surrounded by ideas and new thoughts every minute of every day — sometimes to the point of distraction. I’ve known they were there and always in reach. I simply allowed myself to wonder, to reach out and grab one of the billions of ideas around me. It seems easy because I allow myself to do it — to accept the impossible, to think like a child, to challenge tradition, to swim in my ocean of ideas. At 50 years old it still feels natural. Like I have gills.
So I don't believe that Darren was a better idea man than Larry. I think that Darren was simply a better swimmer that Larry. Like Ms. Barry, I believe that we are all living in this ocean of ideas. We have been since the beginning of consciousness. It’s just that some of us haven’t yet stepped out of the water, dried off and let others do their wondering for themselves.
Jump in. The water’s fine.
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