I’ve been trying to watch more films recently – particularly from countries/regions I’m not too familiar. One of the cool things about the time we’re living in is that a lot of artists and institutes around the world have decided to put out their work for free for people to experience, which I feel is the absolute right thing to do in the circumstances.

I posted a bunch of prose and comics available for free in my newsletter, but I’ve been watching both plays and movies that are available right now. The National Theatre put out Frankenstein with Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch, and Antony & Cleopatra with Sophie Okonedo and Ralph Fiennes. Shakespeare’s Globe did a live viewing of Romeo & Juliet, currently has The Two Noble Kinsmen and will be showing MacBeth from the 11th. Meanwhile, the Dharamsala International Film Festival has a viewing room with some excellent movies.

On the DIFF viewing room, I watched Turup – a Bhopal-based movie about caste, religion and gender, that’s a bit ham-handed about some aspects, but is admirable as a venture by an entire collective of people from various backgrounds within Bhopal.

The other movie that I found myself intrigued by was Jallikattu, a satirical movie from Kerala about a village whose hidden resentments spill out when a buffalo meant for the slaughter escapes and rampages through the village. It gets repetitive in its themes occasionally, and the ending overstays its welcome (particularly by sliding into a version of blackface was as as needless as it was iffy), but I found myself wishing more of Bollywood was this direct in its treatment of humanity as it exists instead of the innumerable versions of urban wish fulfilment it keeps spitting out.

#films #journal

I haven’t been able to write since the lockdown began. Oddly enough, unlike some of my actual writer friends who are having trouble engaging emotionally with their writing while the pandemic goes on, for me it’s been a matter of logistics. There’s a lot I’m eager to write – I just can’t find the time.

I end up spending somewhere between an hour to two hours cooking, dishwashing and keeping the house (and shopping once a week), since I’ve given my cleaning lady a couple of months off. Other than that, I refuse to compromise on the things I need to keep me going at this time – movies, books and conversations. I haven’t met a single person I know in a month (I have met the people running the shops and the security in my building, but that doesn’t count, really) so I know that I need to stay in touch with the people I care about so I can stay on an even enough keel, emotionally.

And, weirdly enough, I seem to have more lettering work than before rather than less. Comics people seem to be taking the fact that they can work from home quite seriously, and I’ve been taking up a few genuinely interesting new projects. This added with the fact I’m working at around 80-90% of my usual efficiency because of the summer heat and the … waves at everything … means my hands are pretty full with work.

So I haven’t really had any time to write – at least any productive time to write. I’ve come up with a few new short stories that I’m hoping I’ll get to write soon, and my big projects – revising SAWBONES and finishing Draft 1 of STRANGER – are also waiting for the next batch of free time I might have.

I’ve decided for now to abandon my usual strategy of writing for an hour a day – I don’t really have that hour. Instead, I’ll be trying to figure out an extra free day a week, or maybe every couple of weeks, apart from the weekend, and try and write then.

#journal #writing

As a comics reader, and as someone who’s now made them for more than a decade, I’ve been thinking about my limitations.

The first and foremost is obvious – I can’t draw. All my various attempts over the years have taught me ways to appreciate other people’s art, and lettering thousands of pages certainly gives you a glimpse into how pages work on a basic level. But that’s a big lacuna – not being able to actually do the thing that makes a comic a comic.

Second, I’ve had a blindness towards other kinds of comics than American. I’ve definitely dabbled in European comics (grew up on Asterix and Tintin), I have my favourite webcomics and manga. But push comes to shove, these are not media I have an attachment to – not nearly as intense as the American variety.

I haven’t been able to pinpoint to myself why that is. There are some webcomics that are investigating the format of comics in a way paper comics never could,* there’s manga that’ll give you an emotional ride of a depth and breadth that most American comics can only dream of. And European comics have some of the best, most laboured-over art. And yet, I love individual examples of all of these, but the media themselves evoke no passion.

* The Webtoon vertical scrolling feels like something that should fire up my imagination, but I’ve read a bunch and … nope.

I’ve tried to tackle this a few times over the years, and it’s introduced me to one of my favourite comics ever – Pluto – but I suspect this is something I’ll eventually just have to make my peace with.

#journal #comics

I’ve been rediscovering the pleasures of uncomfortable fiction. And uncomfortable fiction tends to be disreputable fiction, in some way or the other. I’ve been pairing my reading of Ulysses with transgressive horror short stories (queer and otherwise), and I watched Tromeo & Juliet today, which makes disreputability a veritable virtue.

It’s still comparably easy to enjoy a lot of these things at a distance – books like Ballard’s Crash or Ulysses have been rendered respectable with time (or, like Story of the Eye, come bearing academic analysis as defence). And on the other hand, with transgressive horror, or with bizarro fiction, the discomfort is built in – like a musical without songs, you’d be disappointed if you read these without any discomfort.

It’s also, as a writer, not something you can necessarily think your way into – these things have to come from within, by you confronting your ghosts or your demons. The things that bother you, and the things you’re a bit scared that they don’t.

Almost all of these examples have moments that strike the wrong note – parts that make me think, I wouldn’t have gone there if I were writing this. But the problem with writing such stories is – I don’t think you can get one without the other. You can’t transgress without going too far.

It struck me particularly today, because I just read a short story whose central concept I had come up with independently when I was a teenager. I never wrote my story, because I felt, at the time, that it went too far, that it was too strange and unpalatable. And I finished the story I was reading, and I figured that I liked my version better, because the one I read didn’t go nearly far enough.

#journal #writing

I couldn’t really get anything done today – it’s 11:30pm, and I’m just sitting down to work. I know, I know, it’s Saturday, and I shouldn’t be working, but I just have 20 minutes of emails to send out, and yet it took me all day to get here.

I slept badly, woke up at 1pm, and then went back to sleep at 4pm. While I’ve always worked from home, and managed a decent routine, it’s been a bit difficult to maintain it since I don’t have the option to get takeout, or to have the cleaning lady take care of cleaning the house and the dishes.

The writing has suffered too – I don’t think I’ve written a new word in a week. But I’ve been keeping in touch with friends a lot better, which is nice.

My work backlog’s steadily rising, since my productivity is down, and I’m hoping to cover it up in the coming week. I dunno. Cut me some slack, okay, there’s a pandemic outside.

#journal

Thinking about this drive to diversify what one does. Whether it’s writing too many things at once – be those fiction or my attempts to maintain this log and a newsletter – or the desire to create in various media.

I know people who just write, or just draw, and that’s it. I don’t know if they have better or happier creative lives, but I do know that some of them have a more consistent output.

But then, is the idea to put out as many things as possible? I know writers who write too many books too fast, and too much of the comics medium works around this idea of compromising between quality and quantity.

I have no conclusion here – I struggle with the right number of books on my plate to letter, let alone the other things I do with my time.

I do know that I wouldn’t be happy simply lettering and then being an audience member the rest of the time. I’d need to create something or the other. The question is: is it better to think more deeply about what that something is before I do it, or is it better to do and figure out while doing whether it was worth it?

#journal #writing

I’ve been reading a book to a friend for a bit, and it’s an unexpected pleasure. It’s something to do in the quarantine, and my friend was having trouble reading my recommendation – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s Cat’s Cradle – and I offered to read it to her over video call.

I do need to figure out how to vocalise from the diaphragm rather than the throat, because three sessions in, I can feel it. And other than that, I’ve realised that a lot of Vonnegut’s rhythm was uneven – not someone who would read his prose out loud, I think – although when it works, it really works.

I’ve never read something to anyone – always looked enviously at the people who’ve read each other Harry Potter and the like – but way back when, my dad used to read me comics before I learnt to read for myself (from those same comics). After that, I read quietly and fast, but recently, when I switched over to audiobooks, I learned to enjoy the specific flow of a book read out loud, and it’s nice to share that with someone.

#journal #books

Trying to do a daily log sort of thing here. Preferably less than 300 words, definitely never more than 500.

Started reading Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. You know sometimes you read a paragraph or two of a book and just know you’re gonna love it? You get that feeling … that “Where has this book been all my life?” feeling. I’m getting that with this book.

The way the narrator thinks, the way every sentence is written simply but with care. I picked up quickly that the seemingly random capitalisations were meaningful, and then they are explained just when you need it.

I’m only around 30 pages into it, and I don’t even know the plot of this (I picked it up on recommendation, and dived right into it), but I have a feeling this is going to be a book I reread. Hell, I want to reread the beginning and I’ve barely left it.

#journal #books