CowboyOrange

Actually, you’ll see me in the Sunday magazine of the Boston freakin’ Globe! Sadly, the website isn’t as nice to me as the print edition – I’m mentioned by name in the article, and they ran four pages from Ersatz (reduced to fit on a single page) for illustrations. Still, I have no complaints – it’s great to see my work in a major newspaper, and it’s especially nice that my national media presence has moved beyond tin foil.

On a related note, the Taylor Gallery at Kimball Union Academy is running a show of CCS student work, and they chose my artwork for the mailing for the show. It’s flattering that they seem to think my work will bring people into the Taylor; so everyone, go to the show! I’d be terribly embarrassed if they learned that very few people find my work appealing.

All in all, these past two days have been pretty damn good; my week can only get worse from here.

A: I got free pizza to watch a schoolboy hump a piece of liver. Really.

Okay, so it was a movie: Leolo, a beautiful little French Canadian gem. The director, Jean-Claude Lauzon, only produced one other movie, Un Zoo, la Nuit (The Night Zoo); he died in a plane crash in 1997.

This is one of the many reasons we love Steve Bissette. He brings us such movies. He also spent last semester teaching us the history of the drawn story, and will spend this semester teaching us to draw (which has us all very excited). His enthusiasm for the material - drawing, comics and film - is truly inspiring. I won’t gush much more - he’ll give me enough crap about this entry as it is.

Our other classes seem to still be shaping up. Though I’m looking forward to it, Colleen has elected not to participate in our writing course, opting for an independent study instead. Our graphic narratives class is shaping up, once again, to be a nerve-wracker, though we are getting some great visiting artists this quarter (Jason Little! Kevin Huizenga! Chris Ware!). Remind me to rant sometime about field trips.

We’ll see how it goes. As we roll toward spring, I’m certain all the students will get happier; I also suspect it will become harder and harder to do the work, as the great outdoors becomes more interesting (and less lethal) again. And, of course, every Tuesday we’ll have Steve’s movies to look forward to – if nothing else, that’ll carry us through.

Yay! We’ve got a pretty new homepage up, and a new gallery full of my comics - maybe even stuff you haven’t seen! So check it out, and let us know what you think.

This short essay was part of my final project this semester. Lemme know whatcha think.
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“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” -John 1:1

The word here is Tetragrammaton: the sacred, ineffable name of God. Probably, within the Abrahamic traditions, this word was the most sacred posession of humankind. Was. The word is unknown to the modern world.

The Tetragrammaton was the ultimate four-letter word, not by dint of obscenity, but because speaking it was, except in very particular circumstances, blasphemous. Only the high priest, on the Day of Atonement, while in the Holy of Holies, could speak the word represented by the Tetragrammaton. After the destruction of the temple, without a priesthood to maintain it, the spoken word was forgotten.

This is the Tetragrammaton: יהוה, often represented in the Roman alphabet as YHWH. The written Hebrew of the Torah has no vowels (these being a later invention); pronunciation of the written word was memorized. Unlike other words, though, this one could not be spoken – when read aloud, the word “adonai” (אֲדֹנָי) would be substituted. This is where contemporary Christians get the name “Jehovah”: the vowel sounds from “adonai” are inserted into YHWH.

So, after that little bit of exposition, we arrive at the point: once by law, now by necessity, the true identity of God can only be represented by the written word. Thus, God cannot be known experientially, but only on paper.

Logos and the Paper God

My friends have observed that, for an atheist, I spend an awful lot of time writing about God. Since it’s very easy for me to dismiss the supernatural, God becomes a more interesting question for me. I’m intrigued by appeal of religion, and by the act of faith.

In attempting to explain my interest in religious questions to other atheists, I’ve often said that I thought of God as a convenient symbol for the purpose of being. This, it turns out, is fairly close to the original meaning of YHWH.

In the passage from the Gospel of John above, “Word” is translated from the Greek λόγος or logos. In addition to “word,” logos can be translated as reason, thought or logic. The God that John believes in isn’t just the God of Reason - he is reason, the first thought (to Thomas Aquinas, the first cause), the logic underlying all things.

This is not simply a Christian invention, either. The word represented by YHWH is, according to Jewish tradition, the third person singular imperfect form of the verb “to be,” an attempt in a language not yet good at abstraction describe one whose existence is not only beyond question, but independent of any other factors and causes. Thus Exodus 3:14, when in answer to Moses’ question about his name, God answers, “I am that I am.”

For lack of a better way to describe it, YHWH is the big Why – the reason behind all things. This is mightily convenient for me; whenever I wish to use a story to contemplate purpose or meaning in life, there’s this easy symbol with which all readers are familiar and which is broad enough to encompass whatever interpretations the readers bring.

Another, more interesting thing happens for me with this understanding of God – it has the effect of privileging text above all other forms of discourse. Text’s privilege in religion is absolute (if God is reason for all things, and if the only way to discuss God is through writing, then the only accurate way to discuss the reason for any thing is through writing), and western culture has a long history of believing religion encompasses the whole of truth. Thus, whenever we, as a culture, consider questions like purpose or meaning or truth, text gets an unconscious “bump” into a position of greater authority, greater privilege. For us, the written word is automatically more “true” in questions of truth.

So Why Aren’t You Writing?

I said earlier that God could not be known experientially. That’s not precisely true; we can’t learn of God from others experientially - that is, we can’t be told. I can’t tell you what your purpose is, nor you I.

However, there remains the possibility of immediate, personal experience with that purpose. The “mystical experience,” the “revelation,” even something as common as a “calling,” all these give us a sense of meaning that is almost impossible to speak of and can only be written of in vague, non-specific ways.

Art is not so bound. Throughout history, great thinkers (e.g., Kant) have claimed art has the ability to reach past verbal truths and to transmit a sense of the transcendent, of the sublime. Not all art does this, but all artists strive for it. Nonetheless, art has drawbacks as well. The absence of verbal language makes it difficult to engage any specific consideration; the breadth of symbolism used in visual and aural art makes it difficult for a layperson to access whatever ineffable truths lie within.

If only there were a hybrid… some form of art which was accessible to all, which had the strength of written language at its disposal, and which also possessed that ability move beyond the verbal and into the sublime… I would gladly devote myself to such an art. If only I new its name.

Colleen’s painting gallery is finally up! Yay! That means just three and a half more galleries to go. And, of course, I still have to design the website. Ugh.