Tlönista

Against all odds, it seems I’ve acquired a social life.

Last Thursday I had a random rendezvous with a fellow girl geek and, it seems, did not scare her off. We end up chatting till late and I nearly miss the last train home. Friday morning is thus kind of unproductive. At lunch my co-workers and I go out for Vietnamese and I have proper pho for the first time in ages, and also Vietnamese iced coffee (ca phe).

There isn’t much to do that afternoon. I print out the Google Map for fellow Couchsurfer K. Z.’s birthday party in the evening. I’m looking forward to it, but an old nemesis of mine and Jennie’s is going to be in town, and I can’t miss that either. I text Jennie. “Let’s go torment D. J. later on.” We decide to meet up at Holborn, sevenish.

While sitting around in a coffeeshop waiting for Jennie, who’s stuck on a bus in a traffic jam, I doodle idly. The nemesis we’re going to surprise, by the way, belongs to CFI, a rather slick, corporatesque American secular organisation, which happens to be opening a new branch in London tonight. Their schtick about “culture war” and “separation of church and state” and what not sounded irrelevant enough in Canada; God knows what they hope to accomplish here, in Britain, where the official religion is nominally Church of England but is in practice nonchalant agnosticism. It’s so misguided it’s almost funny. With that in mind I hastily sketch out a mocking cartoon, whatever, finish it when I get there. Then I text a mate I met ages ago when gate-crashing a goon meet and arrange dim sum for the next morning.

Jennie and I get to Atheist HQ shortly before a scheduled talk by Simon Blackburn, a British philosopher and Humanist. A CFI bigwig is giving a speech. We scam some food and sit in the front row. Jennie scribbles copious notes and I draw whilst making snarky comments in a stage whisper. D. J. can’t help but notice us, especially since he’s next up to give the standard Go CFI! speech. Yessss.

Simon Blackburn doesn’t show, and doesn’t show. I figure he’s passed away quietly and I’ll read about it on Leiter Reports tomorrow morning. In the meanwhile, Richard Dawkins, who just happens to be in the audience, gets herded up to the mike for an impromptu Q & A. How random is that? He got questions from a surprising number of philosophy majors. I managed to get a stab in about reductionism. A couple women bring up the gendered rhetoric of New Atheism but unfortunately they ramble and nobody much cares. Eventually Dawkins escapes the inquisitive mob. And before we had a chance to show him the comic, too!

Jennie leaves the cartoon on the desk in front of the hall with the CFI brochures. I go off to the loo. When I come back, the cartoon’s gone. She tells me that some guy picked it up, read it, giggled, and ran back into the hall with it. We flee, burning bridges to Neo-Atheism behind us.

So I set off for K. Z.’s party, a couple hours later than I’d intended. Naturally, I have the map of the area but forgot to write down anything useful like his flat number or mobile. So I wander through the halls of this yuppie Tower Hamlets apartment building until I hear party noises. I stumble into a random party, grab myself a gin & tonic, mingle for a while and am beginning to wonder if perhaps it’s the right one when K. Z. appears and we yell respective greetings over the dj.

To my surprise, I’m actually the kind of person who can go to a party full of strangers and successfully mingle and — I enjoyed myself! Go figure.

A Typical Conversation Begins

Me: NICE PARTY EH
Random Partygoer: WHERE ARE YOU FROM?
Me: SOUTH-EAST LONDON. THE UNCOOL PART.
Random Partygoer: NO LIKE WHAT PART OF AMERICA
Me: TORONTO! CANADA!! BUSH IS NOT MY FAULT!
[Pause.]
Me: SO HOW DO YOU KNOW K. Z.?…

I remember to, y’know, check the time and once again manage to make it back before the last train. And the next morning — okay, midmorning — okay, lunchtime — it’s back into town to meet up with J. for dim sum like I promised. We stuff ourselves on shrimp dumplings and pork buns and deep fried things and wander out into the city, ending up at Borough Market. Oh. My. God. Spices and ciders and cheeses and breads and all manner of meat and produce and did I mention cheese and fresh fish and chutneys and sausages and I’m gonna have to go back. J. waxes eloquent on mackerel while I covet cheese wheels.

At that point the Tired hits. I excuse myself abruptly and head home, where I take the most epic nap ever. And that, kids, is my weekend.

Next weekend: Angoulême.

ENH ENH ENH

When I titled that Alan Moore post “Comics Will Break Your Heart”, I had entirely forgotten that it was the epigram of Dylan Horrocks’s comic book Hicksville. It must have crawled into my unconscious years back.

I first read Hicksville in the summer of 2006, about a year after getting into comics. Ben had it on his bookshelf because it was Chris Butcher’s favourite comic, so I eagerly figured it must be full of awesome.

I didn’t get it.

The story was nice, but I could only manage a superficial kind of appreciation and I knew it. Capital-C Comics was still this entirely alien medium – imagine being new to film in general, or music in general – and I was intimidated. It’s not a n00b comic.

Weekend before last I saw it on the top shelf in the Alternative Comics section of Gosh, almost out of my reach and wedged in too tightly to just tip out. But maybe if I could get a few more inches by just stepping on that ledge of the bottom shelf there –

bam! Piles of bagged and boarded back issues fly out on the floor like a catch of rainbowy fish as the shelf collapses. I want to melt into a puddle as a store clerk piles the comics to one side and puts the shelf right. “What book were you after?” he asks, and reaches it down for me.

I couldn’t very well not buy it after that, eh?

So I read it through again, and this time…I got it. Guys, Hicksville is wonderful.

The comic it reminds me most of is Carla Speed McNeil’s Finder: Talisman, which as Sleep is for the Weak’s NotHayama will tell you anytime, is what indie comics should be like.* I find it hard to explain exactly what McNeil did with Talisman that made it so powerful, but Horrocks does the same thing in Hicksville – a map that in the drawing creates the territory.

(Speaking of maps, I’m also very curious about what Ben thinks about the recurring cartography metaphor…)

Delightful jabs at Todd MacFarlane, Rob Liefeld, and the general awfulness of the comics industry, not just in the ’90’s but pretty much as long as it’s been around. But it’s anything but a snarkfest; it’s about what we do for the love of comics. Horrocks creates this utopic little town that’s populated by people who really, really get it, where this obscure maligned misunderstood medium is the air they breathe, and it’s the most heartwarming thing ever.

If you’re not accustomed to reading comics they can be a little hard to follow at first. My initiation was probably Flight.** It took a bit of effort to parse. But the feeling was simply magic, there’s no other way to describe it. (I’d better stop now before this becomes some soppy love letter…) Hicksville comes closest to re-awakening that sense, and let’s leave it at that.

__________
* As opposed to (as Dirk Deppey said), Joe Worrymope’s Real Life Is Stinky and I Can’t Get Laid for Shit.

** I can hear Lianne Sentar and NotHayama snickering at my cliché indie snobbery already. “She started with Flight! She reads seinen like PlanetES and Dragon Head!”

There is a suspiciously grubby and cat-hair-covered little hollow in my duvet.

I have so much laundry to do, and a bath would be nice, but right now I just want to sleep.

More later.