Fall So Hard Motherfuckers Can't Find Me

Lynda Barry has my back. Or, I think she would if we ever met. Her 2008 book, What it is, is 30% writer’s guide, 30% autobiography and 50% visually-dynamic existential freak out/cure for said freak out. “But that’s 110%!” you might be thinking to yourself. And you’d be correct in your calculations, which is why mathematics is an inappropriate mode for me to talk about how much Barry’s book is meaning to me right now.

It all started, like these stories often do, with a harmless trip to Milwaukee. After a solid breakfast of freshly sugared donuts my girlfriend, her brother, her brother’s girlfriend, and I decided to make a quick stop at Boswell Book Company. While perusing the graphic novel section, my girlfriend’s brother’s girlfriend (from now on, my GBG) pointed out What it is and told me that, as a writer, I’d probably be into it. I opened the large book and randomly (as much as anything in this life happens randomly) flipped through its pages, finally landing on page 39 where I found the following:

"There are certain children who are told they are too sensitive, and there are certain adults who believe sensitivity is a problem that can be fixed in the way that crooked teeth can be fixed and made straight. And when these two come together you get a fairytale, a kind of story with hopelessness in it."

After reading the material I immediately did two things:

1. Tried to hide my scrunched-up, pink-eyed, about-to-cry tear face from my GBG.
2. Bought the book.

After reading What it is in its entirety, the providentially placed passage on page 39 was set in even more powerful context. Barry had a childhood and a half. She loved the arts, had a wild and vivid imagination and a good heart, and felt things in ways that other children found weird and adults found concerning. She was told, as many overtly creative young people are told by American authority figures of various brass, to shut up, sit still, and keep her odd ideas to herself.

            And she did keep them to herself for a while, and in that time of creative hibernation (artistic slumber/unconsciousness) a part of her started to die. And the remarkable thing is, no one seemed to care. In fact, the people in her life (parents, peers, teachers, etc.) were perfectly happy with Barry’s spiritual atrophy. It meant they didn’t have to worry about what she was going to say or do. Her silence (both physical and emotional) was a sign of health. The idea, of course, is that if someone isn’t complaining they can’t possibly be miserable, right?

            Barry’s childhood memories struck me especially hard because they were so reminiscent of my own. Some of the clearest images in my hazy past-life history-thoughts contain people I wanted to like me (parents, peers, teachers, etc.), telling me in no uncertain terms that everyone would probably be better off if I wasn’t so weird/talkative/energetic/creative. So I wasn’t anymore. And people liked me. And everyone went about his or her business pretending that we all loved ourselves. And there was a lot of silence.

            People not being allowed/encouraged to be/express themselves can go on kind of fine for awhile (even decades), but it almost always ends in someone crying in a bookstore in Milwaukee. Somewhere along the line, sensitive children who are told by adults they are too sensitive have their emotions straightened out like teeth are straightened out. Then, everyone lives in the fairytale world of no-feelings and the adults think “That worked out well just like we knew it would, because thoughts and feelings are like teeth, they just need to be straightened out from time to time.” And then, maybe in a bookstore in Milwaukee, the oversensitive child realizes the fairytale is threaded with a plot of hopelessness, and really isn’t a fairytale at all but a tragic comedy. But no one is laughing; there’s still only silence.

            Barry gives the sensitive children-now-adults one option to combat the fairytale-hopelessness and silence: write/make stuff. Making things implies that life can be better; it implies there is a future that is better (or at least more complete feeling) than the one we currently inhabit. Often, making stuff doesn’t feel like enough. Writing simple words on simple paper feels like it is no match for the years of “shut up/sit still/be normal.” And maybe it isn’t enough. But there is something important, maybe even essential, about making noise in a world that would rather you be silent. There is something important, maybe even essential, about declaring vitality in a world that would rather you die quiet.