For three days I've been sitting in front of this machine, colouring pages for the new comic. It has to be done in less than a week. I haven't drawn the last bits, but I needed to get away from the ink for a while. I sat here for 16 hours yesterday, just blocking & flatting.
Today I'm back, doing something a bit different. Today I'm fucking with a dream sequence, in Corel Painter.
The odd thing today has been the music. Some perverse regression. I've been listening to this melancholy, folksy stuff, that I've barely paid a whit of attention to for years. Counting Crows, & Hoyt Axton. Then this poem comes into my head, from Gordon Downie's "Coke Machine Glow"
Mystery (copyright Gordon Downie):
Somewhere there's a soccer game.
I can hear the wild crowd moan.
It's not that life here is distasteful to me
it's just that I'm all alone.
I wanted what took a lifetime to learn
and that determined then
with no more pause than a sigh
turn and start again.
It's not that it's such a mystery.
I saw it from miles away.
In time I'll only think of you
when I'm buttering my toast
or in some other reflective moment
when I expect the least
or the most.
It's not that it's such a mystery
it was practically on display.
We've got "world enough and time"
and "wither youth" comes or goes.
I hope you'll always think of me as "mine"
and not one of those.
It's not that it's such a mystery
this new-found malaise.
It's just that this mystery
has taken your place.
______________________________
Back to work.
