Waning Blueprint

Episode Twelve: Waning Blueprint.
In which Squidman starts losing his audience.


1 comment:

  1. At about thirty, I followed the advice laid out for career climbers told they should seek out and interview someone in the position they want; do this to find out how that person came to be where they are.

    I found someone several years my younger, a programmer in a cutting-edge Cambridge, Mass, tech firm, possibly straight out of college (maybe even MIT?), who agreed to listen to me ramble while he chomped on his baloney sandwich in his office.

    I told him about the eccentric path my career had taken thus far, my father's 'follow your bliss' advice, college years spent studying Wallace Stevens and repairing old typewriters, and the absolute lack of business acumen that led to me now sitting in his office.

    He sat silently looking at me for a minute, chewing, and finally said, "Didn't you ever consider the need to make a living?" And that was it. That was his advice: unbelieving scorn, and ridicule. He turned away from me, and I got up and left.

    This is the censure that returns every time I try to consider what positive there might be to my *extremely* liberal liberal arts degree. (Seriously, you have no idea what kind of surreal crap I got credit for doing.)

    This comic is about that moment in my brain: Reckless lack of life preparation, the inability to focus on form-filling, the fear that seeking accreditation - in whatever discipline - will be too onerous a process to even begin. That career success will be something I will never be able to achieve, and it will lead eventually to homelessness and death in a ditch.

    Which blueprint is waning? My father's 'follow your bliss'? Or the traditional career path blueprint (the voice that tells me I need to be on LinkedIn)?

    The Art answer that feels right? Both. Both are waning. To move forward, I need to dig my own ground, be it foundation or grave.

    Louis C.K., in an interview, talking about the need to keep his material fresh: throw out the previous years' performance and start with a blank slate. If you are going to find what is worthwhile, "throw everything out and just dig."

    Have you see Horace and Pete? Boy howdy.

    I don't remember whether it was intentional that the guy holding the box in the first frame (perhaps he was dismissed from his job?) is drawn half out of the frame, but it looks as is he is walking away from Squidman. I think this is why the 'in which' tagline mentions SM losing his audience. I was entertaining, at the time, the idea that maybe the voice might lose its listener...and what then? If a Squidman puts someone down in a brain and no one is around to feel bad, does it merit a cartoon panel? Still waiting on that answer.

    Guy is holding a standup's mic.

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