Last week we celebrated some movies as part of the inspiring artifacts continuum that guided us through this brave, barbaric and formidable world. But I’m an illustrator and I make comics, so I must write about drawing and comics, right? WRONG!
I learned to read from comics, specifically Mafalda, Graúna e Asterix and of course all of it is essential not only in my work, but in all aspects of my life. But over the years my dedication to drawing and comics has been more and more propelled by books, movies, History, Science, the news, life itself and huge, humungous, obscene tons of music.
Yes, in the next chapters I’ll write about drawing and comics, surely I’ll write about other movies, but now it’s time to groove. Or something like that.
I just find almost impossible to draw without music and music is also fundamental in the everlasting cycle of creating/solving problems - the process of thinking about comics and storytelling. I’m not a neurologist or a shaman so I can’t explain how it works, but it works: some wall cracks, little doors or even floodgates are opened in the brain thanks to some deep and indefinable effect brought by music - it can be the more subtle or more brutal kind of music, it can be a distant circular saw, a singing bird, the wind in the trees or the magnificent sound from steelmaking electric arc furnace.
This ever changing soundtrack can be directly connected with what I’m doing, the subject, but most of it has an oblique quality in its action. It has most to do with intention, tone, atmosphere, form, color and concentration. That’s why in working on La Grande Crociata the music that accompanied me is not some sort of Medieval Folk Greatest Hits Collection.
In the years of thinking, giving up, getting back and making this comic book, the inner core of this soundtrack is formed by pretty much the same elements that are present when I’m washing dishes, when I have to go to the supermarket, when I’m running and doing exercises. This molten metal sphere is made of:
Krzysztof Penderecki
You gotta love polish composers and Penderecki is my main guy. This amiable huggable chap made the most beautiful and terrifying music of the XX century. In his hands, Romanticism turned into a cosmic nightmare, but always with some kind of hope and deep love for Humanity. “Oh, I never heard of him!”, look, if you love The Shining, Penderecki is already in some comfy dark corner of your brain, sipping some tea. He’s not smiling, because he’s polish. He smiles with his eyes.
Éliane Radigue
Éliane Radigue is a kind of audionaut and mind archeologist that can research into the future too. She is generous enough to share her journeys with us and it is a privilege to be born on the same planet as her.
GODFLESH
Yes, to me always in all caps. GODFLESH. If possible, always bold too: GODFLESH. There are all kinds of heavy music. And yes, in this rich and vast spectrum you can find the funny macho self-help instruction manual and drills types like Pantera (I fond of them too) and you can find the mighty contemplative existential odyssey that is GODFLESH.
Intraterrestrial solid bass, brutalist gutting guitars, relentless drum machines and minimal, sparse and fragmentary lyrics with occasional citations extracted from Leonard Cohen. This band has the same impact in my life as Stalker and the other movies and essays by Tarkovsky or the art of Käthe Kollwitz.
GODFLESH is not about self-affirmation through aggressiveness, it is a treatise about endure an existence in a hostile enviroment and this landscape can be a state of mind or a council state. That’s why it is not only heavier, but deeper and denser.
There are more sonic fuel churning in the furnace nucleus and I will write about it in the future. For now I leave here the nervous system and backbone that grew from this core. Enjoy!