Best comics of 2010: No. 8 (tie) : Mr. Mendoza's Paintbrush

As I was reviewing this list, I realized that there were a few really important books I'd omitted.
Since these things are arbitrary anyway, I decided that a couple of these spots would be a tie.
So today's Best of 2010,  No. 8, Part One is Mr. Mendoza's Paintbrush!
Written by award-winning author and poet Luis Alberto Urrea, this slim graphic novel does not take full advantage of the form, but tells a story that is quiet, energetic and magical.

Mr. Mendoza is the senior citizen of the village. He is also its resident tag artist, and is respected as such by most of the locals. His tags are biting social satire on the locals, and he spares no one his  brush's venom.
The story is related to the readers by two young boys that are rapturously observing Mr. Mendoza's  efforts as they discover the possibilities of life.
Luis Urrea is the author of The Hummingbird's Daughter, Into the Beautiful North (the one I'm currently reading), and The Devil's Highway.
I first became aware of Sr. Urrea's work through my man Shawn Phillips. Here's Shawn's song based on the latter Urrea book.
This performance is from St. Cloud, MN, July 30, 2009.



Wow.
Shawn also played guitar on the audio book version of The Hummingbird's Daughter, which I have yet to add to my Shawn archive.
The deep color scratchboard art of Christopher Cardinale works fluidly with the text.
In the last few days, I've talked a bit about the possibilities of comics working as an adaptation medium.  I have more of a caution about people who are versed in other disciplines trying their hand at comics. Some of these, like the comics work of rock musician Dave Stevens or that of actor Nicholas Cage, are well-intentioned but mediocre in their execution.
In this case, Urrea has embraced the possibilities of the form, albeit a mite tentatively. There's an excessive reliance on large panels, but the text and the image support one another with minimal redundancy.
It's clear that Sr. Urrea has approached the form and the narrative respectfully.
The climactic event of the book involves Mr. Mendoza announcing at the local watering hole that he will be leaving the next day.

The flow of the page through the beam of light, the cascading purple swirls and the vaguely neotenic angels create an effective layout, one that's moving in every sense.
So does Mr. Mendoza die the next day?
I'm not saying, other than to say that it's his final great work of art.
In that sense, this is also a bit reflexive, in that it's art about art.
But at the risk of seeming facetious, isn't it all?
Urrea's observation that "home isn't just a place. It's also a language" is reinforced by the first page of this slim graphic narrative.

Tomorrow: best of 2010, No. 8, Part II.

Shawn Phillips, July 26, 2010

I will write more on this tomorrow. The post will be expanded, but I wanted to get it out there that tonight's Shawn Phillips concert was amazing!
Here's me and Shawn, courtesy of my cheesy cel phone.

More details about this fantastic evening tomorrow!
Well, as Martha and the Muffins once sang, let me tell you, it's tomorrow and I never know what tomorrow will bring!
Shawn details:
Show started promptly at 7:30 as is Shawn's way. He made his entrance from the top floor of the 2-story stage setup and walked down the prop spiral stairs, which was big fun!
Shawn's playing with a band for most of this tour. I'd rather see him solo, but this band was a good complement to him. Talented players who knew when to step in and most importantly, when to hold back. Passion and restraint are such a difficult combination!
Here's some rehearsal footage with the band from earlier in the day.




The show was one long set, a little under two hours.
While Shawn was in voice and on for the night, and the material included stuff not performed publicly for more than 30 years, I was most struck by the philosophical and moral content of Shawn's works.
He spoke of the three things he tries to include in his writing:
Anger
Wonder
Technique
Anger is an awareness of what's wrong and a willingness to try to do something about it.
Wonder is a continual appreciation of the beauty in beads of water on leaves, an awareness of the delicacy and endurance of nature, of life.
Technique is balancing the two.
I've never heard it put quite that way before.
As often happens during a Shawn concert, I marvel at what the man has survived. Last night he told us about his 1976 accident, when his long hair got tangled in the propeller of an outboard motor. He was in critical care for three months and spent another four in recovery. The doctors were afraid he had brain damage and would never be able to write or compose again.
Much of the evening was about craft and possibility.  When I'm honored/confronted by the work of a creator of Shawn's caliber, I find myself torn between feelings of tremendous inadequacy and aspirations to immense possibility.
The evening was archived, which gives me hope that there may be a DVD in our future! (addendum: learned that there will be no DVD of this one).
I'll let one of my favorite Shawn songs close. This is from the MN Zoo performance two years ago, the best Shawn Phillips show I've ever seen. I encourage you to buy the DVD!

Songs of love and why it doesn't all fall apart

Twice in the last twelve hours, this song has come up. It seems just to post it now.
This is Hurdy Gurdy Man by Donovan. The rhythm comes from the laugh of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and relates to a universal cadence that all things follow.
There's an extra verse written by George Harrison.
When the truth gets buried deep,
Beneath a thousand years of sleep,
Time demands a turn-around,
And once again the truth is found,
Awakening the Hurdy Gurdy Man,
Who comes singing songs of love.

Here's a performance with that verse.





As we consider our very survival, threatened by a carelessly made wound to the planet, a wound emitting toxins into the sea that ultimately supports our life as much as the sun  and the air, let's take a minute and consider WHY we need to survive.

The introduction to this Shawn Phillips song is on point.




How important are our lives?
Do we care enough to put aside our greed and fear, and just help one another live?
I'm not a meditator, and my spiritual center is, well, not all that centered. But I have an idea of how the whole thing might work. It's fuzzy, as is much unscientific thought on the subject, but science and faith are intersecting in intriguing ways. There's no reason that atoms should even hold together, given that one of the three particles is neutral, and the other two, being positive and negative, should repel each other.
Therefore, since everything is composed of atoms, why doesn't it all fall apart?
On possibility is will, consciousness, God.
In The Cosmic Jackpot, physicist Paul Davies offers, along with other possibilities, a consensus theory. Everything exists because an aggregate consciousness has willed it to do so. Some call that The Universe. Others call it God.
Others just see it as us.
Vaughn Bode' called it The Management.

Some would say that wrapping these ideas in popular culture is doing them a disservice, that I should be dutifully reading the Bible, the Ghita, Jung, and more serious physics texts.
Maybe I'm just sloppy about my spiritual side.
Maybe.
But if we truly are here as a result of shared consciousness, if everything exists by consensus, appreciating its beauty and diversity can only help The Cause.
Thus Spake The Management.

At the Shawnpost up Ahead...

Fresh (sort of) in from tonight's Shawn Phillips concert, and at least somewhat rejuvenated by the experience. That someone as beat up by life as Shawn can keep smiling, keep trying new things and stay so alive creatively is both intimidating and inspiring.
For those not in the know: Shawn's father was a spy novelist (author of the Joe Gall books), a poet and a CIA agent. His mother killed herself with an overdose of sleeping pills, and died cradling a young sleeping Shawn in her arms. In his salad days, Shawn roomed with Lenny Bruce and Bill Cosby (separately), taught Joni Mitchell how to play the 12-string guitar, opened for Yes until they asked him to leave the tour because his act was better received, sang backup on the Beatles' Lovely Rita Meter Maid, wrote most of Donovan's first two albums (mostly uncredited), survived an accident in which hair became tangled in an outboard motor propeller, survived quadruple bypass surgery, was robbed of millions by a manager, was divorced three times, and went without a record deal for close to a decade, despite making millions for his label at his peak.
Survival gave him strength. In his later years, he became an EMT and moved to South Africa with his new wife, where they raise his three year old son Liam, got a new label and released his first live record ever.
Shawn reminds me of possibilities, and he seems to come around when I need him most.

The only photo I was able to get from my (ahem) front row center seat was this cheesy one of the stage, taken with my cel phone.
One of the highlights (and there were many) was a song Shawn had never before performed publicly, a memorial to the Hawai'ian singer Iz (Israel Kamakawiwo`ole).
Haunting and uplifiting, like much of Shawn's best work.

34- 35 years of three octaves: Shawn Phillips!

In 1975, my then-girlfriend sat me down and slammed some headphones on me, and simply said "shut up and listen."
That was my first exposure to Shawn Phillips.
Decades and seventeen albums later....
I will be seeing Shawn perform at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis on Monday, May 4. It will be my 15th Shawn concert.
I could tell you about Shawn's phenomenal career, his compositional acumen, his passion in performing, his intelligent and articulate lyrics, his profound love of humanity despite itself, his engaging smile, or his three-octave voice.
But I think I'll let him speak for himself.