Early on in my napkin drawings I started adding in our pets. We had a dog and cat, and now we have 2 dogs and a cat. They are recurring characters. We also had a snake, a turtle and lots of pet rats when my daughters were growing up. They make appearances as well.
I use animals as the voice of wisdom often. They are immune from the stupidity of society and humanity so they are a great objective reporter of our homo sapien pressures.
Here is a collection of animal drawings from 1998 to 2014.
Let’s cut to the chase, it’s day #4 of my Conscience series.
Moral Fashion
Is this about fashion? Maybe, if you are a young woman who isn’t comfortable wearing short shorts. But ‘fashion’ comes in many forms. There is moral fashion for example.
This quote actually came from a fight about communism here in the US back in the 1940s and 50s. The House of Representatives started to hold hearings trying to get citizens to tell on their neighbors, co-workers and friends as to whether they were communists or communist sympathizers. When they brought Lillian Hellman, a play and screen writer, to testify she refused, using this quote to rebuff their attempts to coerce her to tell.
Heart
The reason I used the image of a heart being cut out is that more than any other element (besides perhaps one’s romantic entanglements) our conscience really is the heart of who we are. Take away our morality and our conscience and you pretty much leave an empty shell behind.
Pride
I am always proud of my friends, family and even people I only know online, who find their moral boundaries and grow in them. Don’t get me wrong though, I am not only talking about the ‘traditional values’ idea. I am also talking about the radical, or the nudist, or the person who foregoes the traditional life of the middle class for a life serving others in Africa. I am talking about the child of doctors who expect their child to follow in their footsteps but instead they incur the wrath of the family by deciding to be a singer, or artist. This is true of the children of artists who want to be doctors too of course.
I am talking about those who have courage to say, ‘This is me.’
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman
Quote by Lillian Hellman, 1905-1984, American playwright and screenwriter. Look her up to find out more about her courageous stand against the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
We continue our journey into the Napkin’s archives with a collection of hands. This collection also happens to contain my favorite quote of all time. See if you can find it.
Hands are Handy
One of the reasons I used hands when I first started doing these drawings for my daughters was that they were very easy and fast to draw. I was drawing 3 drawings per morning to stick in their lunches so I had to be fast. I could quickly draw the hand with one line and have it express an idea. I liked that. Then add in that it was easy for the hand to represent something greater than self, from another world, and it was a no brainer to use the hand for ideas related to God, religion, hell, heaven, theology, etc. It came to represent more than that but that is where it started.
Here is a selection starting in 1998/99. The first napkin is undated but the only undated drawings I have are, for the most part, from those 2 years.
The idea of the all-seeing eye has been around forever. The cyclops is one variation on that. I like to use the cyclops in that way, as the omnipotent witness. I also use him/her to upend ideas of beauty. If one woman’s eyes are considered beautiful, then why would it be different if she had just one eye.
Here is a selection of my cyclops drawings over the years. Below each is a link to the original post the drawing appeared in.
I thought it would be fun to bring out consistent visual themes I have had over the years and show them to you chronologically. I am not talking about the quotes being consistent but the subject matter of the drawings. You will also see a very obvious style progression in the drawings over the years.
Naked Men
First up? Naked men. I draw a lot more naked women than men, but men do make a regular appearance. Here is a selection from over the years. A link to the original post is below each image. There you will find the commentary that went along with the drawing.
I am delighted that today will inflict ‘Conscience #3’ on you.
The Invention of Hell
I know some of you believe Hell is a real place that has existed since time immemorial. I don’t. I believe Hell is a place invented by humans trying to make sense of an unfair and capricious world where seemingly bad people triumphed and good people met disaster too often. How does it all even out? There has to be a place that those bad people go after death to make it fair. That place is hell.
Hell on Earth
Since those same moralists don’t actually know for certain that there is a hell as evil as they want, they make sure that those they hope are going there suffer along the way. There are of course the usual, time honored punishments of burning at the stake, drawn and quartered, etc. But that is for one individual. Far worse is when the moralists devise a hell on earth for an entire population. There is the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, the Armenian genocide, the Cambodian Khmer Rouge regime, just to name a few from the past 100 years.
Why Do People Do This?
How does a person, government or a whole nation justify something like this? They justify it by saying these people deserve it because they are immoral and sinful, thus less human. In their moralistic hunger they have rationalized the most barbaric behavior imaginable.
It’s not just in history and it’s not just in some foreign land. Being a self-righteous moralist, especially an uneducated and zealous one, is a very dangerous thing everywhere. Look around you in your own life, watch for it. You will see it. And when you do I hope you stand up and fight it.
Let’s be clear and don’t forget, today is day #2 of our Conscience series!
The virtue of a bad memory
This morning I happened upon a Facebook post by a muse and friend of mine, Angela Huckeby. This is what she wrote:
Tonight’s reflection:
Dates and anniversaries of sad occasions.
Sometimes I wonder if it is a coping mechanism that I have acquired after a few small tragedies, but I have no idea what date ANY of my family members passed away on… Or the dates of my divorces… And most days I can’t even remember the date of my second marriage. Selective memory, I’m sure. Seem odd? Probably. The thing is, I have become a master at NOT dwelling on the past. I’m sure a little bit of dwelling can be healthy, but I see so many people in absolute heartache each year over the anniversary of anything that caused them pain. What’s the purpose of such torture? I see no point. Remember the joy and live and love in the now.
Where We Store the Big Mixing Bowl
Angela’s reflections show a different side to the virtue of a bad memory than the one mentioned by the quote author, Mark Twain. He is humorously pointing out that it’s pretty convenient to forget our ‘sins’. But Angela is telling us how beneficial it is to also forget our sorrow, pain, resentments, heartaches.
Now, the truth is we don’t really forget them. What we do is put them away in the far back of a lower cabinet, as we do a big mixing bowl we only use once a year.
We know those things are there, we know we can feel them and remember them again if we want. But we have done our constant remembering, our wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth. We are wrung out and gnashed out. Now we know we can put the memories way out of the way and we won’t lose them. We know we can bring them out if we ever need to.
Not a Sin Excuse
There is a peace in that. If you haven’t felt that peace, maybe there are some memories you need to store away. Not so you can excuse your ‘sin’ in the present, but so you can live and love in it.
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman
Quote by Mark Twain
Reflection by Angela Huckeby. Angela and I became friends when she agreed to pose for my ‘Velveteen Women’ project back in 2011. A four panel photo-collage with her as the subject was included in the exhibition at Living Arts in Tulsa in 2012. Scroll down to see all four panels.
Earlier during my cemetery walkabout, right as the sun went down, I happened upon a lone superhero starting her overnight vigil overlooking the city. She was strong and disciplined. I asked her how she got to be a superhero. She said she always wanted to be one and found that the local university had it as a major. She graduated in 3 years with a major in SuperHero Studies and a minor in Civil Engineering. Her day job is with the Army Corp of Engineers.
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The Zombie Pirate Queen
During my cemetery visit I also met the Zombie Pirate Queen. She was desperately looking for something more to eat. I pointed her in the direction of downtown, telling her the bar scene was hopping there and she should find someone to her liking. She thanked me and ran off, but not before giving me her business card, telling me to let my wife know she sold Avon on the side and could give her a free makeover.
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The Night Ninja
I was taking a leisurely midnight stroll around the cemetery when I saw Jack and the Night Ninja doing a bit of competitive grave robbing. I told them they could get a lot more work done if they worked cooperatively instead, which they did. In the end they made their deadline and planned to meet later at IHOP for breakfast.
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The Night Ninja skulked around me for a while after she was done grave robbing. She wanted to know why I was taking photographs and if I worked for the NSA. I told her no, but I was lying. I finally got her off my back when I gave her a coupon I had to Ulta and told her they had a 50% off sale on eyeliner.
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Unfortunately for the Night Ninja she never did get to have breakfast at IHOP with Jack. She instead met her demise at the hands of the Corpse bride who, in spite of being all in white, surprised the Night Ninja while she was checking her Snapchat. The Bride had just been left at the alter and hadn’t eaten all day so Night Ninja had an unfortunate end.
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Sally and Jack
I met Sally in a corner of the cemetery where she was waiting for her blind date. She had been set up by her Sorority sister, Drusilla, with her younger brother. She was quite scared of being alone in the cemetery and was happy to know there were others around. When her date, Jack, showed up out of the dark, hand first, she got so scared she peed a little.
Later in the evening I saw Sally and Jack enjoying a romantic moment sitting on a tomb. Jack had a big smile but Sally was worried about finding a bathroom.
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The Lady in Black
When I arrived at the cemetery she was the first person I came across. But she said nothing, she just looked watched me as I passed. Wherever I went, she was nearby, ever silent, ever watching. After the night was over I finally got up the nerve to talk to her. I asked her what she was doing in the cemetery. She stared at me intently, never blinking and said, “I am your eternal witness that these events were real.”
It’s been weighing on my conscience to do a series on Conscience so here is #1
Rationalizing
Some say humans would not be moral without God, that that is where our conscience comes from. I don’t tend to believe that, I think many non-believers are quite more and conscientious. But I do think there is a basic understanding of right and wrong in most of us (barring mental illness for the most part) and that we know when we aren’t doing right. We may quickly rationalize not doing right, after all most of organized humanity has rationalized incredibly immoral behavior, but deep down we know what we are doing is wrong.
Guilty Before or After?
Not wrong enough to change mind you, but wrong enough that if you get caught you will immediately be repentant and contrite, apologizing profusely. Yes, you are doing all that because you got caught, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t feeling the immorality of what you did. It’s just that the switch was turned on for you to feel that immorality without the buffers and blinders of your rationalization.
Where?
So, where does our conscience come from? Is it inherent or learned, from a God / spirit being or society or?
Tonight I am going to be part of CHiTCHaT&11. It is a program put on twice a year by the Young Architects Forum of the AIA of Eastern Oklahoma. The post care below explains how it works.
This is the reason I did the drawings on Architecture last week. I am showing them in my presentation.
I have been practicing my timing yesterday and today. Luckily the slides automatically advance so I don’t need to worry about going to long. I just need to work on fitting everything I want to say into 20 seconds per slide!
If you are out and about feel free to come by and sit in on our presentations!
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Here are the Architects and historians I’ve written about so far:
