memories

I have a notebook I started in March, 1988. I think it was a birthday gift. Maybe not. I was 18. It’s full of cryptic lists and notes and scribbles. I’m going to transcribe some of it, then I’m going to throw it out. It may not make any sense.

More after the cut.

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Leahpeah: Who’s that?
Me: John Crivello.
LP: Who’s John Crivello?
Me: A guy I sat next to in a drawing class.
LP: He’s got crazy hair.
Me: Yeah.
LP: Was this the exercise where you don’t take your pencil off the paper?
Me: And not look at the paper.
LP: How old were you?
Me: Thirteen.
LP: Pretty good.
Me: Thanks.

This was my freshman year in high school. The instructor told me I was holding my pencil wrong. How dare this woman tell me how to hold my pencil when I’ve been drawing my WHOLE DAMN LIFE? I never listened to her again in that class.

As a result, I didn’t get as much out of that drawing class as I could have.

So much hubris and ego. It took me years to work more of that ego out of my system. It’s still there, but I understand it much better. It drives me to excel, but it also can get in the way.

Know thyself.

Onward.

Ending the week on a sweet note. I have one sister, Kelly. I was 7 when she was born. She rocks. And my Mom rocks too. This drawing just plain made me smile for various reasons, not the least of which I’m gonna get to see my parents and sister this month, and I’m looking forward to it.

At some point I want to let the story be told about how I, Mr. Mild Mannered, apparently started acting out when I had a baby sister. I was no longer the center of attention, and everything changed.

I added some tinting to alter the colors a bit. The original is very faint and I think the paper was not acid-free and has darkened a bit. Plus it’s in pencil. For all I talk about not doing much pencil, I sure seem to be posting a lot of pencil stuff. Once again the physiology is all wrong, but it’s interesting nonetheless. I like it.

Sometimes what I come across in my pile of drawings is a fragment, like this. I like the boldness of the line, the feel of the line (gotten from a heavy inked brush on a nicely textured watercolor paper). I dig it and it reminds me of a retro-1950’s style as seen in things like PowerPuff Girls, but the fact is, it’s lacking. It’s missing a whole chunk out of it? Why? I have no idea.

The magic comes after scanning. Some copying and pasting of other elements, some stretching and bending of 18 year old strokes, and it can actually become what it was destined to be. Some colorization and tricky Photoshoppery and this fragment can actually become a complete illustration. I added a sort of veronica lake line over her face, that was a fragment from the left side of the hair stretched and doubled. I added an ear from a whisp of hair from the right side. The sweater lines are likewise from the hair. It almost looks intentional.

It’s fun working with myself.

In color! (I carried around a set of colored pens and drew this one in a travel scrapbook that is mostly filled with memories of a Europe trip I took with my parents and sister).

At UVa I was one of the Respiratory Therapists on the bronchoscopy team. Basically we assisted on bronchoscopies for patients who needed to have their lungs looked at with fiber-optics. I assisted on some odd ones. I remember one very critically ill patient, their circulation was supported heavily with vasopressors and I think he was an ARDS on top of preexisting pulmonary fibrosis—the inside of their lungs seemed to be filled up with black tar. Really terrible. I worked the night shift at UVa, so there were no “day in day out” bronchoscopies, it was usually people who were very sick. The Pulmonologists were all really cool, and it was fun to be in that assist role. They want saline, you have the saline ready. We maintained the bronch cart and assured we were ready for anything. It was actually quite fun, despite the seriousness of the job.

When a patient already has an endotracheal tube in, adding a bronchoscope can get dicey if you’re making sure they get their ventilation properly. High peak airway pressures can add some adventure, and you do your best.

Mind you, my RT skillz are over 10 years old, which sort of still amazes me, because I don’t know that the technology of bronchoscopy and mechanical ventilation has changed all that much. Then again, computer and internet technology has changed by leaps and bounds in the same intervening time.

In pencil. Quasi Mayan or Aztec, but I suppose it could be North American Indian / Native American.

What inspired me to make it I have no idea, probably the idea was to make something in the style of totem poles. The result is interesting to me now for how out of place it seems among my other drawings and doodles. It’s also in pencil, a rarity because I always think of pencil as imprecise and weak. Silly really, it’s all just tools.

I was about 20 years when I made this, I think. Though I may be off by + or – a year or two. My best estimate is 1990.

I always seemed to be drawing this guy. Longish hair with a curl at the end, mustache, and a beret. The iconic artist. If I posted one artist drawing a day from my files I could probably go 3 months with just pictures of this guy in particular. I was always doodling him.

Huh, that description sounds like how my Mom described her Dad, my grandfather, and how he would draw this dog.

Interesting.

100’s and 1000’s of dollars.

Note: at the time my Dad was a Physician’s Assistant, a PA, not a Doctor. That’s a distinction that my 8 year old self could not make. Wears white coat? Helps people? Works in hospital? = Doctor.

Here’s the text:

By: Joe Crawford

I want to be a doctor because they help the sick and my dad is a doctor.

Also, being a doctor you make 100’s and 1000’s of dollars a year. I will have a wife and three kids. And for transportation I am going to get a Porche. For fun I’ll go to Disneyland, Magic Mountain and fairs. I’m going to live in San Diego in a little green house.

What is this? Why it’s this:

What will you be doing 20 years from now?

Room 10 at Park School thinks they know…

Grade 3
Spring 1978
Mrs. Pfeiffer, Teacher

This is Park School. I used to walk to school from the apartment we lived in which was literally two blocks away. I went there for grades Kindergarten through third grade. This is the school where partway through K, they bumped me to First grade. Being promoted like that was critical to my formation as an adult, though in retrospect it might have been easier on me to not have been.

Does anyone really know at age 8 what they want to be when they grow up?

It’s funny, but the internet already existed in 1978. Little did I know.

And I wanted to drive a Porche?

I said before I’d post the Andy Warhol images I had. As far as I know this one and the last one are the only ones I have.

Andy was a hero, and I remember crying when he died. It’s strange. I have not cried for many deaths of famous people. I cried when Stanley Kubrik died, but beyond him and Andy I never really did. David Bowie plays Warhol in the film Basquiat and I find myself really affectionate for Andy. Such an odd, peculiar man he was. I don’t know that I did very good justice to Andy, but I remember my affection like crazy. And strangely enough, it’s still there, for this person I never met. Leah might call that a kind of fandom. I think it’s something about heroes, and Andy was definitely one of my heroes.