Here begin

Hi,

I'm closing in on the writing and drawing of a graphic novel with the title The Monsoons. It has an autobiographical element to it which requires me to do some thinking both with and without nostalgia. I have little problem with nostalgia, however ill it is served by the graver commentators of our culture (it's a kind of weepy cousin at a family funeral). But I see a real value to it.

Nostalgia is memory filtered through consciousness to invoke a self-pleasing warmth. It's memory with art direction, music score and a script. What I'm about here is a kind of selective nostalgia whereby I'll pursue the feeling of a given occasion or phenomenon rather than attempt to reconstruct a stimulating fib. By this I hope to establish the kind of sensory bed to host the final draft of the novel.

I might start by nudging around a feeling and it might get a quite factually based superstructure. But there is awkwardness, pain and shame in the life of everyone by the time they are seventeen like the characters in the story. For those moments, if I dare reveal them, they will either be played from behind masks or omitted altogether. We'll see.

PJ