Hugo House and Seattlest: The Lit Series Interview Series with Cartoonist Megan Kelso
Each year between fall and spring, the Richard Hugo House presents the Literary Series: four events that feature local writers, musicians, cartoonists, and other artists, who are commissioned to create new works of art. Each event features four artists, each asked to create on the same theme. The result is a diverse and fascinating look into various topics, by some of the Seattle area's most talented creators. This year, we'll be interviewing the participants in the week before the show. This week's theme is "The Haves and the Have Nots", (which is surprisingly fitting, considering the month of October has been host to epic protests) and will be presented for one night only on Friday, October 28 at the Hugo House on Capitol Hill, at 7:30 p.m.
Image courtesy of Megan Kelso's site, Girlhero.
How are you approaching this topic? With a comic?
I'm giving a talk, and I'm trying to not deliver it just as an essay that I wrote and am now reading. I've found that when I speak in public, it comes across a lot better if I don't just read something that I've written. It seems to take the life out of it.
Are you illustrating it?
I'm going to have some drawings. Not quite a comic, but more of an illustrated lecture. I'm going to be projecting some drawings on the screen.
I haven't really ever worked this way, but I decided early on that I didn't want to do a straight comic, even though I'm a cartoonist. But I really dislike reading comics live. It always feels really forced. So I decided to just not go that direction, and write an essay, which I haven't done in many years. And the images just sort of came to me, through the process of writing. Which was really gratifying, because it was like 'Oh right, that's how my brain works.' It reminded me that drawing is still what I do best.
Comics read aloud are pretty terrible. How are you reconciling with that?
I'm using a series of rotating images on a loop. Unlike when you're reading a comic by yourself, where you can go back and re-read a panel or flip back a page (if someone's reading aloud), suddenly it's going by, almost like a film, and you don't control the page.
And I think that that control is what people love about comics. You get to entirely control that space. A lot of the things that are magical about reading comics on a page are lost when they're performed live. So I thought this might be cool, because the drawings will be up for sort of a long duration (about 10 seconds), and they'll be repeated throughout the talk. I'm hoping people can make their own connections, without that forced timing of a performed comic. And without forcing me to have to break the story to deal with the technology and ensure that the right frame is up at the right time.
Can you tell me a little about the story?
It sounds strange, but the main thread of the talk is sort of me, going through a mid-life crisis, and taking on the works of Herman Melville to help me through it. It's very personal, but it's definitely on the topic. It's hard to explain.
Do you write first, or draw first?
I started writing first, but now the drawings and the writings go together. It's been pretty concurrent.
How did you feel when Hugo House approached you with this proposal and theme?
I was really honored to be asked, and kind of daunted by my fellow presenters. And to be honest, I didn't even really start grappling with it until about late summer, because I had other projects I needed to get done. And for the longest time, that theme of "haves and have nots", I was kind of resisting it. I was struck by the duality, because I'm kind of fascinated by dualities, but that particular one wasn't generating a lot of ideas for me.
So I decided to go with Herman Meville/Midlife crisis thing, because it was happening in my life. But that's what's great about writing--it helps you put things together.
Did you set out to do something new for you? Something personal?
No. I think I just assumed when I got the invitation-slash-assignment, that I would do a comic. When Brian (McGuigan of Hugo House) invited me, I thought 'Oh, I'll just do a comic, because that's what I do.'
But the more I thought about it, and the more I thought about the series and what was being asked of me, I saw it as an opportunity to work a little differently than I usually do.
So I decided I wouldn't do a comic, but it would have some visual components. I considered challenging myself and not having visuals at all, because sometimes cartoonists use images as a crutch, but then...you know, I think that's one of the reasons I was invited. So it seemed obtuse not to have any images at all.
Hugo House contacted the artists really early. Did that help?
It was a long lead-time. I feel like it was even before summer started, maybe May or June? But I kind of didn't really engage with it that much until the end of the summer, and I had some ideas in the back of my head, but I wasn't thinking too much about it. And then, actually, I've sort of experienced a lot of doubt and switching back and force, and I really think that's more because what I was asked to do, and how I decided to do it, is dfifferent than I normally work. I feel like if I'd just done a comic, there would be less vascilating and doubt. But it's a good thing.
The Lit Series is kind of a different venue, anyway, right? Did that bring out something new?
It's sort of strangely open-ended. I asked David Lasky (who has performed in the series before) a little bit about it, and he said the same thing. I'm not sure if I'm really delivering on the theme...but I am. And usually the people who assign the theme, they're not being dictatorial about it. They're just offereing a you nugget to work around. And you know how it is--any time you're doing anything kind of creative, it can be hard to stay in one place. So yes.
But this theme wasn't really clicking with you at first?
That's hard to answer. It's not like I don't have any thoughts about the haves and the have nots. It's sort of what we're all going through as a country right now, and I've had my own personal struggles with it, of course. But I couldn't seem to find a way to personalize it.
I wanted to do a piece that was personal, and about me. I never really thought of doing a story, which is often what I do. I wanted to talk about me, and placing myself in that duality was hard. Because I feel like I'm just the most typical, middle-class person in the world. And like I said before, I was going through all this other duality and being in the middle of my career, and feeling like a failure. But that's maybe a little too harsh--I'm clearly not a real failure. But I feel like it's emblematic of your 40s to feel like you may have failed.
And in reading Moby Dick, I just felt like that provided so much grist for that. And for me at the time, that seemed like such a more interesting topic--and they're definitely related.
Do you think that this month's events (with Occupy) will sway the conversation?
You know, it's helped. It hasn't been until really the last few weeks, with Occupy Wall Street, that I could see the connection between the larger political aspect and my story. And it's not like I've tied it up into a neat little bow, but it's definitely all coming together in a way that seems to really fit.
The way that [Occupy] has changed the conversation in the country in the last month, it's astonishing. And it feels like this conversation has been off-limits for so long, and now it's opened up. And then, the fact that I was asked to write about this so many months ago, and at that time, it was like everyone couldn't engage with that topic, but now...we're all talking about it. I think it's amazing.
