So, what does Diabetes look like?

Draw disease - go on. Pick up a pen, pencil, piece of charred wood or whatever and make a mark that represents an illness. Now step back.

Here it comes.

A flood of doubt, angst and bewilderment crashes into you. First, of course, there’s the normal creative crisis of confidence - spotting the flaws in technique and denying your own ability; but then comes the tumult of responsibilities: to others with the disease, to the people working in research and healthcare, to your own sense of self - and your own truth, and to society in general! 

At this point drowning is a very real possibility, so just as water began to seep into my mouth I started to draw. Splashing around desperately I grabbed hold of a quote I found which likened diabetes to a “tiger”, and drew a page that I didn’t use (see previous post The story of now ), which tried to find animals as similes or metaphors for type 1 Diabetes. It didn’t work - for many reasons, but one of the most obvious was that the animals just didn’t really fit, and because of that any “clever” metaphor linked to qualities associated with the animals seemed, well, trite. This in turn I suspect fed into the muddled composition of the page. 

So what did I do? Well some animals were used - bees, the parrot in my previous posts, an octopus - really as a pun for the experience of an ECG, but ultimately I found the best way to represent my experience was through the nitty-gritty of the stuff that surrounds type 1 Diabetes. That’s not to say I didn’t use metaphors - nah, there’s loads; but I think they came to expand on the moments, not substitute for them. 

My favourite page is this one [fig.1],

 fig.1: “Diabetes: Year One”, page 11

I like it because of the enjoyment of drawing this new landscape: because of the working out the perspectives and the shapes, of finding the logic in the clutter; for the body movement, and for the unintentional, but definite presence of Harold Lloyd in the slapstick of the progression through the panels. The page is both distopian and ridiculous, catoony and intricate, bleak and optimistic.

So by making the objects the metaphor, I believe I can express more about the disease than by trying to create analogous connections. In dealing with the complexity of how it is to me I can say more to others, than by trying to spell it out. 

Other pages have a similar approach - the  daily details with a twist [fig.2],

fig.2 “Diabetes: Year One”, page 18

where my equipment is infused with the whimsical unpredictability of The Discworld’s Luggage. Here is the absurdity that comes with the loss of control and the danger that lurks. 

Other pages start by taking the real and applying comics [fig.3], imposing geometric panels to eek out and disrupt the moment of the everyday.

 fig.3. “Diabetes: Year One”, page 18

This page dwells on the quality of time as it relates to my Diabetes, whilst also it giving a hint of my obsession with post-it’s; an obsession that comes from a disease that is managed and checked and assessed all the time at some level. The pieces of debris and the notes are the manifestations of that reality. A reality that only hints at the toll mentally. My mantra, since diagnosis, has been ‘make sure I’m prepared to be spontaneous’. A paradox that can ensure I do what I want to do, but drives me crazy when I fail to do it. 

Where the tracks meet.

It’s a strange morning. There is a chill as I take out the bins, but it’s a crispness that cuts through the fog of Monday morning. After the wind of recent days the dark of early morning gives way to the spreading blue sky. As I make my way to the station I am glad I left my big coat in the car that is heading towards my wife’s work, so that my jacket straddles my eternal dilemma between too hot, and everything else.

I’m going to visit my Dad today. He has dementia, and has moved to a care home. By all accounts he’s not doing well at the moment. Though given his situation, that’s pretty relative. 

My train is cancelled, though fortunately my travel neurosis means this was an early train just in case. Embracing the ‘in case’ I wander up the platform, and think about light and colour and lines and how drawing me lead to drawing Dad.

I hadn’t anticipated coloured pencils. Pen and ink maybe, painting clean lines with gouache or acrylics, but not coloured pencils. But my line for a long time was better in pencil - it’s more forgiving to indecision, or coffee shakes. My style, when I don’t think so much is quick, instinctive but prone to overworking or overthinking. And when I began Diabetes: Year One that was where my drawing started.

So line lead to pencils (awful pun completely intended), but also to colour, and to the capacity to smudge and rub out. Smudging, blurring, blending were elements I was drawn to for aesthetic, theoretical and very practical reasons. I wanted to convery the complexity of experiences, the way in which each moment comprises different layers of who we perceive ourselves to be be; and I’m left hand and messy, and always bloody smudge the paper somehow, no matter how careful I am to start at the bottom right of the page! So y’know embrace the inevitable. 

Using colour is difficult for me. I’m aware that I have a bit of a marmite colour sense; that I like colours that don’t always play nicely with each other. Colour pencils let you use tone to play with that; let you rub out layers, and build them up to create depths and ranges of colour. In turn this can create dissonance between the fore and background and between my experience and the world around me [fig.1] 

Fig.1: “Diabetes: Year One” page 12 (before someone pointed out to me you could make a font of your handwriting and use a computer to put on/Design the text!)

But it wasn’t just in the book I used this, work on my experience lead to work on patient experience - and what that might mean. This is a part of my work that has grown around sequential art, and through other projects to where it is now. But as the first pages of the comic developed, so did Images of Dad’s dementia. In these images my interest in portraiture, in colour and line and in story telling come together. One image of my father took his own words to create a portrait - which you can see, alongside a later graphic short story about Dad at this link: https://thepolyphony.org/2019/01/31/drawing-dads-dementia/. 

The way these experiences impact on each other is often unexpected. Exhibiting my work at the Pathology Museum at St Barts Hospital viewers connected the issues of type 1 Diabetes and dementia in ways I hadn’t, but that opened my eyes to the difficulty  that the two together could have. How do you manage a disease that relies on caluculation, timing and repetition, with less and less recall! Another audience member said that in my Dad’s portrait she saw my own response to type 1 Diabetes - through the complexity of the words she saw the attention to detail that I have tried to use to manage my own situation. Something that will probably be the next blog - Diabetes, neurosis and design.

 (Oh, for more about my Dad’s story, it’s well worth checking out my brothers series of essays about his relationship with Dad: https://medium.com/@goosefat101/down-to-a-sunless-sea-memories-of-my-dad-d1d2d3a61360) 

The tyranny of the line.

I hate rulers. I hate the time it takes to measure out the distance all those times to get a straight line: 5 millimetres, another 5 millimetres, and another, and another! I mean I know in theory you only need three, but the page is longer than my ruler, and anyway I have such a phobia of straight lines that it’s false economy for me to rely on the minimum number of points. And anyway what’s the big deal about straight lines? Why do we react so badly to a line that wobbles - are we that neurotic about trying to achieve perfection that we take it as a personal affront if the line deviates from it’s path? Is this the straw that bursts the dam? I mean, really!?

Trouble is, as much as I hate rulers, and am frustrated by straight lines, it does drive me crazy. Letters, lines and shapes marginally out of place are a visual cry of anguish that gnaws at my sou... bugs me. *Ahem, In my ideal world I’d just hinge the elbow and whoosh out a straight line - there, done! But no, that doesn’t work. So my solution, similar to the one I used as a kid to deal with my hyper competitiveness - that is, don’t compete with others, is to try and avoid straight lines.

 All this would be fine, except I work in comics (For the purposes of this blog it’s easier if we all go with the idea that comics is a description of the medium (like pencils or oils, or prose), and not subject matter - also for me could be 100 pages or 4 - I’m not really bothered.) - and comics use panels, or frames. Which need straight lines - mostly. Bugger.

So each page begins with me procrastinating with coffee and non-urgent tasks that need done stat! Before laboriously ruling out the bleed margin, and the grid frame I use (I try and I do a load of pages in one go, as it can be a real block to getting on with it). Looking at Diabetes: Year One this may be a surprise, as there are different grids, there are pages where the panels float and single page spreads, and generally the lines around the panel are wobbly! But they all start from a framework - a structure that is the basis for any visual grammar. 

My first pages nicked the nine grid pattern from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen , though they’d used it deliberately as a reference to the superhero tradition. This wasn’t a thought-through idea, I didn’t decide - yes I want to compare diabetes to 50s and 60s superhero comics, or better as a reference to the deconstruction of superhero comics, to comment on the disease as a cultural or existential force (though I might use that in the future?). Nope, it’s because the nine panel page allowed me to let time into the story, to stop and dwell on experiences; but also to jump from moment to moment - to press pause and fast-forward with equal ease. 

Four of my earliest pages show this. The first two swirl and sweep across the page - all planned over two nine panel layouts [fig.1].

[fig.1] Diabetes: Year One; page 4&5.

The images break out of the panels, they weave and overlap to convey the disorientation of my diagnosis. The source of the composition is the exploding structure underneath, the foundation crumbling across the pages. As well as disorientating I think the pages show the fragility of these memories - the way that so much happens so quickly that it doesn’t have time to settle, to lie. Instead it remains as echoes, something you feel you should recognise, but can’t quite grasp. Pages 8 and 9 show another approach [fig.2]:

 [fig.2] Diabetes: Year One; page 8&9.

 Here the panels allow time to focus on each moment, and collectively build up a sense of the impact of each of them. The physical mechanics of the process, along with the repetition of sound try to build up what I think of as the weight of the situation. The way the emotion, philosophy and psychology of being human imbue the physics acts with a significance that is more than the doing of the act. 

As I’ve mentioned - the nine panel grid wasn’t the only approach I used - but it got me started and gave me the confidence to explore different approaches. Which I guess, as I’ve rambled on a bit, I’ll cover in another blog.

The story of now.

I pick it up. The book is heavy in my hand. It has a weight, a presence, that gives me great satisfaction. The smoothness of the cover, the flick of the pages, it all sits, and signifies. With the comic now a book - a graphic novel (and from there a graphic pathography), the ethereal settles into being. A block of time and imagination that has now become a thing, an object - a product?

Diabetes: Year One. 2018, by y’know, me. 

Diabetes: Year One took up two years to conceptualise, procrastinate and realise. It took diagnosis with a chronic illness, a lot of confusion, drugs trials and squeezing through academic study and research (see my SciArt blogs to see how it started); and now that it’s done I’m really proud of it! But there is much about it, about me and about my process and how it has developed other work I should reflect on (and I really need to get this blog going again) - so here goes. 

The comic - or “Comics” is a medium that takes different forms - words, pictures, sounds, design, stories, symbols and so on, and puts them side by side, splits them apart, then over and underlaps them and lets the reader put them together; but I didn’t know that when I started! I mean I had an inkling, I’ve read comics, graphic novels or whatever for years, but when I found myself saying I should do a graphic novel about type one diabetes I didn’t know where to begin. 

My first thoughts were a miasma of research and experience that kept floating out of reach. Words and images - fragments of prose that became poetry and doodles that began to outline illustrations. With this in my head I sat down in front of the most dangerous of foes, the blank page.

I hate this bit, there’s so much potential to get it wrong - even when you don’t know what it is you’re about to mess up, so really shouldn’t be able to mess it up, all I can think of is how I’ll mess it up! And this is both silly, and, more annoyingly, fucking frustrating! As a result I harness all my well stored anger management issues and invariably just try to draw or do something - expecting it to be bad, but hoping it just might have something. 

My first, unused page.  

My first page was confused (see) -  when it was finished I wasn’t sure what I’d meant or what I’d said! But I had proved I could design, draw and write a page. I began to grasp hold of a process - writing alongside the drawing, a grid to organise the page (even if by the end I only used the grid to ignore it), and layering pencils to build up Images, or to excavate them with a rubber.

There was lots more I was to develop: at this  point I had fragments not a structure, I hadn’t learnt to love thumbnails or appreciate the gutter and the panel, I didn’t really know I was entering the world of graphic medicine, and I hadn’t realised how much this work of imagination would be a work of ongoing research. But these are for future blogs, for now, I had begun.

The waiting room.

There’s a cough.

A magazine rustles, followed by a sigh of impatience.

There is a faint smell of antiseptic.

I’ve never been scared of hospitals, just uncomfortable. The GPs, the drop-in, A&E, they’ve just never felt like places that belong to me… as if I’m there under false-pretences – an intruder, taking up time and space from those who had better reasons to be there. A fraud – I should go home, get some rest, sleep it off – most things go in time, right?... Right?

Then middle age hit – literally. In the two years since turning forty I moved from accompanying others to the waiting room, to them accompanying me: a foot infection, an eye infection, then, the pièce de résistance, type one diabetes. Gradually what was background has crept forward.

The posters, once visual static – bullet points of dos and don’ts, NHS logos, photos of reassurance and positive thinking, with phone numbers zig-zagging the space, are no longer safe spaces for the eye to linger. Now I find myself scanning for hidden meanings, cracks that they paper over, pathways that I can follow.

And so I tumble into a wonderland - where my certainty in how I am is questioned. A mirror world where I see myself distorted by the sight of others - people who come to know me as my body, my  disease and my treatment. Slowly who I am is changed - measured in terms of strips used and units taken; in terms of the rise and fall of my blood sugar; in terms of the correlation between my application of medicine and self-discipline. Here the habits and tendencies that define me as an adult - as the person I thought I was, are part of the problem - and the solution. Personality is part of pathology, and key to finding the way through.

I take a breath. There is a different quality of time - an otherworldliness. Here the concerns are different: the ticking of the clock counting down the seconds, the opening and shutting of the door, the steps on the floor - all build their own rhythm, have their own logic. This is the world of the body, of the internal, of the mystery and science of health and disease - and at the same time the clamouring voices of those who don’t know what’s wrong, and what they did. As if the atmosphere can be touched, and chewed. There is a thickness that builds where the impulse to help, and the need to help others collides, it carries the aromas of fear, guilt, exhaustion and hope.

Increasingly I find myself belonging. Ironically, as time passes, and I take more and more control over monitoring and medicating my illness, and so have less and less need to go to the waiting room, I now feel justified in crossing the threshold, in entering these, oh so patient, spaces.

“Sunday at the Drop-in #1” colour pencils with digital augmentation.

Cross thinking.

I’ve eaten early - cos’ I had stuff to do later tonight, which means I’ll need to eat dinner early too. Except about now I feel really full.​ This sounds pathetic - but it’s really preying on my mind. I expect more of myself - like I should just make a fucking decision!

​I wonder if I have a bad attitude to sacrifice? But then I’ve planned the day - I planned it last night - so that this should make sense! Should be easy! And I resent it being difficult.  

I find myself dithering at a cross-roads - literally. I stand on a pavement taking half-steps in different directions, cross thinking myself before I’ve made a full stride; unable to decide where I’m going, until, exasperated with my ineptitude I dart into the nearest cafe and sit, and hope... and, trying to stop my thoughts, I draw...

My thoughts settle. I did think about going carbless - which might be less filling, but two things - well three things mean that’s a bad idea. The best reason is that, as I’m going to be doing stuff - walking, standing, maybe talking, I need to make sure I have enough carbs to stop me dropping too low through the evening. Then there’s the fact I’d quite like to have a drink or two - which again means I should make sure I have ‘carbed up’ so the alcohol drop doesn’t affect me so much.

But the third reason is much more irrational... In truth, carbless - taking no insulin, scares me. I don’t believe my body has my best interests at heart, like its waiting for me to fall into its trap. A bit like I felt learning to ride a bike when the stabilisers are taken off! I’ve done it once or twice - but normally when other people are with me... y’know - just in case. 

And it worked, the drawing, the writing... things slow for a moment. I order a coffee, then a sandwich,  and a drink. I eat, I post and I’m off.

Aw nuts!

The light falls, and sinks into the depths of the shell. Tone builds and falls as the pencil scritch-scratches on the paper and slowly the wrinkles form, creating their own geography as the nut takes shape.

I’m sitting drawing walnuts, and my thoughts turn to why (well that and bad puns about “nuts”, “pencils” and “nooks and crannies” - I’ll let you joins the dots”)? There is something joyful and indulgent about taking the time to engage in the complexity of looking - whether in a still-life or landscape. You give yourself to the process: look, squint, soft marks, then more - scribbles to fill in contours, or to establish the geometry of the shapes; more looking, revising - moments of “Ah!” as the confusing opens up - clarity blossoming, along with a flourish of marks - quick decisive lines, then shade here, here and here!

I’m not mathematic, many will tell you that, but drawing - sketching, is a different sort of geometry - a way of unpicking the logic of what you see away from the deceit of numbers, who slyly swap places when you’re not looking. And for me now, living with type 1 diabetes I find the numbers are more present than ever. Phantoms that glide around the potential of each meal - complications that are always on the edge of sight, and snicker at my lack of grace under fire. 

Maybe this is the joy of sketching the obvious, the joy of detail - it quiets my mind, let’s me think my way, for a while.   

Or maybe I’m just nuts...

“Going Nuts” late night thumbnail sketching in pencil.

Food Mood

Food has always provoked strong feelings in me. I associate good times with food - past, present and future. I love the act of preparing food - the alchemy of flavour, and the excitement and contentment of mixing ingredients together - sometimes in quick movements, sometimes a slow bubble. Also I like to eat - to enjoy. Maybe it’s comfort food? - but now, and always I think, it's also control.

With type 1 Diabetes I can’t not think about food. The word think implies that this is always a rational thing - a strategy, a plan, but it doesn’t work that simply. It’s more a presence - a voice nagging away, but quietly - so I can’t hear the words clearly, a thought half grasped...

That day I didn’t want to eat. I felt I had to. Why didn’t I just choose fuel – a sandwich or something? 1 unit would have made me feel better – especially after breakfast!

I like food though, and I hate to eat because I have to. I thought a small pizza could be half way between a sandwich and a roast. But it was too big - more carbs than I wanted - than I’d planed for. So I have to leave a third of it. Why didn’t I know – why didn’t I guess? Of course the one I saw wasn’t the real size – it didn’t fit the sodding plate – why didn’t I see it!

And now the whole meal is about my mistake – my stupidity; and I’m embarrassed – I’m very publically wrong, and I hate it! My stomach contracts and this is what consumes me. So now I notice every flaw – the eating becomes a chore, a task – as now I’ve injected I can’t go back. I have to eat it, and each mouthful finds another issue – texture, taste, value – it all starts to swirl, and snarl.

I know I’m horrible to be around now, so I try to change tack. But it’s still there, and I can feel my eyes screwing up as I look around. I hate this! I hate me – why can’t I let it go!!

Fuck’s sake!

“Food Mood: roughs” 

Old Haunts

A crisp cold cuts through the air - it’s touch slices a cross-hatch of time. Opaque light drifts over the day’s colours - layering a whiteness that signals the move from autumn to winter. Contrast softens as the fingers of dusk caress the afternoon, and introspection takes hold.

I walk on familiar ground. Memories crystallising around me, though the mold no longer fits as tight as it did. There are buildings cut from the silhouette; signs and banners have changed - moved on, and I find my footsteps altered in their purpose. 

A meeting in Newcastle at the Medical school - delving into their research into Type 1 Diabetes, a quick look around old haunts, a catch-up with an old friend. Looking out from within the whirlwind I realise I am, at once, more certain about what I want - and more terrified that I won’t achieve it! A deep breathe, a whiskey, a shrug and I make my way over to Durham.

Returning to the Durham Lumiere has become a ritual for myself and Caroline. A crossroads between the medieval city and the technology of lighting and projection  that holds thoughts in time and allows for reflection and hope. And, as I find my thoughts speeding up, I take moments to stop and look - to sketch and write, to see and think; and squint to see a face I recognise staring back through marks scribbled and symbols tapped... Do I really look like that?

Riverview: Durham

Back again 🙄

As thoughts begin to swirl more thickly around my head I find myself writing another re-start post to my blog. I’ve done this a few times - re-started I mean, and I guess I need to ask why? 

My blog began without manifesto. A series of posts that were plucked from thoughts, sights, sounds and whatever came my way as I made my way through the day. I vaguely thought it might start to explain my approach to art - and maybe give me some insight into what I was doing!

In some ways this has proven to be the case - revealing a quixotic approach to subject matter and form; along with a tendency to doodle with words. It is the benefit of seeing my thoughts written - spaced out in front of me, layers of spaghetti stretched flat so that I can recognise them and me for what they (I) are (am), that has made me restart though.

It’s strange that I feel more confident in myself when I express my doubt to an unknown audience? Maybe it’s my inner narcissist? Maybe the discipline of putting words in front of others? Whatever - it’s my reason to begin again.  

Why words? I’m not sure. Drawing also has a similar effect - sketches, doodles - actual drawings; these are ways of thinking - tracing lines across mistakes to find a path. And I think there will be times when those drawings will make their way on here - especially comics and cartoons (though they’ll be tonnes on other social media if not, I’m sure!), but I’ve come to realise I exist in words and image (as well as y’know, flesh), and though these often cross over - that’s not always the case. 

Over the last year my blog was really only about one specific course - which turned out to be great, but while I enjoyed that, I think that I lost my voice for a bit - bad luck it seems to be coming back. These vignettes - the length of a thought and a raised eyebrow, feel as though they are about right for my...  attention span. 

I guess my posts will be sporadic at first, but there’s a lot to talk about at the moment, so I hope that picks as life generates more material - it’s good like that.