I just re-read I Never Liked You, by Chester Brown, and it got me thinking about his work and why and how I like it.
There are often times I read about or hear about the narratives that Chester Brown makes. Chester Brown is good at making narratives and so of course it does make sense that anyone would say that he is good at making narratives. I do say so too, but I would like to say more pointedly that what I really like and do enjoy and find to be remarkable about Chester Brown is his drawing.
The drawing is the thing for me even though the story is the thing for me as well, i.e., the narrative. The drawing has a space in it, a silence and a special kind of stillness to it, that I find to be remarkable because I find, I really find, I really do discover every time I look at it, at any of his drawing, that I find that stillness space is there in it, because I find that it is there in me, whenever I look at it.
What is reading anyway? What is looking reading anyway? What is looking anyway? And listening? All of these are me doing something similar, and it’s not entirely because of seeing with my eyes or because of hearing with my ears or because of thinking with my brain, because the mystery begins when the limit of machinery and process is apparent, because it all is only ever looked at, read, analyzed, or understood (when understanding is an action more than when it is an object).
What I like about, what I really like about Chester Brown is his drawing, and what I really like about his drawing is the way the silence and the stillness and the space of it finds itself in me, and how I find it there and look at it and notice it by feeling it and seeing looking at it reading it inside the panels of his drawing. There is such a holding still in it, in them, in him, in me, when I am reading looking seeing them it him. There is stillness there, and anyone can see it find it feel it there and correspond with it because it’s there in anyone, is anyone, differently perhaps and similar perhaps. That can be interesting, and that can be the way it is remarkable or not.
I say it is remarkable.
