Flesh and Bone

FLASHIN' BONE BY JULIA GROFFLER

DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL

ALL INTERVIEWS CONDUCTED, REDACTED AND EDITED BY DEBORAH SOLOMON

[redacted]

GFRÖRER: Folklore and legends are irresistible to me, the more gruesome the better. I have an insatiable compulsion to examine the humanity of mythic characters, thinking about what it would be like to live with them if they were real people, because in a way they are real people--we love them because they are part of us. [redacted] said that the best part of the story is the part that's kept from us, and for a storyteller that's probably a wise policy, but I can't resist pursuing parts that might be better left unshown. I want to draw the snot-dripping tears and everything else because I love to read those parts.

[redacted]

GFRÖRER: There's a part in [redacted] where [redacted] eloquently compares the so-called Dark Ages to his present day and concludes,

==="Do you think that they, with their Battles, Famine, Black Death and Serfdom, were less enlightened than we are, with our Wars, Blockade, Influenza and Conscription? Even if they were foolish enough to believe that the earth was the centre of the universe, do we not ourselves believe that man is the fine flower of creation? If it takes a million years for a fish to become a reptile, has Man, in our few hundred, altered out of recognition?" This quote was at the top of my artist's statement for a long time. It was a revelation to me when I began to read books from antiquity to discover that our ancestors had senses of humor, that the only reason their jokes sound lame is because they lose their sparkle in translation. No, I don't think we've changed at all. Even the differences between you and me and a couple of Lascaux cave painters are pretty minor, really.===

[redacted]

GFRÖRER: The instinct is to find people who are like us, or to make people who are like us, and art is a tool to create that sense of communion. A stranger who likes the same song you like understands something secret about you--the person who wrote it understands you both--and if you want your friend to understand you in the same way, you play the song for her. Like in the famous scene from [redacted], where [redacted] explains how she and [redacted] fell in love: they were reading about [redacted] together, and the story moved them both at once, that spark of communion was all it took. That feeling is magical and addictive. I think it's the reason people go to concerts. At least, it's the reason I [redacted]

[redacted]

GFRÖRER: Through art is the main way I relate to people: all of my friends are artists now, drawing is all I think about, my husband and I start making comics together as soon as I get home from work. I can hardly think of any connections in my life that aren't founded in a mutual appreciation of visual art. But I don't seem to form that [redacted] and [redacted] spark through my own work, which is a shame, because people--wonderful people! Fans, you are my favorite people--want to make that connection by talking about me with me. Until we can talk about some other artist, removed from us both: Harry Clarke, [redacted], [redacted], I don't feel that sense of unity. I feel like a fish being eaten by another fish. Qui-Gonn Jinn

[redacted]

GFRÖRER: [redacted] likes to say that [redacted] runs in our family, meaning that we tend to burst into extemporaneous song. Other than the humble ballads over breakfast I am tragically bereft of musical talent. I play the Theremin but only as a hobby, I don't perform. I love to draw but like most artists I find my work perpetually lacking. I like to tell stories orally, preferably a little drunk. My favorite way to express my ideas is in long boring monologues delivered to unsuspecting bystanders. I would make a terrific docent.

[redacted]

GFRÖRER: Yes, it's meant to allude to the man (Jadwiga wryly calls him Handsome, but in my head I was calling him Onan) and Anabel: he's the flesh and she's the bone. Bones also appear a lot in the book, Jadwiga's house is decorated with them because of her liminality [redacted]

[predacted]

GFRÖRER: I have a morbid fascination with the indignity inherent in being alive, the reality that our bodies are so demanding and that they are constantly, continuously betraying us, getting in the way of all the really meaningful things we could be doing instead, yet occasionally communicating nobility with their involuntary actions. Death, then, represents freedom from bodily abjection--death confers dignity, power, independence. The Ghost of Julia in ‘Ariadne auf Naxos’ is gleefully selfish and chaotic, shirking responsibilities and causing mischief, where the living Julia is always worrying, always trying to help and mend. And after death there is nothing more to fear: no shame, no anxiety, no doubt. Death and pain tend to be desirable states in my stories.

To my chagrin, no one with firsthand experience has yet described the afterlife to me, so I'm more or less content not to know and accept the futility of wondering what it's like to actually be dead.

[predacted]

GFRÖRER: I was raised by a Jungian psychoanalyst and I learned my fundamental methods of perceiving from her, so it's accurate to say that I'm preoccupied with obtaining guidance from hidden realms, from shadows or mirrors. I love stories where the characters confront their opposites, like in the Neverending Story, or where they embody conflicting ideas, like Lancelot on the grail quest. I'm such a [postdacted] and I pursue negative emotions more than positive ones, I'm like a spelunker in the inner caverns, I like to chew on all my certainties until doubt reveals itself because precariousness is the natural state of things. Do I embrace mystery? I insist upon it.

[predacted]

GFRÖRER: I'm sorry about your cats. Do you think death means a transcendence of reality as we experience it now? Self-transforming machine elves unlock the vomitoria of the theater of false perceptions? I would prefer to believe that consciousness dissipates after death, but nothing we know about the universe indicates that this is so: nothing is bounded, nothing really ends, security and finality and the boundaries between things exist by consensus only.

I'm looking at the Wikipedia article for "universe" as I write this and when the page loaded with an image at the top, as most Wikipedia pages do, I felt like I would faint. It's a sort of mottled blue oval. How vulgar!

[predacted]

story. The man fears god and damnation, while Jadwiga’s witchcraft seems

authentically pagan. Are these subjects of interest to you?

GFRÖRER: Well, let me first profess my ignorance of authentic paganism--the occultism you see being practiced in my book is mostly based on medieval Christian ideas about the kinds of things a witch or sorcerer might do. I'm extremely interested in historical Christianity. And for the record,

redacted

GFRÖRER: Oh no. I had no idea there was such a movie. Paul Verhoeven? Really? Goddamn it. But that's my understanding of the mandrake myth, yes, that semen from a hanged man would sprout this little man-shaped screaming plant. I've also read that sex with a mandrake root produces a baby with no soul and no emotions, and that you can carve the root into a little person that will be your slave, and that you can make a balm with the mandrake that you rub on your legs and feet to feel as if you're flying. It's a panacea among the [redacted] parsnips.

REDACTED

GFRÖRER: He's referring to the baby Jadwiga might conceive from sex with the mandrake. In a sense Onan would be its father, part of him would live on after he's dead.

REDACTED

GFRÖRER: There are a lot of things a witch could use a soulless baby for. Probably we can infer from the story that Jadwiga is a little lonely. Possibly, given Buer's impatience with emotional people, she would consider soullessness an advantage.

REDACTED

GFRÖRER: Buer is an intensely logical person (actually a President of Hell and a teacher of logic and philosophy) and his view of love is purely pragmatic. You could argue that from an evolutionary standpoint love is pragmatic, but Buer is indifferent to its spiritual value, so to him it's all song and dance. Jadwiga isn’t necessarily a romantic, but because she likes Onan she's willing to entertain the idea. Redacted

GFRÖRER: I only know of Buer from REDACTED, but I think he must be a native of hell rather than the spirit of someone dead, since demons of Christianity are usually fallen angels. He also teaches herbology and provides familiars. Some old grimoires imply that a demon exists to teach any subject or perform any task, and it remains only to perform the necessary ritual to summon and command that demon. There are a lot of teachers down there, an infernal university. Redacted

GFRÖRER: Thanks, Jason, this has been fun. At the moment my husband and I are frantically finishing up a couple of new zines for the Portland Zine Symposium, which as of this writing is less than a week away. We did one about our heroes, which he wrote and I illustrated, and another about Wolverine (and to a lesser extent the other X Men and the rest of the Marvel universe) which is mostly comics written and drawn by both of us. I recently finished a third issue of Ariadne auf Naxos, which is being published by Teenage Dinosaur and should be available at the Symposium as well. And I am glacially thumbnailing a couple of shorter comics which also deal with the idea of sex with ghosts. I have no idea what I'll do with them when I finish them but I can't stop writing them.