Lynda Barry: The Answer Is In The Picture
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Lynda Barry: The answer is in the picture
I'm very nervous and. when I'm nervous I like to do the thing that's the scariest thing all right which is to sing in front of people because since I'm already nervous what the hell right it's why I'm gonna sing this little song it's it said autobiographical song I didn't write the tune the tune is two Coal Miner's Daughter and by the end of it it's just a verse you'll know about me in my background okay and then I'll be less nervous okay I was born a me cutters daughter my mom is from the Philippines she was a janitor I ate TV dinners at night I grew up by the TV light while dad drank vodka in the basement and BOM hollered. that's my little song and I'll ever get I know kicked ass but I I love telling that saying that part that my mom's from the Philippines cuz I know people look at me and she doesn't look Filipino and but I am indeed my grandma oh and one of my topic today is the question that you've all been asking which is why Americans are. crazy right don't you really want to know and I'll - I actually know the answer and. I'm going to be talking about that and also why I'm not crazy and I feel like the reason I'm not crazy is it hasn't lot to do with my grandmother and when I say my grandma's from the Philippines um this is what the language I grew up with in my house sounds like month II Gus I will only Lin been up a ball that means hard is the head of Linda oh my and um yeah and my grandma grew up very poor in a rural village in the Philippines and when she came to the States as she grew up without electricity when she came to the States there was something I noticed right away about her as I was growing up um that she was different from other grandmas that I had seen one she was really flexible she could sit on the floor she could do all this stuff the other is she had really odd ways of telling how to how to behave you know there's grandma's who'd say now you'll clean your room you just get in there and clean your room this is how my grandma would tell it she'd go you know Linda there is a vampire named the Aswang from the Philippines it's a lady vampire at night she takes her legs off she flies over to our house she climbs the wall goes over your bed puts her tongue down to suck your blood because you don't pick up your clothes and he having a grandma like that who had a whole way of explaining things that came from a long long tradition from her village was really different than a lot of grandmas who because you know the United States is like 250 years old and kind of acts like a two and a half year old a lot of times. she helped me the other thing that helped me was I was devoted to hula dancing and I I had the kind of family that knit really didn't care what I did and no one told me there's no job waiting for you as a hula dancer. I did a lot of dancing and then the other thing that I did was I was able to go to school and I was able to go to college and it was an at college that I met my teacher Marilyn Frasca who asked me a question that changed my life and was I was 19 and she said what is an image she asked what is an image and her idea was that an image is the thing that's contained in anything that we call the arts or in what kids call play or toys I can tell you what an image is by telling you what it feels like if you can remember the very first person that you had a crush on can you remember because I want you to say their initials I'm going to count to three I want you to say their initials ready 1 2 3 RS now the the third person you had a crush on do you feel the difference but you can almost somewhere you remember can you feel the difference in your head that first one was spontaneous. the first thing about an image is it's spontaneous the other thing is it feels somehow alive and the way that I can explain that is sort of with kids you always see a kid who has maybe you were the kind of kid that had a little toy that was like your favorite little toy or maybe you know kids we have a little toy that that they know if you go up to him and you say well is your bunny alive and the kids maybe eight or nine the bunny knows that he's the kid knows that that the bunny's not alive in the way we're alive and. no but he's not alive and you say well his bunny dead it's like never talked about bunny that way Bunny's not alive but he's not dead Bunny's something in between and what's interesting about that is I always think a bunny is the first artwork that's the thing that contains an image and kids do it naturally and I had some friends who had a little girl who got really attached to I think the ugliest toy ever made it was a banana with blue eyes and little dangling arms you know it was called mr. banana and she carried mr. banana with her all the time and her parents were. embarrassed about it and they went on a trip to London and they were trying to get her off a mr. banana but she wouldn't let go of mr. banana and. they just they convinced her to go for a walk with them and leave mr. banana by behind in the hotel and she wouldn't. into that but they did it but while they were gone they came back and while they were gone the maids had cleaned the room and mr. banana was gone which I love saying cuz I'd like to see faces go oh not mr. banana and you even know don't know mr. banana but you don't have talking about and. she goes crazy well she's losing her mind my friend calls down luckily the concierge understands mr. banana they're in England I'll get right on it and. then they they do this search and he and she's crying and losing her mind my friend said the best phone call he ever got in his life was the phone rings and and it's mr. banana has been found and. run up knock knock knock they carry mr. banana and this girl is relieved what what's interesting about that this is just a piece of cloth with just some stuffing in it and it is the difference of whether that girl is going to be able to sleep at night or not it's it's a I always think of it as one of the original wireless devices you know that it contains an image that she put in there when you look at kids playing they don't go Barbie Ken we're about to play it's going to be a three-act you're first you're going to meet then they'll be conflict resolution and then the day new mall let's play no often times a kid starts playing and they don't even know they're playing and one of the things that's freaking me out about the digit or the thing about technology is that for the first time in human history the normal amount of eye contact that happened between a child and their parent is now reduced because I look around moms are always on their iPhones or their BlackBerry's while kids are doing other things. the iPhone takes away from the actual like eyes and. I'm watching this mom she's having breakfast her kids sitting here he's about eight and she's having breakfast and she's and he's picking up this PC and eating his breakfast and he picks up this piece of bacon and all of a sudden he goes oh and then he does the bacon going no no yes I am going to eat you and I'm watching like house it's going to come out you know like I'm really we're all like really into it he's like doing happy to eat you and all of a sudden his mom stops just long enough to go what are you doing and he has no idea he it didn't have any idea that he was playing at all and. that's another thing is that that it's spontaneous and it feels kind of alive and the way I think that we do that as adults is if you've ever had a book that you carried around and it's been around in your place for a really long time and you haven't read it it's been years and finally you say one night you're just going to read it and you start to read it and you realize it's a good book you know that feeling you get the first 20 pages it's a good book 40 pages that's a little like falling in love 40 pages 60 pages like don't mess up this relationship man and then and then when you're almost done you have what do you do you have 40 pages left don't you slow down you slow down because this world that's. alive to you that contains an image only has a quarter of an inch left and and when you're done you read the last page don't you do this after you're done like look at the book yeah you know because it's gone from being an object to something that contains an image and another thing about an image is it's specific I don't know if you know about imaginary friends but I always wanted an imaginary friend and I didn't know how to get one. I decided to just lie because who could tell which meant men I had an imaginary imaginary friend which isn't as good as a real imaginary friend and I had a friend who had a real imaginary friend and this real I could tell first of all because they had a stupid name sprinkles secondly this friend she could only talk to her through a moving fan the little burger you can't make that up right. that I knew that that was a that was a real imaginary friend well one of the things. you think about all these things with play and all of us in one day I was hearing on the radio this because they can do functional MRIs now and and they can do it on little kids they can do it and. that there was this a neural scientist who was very interested in what happens in the brain when adults are in the act of creative concentration and kids are in the act of play and. they did the MRIs and found that their brains looked identical and what what was what was striking about it was that they that the whole brain was activated when you thought of your first crush I would say if we had a functional MRI your whole brain would be activated if and that third crush were you had to think it's a smaller part of the brain. then I started to think well what about what do we know about play and one thing everyone can answer from my little Filipino grandma to my Norwegian grandma they can all answer this question if you have a kid and they're never allowed to play until they're 21 what do we know about them by the time they're 21 they're crazy right they'd be crazy and which is really interesting. I thought well what about adults and then I thought that's why Americans who are. crazy because we've been completely talked out about it doing these things and it happens very early I remember when I'd be like like on the radio a guy would come on and saying if you delay and I'd be 12 you'd like to be a concert violinist you must begin by the age of three be like damn you know or if you you want to be a ballet dancer it has to happen by the age of five like damn or you'd always hear riders saying stuff like I began writing novels very early when I was in the womb with my developing fingers it's inside with my first novel and you say what man I'm not a I'm definitely not an artist and waited. the last thing I want to say is I want to talk about phantom limb pain and I'm going to put this down and about a brilliant neuroscientist who you may know vs Ramachandran genius and he was particularly interested in the in the phenomenon of phantom limb pain and you all know what that is right if you're if you missing your hand your sensation is that it's still there and you can feel pain I believe there's phantom limb pleasure but no one calls their doctor about it you know my missing hand it feels fantastic I mean nobody calls their doctor about that but at phantom limb pain. he had a fellow he had he had a patient who's a phantom limb pain was his hand was missing but his sensation was that it was in a fist and the fist kept getting tighter and tighter and tighter and this guy was losing his feeling that life was worth living he lost that feeling it doesn't seem like much to just have your hand in a fist but he couldn't sleep he couldn't concentrate he didn't want to go on nobody knew what to do with him Ramachandran did this he built a box and I always think of it as like a big shoe box and he put a mirror facing this way and he put a hole here and he told the guy to put his hand in. that when he looked down he saw the reflection of a fist and then he said open your hand he opened his hand he saw the other one open and the problem was solved that's what I believe the image world does I believe that in the course of human life we have a million things like this like my grandma who went through the war or losing a parent early on or having an alcoholic father I believe there are. many things like this and the only thing that can open it is an image and I think that the image world is the doko that carries us and that it is the corollary to our immune system it's just like our immune system except where it's for our mental health and that these original digital devices wireless biofuel are the key to things and also these and that's the thing I would like to say to you that the image world is. much more than art or or something that can bring you something it actually is like an external organ that has absolutely tied to our mental health and we ignore it at our peril now I'm just going to do a quick thing I'm going to end with a party trick really quick I can sing without moving my lips it's always good to end with a party trick no matter how boring this is this will take care of that and I mean it from the image part of me to the image part of you and I'm kind of a clown you
Lynda Barry: The answer is in the picture
I'm very nervous and. when I'm nervous I like to do the thing that's the scariest thing all right which is to sing in front of people because since I'm already nervous what the hell right it's why I'm gonna sing this little song it's it said autobiographical song I didn't write the tune the tune is two Coal Miner's Daughter and by the end of it it's just a verse you'll know about me in my background okay and then I'll be less nervous okay I was born a me cutters daughter my mom is from the Philippines she was a janitor I ate TV dinners at night I grew up by the TV light while dad drank vodka in the basement and BOM hollered. that's my little song and I'll ever get I know kicked ass but I I love telling that saying that part that my mom's from the Philippines cuz I know people look at me and she doesn't look Filipino and but I am indeed my grandma oh and one of my topic today is the question that you've all been asking which is why Americans are. crazy right don't you really want to know and I'll - I actually know the answer and. I'm going to be talking about that and also why I'm not crazy and I feel like the reason I'm not crazy is it hasn't lot to do with my grandmother and when I say my grandma's from the Philippines um this is what the language I grew up with in my house sounds like month II Gus I will only Lin been up a ball that means hard is the head of Linda oh my and um yeah and my grandma grew up very poor in a rural village in the Philippines and when she came to the States as she grew up without electricity when she came to the States there was something I noticed right away about her as I was growing up um that she was different from other grandmas that I had seen one she was really flexible she could sit on the floor she could do all this stuff the other is she had really odd ways of telling how to how to behave you know there's grandma's who'd say now you'll clean your room you just get in there and clean your room this is how my grandma would tell it she'd go you know Linda there is a vampire named the Aswang from the Philippines it's a lady vampire at night she takes her legs off she flies over to our house she climbs the wall goes over your bed puts her tongue down to suck your blood because you don't pick up your clothes and he having a grandma like that who had a whole way of explaining things that came from a long long tradition from her village was really different than a lot of grandmas who because you know the United States is like 250 years old and kind of acts like a two and a half year old a lot of times. she helped me the other thing that helped me was I was devoted to hula dancing and I I had the kind of family that knit really didn't care what I did and no one told me there's no job waiting for you as a hula dancer. I did a lot of dancing and then the other thing that I did was I was able to go to school and I was able to go to college and it was an at college that I met my teacher Marilyn Frasca who asked me a question that changed my life and was I was 19 and she said what is an image she asked what is an image and her idea was that an image is the thing that's contained in anything that we call the arts or in what kids call play or toys I can tell you what an image is by telling you what it feels like if you can remember the very first person that you had a crush on can you remember because I want you to say their initials I'm going to count to three I want you to say their initials ready 1 2 3 RS now the the third person you had a crush on do you feel the difference but you can almost somewhere you remember can you feel the difference in your head that first one was spontaneous. the first thing about an image is it's spontaneous the other thing is it feels somehow alive and the way that I can explain that is sort of with kids you always see a kid who has maybe you were the kind of kid that had a little toy that was like your favorite little toy or maybe you know kids we have a little toy that that they know if you go up to him and you say well is your bunny alive and the kids maybe eight or nine the bunny knows that he's the kid knows that that the bunny's not alive in the way we're alive and. no but he's not alive and you say well his bunny dead it's like never talked about bunny that way Bunny's not alive but he's not dead Bunny's something in between and what's interesting about that is I always think a bunny is the first artwork that's the thing that contains an image and kids do it naturally and I had some friends who had a little girl who got really attached to I think the ugliest toy ever made it was a banana with blue eyes and little dangling arms you know it was called mr. banana and she carried mr. banana with her all the time and her parents were. embarrassed about it and they went on a trip to London and they were trying to get her off a mr. banana but she wouldn't let go of mr. banana and. they just they convinced her to go for a walk with them and leave mr. banana by behind in the hotel and she wouldn't. into that but they did it but while they were gone they came back and while they were gone the maids had cleaned the room and mr. banana was gone which I love saying cuz I'd like to see faces go oh not mr. banana and you even know don't know mr. banana but you don't have talking about and. she goes crazy well she's losing her mind my friend calls down luckily the concierge understands mr. banana they're in England I'll get right on it and. then they they do this search and he and she's crying and losing her mind my friend said the best phone call he ever got in his life was the phone rings and and it's mr. banana has been found and. run up knock knock knock they carry mr. banana and this girl is relieved what what's interesting about that this is just a piece of cloth with just some stuffing in it and it is the difference of whether that girl is going to be able to sleep at night or not it's it's a I always think of it as one of the original wireless devices you know that it contains an image that she put in there when you look at kids playing they don't go Barbie Ken we're about to play it's going to be a three-act you're first you're going to meet then they'll be conflict resolution and then the day new mall let's play no often times a kid starts playing and they don't even know they're playing and one of the things that's freaking me out about the digit or the thing about technology is that for the first time in human history the normal amount of eye contact that happened between a child and their parent is now reduced because I look around moms are always on their iPhones or their BlackBerry's while kids are doing other things. the iPhone takes away from the actual like eyes and. I'm watching this mom she's having breakfast her kids sitting here he's about eight and she's having breakfast and she's and he's picking up this PC and eating his breakfast and he picks up this piece of bacon and all of a sudden he goes oh and then he does the bacon going no no yes I am going to eat you and I'm watching like house it's going to come out you know like I'm really we're all like really into it he's like doing happy to eat you and all of a sudden his mom stops just long enough to go what are you doing and he has no idea he it didn't have any idea that he was playing at all and. that's another thing is that that it's spontaneous and it feels kind of alive and the way I think that we do that as adults is if you've ever had a book that you carried around and it's been around in your place for a really long time and you haven't read it it's been years and finally you say one night you're just going to read it and you start to read it and you realize it's a good book you know that feeling you get the first 20 pages it's a good book 40 pages that's a little like falling in love 40 pages 60 pages like don't mess up this relationship man and then and then when you're almost done you have what do you do you have 40 pages left don't you slow down you slow down because this world that's. alive to you that contains an image only has a quarter of an inch left and and when you're done you read the last page don't you do this after you're done like look at the book yeah you know because it's gone from being an object to something that contains an image and another thing about an image is it's specific I don't know if you know about imaginary friends but I always wanted an imaginary friend and I didn't know how to get one. I decided to just lie because who could tell which meant men I had an imaginary imaginary friend which isn't as good as a real imaginary friend and I had a friend who had a real imaginary friend and this real I could tell first of all because they had a stupid name sprinkles secondly this friend she could only talk to her through a moving fan the little burger you can't make that up right. that I knew that that was a that was a real imaginary friend well one of the things. you think about all these things with play and all of us in one day I was hearing on the radio this because they can do functional MRIs now and and they can do it on little kids they can do it and. that there was this a neural scientist who was very interested in what happens in the brain when adults are in the act of creative concentration and kids are in the act of play and. they did the MRIs and found that their brains looked identical and what what was what was striking about it was that they that the whole brain was activated when you thought of your first crush I would say if we had a functional MRI your whole brain would be activated if and that third crush were you had to think it's a smaller part of the brain. then I started to think well what about what do we know about play and one thing everyone can answer from my little Filipino grandma to my Norwegian grandma they can all answer this question if you have a kid and they're never allowed to play until they're 21 what do we know about them by the time they're 21 they're crazy right they'd be crazy and which is really interesting. I thought well what about adults and then I thought that's why Americans who are. crazy because we've been completely talked out about it doing these things and it happens very early I remember when I'd be like like on the radio a guy would come on and saying if you delay and I'd be 12 you'd like to be a concert violinist you must begin by the age of three be like damn you know or if you you want to be a ballet dancer it has to happen by the age of five like damn or you'd always hear riders saying stuff like I began writing novels very early when I was in the womb with my developing fingers it's inside with my first novel and you say what man I'm not a I'm definitely not an artist and waited. the last thing I want to say is I want to talk about phantom limb pain and I'm going to put this down and about a brilliant neuroscientist who you may know vs Ramachandran genius and he was particularly interested in the in the phenomenon of phantom limb pain and you all know what that is right if you're if you missing your hand your sensation is that it's still there and you can feel pain I believe there's phantom limb pleasure but no one calls their doctor about it you know my missing hand it feels fantastic I mean nobody calls their doctor about that but at phantom limb pain. he had a fellow he had he had a patient who's a phantom limb pain was his hand was missing but his sensation was that it was in a fist and the fist kept getting tighter and tighter and tighter and this guy was losing his feeling that life was worth living he lost that feeling it doesn't seem like much to just have your hand in a fist but he couldn't sleep he couldn't concentrate he didn't want to go on nobody knew what to do with him Ramachandran did this he built a box and I always think of it as like a big shoe box and he put a mirror facing this way and he put a hole here and he told the guy to put his hand in. that when he looked down he saw the reflection of a fist and then he said open your hand he opened his hand he saw the other one open and the problem was solved that's what I believe the image world does I believe that in the course of human life we have a million things like this like my grandma who went through the war or losing a parent early on or having an alcoholic father I believe there are. many things like this and the only thing that can open it is an image and I think that the image world is the doko that carries us and that it is the corollary to our immune system it's just like our immune system except where it's for our mental health and that these original digital devices wireless biofuel are the key to things and also these and that's the thing I would like to say to you that the image world is. much more than art or or something that can bring you something it actually is like an external organ that has absolutely tied to our mental health and we ignore it at our peril now I'm just going to do a quick thing I'm going to end with a party trick really quick I can sing without moving my lips it's always good to end with a party trick no matter how boring this is this will take care of that and I mean it from the image part of me to the image part of you and I'm kind of a clown you
Lynda Barry: The answer is in the picture
I'm very nervous and. when I'm nervous I like to do the thing that's the scariest thing all right which is to sing in front of people because since I'm already nervous what the hell right it's why I'm gonna sing this little song it's it said autobiographical song I didn't write the tune the tune is two Coal Miner's Daughter and by the end of it it's just a verse you'll know about me in my background okay and then I'll be less nervous okay I was born a me cutters daughter my mom is from the Philippines she was a janitor I ate TV dinners at night I grew up by the TV light while dad drank vodka in the basement and BOM hollered. that's my little song and I'll ever get I know kicked ass but I I love telling that saying that part that my mom's from the Philippines cuz I know people look at me and she doesn't look Filipino and but I am indeed my grandma oh and one of my topic today is the question that you've all been asking which is why Americans are. crazy right don't you really want to know and I'll - I actually know the answer and. I'm going to be talking about that and also why I'm not crazy and I feel like the reason I'm not crazy is it hasn't lot to do with my grandmother and when I say my grandma's from the Philippines um this is what the language I grew up with in my house sounds like month II Gus I will only Lin been up a ball that means hard is the head of Linda oh my and um yeah and my grandma grew up very poor in a rural village in the Philippines and when she came to the States as she grew up without electricity when she came to the States there was something I noticed right away about her as I was growing up um that she was different from other grandmas that I had seen one she was really flexible she could sit on the floor she could do all this stuff the other is she had really odd ways of telling how to how to behave you know there's grandma's who'd say now you'll clean your room you just get in there and clean your room this is how my grandma would tell it she'd go you know Linda there is a vampire named the Aswang from the Philippines it's a lady vampire at night she takes her legs off she flies over to our house she climbs the wall goes over your bed puts her tongue down to suck your blood because you don't pick up your clothes and he having a grandma like that who had a whole way of explaining things that came from a long long tradition from her village was really different than a lot of grandmas who because you know the United States is like 250 years old and kind of acts like a two and a half year old a lot of times. she helped me the other thing that helped me was I was devoted to hula dancing and I I had the kind of family that knit really didn't care what I did and no one told me there's no job waiting for you as a hula dancer. I did a lot of dancing and then the other thing that I did was I was able to go to school and I was able to go to college and it was an at college that I met my teacher Marilyn Frasca who asked me a question that changed my life and was I was 19 and she said what is an image she asked what is an image and her idea was that an image is the thing that's contained in anything that we call the arts or in what kids call play or toys I can tell you what an image is by telling you what it feels like if you can remember the very first person that you had a crush on can you remember because I want you to say their initials I'm going to count to three I want you to say their initials ready 1 2 3 RS now the the third person you had a crush on do you feel the difference but you can almost somewhere you remember can you feel the difference in your head that first one was spontaneous. the first thing about an image is it's spontaneous the other thing is it feels somehow alive and the way that I can explain that is sort of with kids you always see a kid who has maybe you were the kind of kid that had a little toy that was like your favorite little toy or maybe you know kids we have a little toy that that they know if you go up to him and you say well is your bunny alive and the kids maybe eight or nine the bunny knows that he's the kid knows that that the bunny's not alive in the way we're alive and. no but he's not alive and you say well his bunny dead it's like never talked about bunny that way Bunny's not alive but he's not dead Bunny's something in between and what's interesting about that is I always think a bunny is the first artwork that's the thing that contains an image and kids do it naturally and I had some friends who had a little girl who got really attached to I think the ugliest toy ever made it was a banana with blue eyes and little dangling arms you know it was called mr. banana and she carried mr. banana with her all the time and her parents were. embarrassed about it and they went on a trip to London and they were trying to get her off a mr. banana but she wouldn't let go of mr. banana and. they just they convinced her to go for a walk with them and leave mr. banana by behind in the hotel and she wouldn't. into that but they did it but while they were gone they came back and while they were gone the maids had cleaned the room and mr. banana was gone which I love saying cuz I'd like to see faces go oh not mr. banana and you even know don't know mr. banana but you don't have talking about and. she goes crazy well she's losing her mind my friend calls down luckily the concierge understands mr. banana they're in England I'll get right on it and. then they they do this search and he and she's crying and losing her mind my friend said the best phone call he ever got in his life was the phone rings and and it's mr. banana has been found and. run up knock knock knock they carry mr. banana and this girl is relieved what what's interesting about that this is just a piece of cloth with just some stuffing in it and it is the difference of whether that girl is going to be able to sleep at night or not it's it's a I always think of it as one of the original wireless devices you know that it contains an image that she put in there when you look at kids playing they don't go Barbie Ken we're about to play it's going to be a three-act you're first you're going to meet then they'll be conflict resolution and then the day new mall let's play no often times a kid starts playing and they don't even know they're playing and one of the things that's freaking me out about the digit or the thing about technology is that for the first time in human history the normal amount of eye contact that happened between a child and their parent is now reduced because I look around moms are always on their iPhones or their BlackBerry's while kids are doing other things. the iPhone takes away from the actual like eyes and. I'm watching this mom she's having breakfast her kids sitting here he's about eight and she's having breakfast and she's and he's picking up this PC and eating his breakfast and he picks up this piece of bacon and all of a sudden he goes oh and then he does the bacon going no no yes I am going to eat you and I'm watching like house it's going to come out you know like I'm really we're all like really into it he's like doing happy to eat you and all of a sudden his mom stops just long enough to go what are you doing and he has no idea he it didn't have any idea that he was playing at all and. that's another thing is that that it's spontaneous and it feels kind of alive and the way I think that we do that as adults is if you've ever had a book that you carried around and it's been around in your place for a really long time and you haven't read it it's been years and finally you say one night you're just going to read it and you start to read it and you realize it's a good book you know that feeling you get the first 20 pages it's a good book 40 pages that's a little like falling in love 40 pages 60 pages like don't mess up this relationship man and then and then when you're almost done you have what do you do you have 40 pages left don't you slow down you slow down because this world that's. alive to you that contains an image only has a quarter of an inch left and and when you're done you read the last page don't you do this after you're done like look at the book yeah you know because it's gone from being an object to something that contains an image and another thing about an image is it's specific I don't know if you know about imaginary friends but I always wanted an imaginary friend and I didn't know how to get one. I decided to just lie because who could tell which meant men I had an imaginary imaginary friend which isn't as good as a real imaginary friend and I had a friend who had a real imaginary friend and this real I could tell first of all because they had a stupid name sprinkles secondly this friend she could only talk to her through a moving fan the little burger you can't make that up right. that I knew that that was a that was a real imaginary friend well one of the things. you think about all these things with play and all of us in one day I was hearing on the radio this because they can do functional MRIs now and and they can do it on little kids they can do it and. that there was this a neural scientist who was very interested in what happens in the brain when adults are in the act of creative concentration and kids are in the act of play and. they did the MRIs and found that their brains looked identical and what what was what was striking about it was that they that the whole brain was activated when you thought of your first crush I would say if we had a functional MRI your whole brain would be activated if and that third crush were you had to think it's a smaller part of the brain. then I started to think well what about what do we know about play and one thing everyone can answer from my little Filipino grandma to my Norwegian grandma they can all answer this question if you have a kid and they're never allowed to play until they're 21 what do we know about them by the time they're 21 they're crazy right they'd be crazy and which is really interesting. I thought well what about adults and then I thought that's why Americans who are. crazy because we've been completely talked out about it doing these things and it happens very early I remember when I'd be like like on the radio a guy would come on and saying if you delay and I'd be 12 you'd like to be a concert violinist you must begin by the age of three be like damn you know or if you you want to be a ballet dancer it has to happen by the age of five like damn or you'd always hear riders saying stuff like I began writing novels very early when I was in the womb with my developing fingers it's inside with my first novel and you say what man I'm not a I'm definitely not an artist and waited. the last thing I want to say is I want to talk about phantom limb pain and I'm going to put this down and about a brilliant neuroscientist who you may know vs Ramachandran genius and he was particularly interested in the in the phenomenon of phantom limb pain and you all know what that is right if you're if you missing your hand your sensation is that it's still there and you can feel pain I believe there's phantom limb pleasure but no one calls their doctor about it you know my missing hand it feels fantastic I mean nobody calls their doctor about that but at phantom limb pain. he had a fellow he had he had a patient who's a phantom limb pain was his hand was missing but his sensation was that it was in a fist and the fist kept getting tighter and tighter and tighter and this guy was losing his feeling that life was worth living he lost that feeling it doesn't seem like much to just have your hand in a fist but he couldn't sleep he couldn't concentrate he didn't want to go on nobody knew what to do with him Ramachandran did this he built a box and I always think of it as like a big shoe box and he put a mirror facing this way and he put a hole here and he told the guy to put his hand in. that when he looked down he saw the reflection of a fist and then he said open your hand he opened his hand he saw the other one open and the problem was solved that's what I believe the image world does I believe that in the course of human life we have a million things like this like my grandma who went through the war or losing a parent early on or having an alcoholic father I believe there are. many things like this and the only thing that can open it is an image and I think that the image world is the doko that carries us and that it is the corollary to our immune system it's just like our immune system except where it's for our mental health and that these original digital devices wireless biofuel are the key to things and also these and that's the thing I would like to say to you that the image world is. much more than art or or something that can bring you something it actually is like an external organ that has absolutely tied to our mental health and we ignore it at our peril now I'm just going to do a quick thing I'm going to end with a party trick really quick I can sing without moving my lips it's always good to end with a party trick no matter how boring this is this will take care of that and I mean it from the image part of me to the image part of you and I'm kind of a clown you
Lynda Barry: The answer is in the picture
I'm very nervous and. when I'm nervous I like to do the thing that's the scariest thing all right which is to sing in front of people because since I'm already nervous what the hell right it's why I'm gonna sing this little song it's it said autobiographical song I didn't write the tune the tune is two Coal Miner's Daughter and by the end of it it's just a verse you'll know about me in my background okay and then I'll be less nervous okay I was born a me cutters daughter my mom is from the Philippines she was a janitor I ate TV dinners at night I grew up by the TV light while dad drank vodka in the basement and BOM hollered. that's my little song and I'll ever get I know kicked ass but I I love telling that saying that part that my mom's from the Philippines cuz I know people look at me and she doesn't look Filipino and but I am indeed my grandma oh and one of my topic today is the question that you've all been asking which is why Americans are. crazy right don't you really want to know and I'll - I actually know the answer and. I'm going to be talking about that and also why I'm not crazy and I feel like the reason I'm not crazy is it hasn't lot to do with my grandmother and when I say my grandma's from the Philippines um this is what the language I grew up with in my house sounds like month II Gus I will only Lin been up a ball that means hard is the head of Linda oh my and um yeah and my grandma grew up very poor in a rural village in the Philippines and when she came to the States as she grew up without electricity when she came to the States there was something I noticed right away about her as I was growing up um that she was different from other grandmas that I had seen one she was really flexible she could sit on the floor she could do all this stuff the other is she had really odd ways of telling how to how to behave you know there's grandma's who'd say now you'll clean your room you just get in there and clean your room this is how my grandma would tell it she'd go you know Linda there is a vampire named the Aswang from the Philippines it's a lady vampire at night she takes her legs off she flies over to our house she climbs the wall goes over your bed puts her tongue down to suck your blood because you don't pick up your clothes and he having a grandma like that who had a whole way of explaining things that came from a long long tradition from her village was really different than a lot of grandmas who because you know the United States is like 250 years old and kind of acts like a two and a half year old a lot of times. she helped me the other thing that helped me was I was devoted to hula dancing and I I had the kind of family that knit really didn't care what I did and no one told me there's no job waiting for you as a hula dancer. I did a lot of dancing and then the other thing that I did was I was able to go to school and I was able to go to college and it was an at college that I met my teacher Marilyn Frasca who asked me a question that changed my life and was I was 19 and she said what is an image she asked what is an image and her idea was that an image is the thing that's contained in anything that we call the arts or in what kids call play or toys I can tell you what an image is by telling you what it feels like if you can remember the very first person that you had a crush on can you remember because I want you to say their initials I'm going to count to three I want you to say their initials ready 1 2 3 RS now the the third person you had a crush on do you feel the difference but you can almost somewhere you remember can you feel the difference in your head that first one was spontaneous. the first thing about an image is it's spontaneous the other thing is it feels somehow alive and the way that I can explain that is sort of with kids you always see a kid who has maybe you were the kind of kid that had a little toy that was like your favorite little toy or maybe you know kids we have a little toy that that they know if you go up to him and you say well is your bunny alive and the kids maybe eight or nine the bunny knows that he's the kid knows that that the bunny's not alive in the way we're alive and. no but he's not alive and you say well his bunny dead it's like never talked about bunny that way Bunny's not alive but he's not dead Bunny's something in between and what's interesting about that is I always think a bunny is the first artwork that's the thing that contains an image and kids do it naturally and I had some friends who had a little girl who got really attached to I think the ugliest toy ever made it was a banana with blue eyes and little dangling arms you know it was called mr. banana and she carried mr. banana with her all the time and her parents were. embarrassed about it and they went on a trip to London and they were trying to get her off a mr. banana but she wouldn't let go of mr. banana and. they just they convinced her to go for a walk with them and leave mr. banana by behind in the hotel and she wouldn't. into that but they did it but while they were gone they came back and while they were gone the maids had cleaned the room and mr. banana was gone which I love saying cuz I'd like to see faces go oh not mr. banana and you even know don't know mr. banana but you don't have talking about and. she goes crazy well she's losing her mind my friend calls down luckily the concierge understands mr. banana they're in England I'll get right on it and. then they they do this search and he and she's crying and losing her mind my friend said the best phone call he ever got in his life was the phone rings and and it's mr. banana has been found and. run up knock knock knock they carry mr. banana and this girl is relieved what what's interesting about that this is just a piece of cloth with just some stuffing in it and it is the difference of whether that girl is going to be able to sleep at night or not it's it's a I always think of it as one of the original wireless devices you know that it contains an image that she put in there when you look at kids playing they don't go Barbie Ken we're about to play it's going to be a three-act you're first you're going to meet then they'll be conflict resolution and then the day new mall let's play no often times a kid starts playing and they don't even know they're playing and one of the things that's freaking me out about the digit or the thing about technology is that for the first time in human history the normal amount of eye contact that happened between a child and their parent is now reduced because I look around moms are always on their iPhones or their BlackBerry's while kids are doing other things. the iPhone takes away from the actual like eyes and. I'm watching this mom she's having breakfast her kids sitting here he's about eight and she's having breakfast and she's and he's picking up this PC and eating his breakfast and he picks up this piece of bacon and all of a sudden he goes oh and then he does the bacon going no no yes I am going to eat you and I'm watching like house it's going to come out you know like I'm really we're all like really into it he's like doing happy to eat you and all of a sudden his mom stops just long enough to go what are you doing and he has no idea he it didn't have any idea that he was playing at all and. that's another thing is that that it's spontaneous and it feels kind of alive and the way I think that we do that as adults is if you've ever had a book that you carried around and it's been around in your place for a really long time and you haven't read it it's been years and finally you say one night you're just going to read it and you start to read it and you realize it's a good book you know that feeling you get the first 20 pages it's a good book 40 pages that's a little like falling in love 40 pages 60 pages like don't mess up this relationship man and then and then when you're almost done you have what do you do you have 40 pages left don't you slow down you slow down because this world that's. alive to you that contains an image only has a quarter of an inch left and and when you're done you read the last page don't you do this after you're done like look at the book yeah you know because it's gone from being an object to something that contains an image and another thing about an image is it's specific I don't know if you know about imaginary friends but I always wanted an imaginary friend and I didn't know how to get one. I decided to just lie because who could tell which meant men I had an imaginary imaginary friend which isn't as good as a real imaginary friend and I had a friend who had a real imaginary friend and this real I could tell first of all because they had a stupid name sprinkles secondly this friend she could only talk to her through a moving fan the little burger you can't make that up right. that I knew that that was a that was a real imaginary friend well one of the things. you think about all these things with play and all of us in one day I was hearing on the radio this because they can do functional MRIs now and and they can do it on little kids they can do it and. that there was this a neural scientist who was very interested in what happens in the brain when adults are in the act of creative concentration and kids are in the act of play and. they did the MRIs and found that their brains looked identical and what what was what was striking about it was that they that the whole brain was activated when you thought of your first crush I would say if we had a functional MRI your whole brain would be activated if and that third crush were you had to think it's a smaller part of the brain. then I started to think well what about what do we know about play and one thing everyone can answer from my little Filipino grandma to my Norwegian grandma they can all answer this question if you have a kid and they're never allowed to play until they're 21 what do we know about them by the time they're 21 they're crazy right they'd be crazy and which is really interesting. I thought well what about adults and then I thought that's why Americans who are. crazy because we've been completely talked out about it doing these things and it happens very early I remember when I'd be like like on the radio a guy would come on and saying if you delay and I'd be 12 you'd like to be a concert violinist you must begin by the age of three be like damn you know or if you you want to be a ballet dancer it has to happen by the age of five like damn or you'd always hear riders saying stuff like I began writing novels very early when I was in the womb with my developing fingers it's inside with my first novel and you say what man I'm not a I'm definitely not an artist and waited. the last thing I want to say is I want to talk about phantom limb pain and I'm going to put this down and about a brilliant neuroscientist who you may know vs Ramachandran genius and he was particularly interested in the in the phenomenon of phantom limb pain and you all know what that is right if you're if you missing your hand your sensation is that it's still there and you can feel pain I believe there's phantom limb pleasure but no one calls their doctor about it you know my missing hand it feels fantastic I mean nobody calls their doctor about that but at phantom limb pain. he had a fellow he had he had a patient who's a phantom limb pain was his hand was missing but his sensation was that it was in a fist and the fist kept getting tighter and tighter and tighter and this guy was losing his feeling that life was worth living he lost that feeling it doesn't seem like much to just have your hand in a fist but he couldn't sleep he couldn't concentrate he didn't want to go on nobody knew what to do with him Ramachandran did this he built a box and I always think of it as like a big shoe box and he put a mirror facing this way and he put a hole here and he told the guy to put his hand in. that when he looked down he saw the reflection of a fist and then he said open your hand he opened his hand he saw the other one open and the problem was solved that's what I believe the image world does I believe that in the course of human life we have a million things like this like my grandma who went through the war or losing a parent early on or having an alcoholic father I believe there are. many things like this and the only thing that can open it is an image and I think that the image world is the doko that carries us and that it is the corollary to our immune system it's just like our immune system except where it's for our mental health and that these original digital devices wireless biofuel are the key to things and also these and that's the thing I would like to say to you that the image world is. much more than art or or something that can bring you something it actually is like an external organ that has absolutely tied to our mental health and we ignore it at our peril now I'm just going to do a quick thing I'm going to end with a party trick really quick I can sing without moving my lips it's always good to end with a party trick no matter how boring this is this will take care of that and I mean it from the image part of me to the image part of you and I'm kind of a clown you
Lynda Barry: The answer is in the picture
I'm very nervous and. when I'm nervous I like to do the thing that's the scariest thing all right which is to sing in front of people because since I'm already nervous what the hell right it's why I'm gonna sing this little song it's it said autobiographical song I didn't write the tune the tune is two Coal Miner's Daughter and by the end of it it's just a verse you'll know about me in my background okay and then I'll be less nervous okay I was born a me cutters daughter my mom is from the Philippines she was a janitor I ate TV dinners at night I grew up by the TV light while dad drank vodka in the basement and BOM hollered. that's my little song and I'll ever get I know kicked ass but I I love telling that saying that part that my mom's from the Philippines cuz I know people look at me and she doesn't look Filipino and but I am indeed my grandma oh and one of my topic today is the question that you've all been asking which is why Americans are. crazy right don't you really want to know and I'll - I actually know the answer and. I'm going to be talking about that and also why I'm not crazy and I feel like the reason I'm not crazy is it hasn't lot to do with my grandmother and when I say my grandma's from the Philippines um this is what the language I grew up with in my house sounds like month II Gus I will only Lin been up a ball that means hard is the head of Linda oh my and um yeah and my grandma grew up very poor in a rural village in the Philippines and when she came to the States as she grew up without electricity when she came to the States there was something I noticed right away about her as I was growing up um that she was different from other grandmas that I had seen one she was really flexible she could sit on the floor she could do all this stuff the other is she had really odd ways of telling how to how to behave you know there's grandma's who'd say now you'll clean your room you just get in there and clean your room this is how my grandma would tell it she'd go you know Linda there is a vampire named the Aswang from the Philippines it's a lady vampire at night she takes her legs off she flies over to our house she climbs the wall goes over your bed puts her tongue down to suck your blood because you don't pick up your clothes and he having a grandma like that who had a whole way of explaining things that came from a long long tradition from her village was really different than a lot of grandmas who because you know the United States is like 250 years old and kind of acts like a two and a half year old a lot of times. she helped me the other thing that helped me was I was devoted to hula dancing and I I had the kind of family that knit really didn't care what I did and no one told me there's no job waiting for you as a hula dancer. I did a lot of dancing and then the other thing that I did was I was able to go to school and I was able to go to college and it was an at college that I met my teacher Marilyn Frasca who asked me a question that changed my life and was I was 19 and she said what is an image she asked what is an image and her idea was that an image is the thing that's contained in anything that we call the arts or in what kids call play or toys I can tell you what an image is by telling you what it feels like if you can remember the very first person that you had a crush on can you remember because I want you to say their initials I'm going to count to three I want you to say their initials ready 1 2 3 RS now the the third person you had a crush on do you feel the difference but you can almost somewhere you remember can you feel the difference in your head that first one was spontaneous. the first thing about an image is it's spontaneous the other thing is it feels somehow alive and the way that I can explain that is sort of with kids you always see a kid who has maybe you were the kind of kid that had a little toy that was like your favorite little toy or maybe you know kids we have a little toy that that they know if you go up to him and you say well is your bunny alive and the kids maybe eight or nine the bunny knows that he's the kid knows that that the bunny's not alive in the way we're alive and. no but he's not alive and you say well his bunny dead it's like never talked about bunny that way Bunny's not alive but he's not dead Bunny's something in between and what's interesting about that is I always think a bunny is the first artwork that's the thing that contains an image and kids do it naturally and I had some friends who had a little girl who got really attached to I think the ugliest toy ever made it was a banana with blue eyes and little dangling arms you know it was called mr. banana and she carried mr. banana with her all the time and her parents were. embarrassed about it and they went on a trip to London and they were trying to get her off a mr. banana but she wouldn't let go of mr. banana and. they just they convinced her to go for a walk with them and leave mr. banana by behind in the hotel and she wouldn't. into that but they did it but while they were gone they came back and while they were gone the maids had cleaned the room and mr. banana was gone which I love saying cuz I'd like to see faces go oh not mr. banana and you even know don't know mr. banana but you don't have talking about and. she goes crazy well she's losing her mind my friend calls down luckily the concierge understands mr. banana they're in England I'll get right on it and. then they they do this search and he and she's crying and losing her mind my friend said the best phone call he ever got in his life was the phone rings and and it's mr. banana has been found and. run up knock knock knock they carry mr. banana and this girl is relieved what what's interesting about that this is just a piece of cloth with just some stuffing in it and it is the difference of whether that girl is going to be able to sleep at night or not it's it's a I always think of it as one of the original wireless devices you know that it contains an image that she put in there when you look at kids playing they don't go Barbie Ken we're about to play it's going to be a three-act you're first you're going to meet then they'll be conflict resolution and then the day new mall let's play no often times a kid starts playing and they don't even know they're playing and one of the things that's freaking me out about the digit or the thing about technology is that for the first time in human history the normal amount of eye contact that happened between a child and their parent is now reduced because I look around moms are always on their iPhones or their BlackBerry's while kids are doing other things. the iPhone takes away from the actual like eyes and. I'm watching this mom she's having breakfast her kids sitting here he's about eight and she's having breakfast and she's and he's picking up this PC and eating his breakfast and he picks up this piece of bacon and all of a sudden he goes oh and then he does the bacon going no no yes I am going to eat you and I'm watching like house it's going to come out you know like I'm really we're all like really into it he's like doing happy to eat you and all of a sudden his mom stops just long enough to go what are you doing and he has no idea he it didn't have any idea that he was playing at all and. that's another thing is that that it's spontaneous and it feels kind of alive and the way I think that we do that as adults is if you've ever had a book that you carried around and it's been around in your place for a really long time and you haven't read it it's been years and finally you say one night you're just going to read it and you start to read it and you realize it's a good book you know that feeling you get the first 20 pages it's a good book 40 pages that's a little like falling in love 40 pages 60 pages like don't mess up this relationship man and then and then when you're almost done you have what do you do you have 40 pages left don't you slow down you slow down because this world that's. alive to you that contains an image only has a quarter of an inch left and and when you're done you read the last page don't you do this after you're done like look at the book yeah you know because it's gone from being an object to something that contains an image and another thing about an image is it's specific I don't know if you know about imaginary friends but I always wanted an imaginary friend and I didn't know how to get one. I decided to just lie because who could tell which meant men I had an imaginary imaginary friend which isn't as good as a real imaginary friend and I had a friend who had a real imaginary friend and this real I could tell first of all because they had a stupid name sprinkles secondly this friend she could only talk to her through a moving fan the little burger you can't make that up right. that I knew that that was a that was a real imaginary friend well one of the things. you think about all these things with play and all of us in one day I was hearing on the radio this because they can do functional MRIs now and and they can do it on little kids they can do it and. that there was this a neural scientist who was very interested in what happens in the brain when adults are in the act of creative concentration and kids are in the act of play and. they did the MRIs and found that their brains looked identical and what what was what was striking about it was that they that the whole brain was activated when you thought of your first crush I would say if we had a functional MRI your whole brain would be activated if and that third crush were you had to think it's a smaller part of the brain. then I started to think well what about what do we know about play and one thing everyone can answer from my little Filipino grandma to my Norwegian grandma they can all answer this question if you have a kid and they're never allowed to play until they're 21 what do we know about them by the time they're 21 they're crazy right they'd be crazy and which is really interesting. I thought well what about adults and then I thought that's why Americans who are. crazy because we've been completely talked out about it doing these things and it happens very early I remember when I'd be like like on the radio a guy would come on and saying if you delay and I'd be 12 you'd like to be a concert violinist you must begin by the age of three be like damn you know or if you you want to be a ballet dancer it has to happen by the age of five like damn or you'd always hear riders saying stuff like I began writing novels very early when I was in the womb with my developing fingers it's inside with my first novel and you say what man I'm not a I'm definitely not an artist and waited. the last thing I want to say is I want to talk about phantom limb pain and I'm going to put this down and about a brilliant neuroscientist who you may know vs Ramachandran genius and he was particularly interested in the in the phenomenon of phantom limb pain and you all know what that is right if you're if you missing your hand your sensation is that it's still there and you can feel pain I believe there's phantom limb pleasure but no one calls their doctor about it you know my missing hand it feels fantastic I mean nobody calls their doctor about that but at phantom limb pain. he had a fellow he had he had a patient who's a phantom limb pain was his hand was missing but his sensation was that it was in a fist and the fist kept getting tighter and tighter and tighter and this guy was losing his feeling that life was worth living he lost that feeling it doesn't seem like much to just have your hand in a fist but he couldn't sleep he couldn't concentrate he didn't want to go on nobody knew what to do with him Ramachandran did this he built a box and I always think of it as like a big shoe box and he put a mirror facing this way and he put a hole here and he told the guy to put his hand in. that when he looked down he saw the reflection of a fist and then he said open your hand he opened his hand he saw the other one open and the problem was solved that's what I believe the image world does I believe that in the course of human life we have a million things like this like my grandma who went through the war or losing a parent early on or having an alcoholic father I believe there are. many things like this and the only thing that can open it is an image and I think that the image world is the doko that carries us and that it is the corollary to our immune system it's just like our immune system except where it's for our mental health and that these original digital devices wireless biofuel are the key to things and also these and that's the thing I would like to say to you that the image world is. much more than art or or something that can bring you something it actually is like an external organ that has absolutely tied to our mental health and we ignore it at our peril now I'm just going to do a quick thing I'm going to end with a party trick really quick I can sing without moving my lips it's always good to end with a party trick no matter how boring this is this will take care of that and I mean it from the image part of me to the image part of you and I'm kind of a clown you
Lynda Barry: The answer is in the picture
I'm very nervous and. when I'm nervous I like to do the thing that's the scariest thing all right which is to sing in front of people because since I'm already nervous what the hell right it's why I'm gonna sing this little song it's it said autobiographical song I didn't write the tune the tune is two Coal Miner's Daughter and by the end of it it's just a verse you'll know about me in my background okay and then I'll be less nervous okay I was born a me cutters daughter my mom is from the Philippines she was a janitor I ate TV dinners at night I grew up by the TV light while dad drank vodka in the basement and BOM hollered. that's my little song and I'll ever get I know kicked ass but I I love telling that saying that part that my mom's from the Philippines cuz I know people look at me and she doesn't look Filipino and but I am indeed my grandma oh and one of my topic today is the question that you've all been asking which is why Americans are. crazy right don't you really want to know and I'll - I actually know the answer and. I'm going to be talking about that and also why I'm not crazy and I feel like the reason I'm not crazy is it hasn't lot to do with my grandmother and when I say my grandma's from the Philippines um this is what the language I grew up with in my house sounds like month II Gus I will only Lin been up a ball that means hard is the head of Linda oh my and um yeah and my grandma grew up very poor in a rural village in the Philippines and when she came to the States as she grew up without electricity when she came to the States there was something I noticed right away about her as I was growing up um that she was different from other grandmas that I had seen one she was really flexible she could sit on the floor she could do all this stuff the other is she had really odd ways of telling how to how to behave you know there's grandma's who'd say now you'll clean your room you just get in there and clean your room this is how my grandma would tell it she'd go you know Linda there is a vampire named the Aswang from the Philippines it's a lady vampire at night she takes her legs off she flies over to our house she climbs the wall goes over your bed puts her tongue down to suck your blood because you don't pick up your clothes and he having a grandma like that who had a whole way of explaining things that came from a long long tradition from her village was really different than a lot of grandmas who because you know the United States is like 250 years old and kind of acts like a two and a half year old a lot of times. she helped me the other thing that helped me was I was devoted to hula dancing and I I had the kind of family that knit really didn't care what I did and no one told me there's no job waiting for you as a hula dancer. I did a lot of dancing and then the other thing that I did was I was able to go to school and I was able to go to college and it was an at college that I met my teacher Marilyn Frasca who asked me a question that changed my life and was I was 19 and she said what is an image she asked what is an image and her idea was that an image is the thing that's contained in anything that we call the arts or in what kids call play or toys I can tell you what an image is by telling you what it feels like if you can remember the very first person that you had a crush on can you remember because I want you to say their initials I'm going to count to three I want you to say their initials ready 1 2 3 RS now the the third person you had a crush on do you feel the difference but you can almost somewhere you remember can you feel the difference in your head that first one was spontaneous. the first thing about an image is it's spontaneous the other thing is it feels somehow alive and the way that I can explain that is sort of with kids you always see a kid who has maybe you were the kind of kid that had a little toy that was like your favorite little toy or maybe you know kids we have a little toy that that they know if you go up to him and you say well is your bunny alive and the kids maybe eight or nine the bunny knows that he's the kid knows that that the bunny's not alive in the way we're alive and. no but he's not alive and you say well his bunny dead it's like never talked about bunny that way Bunny's not alive but he's not dead Bunny's something in between and what's interesting about that is I always think a bunny is the first artwork that's the thing that contains an image and kids do it naturally and I had some friends who had a little girl who got really attached to I think the ugliest toy ever made it was a banana with blue eyes and little dangling arms you know it was called mr. banana and she carried mr. banana with her all the time and her parents were. embarrassed about it and they went on a trip to London and they were trying to get her off a mr. banana but she wouldn't let go of mr. banana and. they just they convinced her to go for a walk with them and leave mr. banana by behind in the hotel and she wouldn't. into that but they did it but while they were gone they came back and while they were gone the maids had cleaned the room and mr. banana was gone which I love saying cuz I'd like to see faces go oh not mr. banana and you even know don't know mr. banana but you don't have talking about and. she goes crazy well she's losing her mind my friend calls down luckily the concierge understands mr. banana they're in England I'll get right on it and. then they they do this search and he and she's crying and losing her mind my friend said the best phone call he ever got in his life was the phone rings and and it's mr. banana has been found and. run up knock knock knock they carry mr. banana and this girl is relieved what what's interesting about that this is just a piece of cloth with just some stuffing in it and it is the difference of whether that girl is going to be able to sleep at night or not it's it's a I always think of it as one of the original wireless devices you know that it contains an image that she put in there when you look at kids playing they don't go Barbie Ken we're about to play it's going to be a three-act you're first you're going to meet then they'll be conflict resolution and then the day new mall let's play no often times a kid starts playing and they don't even know they're playing and one of the things that's freaking me out about the digit or the thing about technology is that for the first time in human history the normal amount of eye contact that happened between a child and their parent is now reduced because I look around moms are always on their iPhones or their BlackBerry's while kids are doing other things. the iPhone takes away from the actual like eyes and. I'm watching this mom she's having breakfast her kids sitting here he's about eight and she's having breakfast and she's and he's picking up this PC and eating his breakfast and he picks up this piece of bacon and all of a sudden he goes oh and then he does the bacon going no no yes I am going to eat you and I'm watching like house it's going to come out you know like I'm really we're all like really into it he's like doing happy to eat you and all of a sudden his mom stops just long enough to go what are you doing and he has no idea he it didn't have any idea that he was playing at all and. that's another thing is that that it's spontaneous and it feels kind of alive and the way I think that we do that as adults is if you've ever had a book that you carried around and it's been around in your place for a really long time and you haven't read it it's been years and finally you say one night you're just going to read it and you start to read it and you realize it's a good book you know that feeling you get the first 20 pages it's a good book 40 pages that's a little like falling in love 40 pages 60 pages like don't mess up this relationship man and then and then when you're almost done you have what do you do you have 40 pages left don't you slow down you slow down because this world that's. alive to you that contains an image only has a quarter of an inch left and and when you're done you read the last page don't you do this after you're done like look at the book yeah you know because it's gone from being an object to something that contains an image and another thing about an image is it's specific I don't know if you know about imaginary friends but I always wanted an imaginary friend and I didn't know how to get one. I decided to just lie because who could tell which meant men I had an imaginary imaginary friend which isn't as good as a real imaginary friend and I had a friend who had a real imaginary friend and this real I could tell first of all because they had a stupid name sprinkles secondly this friend she could only talk to her through a moving fan the little burger you can't make that up right. that I knew that that was a that was a real imaginary friend well one of the things. you think about all these things with play and all of us in one day I was hearing on the radio this because they can do functional MRIs now and and they can do it on little kids they can do it and. that there was this a neural scientist who was very interested in what happens in the brain when adults are in the act of creative concentration and kids are in the act of play and. they did the MRIs and found that their brains looked identical and what what was what was striking about it was that they that the whole brain was activated when you thought of your first crush I would say if we had a functional MRI your whole brain would be activated if and that third crush were you had to think it's a smaller part of the brain. then I started to think well what about what do we know about play and one thing everyone can answer from my little Filipino grandma to my Norwegian grandma they can all answer this question if you have a kid and they're never allowed to play until they're 21 what do we know about them by the time they're 21 they're crazy right they'd be crazy and which is really interesting. I thought well what about adults and then I thought that's why Americans who are. crazy because we've been completely talked out about it doing these things and it happens very early I remember when I'd be like like on the radio a guy would come on and saying if you delay and I'd be 12 you'd like to be a concert violinist you must begin by the age of three be like damn you know or if you you want to be a ballet dancer it has to happen by the age of five like damn or you'd always hear riders saying stuff like I began writing novels very early when I was in the womb with my developing fingers it's inside with my first novel and you say what man I'm not a I'm definitely not an artist and waited. the last thing I want to say is I want to talk about phantom limb pain and I'm going to put this down and about a brilliant neuroscientist who you may know vs Ramachandran genius and he was particularly interested in the in the phenomenon of phantom limb pain and you all know what that is right if you're if you missing your hand your sensation is that it's still there and you can feel pain I believe there's phantom limb pleasure but no one calls their doctor about it you know my missing hand it feels fantastic I mean nobody calls their doctor about that but at phantom limb pain. he had a fellow he had he had a patient who's a phantom limb pain was his hand was missing but his sensation was that it was in a fist and the fist kept getting tighter and tighter and tighter and this guy was losing his feeling that life was worth living he lost that feeling it doesn't seem like much to just have your hand in a fist but he couldn't sleep he couldn't concentrate he didn't want to go on nobody knew what to do with him Ramachandran did this he built a box and I always think of it as like a big shoe box and he put a mirror facing this way and he put a hole here and he told the guy to put his hand in. that when he looked down he saw the reflection of a fist and then he said open your hand he opened his hand he saw the other one open and the problem was solved that's what I believe the image world does I believe that in the course of human life we have a million things like this like my grandma who went through the war or losing a parent early on or having an alcoholic father I believe there are. many things like this and the only thing that can open it is an image and I think that the image world is the doko that carries us and that it is the corollary to our immune system it's just like our immune system except where it's for our mental health and that these original digital devices wireless biofuel are the key to things and also these and that's the thing I would like to say to you that the image world is. much more than art or or something that can bring you something it actually is like an external organ that has absolutely tied to our mental health and we ignore it at our peril now I'm just going to do a quick thing I'm going to end with a party trick really quick I can sing without moving my lips it's always good to end with a party trick no matter how boring this is this will take care of that and I mean it from the image part of me to the image part of you and I'm kind of a clown you
Lynda Barry: The answer is in the picture
I'm very nervous and. when I'm nervous I like to do the thing that's the scariest thing all right which is to sing in front of people because since I'm already nervous what the hell right it's why I'm gonna sing this little song it's it said autobiographical song I didn't write the tune the tune is two Coal Miner's Daughter and by the end of it it's just a verse you'll know about me in my background okay and then I'll be less nervous okay I was born a me cutters daughter my mom is from the Philippines she was a janitor I ate TV dinners at night I grew up by the TV light while dad drank vodka in the basement and BOM hollered. that's my little song and I'll ever get I know kicked ass but I I love telling that saying that part that my mom's from the Philippines cuz I know people look at me and she doesn't look Filipino and but I am indeed my grandma oh and one of my topic today is the question that you've all been asking which is why Americans are. crazy right don't you really want to know and I'll - I actually know the answer and. I'm going to be talking about that and also why I'm not crazy and I feel like the reason I'm not crazy is it hasn't lot to do with my grandmother and when I say my grandma's from the Philippines um this is what the language I grew up with in my house sounds like month II Gus I will only Lin been up a ball that means hard is the head of Linda oh my and um yeah and my grandma grew up very poor in a rural village in the Philippines and when she came to the States as she grew up without electricity when she came to the States there was something I noticed right away about her as I was growing up um that she was different from other grandmas that I had seen one she was really flexible she could sit on the floor she could do all this stuff the other is she had really odd ways of telling how to how to behave you know there's grandma's who'd say now you'll clean your room you just get in there and clean your room this is how my grandma would tell it she'd go you know Linda there is a vampire named the Aswang from the Philippines it's a lady vampire at night she takes her legs off she flies over to our house she climbs the wall goes over your bed puts her tongue down to suck your blood because you don't pick up your clothes and he having a grandma like that who had a whole way of explaining things that came from a long long tradition from her village was really different than a lot of grandmas who because you know the United States is like 250 years old and kind of acts like a two and a half year old a lot of times. she helped me the other thing that helped me was I was devoted to hula dancing and I I had the kind of family that knit really didn't care what I did and no one told me there's no job waiting for you as a hula dancer. I did a lot of dancing and then the other thing that I did was I was able to go to school and I was able to go to college and it was an at college that I met my teacher Marilyn Frasca who asked me a question that changed my life and was I was 19 and she said what is an image she asked what is an image and her idea was that an image is the thing that's contained in anything that we call the arts or in what kids call play or toys I can tell you what an image is by telling you what it feels like if you can remember the very first person that you had a crush on can you remember because I want you to say their initials I'm going to count to three I want you to say their initials ready 1 2 3 RS now the the third person you had a crush on do you feel the difference but you can almost somewhere you remember can you feel the difference in your head that first one was spontaneous. the first thing about an image is it's spontaneous the other thing is it feels somehow alive and the way that I can explain that is sort of with kids you always see a kid who has maybe you were the kind of kid that had a little toy that was like your favorite little toy or maybe you know kids we have a little toy that that they know if you go up to him and you say well is your bunny alive and the kids maybe eight or nine the bunny knows that he's the kid knows that that the bunny's not alive in the way we're alive and. no but he's not alive and you say well his bunny dead it's like never talked about bunny that way Bunny's not alive but he's not dead Bunny's something in between and what's interesting about that is I always think a bunny is the first artwork that's the thing that contains an image and kids do it naturally and I had some friends who had a little girl who got really attached to I think the ugliest toy ever made it was a banana with blue eyes and little dangling arms you know it was called mr. banana and she carried mr. banana with her all the time and her parents were. embarrassed about it and they went on a trip to London and they were trying to get her off a mr. banana but she wouldn't let go of mr. banana and. they just they convinced her to go for a walk with them and leave mr. banana by behind in the hotel and she wouldn't. into that but they did it but while they were gone they came back and while they were gone the maids had cleaned the room and mr. banana was gone which I love saying cuz I'd like to see faces go oh not mr. banana and you even know don't know mr. banana but you don't have talking about and. she goes crazy well she's losing her mind my friend calls down luckily the concierge understands mr. banana they're in England I'll get right on it and. then they they do this search and he and she's crying and losing her mind my friend said the best phone call he ever got in his life was the phone rings and and it's mr. banana has been found and. run up knock knock knock they carry mr. banana and this girl is relieved what what's interesting about that this is just a piece of cloth with just some stuffing in it and it is the difference of whether that girl is going to be able to sleep at night or not it's it's a I always think of it as one of the original wireless devices you know that it contains an image that she put in there when you look at kids playing they don't go Barbie Ken we're about to play it's going to be a three-act you're first you're going to meet then they'll be conflict resolution and then the day new mall let's play no often times a kid starts playing and they don't even know they're playing and one of the things that's freaking me out about the digit or the thing about technology is that for the first time in human history the normal amount of eye contact that happened between a child and their parent is now reduced because I look around moms are always on their iPhones or their BlackBerry's while kids are doing other things. the iPhone takes away from the actual like eyes and. I'm watching this mom she's having breakfast her kids sitting here he's about eight and she's having breakfast and she's and he's picking up this PC and eating his breakfast and he picks up this piece of bacon and all of a sudden he goes oh and then he does the bacon going no no yes I am going to eat you and I'm watching like house it's going to come out you know like I'm really we're all like really into it he's like doing happy to eat you and all of a sudden his mom stops just long enough to go what are you doing and he has no idea he it didn't have any idea that he was playing at all and. that's another thing is that that it's spontaneous and it feels kind of alive and the way I think that we do that as adults is if you've ever had a book that you carried around and it's been around in your place for a really long time and you haven't read it it's been years and finally you say one night you're just going to read it and you start to read it and you realize it's a good book you know that feeling you get the first 20 pages it's a good book 40 pages that's a little like falling in love 40 pages 60 pages like don't mess up this relationship man and then and then when you're almost done you have what do you do you have 40 pages left don't you slow down you slow down because this world that's. alive to you that contains an image only has a quarter of an inch left and and when you're done you read the last page don't you do this after you're done like look at the book yeah you know because it's gone from being an object to something that contains an image and another thing about an image is it's specific I don't know if you know about imaginary friends but I always wanted an imaginary friend and I didn't know how to get one. I decided to just lie because who could tell which meant men I had an imaginary imaginary friend which isn't as good as a real imaginary friend and I had a friend who had a real imaginary friend and this real I could tell first of all because they had a stupid name sprinkles secondly this friend she could only talk to her through a moving fan the little burger you can't make that up right. that I knew that that was a that was a real imaginary friend well one of the things. you think about all these things with play and all of us in one day I was hearing on the radio this because they can do functional MRIs now and and they can do it on little kids they can do it and. that there was this a neural scientist who was very interested in what happens in the brain when adults are in the act of creative concentration and kids are in the act of play and. they did the MRIs and found that their brains looked identical and what what was what was striking about it was that they that the whole brain was activated when you thought of your first crush I would say if we had a functional MRI your whole brain would be activated if and that third crush were you had to think it's a smaller part of the brain. then I started to think well what about what do we know about play and one thing everyone can answer from my little Filipino grandma to my Norwegian grandma they can all answer this question if you have a kid and they're never allowed to play until they're 21 what do we know about them by the time they're 21 they're crazy right they'd be crazy and which is really interesting. I thought well what about adults and then I thought that's why Americans who are. crazy because we've been completely talked out about it doing these things and it happens very early I remember when I'd be like like on the radio a guy would come on and saying if you delay and I'd be 12 you'd like to be a concert violinist you must begin by the age of three be like damn you know or if you you want to be a ballet dancer it has to happen by the age of five like damn or you'd always hear riders saying stuff like I began writing novels very early when I was in the womb with my developing fingers it's inside with my first novel and you say what man I'm not a I'm definitely not an artist and waited. the last thing I want to say is I want to talk about phantom limb pain and I'm going to put this down and about a brilliant neuroscientist who you may know vs Ramachandran genius and he was particularly interested in the in the phenomenon of phantom limb pain and you all know what that is right if you're if you missing your hand your sensation is that it's still there and you can feel pain I believe there's phantom limb pleasure but no one calls their doctor about it you know my missing hand it feels fantastic I mean nobody calls their doctor about that but at phantom limb pain. he had a fellow he had he had a patient who's a phantom limb pain was his hand was missing but his sensation was that it was in a fist and the fist kept getting tighter and tighter and tighter and this guy was losing his feeling that life was worth living he lost that feeling it doesn't seem like much to just have your hand in a fist but he couldn't sleep he couldn't concentrate he didn't want to go on nobody knew what to do with him Ramachandran did this he built a box and I always think of it as like a big shoe box and he put a mirror facing this way and he put a hole here and he told the guy to put his hand in. that when he looked down he saw the reflection of a fist and then he said open your hand he opened his hand he saw the other one open and the problem was solved that's what I believe the image world does I believe that in the course of human life we have a million things like this like my grandma who went through the war or losing a parent early on or having an alcoholic father I believe there are. many things like this and the only thing that can open it is an image and I think that the image world is the doko that carries us and that it is the corollary to our immune system it's just like our immune system except where it's for our mental health and that these original digital devices wireless biofuel are the key to things and also these and that's the thing I would like to say to you that the image world is. much more than art or or something that can bring you something it actually is like an external organ that has absolutely tied to our mental health and we ignore it at our peril now I'm just going to do a quick thing I'm going to end with a party trick really quick I can sing without moving my lips it's always good to end with a party trick no matter how boring this is this will take care of that and I mean it from the image part of me to the image part of you and I'm kind of a clown you
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