Confessions from a Freak of Nature

by Michael Lowell Teague

Blender Kitty (the comic strip)
Blender Kitty (the comic strip) was started in 1999, or thereabouts. It did not entail placing viable cats in blenders, or anything so gratuitous. Rather it was about a cat that kind of looked like a blender. The name actually came from a friend’s cat many years back: Barbara Blender Kitty. My original idea was to get the strip syndicated, but as the head of King Features Syndicate told me, BK, though good, was too edgy for the mainstream. In the summer of 2001, the strip was picked up by The New York Press, which, being just about the only non-liberal alternative newsweekly in the biz, had no problem with my lack of political correctness. The strip stayed there until 2003, when it and several other strips (including Renée French’s) were dropped. (Cartoonist, Tony Millionaire, who later quit NYPress for The Village Voice, tried to give me a heads-up as to what was coming.) I still have a New York connection, of sorts: My comics are regularly featured in the comics anthology, Blurred Vision.

Blender Kitty (the website)
Blender Kitty (the site) was launched in 2002 with the aid of a friend, and I have maintained it ever since largely as a vanity project. I stopped making Blender Kitty comics proper around 2005, but by then it was too late (or I was too lazy) to change the domain name. Much of what you see in my web pages, particularly the gallery and history pages and Blender Kitty Archive, went up in 2003. By late 2003 I commenced what became my memoir/novel, and so pretty much abandoned everything, including keeping up the site, for the better part of four years.

Reflections on My Years in The Wilderness (2003-2007)
I believe my memoir/novel is and will continue to be the greatest thing I have ever created. I tried unsuccessfully for months to get an agent to read the first chapter of An Aversion to Ladders. The best I could do was to find one Manhattan agent who was willing to read one of Omar’s letters. He thought it was great, but “not his area.” Around the same time I won an honorable mention in the 73rd Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition with my first short story, yet beyond this promising beginning I met with only deafening silence in my query letters. Of all the creative pursuits I have failed at, no world is more impenetrable and creatively insular than the world of writing.

First, there is the query letter. The only point of a query is to expedite the rejection process. You are given approximately thirty-five words to pitch your book, and no book of any real value (in my estimation) can be laid out in two sentences. If you can’t compare it to something that already exists, say “Jaws in space” or “Driving Miss Daisy meets Speed: Cruise Control,” then you will be perceived as hopelessly abstruse. Regardless, what your book is about is of less importance than what follows in your query. I call it the “what have you done for me lately” paragraph. In these few sentences you are essentially telling the prospective agent why you don’t need them. It’s a lot like going into a bank and asking to borrow a million dollars. If you already have a million dollars, the bank is very interested in giving you a second million dollars. If you can’t produce a bank statement, however, you are wasting everybody’s time. What the risk-averse agent wants to read about is your track record of publishing and sales. The only way around this lose-lose scenario is to know somebody who knows somebody in the industry, whereupon the aforementioned query is less critical. In some of these cases, you don’t even have to write a book. They will find someone to write it for you.

Related to the sales question is the marketability question. I break this question down into three conditionals:

1.) If you have prior sales, then the book industry can market you from that angle.

2.) If you fall within an established demographic group or recognized victimology culture (minority, gay, etc.), then the book industry can market you from that angle.

(Asperger’s is a recognized victimology culture [of sorts], but here I fall prey to the third conditional.)

3.) If you are to be presented as representing a recognized victimology culture, then your book must adhere to, one, the assumptions and expectations arising from a book about a given victimology culture, and two, the book must be presented in an acceptable form, such as an Oprah Winfrey or National Public Radio style memoir where the message is unambiguous, life-affirming, accusatory toward those who have or would victimize you, and non-derogatory toward others within your or other victimology cultures.

(What you cannot do is be creative by inventing new categories beyond what I have just listed. “Build it and they will come” is not the mantra of the book industry.)

It is clear to me that most literary agents are neurotypical (see third page of Further Topics at Asperger's Doorknob for definition), and I say this because I once ran across a writer’s resource book that not only listed addresses of said agents but also their “personal interests and hobbies.” These sundry lists included things like skiing, hiking, horseback riding, and the like. What was not included on these lists were things like furniture design, collecting early Twentieth Century German Objectivist artwork, playing the bass clarinet, and etc… I am a firm believer in the Biblical saying, “ye shall know them by their fruits,” and not only by the nature of what interests people but also by what they create in their livelihoods. Walking into any commercial bookstore is like déjà vu all over again, because what you see by way of new books is always the same kind of books. You can take a utility knife and roll of scotch tape and surgically switch all the book covers and it will probably be weeks before anyone will notice.

Most people in the book industry would agree with me that the system is unfair, but they would also say “you can’t fight city hall.” This may be true, but I would remind them that “you can’t fight city hall” is the dirge they are singing on their way to the cemetery. The book business is dying, and in a senile way that apparently rules out doing anything differently that might slow or stop the death.

A Less-Traveled Path, Part One
I am a contrarian by nature, and so I have no patience for cultural groupthink that assumes and prejudges all things as existing in time or trend sensitive styles, or as adhering to the tenets and prejudices of a given discipline, school of criticism, genre, or sub-genre. As far as the hobgoblin of style is concerned, I borrow liberally and graciously from a multitude of styles, but to the degree style serves any purpose at all it is only to enrich and complete an idea. Where many artists see styles as ends-in-themselves, I see them only as means. For example, when I was a musical composition major in college in the early 80's, the established rule was to compose dissonant, atonal music. I dabbled in dissonance, but mostly composed tonal music. When I was in art school, the established rule was to paint abstractly. I dabbled in abstraction, but mostly painted with a realist technique.

LowBrow and Me
I flirted with the lowbrow art movement for a while in the late 90’s and early 00’s, but as with all art movements, lowbrow (though infinitely more open-minded than anything in the mainstream art world) necessarily defined itself by a sensibility and a style. This even extended to subject matter. In a wider context, a “style” is as much about what it is not as about what it is. Cool is always the doorman at a hip club: he decides who gets in and who does not. Though I was capable of glancing this “cool” from time to time, my imagination was never content to limit itself to the list of cool things, like tikis and flaming skulls. Every major contributor to the lowbrow culture can make a similar half-in-half-out argument. It is just that my points of convergence in this or any style are exceedingly narrow, and thus I never get very far in convincing the doorman I meet the minimal defintion of the style.

Every Accident Is A Creative Opportunity
If one is determined to be different in what one does, then a good place to start is to think about your relationship to accidents. It is not simply about being open to accidents but also about building up experience with them—not only learning how to exploit them but also how to take credit for them. In short, what separates genius from talent is good editing: knowing what to latch onto in coinidence and circumstance and what to throw away.

Motivation is More Important than Talent
Talent is always a valuable resoure, to be sure, but it is almost beside the point once you get further along in the process. Moreover, as a painting teacher in continuing education (as a damn good painting teacher in continuing education), I have taught countless people who did not know one end of a paintbrush from another how to paint still-lifes with a remarkable degree of realism and finish. And yet, I would be willing to wager that very few of these students continued to paint after leaving my class—this in spite of their extraordinary accomplishment. Why?

Anyone can learn a skill set (talent), but creating something is not the same thing as needing to create something; and needing to create something is not the same thing as needing to discover something when you create. Here we step away by degrees from what constitutes a hobby or a livelihood to what defines an obsession and a raison d'être.

A Work Ethic is More Important than Inspiration
The following is the real acid test for whether or not you have the patience and fortitude to be an obsessed creative type:

You must be willing to endure making a lot of crap, and perhaps for many years, before you get to a place where you are making something that is uniquely yours and of certain if not instantly recognizable quality by others. In these instances, you will have to wait for the world to catch up with you. Lastly, and this is the most important virtue: If you need to be inspired, or cannot find a creative angle for any random task set before, then you lack that most crucial ingredient of a creative mind: resourcefulness. The higher the degree of insight you possess, the more you should excel when working within limitations. If you cannot be put in a room with nothing more than a paperclip and be perfectly entertained—if you cannot think joyously of a thousand and one creative applications for a paperclip because a paperclip is all you have or will ever need—, then, at the very least, it is safe to say you may have some degree of talent, but you surely do not have the commitment of an autistic. Inspiration is great when you can get it, but it is only necessary if you are a rank amateur. For the rest, the task at hand is inspiration enough.

Arrogance: The UnSung Virtue
When other people look at my work, they scratch their heads and wonder at its value. When they, in response, point out the things they like, I scratch my head. What most people see as valuable is so predictable by my estimation it barely merits comment. Do I come off as self-important in admitting this? Of course. But I confess this only to foil critics who will exercise a smugger conceit in pointing out my conceit. In truth a degree of arrogance is required when you make a life of rejecting established practices and prejudices. You have to become quite probably the only cheerleader for your cause.

The following passage from my memoir/novel is as honest an account as I can give for how I assess my less-traveled path through life:

“In a wider context the painter had never met anyone even remotely like himself. In his areas of interests, he admired talent, but was only excited by genius. This admiration did not proceed from immodesty or self-delusion about his own abilities but from a like way of thinking he could instantly recognize and value. It was only one more proof of this 'like-mindedness' that so few shared his appetite and giddy excitement for strikingly original ideas. By his reckoning most creative ventures undertaken by others were little more than 'aspects,' which, like one-trick ponies, he could readily digest within seconds of looking at something or hearing it explained. He could draw three circles around what other people were doing without them ever being able to draw once around his thought process. And was it arrogance that he could demonstrate what he knew to be true while it was not arrogance for others to devalue with their silence or lack of curiosity what they could not or would not understand?” ~from Chapter Twelve of An Aversion to Ladders.

Factor X
I am making a fine distinction between talented people and highly motivated people, and then between highly motivated people and people who are, by some fluke of brain wiring, following an altogether different muse. Let us call these eccentric and self-styled types neuro-atypical.

I have alluded to high functioning autism, but the ranks of neuro-atypicals also include dyslexics, those afflicted with Bipolar Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Depression, and Schizophrenia. Even the most cursory examination of distinguished artists, writers, composers, mathematicians, scientists, and inventors turns up more people displaying traits from these disorders (and other disorders) than not. So much so I cannot help but draw the same conclusion as did Dr. Hans Asperger back in 1944: certain atypical people have a predisposition to certain atypical accomplishments.

This is not to say everyone with a mental problem is gifted—far from it. It is only to ask this: When giftedness is encountered, when is it ever without difficulties for the individual who possesses it?

Charlie Chaplin, The Taskmaster

The Luxuries and Indulgences of Genius
My predilections for endless experimentation, indecisiveness, ass-backwardness, and dilly-dallying around while working as an artist are nothing unique to me. These traits are perhaps, at bottom, collectively an autistic thing: a form of perseveration (see the first epilogue in my book for definition).

Nowhere have I seen this way of working better employed than in rare archival footage of Charlie Chaplin directing his films. I encountered this footage in a PBS program many years ago, and was fascinated by Chaplin’s methodology in working out his scenes, stories, and gags on the fly. (No wonder he was constantly running over-budget and in trouble with the studios.) He would replay scenes over and over again in front of the camera, with subtle changes in the action each time: changes that could have huge ramifications for the script if he decided to keep them. He was relentless, and no one but an autistic could find purpose in such repetition. 7/26/09

An Inconvenient Truth
You can call this package of talent and dysfunction whatever you like, but since these attributes and traits, both positive and negative, tend to come in a package, it is fair to say they have something neurological in common. Many critics shrink from the implication: The rarest intellectual and artistic talent may be inborn; or worse, it may arise from a mental disability. I dance around this topic in my book when I criticize academia, but I believe this is mostly true:

College is where neurotypical people go to learn, but without neuro-atypical people there would be little to teach.

(Read Further Topics 3 section on autism at Asperger's Doorknob for more discussion on this topic.)

Related to This: The Overselling of Institutional Education
Education, as traditionally understood and debated in our society, is a highly oversold concept. I have two college degrees, but I set very little store by them. Most of what I know I have either taught myself or learned from a similarly self-invented person. Of all the artists and intellectuals I admire through history and modern time, very few of them attended university; and of the few who attended university (or taught there), very few of those individuals acquired their area of expertise through the university. The most uninteresting and unoriginal people I have met in my life include many college professors. The most interesting people I have known in my life are who they are in spite of the time they spent in college—if they spent any time in college!

Related to This: The Overselling of Children and Creativity
I occasionally teach cartooning classes for children, and I used to believe I could teach kids to be more creative. As a general rule, first and second graders are more open to the possibilities than children even a year or two older. There comes a point, however, where kids learn how to draw one cartoon character (usually from Manga or Anime), and that’s the end of their interest in drawing. They would rather sit around and talk about Japanese cartoons than draw. Yet parents are convinced that because their kids draw this one cartoon character over and over they must have a “talent” or “interest” in art. Needless to say, you get enough of these Johnny-One-Notes in a class and what you have is a babysitting situation.

No. Creativity (at least with children) cannot be taught. An interest in art cannot be cultivated unless a predisposition is already there. I was drawing before I could write, and drawing very well by the fourth grade. By which time I was also making up characters and stories. I have taught several hundred children in my classes, and I would say only about three or four of them would be described as “gifted”; and of these gifted children only two had the divine spark to be cartoonists. Knowing what I now know about autism, ADD, and dyslexia, I would have to say all these gifted children displayed (as I did at their age) traits consistent with one or more of these conditions.

A Less-Traveled Path, Part Two
People have advised me to stick to one thing, and then to do that one thing tolerably well, but not so well as to show others up and earn their resentment and sanction. In a neurotypical world, there will always be more people of general talent than of singular talent; and going by my experiences in music and art school (where I learned practically nothing), what the majority deems to be the highest good is necessarily what the majority excels at. Everything else is anomalous. Because of this mindset, I have never thought of myself as a painter or a musician or a writer or anything. I do not want to be evaluated by any criteria in any discipline that elevates similarities over differences in the name of the highest good. This is the subtlest, most insidious form of group intimidation, or as Omar says in my book:

“Wherever two or more people are gathered in the name of culture, there is already a conspiracy against it.”

Asperger's Doorknob (the website)
It was during my obsessive pursuit of writing the Blender Kitty site began to grow in visits, although I only rarely looked at the stats. When I returned to the Internet in 2007, it was to create a second site, Asperger’s Doorknob, for my unread masterpiece. It took the better part of a year to build. I spent most of 2008 editing the site and book, yet was already drifting back into Blender Kitty with comics and paintings. Having made films for AD, I was soon making films for BK. By the end of 2008, I was even returning to my original love, music, and making films that featured sound.

Who the Hell are the People who visit My Sites?
Apart from the odd fan mail (two or three emails a year), I receive little feedback about Blender Kitty and Asperger’s Doorknob, even though the number of visitors attracted to the sites continues to steadily (if silently) grow. I do not sell paintings, comic books, or much of anything else on the Internet, although this may be because I do not promote or advertise. Fellow cartoonists are among the few people who have personally expressed interest in what I do, and much of that stems from my having won a Xeric Award in 1999 and ironically predates my move to the web, back when people still wrote letters and mailed out samples of their comics. As things stand now, I haven't the foggiest idea who are the people that visit my sites (18,500 in 2009), but I seem to be one of the few artists I know who is using the Internet as something other than a business card. I view my two sites as works of art in their own right, and do not simply see them as storefronts or portfolios for art directors, agents, and collectors. I don't know if this puts me in the vanguard or in the dunce's corner. The only comfort the web affords are stats, yet they weirdly underscore the impersonal, “drive-by” nature of the Internet, which is discouraging.

This classic episode of The Twilight Zone, Eye of The Beholder, perfectly captures my Internet dilemma. I see myself as a blind, head-bandaged Donna Douglas, convinced she is a freak of nature, yet her only evidence of this are the silent stares she senses from those who look upon her. Truly, given the lack of feedback from visitors, you can never be sure whether the people visiting your site are coming because they like what they see or are only rubberneckers driving by a car accident.

The Internet: The Double Edged Sword
Still, as someone with mild autism, I am not disposed to share what I create, which makes the anonymity of the web ideal. When I upload new work to my sites, or tweak work already uploaded (which I do endlessly), I have no concept of walking up to someone and shoving something in their face and saying, “here, look at this.” If no one but me ever visited my sites I would still make work to put on them. This notwithstanding, the future of Blender Kitty and Asperger's Doorknob is an open question. I am constantly toying with the idea of taking them down.

The Internet provides a means of disseminating ideas and creations that the for-profit world and academia have little interest in. Someone once said the Internet was probably invented by a person with autism, and as a forum it allows people who are otherwise socially dysfunctional and/or socially and politically unconnected to have a place at the table. The Internet is an invaluable if flawed resource in this regard.

A Division of Labor: The Distinct Purposes of My Sites
I make Blender Kitty for people like me: artists and fellow travelers in the world of ideas who are looking for subtle details in the larger culture as profound points of departure. Visitors who come here to see one thing and not another will lack a context for what I do, which is the only reason why I am attempting to write an artist statement. The Blender Kitty site is primarily a vehicle for my films, music, comics, and paintings. My writing more properly resides at Asperger’s Doorknob.