As creative projects go, I think the best ones I am currently undertaking are the Paffoonies. These, of course, are the colored-pencil and ink cartoon-o-matic creations that come out of my fevered little-boy mind as it has been stretched and contorted to fit into my old-man brain.
There are rules to this stupid creation game. First of all, a Paffooney must tell a story and have a piece of writing to go with it. Naturally, though, the picture must come first. The tortured elements of the Sci-fi or Fantasy that comes out of it result from the need to explain every oddity, punkitation, and warped perception that went into the picture. I draw pictures from dreams. I also draw from the monkey-shine metaphors that well up in my overly-wordy conscious mind. I do not take drugs to accomplish this. I do not drink alcohol. I am on numerous medications for numerous medical conditions… but I like to think there is no pharmacological element to my creativity. I am just your basic goofy old man with an exploding right brain.
You remember the writing that went with the first Paffooney in this post, don’t you? If not, you can still see the post here on WordPress where I wrote a poem that convicts the average school teacher of being a serious clown and puppet master. Some Paffoonies are poetic in nature. Others require a piece of fiction, like the one I wrote about Mai Ling’s encounter with the plant people of the planet Cornucopia. Here is a another version of it…..
So, a Paffooney is a creative project, a game, an exercise if you will, that will hopefully make me a better story-teller, writer, and cartoonist. I hope to post a lot of them on the web. So-called social media marketing experts tell me this kind of thing will get you, dear reader and viewer, to buy my book Catch a Falling Star, a sort of extended Paffooney of its own. The theory is, if you like the stuff I give away for free in these posts, you will want to actually pay money to see more of what I can do. I really think that is a big black Hoo-Ha, though, as I have not seen any evidence that social media marketing experts know anything more about marketing than I do. Are they really worth that expensive salt I put on their tails to trap them into to telling me their secrets and lies?
Ah, well… here is one last Paffooney that does not yet have a story to go along with it. At least, I am not aware of a story yet. Hmm, I think something is coming to me even as I post this picture.
Catch a Falling Star 