To What End Will I Go

To What End Will I Go
A Comedy In 32 Pages And Three Years by Dylan Williams

Mid-1990's minicomic.

Banana Nanny

A while back Dylan had the urge to write about a lot of things, but he was struggling with the idea of his public persona as a publisher vs his personal thoughts about comics, art, teaching, process, etc. So, we started a blog called Banana Nanny. It was kind of a free-form, personal blog where he and I would just post our thoughts about all of these things. Dylan wanted to keep it mostly secret, only letting a few close friends know about it. At some point he thought that too many people were reading it and he got uncomfortable and decided to delete the blog.

I thought it was gone forever, and unfortunately most of it is... but for some reason the first 5 lines of most of the entries is still on my blogger account's dashboard. I've been trying to deal with blogger about retrieving the lost information, but it seems hopeless. So, all I have are these screengrabs of the beginning of each entry.

Keep in mind these were pretty personal posts from Dylan.  I think he expressed a bit more of his personal frustrations and anger with the comic industry and art world that he often felt at odds with, but cared about so deeply. We both did. My own posts were often about my frustrations with the art world at the time, but also random things like the spelling bee as a metaphor for the problems with popularity in the arts. Dylan's philosophy about promotion, production and popularity vs. art was a very good one. other stuff about time travel through art and Star Trek. His rants against the Portand Mercury's Comics section were in many ways an exercise of his humorous side - his frustration with that publication was that it ignores so many talented Portland cartoonists who deserve a slot on their local comics page. He channeled that frustration into comical rage directed at the talking dinosaur comic strip. Please keep in mind that this is only the opening thoughts of each entry, thoughts that were fleshed out and explained through lengthy posts, so please don't take offense of judgement to these incomplete posts.

We didn't expect a lot of eyes on this. I feel a little weird posting it here. But I miss this blog. I was sad when Dylan shut it down. I'm even sadder that I can't get to the rest of it. I think Dylan felt like a lot of his ideas needed to be out there somewhere, but he was still uncomfortable with the reality of having eyes on these thoughts. The post "Push Push" and "Links" both spoke about this.

Dylan wrote some really good things on Banana Nanny.  He also wrote some angry rants. And some really funny stuff, too... Here's all that's left of it.

About two years ago, I sent DW an email asking if he could explain Rosicrutian alchemy to me, and define "philosophical mercury", and this was his response:

I can't pretend to know all the allegorical meanings of the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz. I've always understood it to be a metaphorical story about remaking one's self through a series of philosophical examinations/methods. I think that is one of the funniest things about the misinterpretations of alchemy as a literal pseudo science. Mercury (according to my books) represents the "volatile intellect" which is the polar opposite of sulphur which represents the soul.
http://www.levity.com/alchemy/p-philmr.html
I like this quote from a "famous rosicrucian" Julianus de Campis, "our material is of the spirit not of the body".
Just like in Taoism, and Sufism, the thing I love about alchemy is how every single fucking thing is allegory, how everything is a means of talking about something else. It is funny, because everyone I've ever encountered who is deep into this shit uses it as a means of differentiating themselves from the great unwashed masses through hidden knowledge that they've built up...to differentiate them from everyone else. My grandfather was a big fan of the Faire Queene which I've always been scared of reading because I feel like you'd have to have a book five times as big as it to explain it to you.
I'd recommend Yates' book on "the Rosicrucian Enlightenment" which has a chapter on the Wedding, she is much more level headed than all these internet alchemists.
http://books.google.com/books?id=MTvjkifGp04C&printsec=frontcover&dq=frances+yates+rosicrucian+enlightenment&source=bl&ots=nbeHkyMkKh&sig=hjHB7rmTWHtwApQLovCFpiJfTi4&hl=en&ei=puypS4fhIYi4swOrssz3BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=&f=false