In Another Land

One of the odd aspects of Facebook is the sudden appearance of intriguing but unanchored stuff, which usually flies by in the "gotta get to the next thing" pace that Facebook seems to impose, which is why so much silly stuff gets liked or shared or commented on by people who clearly aren't reading the existing comments or even clicking through to see the entirety of the original thing itself.

But when this cartoon popped up yesterday, I was intrigued enough to go play in the intertubes to find out more.

Interesting, no? The art is softly appealing and the message, while of scant comfort to passenger pigeons and rhinos, is a good reminder of our essential self-centered folly.

And the language -- gentle and nurturing but with a contextually appropriate F-bomb -- is an increasingly familiar millenialist pastiche of the naive and the physical which I consider one of the more intriguing hallmarks of a generation far removed from my own salad days.

That mix is not simply an issue of language, either: It expresses itself particularly in the anime/manga art from which I suspect it sprang, but throughout a whole school of what I guess could be called naive sexuality, like flower children with a streak of modern, protective self-awareness.

Or maybe not, but whatever it is, it's all over the place and sometimes it's drippy and sentimental and unformed, but then sometimes it is focused and perceptive and sly.

So who did this and can I have some more, please?

Turns out that particular piece is from 2012, which took me a little time to discover, but the Facebook posting at least started me off with a semi-functional link to a DeviantArt account from which I got to a website and an artist called Humon, who is Danish and female and has lived in England and has a following but not a lot on this side of the Atlantic and ...

I guess you could say she doesn't leave a traditional trail, which is either caution on her part or maybe just a strong case of letting her art be her face to the world.

Which works, since her Scandanavia and the World feature was recently part of a successful Kickstarter, and that site looked familiar. Turns out Friend-of-the-Blog hildigunnur had pointed me to it three years ago and I followed it until it seemed to stop updating.

Well, (A) it's started up again and (B) I never drilled down and saw what else she does, which is a lot.

In fact, I think maybe the most successful thing about Humon is not her ability to run a Kickstarter but the fact that she seems perfectly content to rocket back and forth from topic to topic, from mood to mood, and somehow manages, for instance, to avoid the common flaw of being aggressively, even pridefully emo when she may be feeling a bit down:

You can be too cynical to appreciate that, of course, but I find it pretty refreshing, perhaps because I'm as old as God now and I like the idea of telling people to get over themselves without being mean-spirited about it, but without nicely and kindly and gently missing the message that, yeah, you need to get over yourself.

God, by the way, seems to have much the same long-term attitude as Mother Nature, but he's a little less dismissive of more immediate needs.

And while some of her stuff is, well, a little purposefully innocent, she's also self-aware enough to add some Siracha to things more often than not.

For instance, this response to the "fake fan" controversy in which girls who dress up for Cons are dismissed by the True Believers cracks me up, though I'm pretty sure the Bronies aren't the same people who are slagging female cosplayers.

And then there's this.

In her commentary, she admits she's not all that invested in Dr. Who one way or the other, and neither am I, so maybe we're the only two people laughing. She mistook a comment about the Doctor's assistant getting married for her getting pregnant, which, understandably, began a really off-topic slide, but it resulted in a funny comic and for this, much thanks.

Here: Go find stuff to crack yourself up. There's sure a lot of variety from which to choose, which is what kept me poking around long enough to come up with an entire posting about someone I never did actually track down.

Thing is, I prize consistency both in voice and in production and she's not exactly either, but what she is is willing to play and to give it a shot, and I like that a whole lot, particularly when there is a very discernible voice throughout the seemingly random material she produces.

And now ...

Which makes today's headline more applicable than simply an acknowledgment of her Danish identity. For those of us of a certain age, it brings out an earworm from an album that may have started the end of Brian Jones' time as creative force behind the Rolling Stones.

It's not just a matter of being old enough to remember this album and this cut, but old enough to remember when groups were not only willing to experiment but driven to do so, such that you waited for the next album not for more-of-the-same but to see what they came up with next.

Sometimes it was Sgt. Pepper, sometimes it was this. Sometimes it was Tommy or Crown of Creation. Which is to say, sometimes it was brilliant and sometimes it was unbrilliant but it was never boring.

But the Stones got rid of Brian Jones and settled into being the World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band and became wonderfully successful at selling out.

Concerts, I mean.

At selling out concerts.

So, anyway, here's a dedication going out to those who do not fear inconsistency, experiments and exuberance.

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Catching up on Monday morning, and just wanted to say I think this is one of the things you do best: a deeper-than-usual look at someone I've never heard of with some good insight and analysis. I hope Humon sees this because I'm certain she'd appreciate it.

Posted by: Brian Fies | 06/16/2014 at 11:45 AM