No. It's interesting that people would ask me that and they've certainly asked me that a lot here on the Virtual Tour so far. But, you know, if you think about it, if there's anyone on the planet who WOULDN'T have regrets, it would have to be Dave Sim. I've made all of my own calls all along the way, made all my own choices and made of my considerable opportunities what I made of them. I would have to say, standing back mentally as far as I can from where I am now, where I've arrived at that I've been very fortunate and very blessed to get here in one piece for the most part (certainly in all ways that I consider important). Particularly when I picture all of the really bad choices I made for the first forty years of my life. We are, none of us, perfect. "All have fallen short of the glory of God" so I think it's completely impractical to think you're going to be 100% content with everything. At the same time with, say, the pariah thing, I've always said it gives me a lot of space and time to work, which is one of those things that non-pariahs are always going to have trouble with. What do you allow to encroach on work time and to what extent? I really don't have that. Apart from five prayer times a day, doing the ten flights of stairs at City Hall every weekday, going for groceries and doing basic business stuff, the rest of the time I'm just ploughing through my work.
I recently read a 1930s science fiction novel ‘Last Man in London’ by the author Olaf Stapledon. Although his concerns and style were vastly different from yours, he nevertheless reminded me of you because he had a unique visionary perspective and ploughed his own furrow with honesty and integrity. It was also clear that he was writing the novel with one eye to posterity and how it might be seen a few generations down the line, which made me wonder... Were you ever wondering what future generations of readers might think about Cerebus when you were writing it and if so what aspects did you think would be most important?
Hit the link to the MINDLESS ONES for the answer and I'll see you back here tomorrow.
1 comment:
No regrets? Even a public egoist like Frank Sinatra had a few... remarkable that there's not a whit of empathy for anyone other than oneself. There is the minor addendum of regretting being treated as a "pariah" by others, but only in the selfish sense of regretting being treated with other than adulation.
We are supposed to love people, and use things. But in this case, the religion is remarkable in confirming, instead of convicting. There is an apologia (of sorts) for having abused substances, but not for having abused people.
Most often, self-satisfying religion is used just in this way, to make people feel better about the bad things they do to others, making them morally worse instead of better.
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