(whimsical music) (attendees chattering) - [Announcer] Welcome everyone to the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series (whimsical music) (attendees chattering) (attendees clapping) A welcome everyone to the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series and Happy Halloween.

Halloween marks the midpoint between the fall equinox and the winter solstice, and we are most certainly moving into darkness.

So do remember to turn your clocks back on Sunday.

We're gonna make it folks, it's gonna be all right.

Today, by the way, marks only the third time in 20 years that Halloween has fallen on a Thursday and we've done a Penny Stamp Series Event, so we present something very special for Halloween today with writer, illustrator and acclaimed graphic novelist, Emil Ferris.

A big thank you to our supporters, Vault of Midnight, who is out in the lobby with Emil's volume one and now volume two, the long awaited.

Yeah, so you can get your book.

If you don't have volume two, wow, I know you've been waiting.

Yeah, oh, our other supporters, of course, the U of M Libraries and Arbor District Library and our partners, Detroit PBS, PBS Books, WNET's ALLARTS, and Michigan Public, 91.7.

We're not gonna have time for Q&A today because Emil is going to join us in the lobby to sign books.

So if you brought your book with you or if you want to get a book, or if you wanna wait in line and say hello, that instead of a Q&A is gonna happen directly after the stage program here in the lobby, so do join us there.

Reminder to turn off your cell phones.

Take a break from your technology and now to introduce our illustrious guest, please welcome another cartoonist and graphic novelist, our very own stamp school professor, Phoebe Gloeckner.

(attendees clapping) (attendees cheering) - Hi everybody, I'm gonna make this short at the request of the people back there, but I just wanna say Emil Ferris is one of the most amazing artists that I've ever had the pleasure of reading and I hope you know her work already.

I mean, it's incredibly detailed.

You just thinking in your head, "Oh my God, she must have carpal tunnel syndrome.

How does she do this?"

It's just, you know, she models her figures, her faces, you feel like it could just touch it, you know?

And the stories are amazing.

She's such an inspiration to me and I got to say that right now, I'm kind of at a loss for words because I feel so fortunate that I got to spend 15 minutes with her backstage and I feel transformed.

We talked about a lot of things, but she's an incredibly positive person and simply magical, which is a wonderful thing to be on Halloween.

At any rate, I won't say much more, because she'll tell you all about her life and where she's from and everything like that, but Emil Ferris is magic and I hope you enjoy her talk.

Thank you.

(attendees clapping) (attendees cheering) (attendees clapping) - You are all so beautiful, and I am so grateful that you came here today.

Thank you so much.

It means a great deal to me.

It is Halloween.

(attendees cheering) (attendees clapping) It's our day.

(attendees laughing) (Emil sighs) Well, I'm supposed to do things and first of all, would you just howl with me one time to begin things?

Would you?

I better stand back a little bit, because let's really do it.

Now what we're doing here is defiance.

We are declaring victory over everything in our lives, in the world at large.

Every difficulty, every challenge, all the hate, as monsters, we have this right, we are wild creatures and now we will send that energy into the world.

Our defiance, that nothing defeats us, not even death, because we are the undead.

We will live forever.

That's what we do.

That's what we do, especially if we're creative, whatever that means to us, whether we're parents or gardeners or chefs or artists or writers or poets or scientists, we make this world.

We bring it into being and so now we declare ourselves, please join me, if you wanna stand, you can, because it's so good to howl from your nether regions, right?

(attendees laughing) Come on, let's do it.

(all howling) Do you want another one or are you good?

(attendees laughing) - Yeah.

- Okay.

(attendees howling) If you want another one, you can have as many.

(all howling) Yeah, okay.

Thank you so much for that.

That was wonderful.

I appreciate that.

Here's my girl.

You know, I get asked all the time, who is she to you?

And the only thing I can tell you is that she lives in my head as if my head was a house.

She has a suite of rooms and she talks to me a lot of the time and I just, I love her so much and she kicks my butt so regularly and there we are, okay, so I was asked to draw this, and I was told that I had 15 minutes to draw something, so I just did and I did it very quickly and it was kind of freeing to do that and this is something I call it, you know, it's supposed to be starry, starry night, but I call it scary, scary night and it was something that was exhibited.

They blew it up for a large wall in the society of illustrators and Karen liked it, she liked it.

Aren't we glad, I'm going to just say that some of what I'm going to tell you might sound like a woo, but here's the deal.

I'm grateful that I can see your faces and we're not in a place of illness anymore and I'm just, I'm so terribly grateful.

I took this picture, the Halloween that so many children weren't allowed to treat or trick or any of the things and yeah, it just, I'm so grateful that we're not there anymore.

Although I thought this was pretty clever, but I would've come earlier, I would stay later, but this person who is very dear to me, became ill and so I'm sort of dedicating this talk to him because he became ill and he's important.

You've seen him many times, but you don't realize it.

He shares my love of art and we are very good friends and he is the model for the moth man.

So that's who he is.

His name is Kurt, Kurt Divine and he's a painter and there he is and there he is again, having a talk with Karen and that's an important thing because we have to think about howling tonight.

We have to think about our lives and so he's in the process of howling despite this illness and here's the thing, I know almost certainly that you monsters are like me.

There are things we see every day that give us great sorrow and grief.

The world is a very dark place at times and I met a woman who had come from France and she was writing a book about, and this is important, I mean to recognize and acknowledge the Odawa, the Ojibwe, the Anishinaabe and the Potawatomi.

She was here to write about the disappearance of native women and it's very much an interest in France, which I wish it were more of an interest in the United States and Canada frankly, but she is trying to raise the level of interest by writing books about it and one of the things that she said is, there's so much dispirited ness and grief among people in France right now, because they see the things that are happening in the world, and they're in a state of grief and they don't know how to live their lives, how to scramble eggs when they know in another place people are being bombed and we've lost so many people, hundreds of thousands of people and in terrible ways, and these are vulnerable people.

So she said, she poured her grief out to me and we shared it in that moment and I thought, I suspect that many people are feeling this and I don't, I'm far from perfect.

I'm a very negative self talker at times, I have many negative traits, but I do have one thing that I know is true and sincere, that if I see people who have fallen down, they're me.

I wanna help them stand again.

I wanna help them walk through difficulty and that's why I'm here today.

Even though I could have canceled, I thought, no, no, I do have this one thing to say.

I want you to take this away with you.

So it's how to be howlers, you're already howlers, that's clear, but how to stay howlers because you're already vibrant, creative people who are building a world with your energy and your intention and your vision, but how do you maintain that in a world that really does seem dedicated to crushing that?

What do you do?

Well, first of all, you celebrate Halloween, of course and second of all, you understand that the horror is healing and humor is important and so I'm gonna tell you that as a child, I was a pretty poor kid up until the time I was about eight years old.

We didn't have very much, my life and Karen's life were very, very similar, but I had a deep and abiding love of Halloween and I got that love because I had parents who also loved it and one of the gifts they gave me was making do with almost nothing.

We had so little, if hot dogs were coming for dinner, I was thrilled because it was dinner.

We were so little, my parents were both artists and they didn't have much.

So I wanted a costume, I wanted a costume like all the other kids had, which was this plastic mask, they were terrible, they were fluorescent, they were ugly, really?

But I thought they were the most beautiful things in the world.

This is where I lived, this is uptown Chicago and I asked my mother, could we have it?

And they were 25 cents.

Now, keep in mind that I hadn't been able to go on the field trips.

I stayed behind with native kids and hillbilly kids, that's what we said at the time.

Not politically correct, but that's how we talked and I stayed behind because we were the kids that didn't have the money for the field trip.

So we would just draw and that was our field trip, okay?

So I was, my heart was set on this costume.

Well, my mother couldn't give it to me, but what she did do is she went to the Woolworths and she found that there was a table and at the table there were all the broken things and she found one smashed Spider-Man mask and I looked at her when she bought it and thought, oh great, this is gonna be great, but she took it home and she dipped newspaper into flour and she made this and this is the actual mask and I still have it, I've had it for 60 years now.

It's on display at the Society of Illustrators.

My talented, amazing mother created this mask for me.

Now, I went with this mask, we lived at that time in a high-rise building.

It was a low income building where everybody from around the world lived.

So I could go in different houses, I could sit on the ground and eat off a leaf with one hand.

I could have, you know, Haitian food.

I had so many friends from different parts of the world and it was wonderful, but this mask was my education in horror, because what my mother did is she would say, "No, go on, go get in front of your neighbor's door" and she would go off and hide and I was really small and I had a slightly hunched back and I had a very deep voice.

Just my voice hasn't changed at all and she'd say, "Make sure when they answer the door, cackle."

(attendees laughing) So, I mean, I did what my mother told me to do, right?

So I would go (cackles).

Now that's what they would open the door to find and there were no adults around, just this terrifying little imp and they would scream and I loved it, God, I loved it and we did that again and again, but I should tell you that the neighborhood we lived in, was one where it was not uncommon for people to be taken off the street and to be beaten by the police.

This was a regular occurrence for us.

Murder, rape, suicide.

We couldn't go near the windows at night in the high-rise building because if you presented a profile, it would get shot at.

As a child, I heard gunshots all night long.

That's how dangerous and I didn't put that in the books.

I really toned the books down.

I had seen six dead people by the time I was seven years old, okay?

And some of them were children, one I'll tell you about later.

So what happened then is how I learned how valuable horror is.

I would take that mask off after they screamed, of course, because that's the payoff, right?

And then they would see that I was just a little girl, really scary little girl, but I was just a little girl and they would start laughing and step back and go, "oh shit" and breathe and smile and I could see the joy and relief in their face and this is how you expiate fear.

Suddenly you control it, it doesn't control you and I could see the value of that and I loved it.

So here's the irony.

Now, how really different is this mask than me now?

Not too different.

It's like I finally grew into the mask.

Yeah, and this is what we do in life, right?

We grow into ourselves.

So I was talking with Phoebe and she said, "You know, you came at this whole comics thing when you were," I said, I finished her sentence.

I said, "like a million years old?"

She was like, "I didn't wanna say it, but yeah, pretty much" and I was like, "yeah that's it."

Here's what I wanna say to you.

Many of you are writers and artists and achievers, but some of you are in your twenties, and you feel the pressure, "I need to get this going."

No, you don't.

Just be patient.

It will come to you.

Continue to work and have faith.

Your brilliance will find its path into the world.

Just continue to do what you do and to those of you who are older, oh, please, please, you are bad asses.

You have so much beauty and wisdom to offer this world.

Never let anyone tell you that you're done.

You bitches aren't done yet.

(attendees laughing) I mean it.

I know this.

- [Attendee] Woo-hoo, yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

(attendees clapping) Every person comes here with a mission.

It's theirs alone.

It's unique.

You are, that's me, I will tell you, if you can go to New York, go and if you can go to this one bar, it is like a sex worker, Victorian sex worker's orgasm.

It is, (attendees laughing) it is like, it's called Lily Lang Trees and it's like three stories high and the walls are covered in flowers, and there are prints and there's Tiffany stain glass, it's just crazy, wonderful, but there I am being my witch self and just loving every bit of it.

So the O in howlers, one and only, you are the one and only.

This is a drawing that hasn't been used yet, but like you, I probably, probably like you, I love this monk piece and I love the fact that his, the figure's mouth is an O and there's this loneliness and the howl, the cry is in the sky, it's everywhere and I think about the first words in the Bible and what are they?

"In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was good" and we are the storytellers and your story, your story matters.

We need it and these are difficult times, right?

But they have always been difficult times.

My childhood was that, I had liberal parents.

There was a penthouse and a playboy on the coffee table, there, you know, it was the 1960s, seventies and I was allowed to watch the news at 10 o'clock and I watched children on fire, screaming and running down roads and it broke me, it broke me, but it built me too, because the obstacle is the way, Marcus Aurelius told us that and we must believe it now, now more than ever.

So there's Karen, she is unique and she knows she is.

She goes into the Bible and in Ezekiel 10:14, she finds out that God, as she understands God, is described as having the head of a man, the head of an eagle, the head of a lion and the head of an ox and four wings.

That's her monster God.

The moment she finds that out, she can pray, because she believes in that God, that God who is powerful, beautiful, weird and original just like her, just like you, so wild, wilderness, wise, these are important things.

We are tamed creatures in this world and we're tamed when we go into kindergarten, we're told that we will line up.

We are told how to be, we're rewarded if we're farmers, but we're not rewarded if we're hunters and the truth about most of us artists, it's not that we have an attention problem.

It's that the world that's presented in schools is fucking boring, for, we are brilliant.

The world needs to be with us in our brilliance.

When were you ever asked who you were there?

That's not the program.

The program isn't to say, who are you?

The program is to say, this is who you are.

Mh-mh.

We spend the rest of our lives, from that moment we walk away from ourselves walking back and I'm sure that a great number of you are in the process of walking back to yourself, especially you over there in the Black Parade outfit.

I love that, I do, but I'm absolutely certain that's what you're doing.

That's why you're here tonight, because you read this book and you realized that so much of the book is about walking back to yourself.

I walked back to myself and I couldn't walk at the time, I'd been paralyzed by a mosquito bite, but the process of creating this book that you read was my trip back to the little girl who loved to draw and lost it with one bite, the bite she always wanted, right?

But it wasn't the bite that I wanted and yet it led back to me.

So the obstacle is always the way.

So there's Karen and I gotta tell ya, our religious practices are sometimes positioned as being vacant, but if we really research them, they're not quite as vacant as we think they are.

For instance, St. Christopher is actually a werewolf.

Who told you that?

I mean, unless you go deep into the books, as Karen does, you don't know that and so that's her saint, right?

And here's the other thing and I'm gonna say this to you.

It is time to be utterly welcoming and embracing of our differences.

We cannot afford anything else.

We need to love every expression of the other in each other.

I tried things on and I was lucky.

I was lucky because I had parents that permitted that, but I look out into the world and I talk sometimes to parents who are very anxious about their children presenting a difference, something different and I think, my God, you're gonna lose them and they're your gift.

We can't lose our children and I know I'm not really, I'm preaching to the choir here, because if you came here to hear me, you already know that, but you know people who don't know that and how do you deal with it?

Well, I don't have the answers for you, but I do know one thing.

Love is absolutely the answer for that and it's very difficult.

It is difficult to love people who reject you.

I experienced it.

I had one person in my life say, I came out to them, I said, "I think I wanna marry a girl" and that person in my family said, "I would be ashamed of you" and that hurt terribly and when I considered writing this book, I knew I had to write for some child in some place who was under that kind of control and that they could get this book and they could look at it, and they could feel seen and understood and heard and that there would be a place for them, because there still are places in this world where difference is not accepted.

I mean, not in Ann Arbor, thank God, but other places and so you have Karen and in this drawing, she might be running from something or she might be running to something, but she's in that wilderness and we sometimes find ourselves in that wilderness and I'm just encouraging you, if you find yourself in that wilderness, please believe that there's something for you, specifically you in that place.

What I found was that at 40 years of age, I had lost the ability to walk.

I was paralyzed from this vertebrae down.

I had a 6-year-old child.

I had not much else, some family, but what do you do?

I'm suddenly in a wheelchair.

I've lost the ability to talk for a period of time and how do you find your way back from that?

Well, that's a wilderness.

You can be in a wilderness in your life and you can still find something amazing in that.

Actually, the truth is, that's where the amazing stuff is.

So just for your interest, if you have any and I hope you do, this is Karen's first cover.

I drew her as the little Catholic school girl, but she's so much more than that, right?

And then the L, lonely, loving, loser, learning.

That would be my dating want ad.

If you were, I would call myself that and 'cause you know, Karen, oh, forgive me, she's lost so much, right?

When we interact with her in these books, we find out that she's lost a great deal, but actually, every single person in these books, traces loss through the pages.

So there's Anka who can still look up, who can still love, although her life is really tortured and has been for all of it and then there's Deeze who we realize there are secrets and horrors in his life and somehow he manages to live, but how?

Well, of course, you know he lives because he has this creepy little girl and he loves her and he's going to freaking protect her no matter what, even if he has to sell his soul to do it.

That's interesting, now then there's this little guy who I love.

I love him so much.

I love Blemmy.

I'm not sure if you know who he is, but like a lot of the characters and I'll tell you now, I'll tell you the little secret.

When I was about six years old, I was standing on a street in uptown Chicago and one of my friends was skitching on the back of a car and two cars came together and he was murdered, he was killed by that.

His head was damaged permanently and I became obsessed, I can't actually remember it, it was so traumatic that I have no actual memory of it, but I have all my life been obsessed with headless things or anything that loses its head.

So Medusa, big time obsessed with her and there's a love for the headless things, which I feel all the time, because we're kind of all that, we're all the results of some trauma that we then have to figure out and this is how the great works get written.

This is how you, when you start with your catastrophe, it is your gold, it's your treasure.

So there you go, Saint-Denis, Saint Dennis.

It is no mistake that the French love him, the best of all, because they are, I mean, he picks his head up and then he continues to walk along which mama says is a sign of real determination.

When you get your head cut off, but you're still gonna give a sermon, that's a real Catholic right there.

So, (laughs) (attendees laughing) yeah, I think it's so interesting because the French are very involved.

I mean, you'll get on a train in France, as you probably know, and people will be reading, I mean, bookstores, the whole family goes, thinking, ideas, reading.

These are important things to them and it's no mistake that this character who loses his head, but then walks back how that happens, I've never been quite sure, but he walks back and there's some episodes where it sort of tumbles down a hill.

It's rather comical, if you can go there with that.

This is what I believe we're in the business of doing.

We're in the business of sowing that head back on, sowing Medusa's head and she is the victim of rape really, she is the victim and if you read the original story, she's absolutely the victim of rape and it is a process of reclaiming, of redeeming, of healing that I believe we can believe in with her and then there's the other aspect of beheading, which is and I don't recommend violence, I never do because I know that violence, here's the thing, and I say this to you because I believe this.

I don't believe everything that's written in any book.

I might disappoint you in that way, but I know this one thing I believe and that is that we battle not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities of the air and wickedness in high places.

So when you encounter the cruelty of other people, you are looking at people who have been colonized by hate and you can separate them if you choose to, you can separate them from what they have been colonized to believe and the way you do this is that you walk in humility.

You walk in the humility of knowing that in your country, your country was tricked and has been tricked over and over again to hate groups of people, Native American people, Black people, Hispanic people, Arab people and that wars have been initiated for profit by interests of all types who profit by these wars and we have sacrificed our children and our morality and our ethics to engage in wars.

We have a million dead Iraqis that can be laid at the feet, my feet, that can be laid at the feet of anyone alive when two disastrous and uncalled for wars were waged against Iraq.

So I walk in humility knowing that if I'm encountering people who hate me or who are in engaged in hating, they are colonized by a wickedness that I desperately imagine them released from, because this is the only way forward, there cannot be any others, that's not what we want.

We don't and we can have that world, but we must believe in it.

Now, I'm gonna tell you about the loser who learns, because if you read this carefully, it's the literal first page that I ever made about Karen and it was so important to me because she's having a relationship with Missy.

She is in love with Missy.

The person upon whom Missy was based died three months ago and I'm very sad, but she gave me a gift and that is that in her way, she loved me and I loved her.

Now, I wrote this, if you read this, it doesn't track.

I didn't know how to do a graphic novel.

So I put the text in the wrong place.

This was a learning moment.

So as much as I liked all the aspects of this page, I'm telling you this, I'm showing you my underwear, the worst pair I have, the ones with the holes and other things and just gross and I'm saying to you, learning is acceptable.

Have humor about it.

Give yourself a break.

Know that you don't necessarily have to do it perfectly.

Be willing to listen to the universe.

Be willing to listen to the universe, because if you really hear it, it will say, "I love you."

You are amazing, you can do anything and then this, because it's Halloween and after he eats that can of beans, he's gonna kill you and your whole family because you, (attendees laughing) just because, that's what he's gonna do, hello and then E for empathy and educating, because that's what we do and this is what much of the book is about.

Karen is being educated in empathy by Anka, by Deeze, by the brain, by her brother, Deeze, yes and by her mother and then even by Mrs. Gronan, who I love, by the way.

There will be more about her, she's so good, but Karen is learning how to live inside the life of someone else and especially when she watches this one movie, "The Wolf Man," she knows and I hope you know this, what could they have done differently?

Well, you know what they could have done?

They could have said, "This guy is afflicted.

Let's put him in the crypt when the moon is full.

Let's not kill him and let's find out what he knows" because here's the big secret.

What happens to the village is that the industrialists come in.

Now, he was their protector, but they killed him.

So the village was mowed down and that's kind of what I wanna get to with the monster.

The monster is necessary.

The part of us that is monster is necessary.

I'm not talking about bad monster.

I'm not talking about the colonizer or industrialist who has no concern for the people, I'm talking about the monster, the weirdo, the one who's different, the one who might be afflicted by something we can't understand.

The artist, the poet, you know?

And then here is my amazing Deeze whom I love so dearly.

He loves Karen so much and here's my actual father.

I loved him.

He was complicated like Deeze.

When he went across the country with me in inside of my mother's stomach, was not allowed to have a hotel room in 1962, they had to sleep in the car because there were miscegenation laws and he did not look white enough.

So all the way through the United States of America, he slept in the car with my mother and me.

We've come a long way.

We have a lot to be proud of, but we have a lot further to go, don't you think?

And these are his parents.

My grandmother, my poor grandmother did not have the benefit that I have.

She was pretty much the victim of an arranged marriage.

She came from Lebanon to marry this man whom she had never met and she went mad because she was deprived of the right to choose anything about her own life and I feel like she's crazy, she is, but she's with me all the time, encouraging me to do things that are wild and crazy and I kind of do 'em.

That father of mine he had been, his father had become a Jehovah's Witness and had not allowed him to have any toys or Christmas or any of that.

So one day he had an uncle who said, "I've had it" and he just went and bought a Christmas tree and bought presents and my father said it was his first, he was seven or eight years old, it was his first time having toys and he loved them so much that he decided to become a toy designer and he made toys for children for the rest of his life and this was one of the toys he made.

He invented this and sold it and he didn't make the money from it, unfortunately, as many artists don't, but he did many other games and toys that you've probably played with, like Simon and the Masterpiece Game and there were plenty and then he sculpted, actually sculpted this and designed it.

It was Inspector Gadget and I'm so grateful for him because he really taught me a lot without teaching me anything.

He just did it around me all the time and he was the first person who gave me a pen, a rapidograph pen.

My mother had set up a little space for me to draw, because I couldn't walk.

Ah, you probably already heard this.

Have you already heard this?

And I don't need to tell you this.

I couldn't walk until I was two and a half years old because I had scoliosis very badly and so my mother would set up a little thing for me on the living room floor, she'd set up these still lives, 'cause I couldn't walk to anything and touch it and I was drawing before I was walking and what I did as a child is I touched everything with my pen.

So when I give you a drawing in the book, I felt it and I hope you feel it too, that's the idea.

That is my little baby.

She's like a million years old now.

She's approaching 30, but I'm just saying this to you because in the world today, as I watch the genocide that is occurring, I am so grateful and there's more than one, of course, unfortunately, there are so many being killed all over the world.

I am so grateful that I was able to raise my daughter and give her to the world but there are so many people who have not been able to do that and I'm going to talk to you about the frustration in that.

It's almost as though we're being demoralized, because we're being shown cruelty and horror being inflicted upon people who can do nothing to even escape it and we can't get to them and help them.

It's demoralizing and you might think there is no hope in that.

I believe that we're being driven towards our spirit, because we are all connected and we can do something.

We can remain connected to our mission.

It's difficult in a world like ours, but we can do that and we can imagine and fight and yes, protest, but maintain our commitment to who we are and to creativity and to what we do and to the imagination of a world where every little baby gets to grow up and find out what treasure they are and I don't know why I put this in, except that art was everything to me.

I was taken by that man I showed you, that Lebanese man.

I was taken to the art institute and he was a big bruzy kind of guy who talked like this.

That's how my father talked, pretty much like this and I'm pretty much doing exactly what my father would be like, except here's a guy who talked like that, except he could tell you everything about a Delacroix and you didn't even know nothing about it, but he would tell you and it would be exactly right and it would be brilliant.

People would stand at the Art Institute of Chicago and they'd go, "Oh, I didn't know that" because he lived it, ate it.

He had almost been absorbed into the mafia.

He did kind of get a little bit absorbed into the mafia, but you know what happened?

Porn and (attendees laughing) he was in a military school and all of his friends were the sons of the big mobsters and they were kind of, "Hey Mike."

They were kind of, you know what they do and he started doing a little business on the side.

He'd go into the mimeograph machine and he'd run off some eight pagers, Minnie and Mickey getting quite Randy and he would sell them for a quarter a piece and he was doing great until somebody left one of them on the machine and they figured out who was doing it and he was gonna be expelled and the mob was right there.

"Hey Mike, don't worry about that.

Come on.

We can take care of you."

And what saved his life and made me who I am, is that the art teacher said, "Who drew this?

Yes, that's a very anatomically correct penis.

(attendees laughing) I would like this one, give him to me, don't expel him" and they didn't, they let her have him and she said, "Go to the Art Institute and take your portfolio" and he got a Presidential Merit scholarship, which I also got and it saved him from the mob.

Now that painting there, why do I talk about the gargoyle?

Well, we have something with us now.

We have an intelligence.

It is what I believe is the new Frankenstein, very much like this gargoyle and I'm showing you this because, you know, I love these things.

I could sit and just look at these pages.

I ate them up, these horror stories and they're vivid black and white and to me, Goya and these stories were no different.

I love them so much, but I'm talking to you, this is an illustration I did for a French paper called Society.

It's actually like pronounced in French, it's beautiful, but I can't do that.

They just laugh at me when I try to speak French.

So I don't even try anymore, but we have something with us now and we better hope that it can love us because we need it to.

It's going to be and we already know, it's going to be a part of our lives, it already is and it's gonna manifest as a greater part of our lives, potentially and so it is the new Frankenstein.

Let's hope it can love us.

So resist, refuse, redeem.

It should be that order and why do I say resist?

Because here's the greatest resistance.

Not what you do politically.

Here is the greatest resistance.

No matter what the circumstances, I entreat you to consider gratitude, joy, beauty and love.

They're the greatest resistance that exists in this world.

There have always been a political elite.

They have always not necessarily had our best interest at heart.

I'm thinking of the many wars that we've been kind of encouraged to get into, even though none of them have benefited us.

They haven't made our schools better, they haven't made our hospitals nicer.

They haven't allowed us to educate ourselves better.

They've done us nothing and I am encouraging you to embrace a spiritual practice, whatever that is.

I mean, it just doesn't matter.

This is a altar that I had for some time that was displayed at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

It got much crazier than that.

Some people would be upset because there was a lot of, some of the saints got different, they got turned into vampires.

Okay, I'm sorry.

If there's anybody out there who's offended by that, ah, I can't help it, but what if you're worshiping trees?

Look at this guy.

I actually love this guy.

This is an actual tree and I think trees are cool.

I would say yes to that because these are times, not unlike the times that I live through with the Vietnam War, these are difficult times.

So a spiritual practice will allow you to think about something in a very, very great way, in a broader and greater way and what is the thing?

What is Buddha and Jesus and all the women and guys and people, what did they do?

They told stories, because stories are spells, stories are spells.

We are witches in the best sense of the word.

You have uptown Chicago and Karen Reyes living inside you now, right?

That's a miracle, right?

Because you just took this inanimate object and you opened it up and this lives inside you now, that's a spell and I encourage you to cast spells in your life.

I'm not talking about invoking demons.

You know, demons are really the weakest thing in the world.

What is strong and infallibly strong is love and stories.

So you are a haunted castle, go talk to your ghosts, please.

It's a wonderful thing to do.

This is Karen's recitation of Anka.

If she could draw Anka as a castle, this is the Anka castle.

This is my story about me.

I very quickly should tell you before I run out of time, that I had me about 16 months that I believed I was a tutor.

I call these my tutor years and I spoke in an English accent.

I really did and I had lovely other kids who completely tolerated that.

At that time, I wore a body cast and the body cast, I called it my trouble doublet because it had this high thing.

You can kind of see the picture here.

Lemme see if I can, ah, eh, ooh, I just went the wrong way.

Well, let's see here.

That's it, right there.

I was that kid right there.

Pardon me.

A real looker as a kid, as you can see and this was me in my giant body cast that I had after I had scoliosis surgery, which saved my life because my spine was running into my heart, but here's the thing, once again, I received a blessing, after I came out from the surgery and here's this, I just wanna show you this 'cause it's fun.

That's the kind of tutor I would hope to be.

Anyway, when I got outta surgery, I could taste cigarettes in my mouth and I had a vision and the vision was that I was in this very small room and I wasn't me.

I was, I think a man and this woman walked into the room and she sat down, I was sitting in a chair, she sat down on my bed and it was kind of cool, because she had a shabby fur coat on and she had bleach blonde hair, but with a streak of black right down the middle and she opened her coat and she was naked.

Now I'm 10 years old and I have this vision, and I have to think that I was actually seeing something from the life of the person who gave their blood to me.

Now they've actually proven that that can happen, that there are memories that aren't held in our minds, but that are held in other organs and that's when I became a writer, because I asked myself, who am I?

And I started building out from there and I became, this was who, Doreen was based on that woman that I saw and you know, I just encourage you to go with your visions.

So this is Doreen's world and that was the world of uptown.

I remember the prostitutes when I was standing with my mother.

We had no money for me to have a birthday party.

We didn't have it and I was kind of, you know what, all kids don't know how poor they are.

So they're asking for stuff that nobody can give them and I remember the sex worker standing in the doorways of the abandoned building and I remember, she must have heard me saying this and then we looked down and there was a roll of money right at our feet, $14 and I had my first birthday party.

People are wonderful and that's me, you know, with my girl, Karen and we're creating each other.

Tell your stories.

Tell your stories.

That's what you need to do and you will create yourself and your stories will create you and I just wanna thank you for being here.

I don't know, did I go over, I just wanna know if I have any more time to talk to you, I will, but hey, believe in yourself, believe in your inner vision.

Look through the eyes that you can't see in the mirror.

It's wonderful to do it.

(attendees clapping) (attendees cheering) Thank you.

(attendees clapping) (attendees cheering) Another howl?

Just a goodbye howl.

(attendees howling) (all howling) Thank you.

(attendees chattering) Oh, let me just tell you something.

This is a wonder.

Your state, Michigan is wonderful.

Ann Arbor is gorgeous.

This program is amazing.

Christina Hamilton is amazing too.

Phoebe Gloeckner, oh my gosh.

I've admired her work my whole life.

Well, when I learned about graphic novels, I was so impressed with her work, so moved by it and I'm so thankful for this experience to meet you all, to come here, it's wonderful and I just hope I'm leaving maybe with one or two ghosts from this beautiful, haunted place and thank you.

Thank you so much.

(lips smack) to every one of you.

(attendees clapping) (attendees chattering)