Meanwhile… An Introduction
Hi. Hello. How are you? This an introduction to why I began the ongoing comic series that is "Meanwhile..."
Recognised as Autistic as an adult in late 2019, I came to realise that one of my stims and means of calming myself is drawing. With 2020 being – well, 2020 – I began "Meanwhile…” as an ongoing project, with the final panel of each instalment leading to the next, with the aim of it being to just keep doing and being in, well, 2020.
With the comic series being sequential, some of the narratives are conceptualised ideas of what I find personally poignant or amusing, some are just abstract thoughts that are absurd – growing up I fully embraced and found a kinship in the absurd (Monty Python, Spike Milligan, Dr Seuss) because as I stated to my psychologist when being assessed, it became very clear while growing up that being weird was my best shot at being normal, lol
While normally I’d leave artworks or narratives of this nature up to personal interpretation, I made the decision to actually include what influenced each instalment of the comic series, explaining the reasoning behind the thought process and how it may have influenced the symbolism within the narrative.
My reason for this is that, as an Autistic adult, I realised that writing, literature, art and television had played an enormous part in how I learned to relate to the world and to others. In this, metaphor became as much a part of how I would understand others or try to explain myself.
I first showed this comic series within online communities for Autistic adults, and some commented that certain metaphors or analogies weren’t immediately clear to them. I’ve detailed the thought process behind each instalment of the series as best as I can (some are just simply abstract concepts and go no further than that) to provide a context and also as a glimpse into what inspired such ideas – something that surprises myself sometimes when I hold my own thought processes up to scrutiny.
This is my weird, my thoughts, my idle notions and my being and doing, cast as an ongoing project.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed creating it.
Best Regards,
Brett J Cole in, well, 2020.