Page 32 - Finding Tulsa - Preview

24 Jim Provenzano

People were boring and too hard to wrangle. We made cartoons.
Using a stop motion wire, we made a clumsy cartoon with magazine cut-
tings flying around a series of backgrounds. In one part, I wanted to recre-
ate the depth effect in some early Popeye cartoons. I showed Dan how to
do it with a sheet of glass. I stole the idea from a chart in a special issue
of Scream Magazine devoted to the technical details of King Kong. He
seemed wary, but we tried it.
We created a forest of hands clipped from jewelry ads. Armless crea-
tures with bulging eyes chased bird things with shoes for wings. The glass
ended up glaring. The section with the cartoons and magazine people
was funny, usually one opening its mouth to eat another. My fingers and
elbows were in a few shots, but we were happy. This was magic. The audi-
ence could be summoned.
My parents used to throw parties in the ’70s. Dad was a math teacher
at Brookside College, and all sorts of intelligent people came to eat and
drink. We sat in corners or asked precocious questions from English teach-
ers whose breath was heavy with scotch.
Before one of these parties, I’d snuck a sip of the scotch in our dining
room bar and gasped for air. I hated it and preferred sneaking my mother’s
sparkling cider as I stole cashews and Brazil nuts from the little nut bowls
she set out on such nights.
Mom didn’t drink, then. At the time, I didn’t know the difference.
I just knew the smoke and music would make me tired, and Dan and I
would be sent off to bed, occasionally visited by bored adults who liked to
peruse our room full of monster posters and books and Star Wars models
and my growing puppet collection.
The first night we showed a film, my dad draped a white sheet over a
painting, where we aimed the projector. All the adults laughed in the right
places and clapped and whistled when the movie was over.
I didn’t know then most other kids didn’t make movies that were
watched by college professors. I didn’t know most other kids didn’t make
art, or at least didn’t make a constant waterfall of it the way we did.
Forget magnetting them to the fridge. We had piles of drawings, stacks
of cartoon books, clusters of clay sculptures. I want to be able to do that
again, to make things without thinking once about whether anyone will
like it, fund it, market it, distribute it, to just make things and do things
knowing they’ll make me happy, and if someone else likes it, then fine.
How nice for you. How nice for everyone.