When the Legends Fail

I was recently chatting with an old friend from art school. We’ve kept in touch over the years seeing each other’s art shift and form, succeed and fail. We’ve encouraged each other to stay in the race and not give up. I showed him a picture of something I was working on recently. It was just a light hearted cute little illustration of some auburn fall leaves tumbling down turning into little crimson hearts. 

“These are deeply satisfying,” he says. “Like Winslow Homer met Bill Watterson. Except more free.” 

I don’t believe that my little illustration merited such a tremendous compliment. But I took it anyway. Both of these artists are legends to me. It took me back to my childhood. I didn’t grow up close to the sea. Though I may have loved it as much as Winslow Homer did. I grew up in the landscape of Bill Watterson. The American Midwest. Fall, winter, spring, and summer. Calvin’s summers were much like mine, growing up in a place where the city was far away and the woods were in abundance. I read those comics during the long summer months when school was out and there was nothing to do. The mornings were late, the days were long, and the nights were filled with fireflies flickering over open fields. 

Idyllic. 

An artist, a cartoonist, a philosopher, a storyteller, a legend… and a six-year-old kid forever. Watterson has gone to a place where few have gone: a place of unprecedented success where his personal integrity and the purity of his art were maintained. With an uncompromising attitude, he turned away more fame and fortune than many of us will ever know to uphold the intrinsic value of his art and not cheapen it with endless merchandizing. 

I went to purchase the latest book about him, Exploring Calvin and Hobbes. It contains the crown jewel of interviews: a 35-page interview with Bill Watterson. Liquid gold in the form of words. The reclusive cartoonist opens up about his life and work after so many years of silence. And I do respect his silence.

He’s open, poignant, wise, and naturally very very funny. He also talks about one thing that we can all relate to: Failure (with a capital F). He was fired from his first job out of college and this is what he said about it:

True, although there were a number of years out in the wilderness. My failure was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me, although I don’t recommend the humiliation and insolvency so much. But if my experience at the Post hadn’t been so catastrophic, I don’t think I would have started over. I’d have limped along doing weak editorial cartoons, and would have never gotten to what I was good at. I didn’t want to throw away all that time and effort, but sometimes you can’t move forward without going back to the beginning to get your bearings again.

And in the long run, nothing is wasted. It takes a while to see this, but it’s true. I learned a lot about drawing and about how to work with complex ideas for those years. It was valuable. The failure also raised the stakes for me on a personal level. Years later, when I finally got syndicated—when they finally opened the gate—I ran like my head was on fire. The Post failure made me realize that this wasn’t going to come as easily as I’d thought. So I treated the marathon as if it were a flat-out sprint.

I love what he has to say about his failure. I love it so much. 

Nothing is wasted. 

I’ve experienced a decent share of failure in life. I'm still waiting for the return on many of those "investments." Oceans of missed opportunity, poor choices, and other inadequacies. There were palliatives for mistakes. And yet, nothing is wasted. That seems like too much grace for me. But I think it’s true. I believe in grace. There is a need for grace in our world. 

Don’t be afraid of failure. Don’t be afraid of that wilderness, even if it may last for a few years longer than expected. There is grace and the courage to change. Failure may cause charting a new course and new unexpected opportunities may lie in wait. Maybe the legend of success is different than what success is in real life. Staying true to oneself may be the cause for a longer and more winding road. 

Let’s stay in the marathon and overcome. It may take longer than expected, but it will be worth it. Let’s turn mishaps into adventures, problems into opportunities, and failure in to success. 

The Only Painting that Went With Him

I gave this painting to my uncle when he was battling lung cancer. I was in America and he was in Taiwan. I went to visit him when he was diagnosed. It was fall in Taiwan. He was still healthy and seemed carefree. He took me to eat panda shaped donuts. He took me to the markets in the city to find pomelos, my favorite fruit. He took me to classes that he taught at his university. Bright students all around. He still smiled and still sang his favorite tunes from youth … when time was infinite and life was limitless.  

“…Bye Bye Miss American Pie…” 

One day somewhere in between the rhythm and the blues, he said to me one of the most meaningful compliments I’ve ever received. He spoke to me in Chinese, “Even though you may not look like much on the outside (to the Chinese there is always something wrong with the way you look), there is something special that glows and shines from your face. It’s like a light. When I see you I think you’re beautiful. I believe it comes from deep inside you. I know that you are a good and kind person and that makes me like you even more.” I was taken aback. Maybe it was so meaningful because it came from him. My uncle. My JiùJiu. 

Some of my fondest childhood memories were in Taiwan with him, my brother, cousins, and all, running along the small serpentine sidewalks that lace around the green rice paddy fields. We went to play basketball. My aunt made homemade dumplings for us when we returned. Basketball, rice paddies, and dumplings on those hot humid summer days. 

When I returned stateside, I mailed him this painting. I prayed that somehow I could weave the very fingers of God into the yellow lights of the trees or the crimson stains of the cascading flowers. Maybe those red flowers could absorb and contain the life that was bleeding out of him and give it back when his body was healthy and his lungs alive. 

During that last visit, an image of him was preserved in my mind. It was the last time we saw each other. Healthy, happy, and free. As the year unfolded and the battle went on, his body continued to degenerate. Time poured in and funneled into the last few weeks of his life. It was a time when I couldn't tell what were morning shadows or evening half lights. My mom never would stitch together a description of how he really was doing. The only thing she would tell me to do was to remember him as he was when I last saw him. Healthy, happy, and free. It was fall in Taiwan then. Remember him then. Remember him strong. Much stronger than lung cancer. 

He died a year after that visit. He died in December.

His body was cremated. Besides the garments that covered him, the only thing that went in there with him was my painting. My aunt laid it on his chest. It was a gift during the last year of his life. My little watercolor. Blue hues, little trees, crimson flowers, and yellow lights. I cried when my mom told me. 

This painting never saw a gallery wall, or any wall. It was never sold, never purchased. Never framed, never matted. It existed just for a small moment in time, given as as gift, was burned, and turned into ashes. Only this blurry capture of it remains. I will never hear from my uncle what that painting meant to him. Whether or not he liked that particular shade of yellow, or the whitespace above, or the little mountains below. These strokes, those hues, or that blue. Maybe it made him smile a real smile. Maybe it made him laugh a real laugh. Maybe it made him feel loved with a true love. Maybe it told him of salvation, when spirit joins a body that will never die. Maybe it gave him beauty and breath during his last year, the hardest year. 

I never knew what I really meant to him until that day. I never knew how meaningful my paintings could be until that day. I know he cherished it. I know he cherished me.