The Honesty of Imperfection: Profile of Writer and Figure Model Paul McComas |
Dimitry Tetin
|
Paul
McComas is a lot more imposing up close than behind the protective shield of
a drawing easel. Drawings of him often line the school walls: Paul comfortably
sleeping, Paul standing on one foot, Paul stretching out his arms like an Ancient
Egyptian priest waiting for the appearance of Ra. On the surface of brown butcher
paper the image of his body suffers daily from terrible distortions: the top
of his skull is severed, his legs are extended to three quarters of the body,
new joints are created for him, while the ones he has are ossified.
�I am this body and this body seems to know what it�s doing,� Dayna Clay, the
character of McComas� first novel Unplugged, says to herself. �I am this
body� is a phrase that opens many of Dayna�s lines. Unplugged describes
the journey of a twenty-something rock star, completely unable to handle her
stardom. Her depression becomes obvious at the beginning of Unplugged
and McComas hints early at the subtext of his heroine�s childhood abuse. Leaving
her stardom behind, she retreats away from everything, to the barren landscape
of the Badlands, in an attempt to let her body guide her to the recovery of
her self.
�It was April, 1997, while driving, I heard the news of Kurt Cobain�s death.
I had to stop my car,� McComas remembers. The event that brought the end to
Generation X helped bring to the forefront McComas� talent a writer. In his
twenties he was a self-described �jack of all trades.� He dabbled in music,
performance, fiction, writing screenplays, and modern dance. In many ways, he
was a prototypical �creative.� McComas worked in public relations and as a journalist,
moonlighting on several political campaigns. In college he wrote stories that
directly addressed political issues. He soon found that politics began to overshadow
his characters. In response to his mentor�s suggestion to �write what you know,�
he started to develop a way of writing that directly focused on the character,
while allowing �plenty of opportunity for socio-political commentary.
�If you create engaging characters and place them in a setting appropriate to
exploring your theme, the plot is, quite simply, whatever happens,� Paul stresses
to students in the fiction classes he teaches. This character-driven approach
allowed him to write a 250-page novel exclusively from a female point of view.
Stressing that he is not a fan of identity politics, McComas wholeheartedly
rejects the male-female dichotomy: �Sexual differences are dwarfed by individual
personalities.� The feeling comes through in the main character of Unplugged.
Through a masterful act of portraiture, McComas never lets the reader forget
that Dayna is a bisexual woman, while allowing her character to dominate the
novel by her humanity and universal struggle to recover her damaged spirit.
And although the sexual abuse she suffered in her childhood is unique to development
as a young women, her actions as an adult are universal to anyone recovering
from severe depression.
Dayna Clay�s character is closely related to Kurt Cobain�s androgynous persona
and his continuous insistence on addressing the abuse of gays and women. It
was while organizing the first of several tribute concerts to Kurt Cobain, �Rock
Against Depression,� to educate teens about suicide prevention, symptoms of
depression, and treatment options, that McComas �basically collapsed.� The symptoms
were clear: insomnia, sorrow, inability to make the simplest decisions, fear
without reason. McComas calls the event the �transformative experience of my
life.� He says, �Any major crisis affords one an opportunity to gain a new perspective,
to reorder one�s life.� Following the recovery, McComas, who was working full
time in public relations, decided not to �reinject myself into that particular
rat race.� He took writing that was, at the time, his hobby and made the decision
to make it a career.
When asked about recovery from depression McComas likes to quote Unplugged
character Dayna, who says: �Fewer things matter and they matter much more,�
in response to a reporter�s question about what changed in her life after living
through depression. �I always make it a point of taking issue with the romantic
notion that suffering and genius are inseparable,� McComas says.
He needed to be in a brighter place before starting Unplugged. Its darker
chapters, detailing Dayna�s depression and childhood abuse, could not be written
by somebody who did not go through similar experiences and come out healthier
on the other side.
In order to better understand Dayna�s character, McComas went as far as recording
an entire record of original material �in the voice of Dayna Clay.� Proceeds
from the sale of the disk benefit two charities: Rape, Abuse and Incest National
Network and the Badlands Natural History Association. McComas took the songs
on tour of the country, combining them with excerpts from his novel into his
performances.
Performance is a large part of McComas�s artistic vocabulary. He regularly performs
parts of his written work. It allows him a chance to gauge an audience�s response
to his writing in a short period of time. And he �likes the attention.� Recently,
as part of �Vaudeville Underground� in Logan Square, McComas provided live accompaniment
to the screening of two Super-8 horror movies he made as a teenager.
Performance also enters his work as a figure model at SAIC, Harper College and
College of Lake County. Whether dressed as a cowboy and strumming a guitar for
Mary Lou Zelazny�s Figure Drawing class or embracing a pillow under the hot
lights, as Marion Kryczka marches around the room attempting to keep figurative
distortion in his students� drawings under control, McComas sees the practice
of figure drawing as a collaborative process between the student and the model.
He talks about observing a student in a Figure Sculpture class, who was clarifying
the form by slicing away the extraneous clay, and finding a similarity to the
way he chisels away at the superflous narrative to bring forth the characters
in his work.
�In my opinion, every figurative artist should do a stint as a figure model,�
McComas says. In some ways, the act of figure drawing involves projection of
the self upon the model, and the experience of �walking in model�s shoes� can
help open new perspectives for the artist. For him, modeling is a way to stay
visible and be political. �Current culture wants to cover the body up,� and
for McComas the body and spirit are not separate. He states, �Physicality should
not be a cause for distress, but a celebration.� This statement strongly echoes
Dayna�s recovery from depression by retreating to the basic needs of her physical
body. McComas himself dedicates Unplugged to the �beauty of the earth,�
and the novel�s most cathartic moment comes as Dayna clings on to the very essence
of her body as she is close to death on one of the mountains in the Badlands.
Unplugged was the first novel McComas wrote. It was published in 2002
and stands as a personal contemplation as well as a timely reflection on youth
culture in the post-Grunge world. His 1998 collection of short stories, titled
Twenty Questions, offers a much harder-edged commentary on what it means
to be a heterosexual male in the nineties. Hearts are broken, egos are bruised
and redemption is nowhere in sight. However, the characters of each story shine
through. They are fucked up, human and insatiable in their quest for something:
pleasure, death, feeling alive. It is a satisfying to look at McComas� progression
from Twenty Questions to Unplugged to First Person Imperfect,
a collection of short stories that came out of his Minicourse Program at Northwestern
University. Some of his recent short stories are included among those of his
students, and they are full of humor and vitality, ridiculing some of the darker
aspects that characterize his earlier Twenty Questions.
His
most recent novel, set in the summer of 1980, juxtaposes the transition of a
16-year-old from a boy to a young man with a country that is moving toward a
culture ruled by greed. The main character is overwhelmed by his choices: from
his first pathetic attempt to find a girlfriend and struggle to develop a romantic
relationship, to his greedy search for new
sexual conquests.
Listening to L.A.�s the �X� will provide a perfect soundtrack to McComas� new
novel. Much like the �X,� McComas is painfully honest. In the 1980s, the era
of �ber-polished production and glamour, the �X� sang about their beds: places
they made love in, spent most of their days in, did their drugs in. �What�s
wrong with me?� was the question John Doe and Exene asked as Reagan�s war planes
flew over their heads.
Like the �X,� McComas has nothing to hide: see him naked, if you like, or read
his intensely personal novel or short stories. He is not afraid to experiment
and no longer willing to compromise. This position gives him enormous strength:
away from his twenty�s state of a cog in the machine. For now, he is completely
free.
Additional research by Emile Ferris.
For more information on Paul McComas see:
www.paulmccomas.com
See Paul McComs perform on Dec.1&2 at Vaudeville Underground in Logan Square
2640 W. Altgeld
December 2004
![](../../images/tinyf.gif)