Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
Table of Contents:
Autobiographical
The Bunny-Blatners
Tumpy Bumkin and Bumpy Tumkin are the Bunny-Blatners who live in a little tiny house under a tree next to a meadow by some trees bordering on a sweet little stream with froggies and such living in it. That’s their address. You ought to be able to find it. Sometimes, though, they forget who is […]
The Crockensoon
When I was 14 (in 1951) Phil Harris sang a funny song on the radio titled “The "Thing,” which triggered my imagination. I cartooned and made up a back story about the discovery of this “Thing,” which was in fact a Fantasmous Crockensoon, a being of extraordinary something-ness. Intrepid Explorer Professoroid Norbert Q. Hackenthorpe (notice […]
The Higher “I”
I’ve become increasingly aware that I’m only part-way between me and not-me. There are parts of me that are spontaneous, and realistically speaking I should not take credit for these parts or their products. I’m tempted to say, like Jack Horner in the nursery rhyme, “Oh, what a good boy am I!” But a couple […]
The Human Potential Movement Revisited
I realized this morning that my life is to some degree a “product” of the Human Potential Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This was a sub-cultural movement that blossomed in urban centers, more vividly in the greater San Francisco Bay Area and nearby regions (such as the Esalen Institute about 100 miles […]
The Humanities in Medicine
One of my roles is as an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the local branch of Texas A&M Medical School, where I give occasional lectures on psychotherapy. Allied to that, I have an interest in supporting those who would promote the “Humanities in Medicine.” There’s a sore need for this, because most medical students […]
The Impossible Dream
I was singing this song to myself, from the Broadway play of the 1960s, Man of La Mancha—, revealing my private dreams of grandiosity. These betray the mind’s capacity to think in terms of superlatives. Each is paradoxical, a way of dramatizing ambition, such as dreaming an impossible dream or fighting an unbeatable foe. They […]
The Inadequacy Complex
I wasn’t sure if I had an inferiority complex—it just wasn’t the right word. (The term was originated not by Freud but by Alfred Adler.) If you left me alone with my books or play I was fine. Finally at age 76 I found a better word: Inadequacy complex, which senses and feels bad about […]
The Influence of Abner Dean
I was strangely influenced as a young man by the surrealistic, semi-cartoon art of Abner Dean, who drew cartoons and pictures that intrigued me. I had been into comic books, but here was a fellow who, like Saul Steinberg, used cartooning to present serious themes. Recently, I remembered Dean and wondered why I was fascinated […]
The Low-Down on the Higher-Ups
They aren’t really “higher,” or at least not in all ways. Rather, there are other dimensions, more than 4 dimensions. For example, I have a memory of a past life when I was an elf in Santa’s workshop (level 9 row 4, choo-choo train assembly line. We elves were sooo excited to be part of […]
The Minions of Mild Villainy
I was reminded of this archetype also in this summer’s Computer-Graphic Cartoon movie, Minions. I liked the theme that simple minded folks (the cute lil’ Minions) happen to love the energy put out by someone who exhibits a strong sense of triumphant malevolence. A good villain is appealing in a weird way. In my childhood, […]
The Minions, Gib-reesh and Taboo
You don’t really need words. There was a movie in 2015 titled “The Minions,” a sort of cartoon movie about those cute, diminutive medicine-capsule shaped little guys. They were sidekicks to a villain in the popular movies around 2012 and got their own film in 2015. They speak in a kind of gibberish that, with […]
The Roots of My Interest in Scriptology
I’ve been making a series of presentations about scriptology, the very inter-disciplinary not-yet-officially formed field that deals with writing and associated technologies. It has been a sort of hobby of mine since the early 1970s, though I now realize that I’d been somewhat sensitized to the whole enterprise through a number of blessings (as I […]
The Seven Ages of Man
(Words by William Shakespeare; Cartoons by Adam Blatner) [Adam’s note: As a teenager, I read the works of William Shakespeare, took a class in school, enjoyed the shaping of words, declaiming, enunciating, the feel of his rhythms. (I was in a local high school contest once, where I recited and enacted the “tennis ball” speech in […]
The Twenty Basic Whatevers
I enjoy making lists, and part of that is an archetype. There’s a saying that there are two kinds of people: Those who divide things into two kinds, and those who don’t. Ha ha. But I realized that I tend to divide things into multiple sub-groups and often sub-groups of the sub-groups. I realized just […]
The Ultimate Truth (Not)
Alas, after decades of considering what’s what, it’s not so much that I don’t know—that’s true—but I am quite sure that the “everything” cannot be known. Now there’s an apophatic stance that invites dispute! I guess I agree with the postmodernist view that it’s all co-created. There are no objective standards that transcend our co-creation. […]
The Whizzard of Ahs
This is a bit of an autobiographical contemplation: Perhaps I too am a bit like the Wizard of Oz, not a great wizard, but really a good man. Maybe my name in another story would be “The Wise Art of Ah’s” or the “Whizzerd.” Anyway, the point of this post is: Who is to say. […]
The World of Almost-Real
This is a fictional alternative dimension where I “live,” as do many cartoonists, novelists, and others who make up alternative realities. I “become” various characters, and enjoy the fiction that “they” are real and have chosen to “channel” through me. It is thus not me who writes some of these more far-out posts, it is […]
Those Were the Days
Listening to a Sinatra tape on my portable tape recorder—there are some of ‘em still around!—and thinking some smug thoughts! No doubt folks who liked songs before the 1920s and after the 1980s have a nice repertoire and good memories—I think—but the mid-20th century was blessed with evocative and poetic songs. Oh, of course, some […]
To Blog or Not to Blog
To paraphrase Hamlet’s soliloquy, in the play by Shakespeare, but things are different today: I have become more aware of “blogging,” which is another way of publishing my random thoughts or writing. What ego! What conceit! to think that anyone out there would care in the least about “random thoughts,” no matter how well-put. To […]
To Dance a Thousand Flames and Call Them “Self”
This phrase and picture came at me some years ago and re-presented itself recently in light of a growing awareness that I serve as a vehicle for innumerable roles. Some of these include dishwasher-guy (a not-particularly-super-hero), amanuensis (I just take dictation), encourager of others (often international students), etc. The point of course is that “Self” […]
Tooting Your Own Horn
“To think: I did all that…” a fragment from Frank Sinatra’s theme song, My Way. A little of this—maybe 7 – 12%—is good. More begins to become sort of “narcis-sistic.” Less is too deferential. More is tiresome for others; 20% is annoying; and if you toot your own horn at 30% or more you become […]
Turn the World Around
Harry Belafonte co-wrote a song and performed it on the televised Muppet Show in the late 1980s: “Turn the World Around.” (You can see it on YouTube.) “We come from the mountain,” the song goes. “Living on the mountain; Go back to the mountain, turn the world around!” Then the song repeats for fire instead […]
Tweetum-Tweetum
I think that’s the call of a Cardinal-bird. A walk on a late Spring morning, with Allee, who is recovering from an appendectomy. (It was done with one of those little ‘scopes that go in through the belly button.) Wow. In the olden days she would have had to stay in the hospital a couple […]
Two-Thirds Human!
Yes, imagine that I am indeed 2/3 human! More, I’ve established credentials, so that makes me okay. All this is to compensate for the part that most folks don’t understand: I’m 1/3 elf. Now let’s just say that I have imagined myself in this fictional but meaningful story. I would daresay that whatever we imagine […]
Unaffiliated Idealism
If I had to give a name to my “religion,” this would be it. I realized only recently that I did indeed have a spiritual path as a teenager: “unaffiliated idealism.” (I had no name for it then, though.) As a lad I collected and cut out nickel-priced used copies of Readers’ Digests, and similar […]