Artist & illustrator Maurice Vellekoop joins the show to celebrate his amazing new graphic memoir, I'M SO GLAD WE HAD THIS TIME TOGETHER (Pantheon). We talk about the midlife crisis that led to the memoir (and the subsequent crisis that almost made him give up), the joy and pain of putting his life on the page, his process of self-discovery as a gay man and an artist, and why his mother hoped she wouldn't live to see the book come out. We get into his (editor) partner's sigh that told him the first draft needed a drastic rewrite, the role sublimation has played in his art & sex life, his accidental technique for drawing himself crying, how the AIDS crisis did & didn't affect his life, his decision on how to depict sex in the book, the incredible color palettes he uses throughout the work, and the realization that he had a 500-page book on his hands. We also discuss life on Toronto Island and what it was like during lockdown, why he'd like to try stage design (just once), his Pride tradition, why publishing a book of erotica was a great stepping-stone for making a memoir, and more! Follow Maurice on Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter
The Virtual Memories Show
Episode 596 - Maurice Vellekoop
(upbeat music) - Welcome to The Virtual Memories Show. I'm your host, Gil Roth, and we're here to preserve and promote culture one weekly conversation at a time. You can subscribe to The Virtual Memories Show through iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, Google Play, and a whole bunch of other venues. Just visit our sites, chimeraobscura.com/vm or vmspod.com to find more information, along with our RSS feed. And follow the show on Twitter and Instagram @VMSPod. Well, I am back from a kind of exhausting weekend. I drove up to the Boston area on Friday for a reader con, the literary science fiction and fantasy festival that I've gone to every year in the before time. But as I mentioned, either here or in the newsletter, wherever, almost none of my regular pals were going this year. So it was more like the reader con hotel was my base of operations to go explore the Boston area as opposed to going to the festival itself, which is good 'cause I am starting to hear stories of a bunch of COVID cases from reader con participants. And I seem to have dodged that bullet largely because again, I didn't set foot in reader con itself outside of hitting the book dealer room for a little while and they were a mask mandate for the entire time. So anyway, for my part, I wound up recording three shows over the weekend, again, none of which are reader con related, but two of those will roll out in August and the other one is holding for an October pub date. But that'll be worth the wait. And in addition to the shows, I got to have dinner with my old college pal on Friday. It's our annual tradition around reader con. She lives about an hour and a half away. So we meet Midway, Heavindian food and catch up. And on Saturday, I got to sit down with a past guest and podcaster, Scott Edelman, which was also fun. He does a podcast called Eating the Fantastic where he records these conversations with science fiction and fantasy people in wild dining. We decided we would dine, but not record anything and just talk like two human beings instead of two guys who make podcasts. Anyway, the other thing is since the hotel is the site where I first took up running back in 2018, I compelled myself to do a 5K run on a treadmill in the fitness center on Sunday morning before hitting the road. I have not run in a long time. I've been dealing with all sorts of stuff and moved over to sort of weights and yoga and things like that. So two and a half days later, I am still feeling it in my thighs and ankles, but maybe that'll inspire me to get out on the road once the current heat dome disperses. Anyway, it was a tiring weekend, but I met and talked with good people and that's what matters in my life. Oh, and the kitchen renovation that I have not talked about that has been going on in our house since the end of May with a break in between while we were waiting for the counter to get delivered finished about 20 minutes ago. So that kind of brings some normalcy back to the house and a wonderful new kitchen, which I'm sure my wife will post pictures of. But anyway, I also took some great Instax pictures from my book project that I'm doing. And I had this idea in my sleep-deprived monotonous driving mode on Friday morning that was faux profound, not really profound, more guilt trying to add weight and portent to an idea. But by Sunday afternoon, when I mentioned it to the guest I was recording with in Amherst, it grew into a stupid, funny, smart three-page, maybe too smart for its own good three-page comic that is gonna be in the next issue of haiku for business travelers, so that was something. It was just funny to me how ideas work and change shape, which is gonna be part of this conversation you're gonna hear. In this case, I had the portentousness of this thought and concept going on, and then when I mentioned it to this guest and he zinged something back and hit me that, oh my God, I know where I can take this humor and a weird conceit and boom. But with any half-decent idea I have, I'm probably just gonna kill it anyway. But on that depressing note, we will get on with it. So like I said, I spent this past weekend in the Boston area and then up in Amherst of the weekend before, which feels like two months ago, Amy and I went up to Toronto for a post-July 4th escape from America. And while we were there, I've recorded two shows, follow up with the artist Anita Kunz, which we'll hear next week, and this week's show with first-time guest, Maurice Velacoupe. Maurice has a new graphic novel out from Pantheon called, I'm so glad we had this time together. It is a gorgeous and amazing book. Over nearly 500 pages, it spans Maurice's childhood in an immigrant family of Dutch Christian reformists to his self-discovery as an artist and the center of the book, his discovery as a gay man, along with the struggles of religion and shame and the question of his parents' acceptance of who he is and what that did to him for decades, as well as just finding and celebrating his life and a lot of it centered in his mature years, 80s and 90s Toronto, which we talk about as a character in the book very, very much. I'm so glad we had this time together is a joy to read, even when the story is at its saddest when Maurice is wrestling with so much of the conflict in his heart as to who he is and who he's supposed to be and the love of his mother, which we get from the very beginning is everything to him. His cartooning style, I should point out or talk about a little. I've adored his work for a couple of decades now. I first saw him in the early 90s or so. He has always had this sort of jauntiness and lightness to his art. A little like Seth, the cartoonist who I've recorded with a few times with a different style, but they both harken back to a 40s and 50s, New Yorker-ish thing, but they go in different directions drastically, but it reminds me of something that Bob Fingerman talked about a few weeks ago when we were having our conversation about another artist. Maurice's line looks light, but a lot of work goes into depicting that light touch and the artwork is gorgeous. The composition of both the panels and the full pages is extraordinary. And the book's design is lovely too. The story of Maurice's journey and the ways he thwarted himself and the decades of tension between his sexuality and his relationship with his parents and the ways art gave him an outlet, a form of sublimation as we talk about and a career. And the transformation he undergoes as he discovers the broader world around him and his introduction into opera and his childhood introduction into the movie Fantasia, the depression and the highs and the friendships and the mentoring and the forays he takes into sex and the fear of opening up and the humor he shows throughout this book for all the fraud emotional moments, it's a book of joy and it all goes to make this an absolute treasure. So I loved, I'm so glad we had this time together. Go get it now from Pantheon at your favorite book shop, maybe comic shop, depends on what sort of comic shop it is. My only caveat for that is it's currently a hard cover and as I mentioned earlier, it is 500 pages, so be prepared to do some heavy lifting physically. As far as reading and the story goes, you will be swept along as we can talk about. The other caveat is that there is a weird fluttering on my audio channel, not his, so I cut as much of those segments down as I could. And there's a long pause at one point but it's there for a reason so I leave it in. Now here's Maurice's bio, it's from the book's flap copy. Maurice Velikoupe was born in Toronto in 1964. Upon graduating from Ontario College of Art in 1986, he joined Reactor Art and Design, an agency for illustrators. In a more than 35 year career, he has worked for top international editorial and advertising clients, published numerous zines and comics, created art for animated films, and participated in art shows around the world. His books include "Vellivision", a collection of comics and pictures, Maurice Velikoupe's ABC book, "A Homoerotic Primer", and Maurice Velikoupe's "Pin-Ups". He lives on Toronto Island with his partner, writer and editor, Gordon Bonas. I'm so glad we had this time together, is his first full-length graphic work. And now, the virtual memories conversation with Maurice Velikoupe. (upbeat music) How did the books start? How did the books start? So, back in 2012, I was having kind of a mid-life crisis, basically. So, I had been a commercial illustrator for many, many years, and the work was really, really drying up. And 2012 was a particularly bad year. And I kind of realized I needed to, you know, figure something else out to do. So, I've turned, of course, to the lucrative world of comics. I wasn't gonna say, but-- - No, that's when I thought 500 pages of comics would make it. - Well, make everything great. But yeah, that's how it started. And so, I was going to sort of pitch getting an art show together, and that always seems very daunting. It's not a world that I'm particularly interested in even. So, yeah, so I ended, I wound up with the idea to do a memoir, and it was a little bit strategic. I had, you know, was looking around, and memoir had still been going strong for many years. And I started to think about my story and how kind of eccentric it is, and my family's nuts. And I thought maybe there's a story here. And so, I made a very slender little proposal, which I sent to Chip Kidd. And he immediately said, this is something for Pantheon. And then I also applied for my first Canada Council Grant. So that's where the money came in, was through this wonderful thing that we have here in Canada. - We don't understand being Americans, so you could actually support the arts in the government. - Yes, so that, yeah. And so then I was set up and ready to go. So that's how it began. - When did you realize it was going to have the scope? When did you realize you had a 500-page book on your hands? - Yeah, well, about a year later. Because I was afraid that it was one of those, really just need a little more in the middle of a couple of years. - No, no, so I wrote a really, really terrible first draft as you know, you must hear all the time. And my partner is an editor, and he read the draft. So the story goes that I left him alone with it. I went for a long walk. When I came back, he still wasn't finished. And so I went into the bedroom to let him finish. And I heard this heavy sigh. (laughing) And he sort of gave it to me. And I was very crushed, but I realized eventually that everything that he was saying was kind of true. And I needed to rethink the whole thing. And so yeah, during the first year after the signing the contract and getting the grant, I basically spent a lot of time like reading about writing and learning some principles of writing. And that's when it started to mushroom into a 500-page book. - Had you been doing any drawing as part of it? - Did you really want to work it out as text first? The funniest issue I've run into with cartoonists discovering memoir was Roz Chast, when she did the one about her parents' decline in deaths, where she was stuck on trying to figure out how to get the whole book to work. And eventually it was her therapist who said, "Have you thought about chapters?" Because she had just kept going and going and going with it and didn't realize, "Oh, yes, books have chapters." And if I do that, there's a dramatic rise of flow. And it was the dumbest thing in the world, but she realized, "Oh, okay, no, I wasn't thinking "about the most basic aspect of this. "I was just telling the story without end." - One, two, three, go. - And it was, "Well, if you do this, boom." And all of a sudden she had structure, but did you start to get those, and not something on that level, but those sorts of realizations as you were reading and writing? - Yeah, and chapters really helped me a lot as a way to sort of grasp the whole thing. So I wrote chapters that I kind of feel could stand alone as short stories, and that really helped me to conceive of the thing. And I also, my book agent sent me a book that really helped me a lot with the writing, and that was Robert McKee's book story, and I studied that book a lot and made a lot of notes. - I've heard such great stuff. How fundamentally useful it is. - Yeah, yeah. So it turns out that writing can be taught. (laughing) And I really, yeah, I guess I owe him a huge debt. And so it's a book about screenwriting, and I think, yeah, it's helpful for any writer, I think. And a lot of the principles go back to the Greeks and Shakespeare in terms of structure, and they're very, very sound principles that have very tried and true. So yeah, I spent a lot of time reading that and structuring the scenes according to some of the principles that he lays out, and trying to get the subtext in, and all of that good stuff. - Did you see it cinematically? - We know comics are very different than cinema. You're not storyboarding something here, but were you building it in that mode also? - Yes, no, I think so. I mean, cinema to me is one of my favorite things. So obviously, yeah, I think it was influenced a lot by cinema, but also I appreciate that comics are not cinema, and yeah, they're very different things. - When you mentioned the initial pitch and my family is crazy, et cetera, when did that occur to you, that they were crazy? As opposed to, well, this is what families are like. - Right, yeah, well, like I say, I always knew they were crazy, they don't always get that, get that. It's usually the, you know, until you're really exposed to the outside world sometimes. - Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, we thought, yeah, we thought we were normal, but yeah, I don't know, I can't really have that. - We didn't have a key moment of, wait a second, it's not me, it's them. I guess, part of that comes through with the therapy section toward the end, exploring the parents and their effect on you and all of that stuff. Continue to wrestle with and it goes in different directions for all of us, but yeah, Philip Larkin was right. You know, they do screw us up or fuck us up. However, we want to use language on there, the show is fine by me, but did you know you were capable of a book of this size? You've done comics, but they were, we'll say short form, even if it was 20 pages or so. - Yeah, well, no, I didn't know I was capable of it. - I suspected, but yeah, it just kind of happened because once I started the rewrite, I realized I had to tell a lot of stories in a lot more detail than I had in the first draft. And I realized also that maybe a 20 page essay on Wagner's "Tom Hoizer" was probably not the best way to end a novel memoir. - Yeah, although there's people take things in some funny directions or they find a common thread right there and that explains exactly why I ended up like this. - Yes. - Yes. - How did your art change over the course of it? - It was constantly challenging. So, and of course, continuity is a big thing in comics. So I think for me, it helped that I started it when I was in my 50s. So the style is pretty much set. But it changed in the sense of all of the challenges that the book presented, that so I had developed a whole bag of tricks that I could use as an illustrator, but suddenly some of them were not useful or functioning in this context because there's so many likenesses that I was trying to get and drawing myself in three quarters and profile and stuff was a big learning curve. And drawing all of the other characters in profile and in three quarters was also a lot. So yeah, there was so many challenges and so many things that I learned over the 10 or 11 years. - Yeah, those sorts of moments where it's like, I thought I knew how to make comics, but I didn't really know until I tackled. - Well, that's the thing, it just never got easier either. Like the final section, as I mentioned before, and maybe we'll talk about it some more, but it's about getting into therapy and there's a lot of talking just in its back and forth. - Yeah, my head with different expressions and the therapist's head with different expressions. And so there's quite a number of pages of that, but it just never got easier. Every panel like drawing that face again was just like starting over every time. - Self-conscious of your own face. - No, no, no, no, just the technical challenge of it. - Yeah. - Of getting the likeness and the expression. I'll say your eyebrows are less menacing in person than they are in the strip, but I understand for a dramatic effect, you need to push them a little. - Yeah. - But yeah, it's a sort of thing I wonder, just especially the fact that you include some early artwork, your artwork from the '90s and it's a very different style. You could say the same sensibility is permeating throughout, but you know, it's, you know, you evolve as an artist and a cartoonist. But yeah, tackling a single project, keeping that continuity, this is the sort of thing I always marvel about with guys who are doing these long form pieces because the temptation to go back and work on earlier panels and clean things up. - Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. There is a lot of that with me, yeah, yeah. And a couple of the chapters ended up not being successful and I had to redraw them too. And one of them was the chapter that takes place in Bavaria at Ludwig II's castle in Bavaria. And so there's a lot of detail in those drawings and I had to redo the whole thing just because of the way I rewrote it. - And at the same time, you're bringing the emotionality of those scenes into an end to revisit that again and again. You're like, oh yeah, how do I make this a little more pointed while I'm showing a guy's soul being, you know, torn in half? - Exactly, yeah, there's interesting. So I'm a big opera fan. - You? (laughing) - And one day I was working on a very painful, emotional scene where I had to, you know, have a breakdown and start weeping in the drawings. And I hadn't really thought about it, but I put on this opera that I love. It's by Leo Sienna Chek and it's called "Yanufa." And I just find the story and the music so moving every time I get, you know, I'm in floods of tears by the end of act one. And that's not even like the best part of the opera. And so I'm, they're crying and I was like, get to the mirror. (laughing) - So I rushed over to the mirror and I draw this ugly red face with the tears and the bloodshot eyes and everything. And I'm like, yeah, perfect, got it, you know. (laughing) - You don't want to lean on that too much 'cause-- - No, not too much. Get emotionally numb, but that's great. - In that moment, it was great. - One of the, I'm jumping all over, but one of the things that I'm interested in, you're chronicling, you're coming out, gay life throughout, we'll say the 80s, 90s into the aughts. AIDS comes up a few times. There's concerns about, you know, whether somebody's going to insist on, you know, bare back or not, but it's not huge. And I have no idea what it was like in Toronto, what the vibe was. I was in, I'm straight and living outside of New York City, but every show I've done with anyone who was alive in New York at that time, it was, well, I mean, you got a character reading an Edmund, you're reading an Edmund White book in the book itself and the sense of apocalypse that rained over that era isn't in here. So I have no idea, you know, whether it was there or just something you had to downplay, lest it take over, you know, the tone of the book itself. - Yeah. - That was your AIDS, I guess. - Yeah. - It's a horrible way of asking for this, but you know. - Yeah, well, no, that's a really good question because I think certain people will be kind of mystified by that. And the truth is that I only experienced it very tangentially. - And that's what's conveyed in the book and I'm just wasn't sure if that was. - Yeah, so my, I had friends who were like a generation older, some very close friends and they lost all of their friends. But in my generation, like when I came out in the early 80s, it was, they were already like, you know, condom campaigns going on. And so right from the beginning, I, you know, had it drummed into me, safer sex, safer sex. And my generation, I think, did that too. So I didn't, I didn't lose any contemporary friends to AIDS, but my older friends obviously did, but it was a bit off stage for me. - Yeah, it just wondered 'cause I'm like, wow, I'm used to a certain, you know, a certain gay story of that era and, you know, not seeing it here. I was like, that's, that I'm glad that that doesn't exist in everybody's lives, that it's not a. - Yeah, but it did, but it did affect me very greatly at the same time, which is, which is, you know, there's, there was a long period. So, so in the book. - We go into your sex in the book and it's very furtive. - Yeah, and there's a long period of basically celibacy, like 10 or, 10 or 12 years of where I was more or less celibate because I was just so scared of everything. Men and, and, and the AIDS era too, it was just so frightening. So it is there hovering over it, but in terms of like personal loss, it, it, I was lucky to have escaped most of that. - When it comes to depicting sex within the book, you know, you go in various degrees of how graphic you're gonna take it. How much of a consideration, you know, how much did you consider that going in? You know, how much am I going to show? What is it going to do with different audiences? You know, in America, everything is going to be banned for, you know, yeah, groomerdom and all that, but. - Yeah, I just decided I wasn't going to go show cock, basically, just because that's too private and personal. So the rest of it, I thought, was fair game. - So it's funny as I just recorded with Anita Kunz and her last book was all about Phil Goodman's Cup. That was like, I even asked her, I'm like, how did you decide who was going to be large? Who was going to be small? She, you know, it was just on a whim, you know, I died. - Such a great book, yeah. - I was laughing my ass off, I told her, luckily, nobody knows it, we're recording this show Naked too, but, you know, she did that. But yeah, so that was the basic consideration, was just keep it, you know, be back. - Yeah, I mean, it's a book for adults, but I didn't want it to be like that graphic. - Sure, yeah, sure. - And you've drawn a lot previously to the pent up book and everything else, or, you know. - Well, yeah, I've been, I've actually, yeah, I've been saying this to a couple of people, just that if you're going to do a memoir, it's really good preparation to publish a book of Erotica first, because you've already exposed some of your, you know, most personal fantasies to an audience, and so it just seems like a small step to memoir, to verbalizing it and laying it all out. How I ended up like this. - Yeah, exactly. - You can talk about, I guess talk about that a little bit, just the, doing those earlier books, and just the, one of the interesting concepts to me and it's something Anita and I just talked about, was how artists, whether they're cartoonists, writers, visual artists, deal with a sense of permission. Can I do this? Can I tell this story before my parents are dead? I can't, and I'm waiting for it, but, you know, eventually it'll happen, you know, I hope I'll still be around, then I'll be, but anyway, in your case, in the book, I mean, you're doing a whole gallery show of erotic, homoerotic art without having told your parents yet that you were out, and that becomes the catalyst for taking that step. I guess, talk a little about that sense of permission, you're giving yourself versus, you know, who are you and how did you end up that way? - Yeah, yeah. - Well, the idea of sublimation is one of the big themes in the book, I think, so there's this sense that, for me, sex and love was too complicated and scary, and so I would draw it rather than experience it, and this sort of comes out in various ways, I hope in the book, this idea that, that, you know, I felt that I couldn't get love, and so I would look for love in cinema, and I would look for love in books and in art and opera and ballet, and eventually I realized that that's not gonna work, but it's a long period of trying to make it work, and yeah, that also, for me, included making art that was about things that I wanted to do, but I couldn't allow myself to do. - It's, well, like I say, it's an amazing achievement, and the fact that it's not heavy, that, I mean, you always had this, I don't wanna use the term jaunty, but you've always had this light line to everything, whether it's the line itself or the content, there's always been a joyousness in your drawing, and seeing that done comedically in the book during some of the heaviest moments, it's one of those, I'll say, real achievements and storytelling that I, you know, kills me, you weren't doing more of these books earlier, I guess, that you didn't have, you know, this whole bookshelf of long-form comics, but I could see how, you know, these take you quite a time to get there. What was the, beyond learning the story structure, what really took you the longest time to do? Why did it take 12 years, I guess? - Yeah, um, for a long one. - Or again, just the drawing and keeping continuity and... - Sorry, what's the question? - I took you so long, it took me so long, yeah. - I guess it was just the amount of drawing that's involved. I got a lovely letter from Seth, actually recently, and it's three pages long, it's hand-typed. - I've received a postcard from him, and yes, I know where you're coming from. - And it's very lovely, but one of the things that he said was, you know, how beautiful the artwork is that he took it for granted after a while. - Yeah, not that it's wallpaper, but you flow so beautifully through it. - Oh, thank you, and so that's what took so long. Was to make it like, I always want, as a comic book artist, I always wanted to make it as clear for the reader as possible. - There's never a moment of, wait, I don't understand, who's, either who's in the panel, or who's saying what, you compose very, very well. You know, everything is there, and everybody's distinct in themselves. - But I just cut you off. - No, no, great. That's great to hear. - You just want to hear more compliments. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Who were the cartooning influences? We were talking about the artistic ones, or the fine art ones, but who were the, either the cartoonists who inspired you, or guys who were kind of helping you in the process of this? - Yeah. - Or if they knew it or not. - Well, this is always so hard, because there's so many dozens of them that people that you love, and that people that you haven't even thought about for a long time. So we were talking before about Edward Gory, and I realized, I was lucky enough to visit the Edward Gory House and Museum on Cape Cod recently. And I was reminded of just how huge an influence he was on me as a young person, and how much I adore his work. But I hadn't really thought about him in many years, you know? So there's one. And then we were talking about Errol Lecane, to this fantastic children's book illustrator from the '70s. And then, I guess in terms of like more contemporary, like I guess Alice in Bechtel is really an inspiration. It's funny because during the course of making this book, I read Fun Home several times, and I was trying to figure out how it was constructed. - Yeah, it's an interesting mechanism. - Yeah. - The whole thing is built around. - But I just couldn't deconstruct it. It's so resistant, maybe. Or maybe I'm just, you know, not that bright, but you're pretty smart about coming next time. - Yeah, anyway, what a feat that book is. And, but also the seriousness of it, combined with the humor, was an example. And I think personally that she really, she really changed the medium with Fun Home and challenged comics books, people to be literary writers, you know? I don't think there's anything else quite as literarily smart as her work. - Yeah, I'll give you that, yeah. It's always nice, and it's like seeing certain artists come up before we sort of recording. I mentioned Chris Ware, and the, when somebody comes around and raises the bar for everybody, there are those great moments of, oh, and historically you look back, and that's why all these cartoonists started, you know, challenging themselves or going in another direction, 'cause they all saw this person is blowing us out of the water, or this person just created something that we're all trying to match up to. - Sure, yeah. And for me, like I was never, I was, as a kid, I was never obsessed with comics. I had, we had Mad Magazine, and we had Heavy Metal. I have two older brothers, so we had lots of Heavy Metal in the house, and Asterix was a huge thing. I love, I still love Asterix so much. The drawing is just so incredible. - So I told you about the Clive James interview I did. I also, besides him and his wife, I also recorded with Anthea Bell, the woman who translated a whole bunch of Asterix. That one came together late. It's one of the greatest shows I've ever done. - Oh, wow, I'll have to listen to that. Start slinging Yang for a place in Cambridge. It was fantastic, I had no idea what to expect, and she was awesome. - It's so witty, like the translations, the original text, I'm sure, is witty too, but-- - She went into like how you had to figure out a joke that was set for like a 1950s French audience and figure out how to make this, you know, work in English for young readers, and-- - Yeah, and all the puns too. - She had to translate puns. - Like, "Get a fix, get a fix." I didn't even get that until I was older. - No, take things older. - No idea what that meant. - It went over my head. But yeah, but I was just gonna lead into what did actually turn me onto the endless possibility of what comics are was "Raw" magazine, and Mark Baier particularly, like that wonderful deadpan voice combined with that strange artwork. And Jerry Moriarty too was huge for me back in art school. And we, me and my brothers, we all fell in love with Jerry Moriarty and his deadpan humor. And, but for me, what I took away from him was these kind of banal situations that also had a kind of a cosmic timelessness to them too, like how did he do that? And that was something that really influenced me in my early comics work was I did these one-page comics that were about very small moments in life. - I mentioned, or you show a couple of those in the book. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - That was your Moriarty, totally working itself out? - Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, he was a fascinating guest, I'll say. Let me ask also, just the choice of color palettes throughout the book, they're very distinct and certain, depending on certain moods you're achieving from chapter to chapter. - How much opera came into that? - As opposed to comics background versus the, this is my opera brain really forming, how this is gonna look. - Well, it's something a little different from that. So what that refers to is the children's books that I used to get out from the library as a child. - Yeah. So we, yeah, we lived close to a fantastic library in Etobicoke, a suburb of Toronto. And my family all went there, you know, every couple of weeks to either just spend time there looking at books or to take books out and bring them home. And so there was a lot of flow of books into our house. And the children's books that I loved were, most were the full color ones, but there were often books that were in, like one spread would be color and then one spread would be two colors. And then they would alternate. And I, even as a child, I knew that that was because the publisher was just being cheap, right? (laughing) And I really, really resented it. I wanted my world to be in full color all the time. - Every page, yeah. - And that's just kind of another kind of huge thing that runs out through the whole book too, is I want my full color. (laughing) But I, and so that's what the meaning behind all that is. And so everyone's in a while, as you know, the book goes from two colors into full color for a page or two. And that's, the root of it is within that childhood resentment publishers. (laughing) But what it also is doing is that old thing from the Wizard of Oz when she lands in Oz from her depressing Kansas, the Kansas section, it turns into full color. And so that seems to me a very queer thing as well. And it's also tied into depression. So when you-- - You certainly have a very monotone chapter when the depression really well ups. - Yeah. And then, and so the two tone chapters are many of the, many of them are sort of unhappy. And as I say, yeah, when something really fantastic happens, you get full color for a page. So yeah, and then the other additional thing to that is that now when I see those old children's books with the two tone and the color that I think, oh, how great, like the-- - Building up dramatic effect. - Yeah. And the artist is challenged to work in two colors and it looks so wonderful. So yeah, it's all very complicated. (laughing) Expect nothing less. (laughing) This is how weird because the book itself, especially the last portion of it is the working out as we talked about the time spent in therapy and the understanding, the greater understanding of your family, but what did you learn about yourself and the process of making the book? Knowing that you're recounting the epiphanic as well as the awful moments in your life, do you feel like you're a different man than you were when it began, did it change you? - No, no, I've said this many times to people throughout the years that I worked on this book, they would say, well, is this project therapeutic for you? And I would say, no, therapy was therapeutic for me. - Yeah, so I wondered whether-- - Especially because you capture it so well at the end of the book, whether that's the, I don't see the final Maurice, but-- - Yeah, sure, sure, yeah. No, and I continued to see that therapist long after the end of the book, but yeah, so the insights were all taken from the therapy, I would say, but the book was definitely challenging, at times, in terms of being painful. In terms of being painful and a lot of tears and a lot of bad memories. And then there was a period, sort of about halfway through where I had another kind of a mini crisis and I thought, I'm gonna have to give back the advance, I don't know if I can continue this. Yeah, so I went to my therapist and she patched me up again and got back on the horse. - Has she read the book? - Yes, yes, she loved it and she said she was in tears at the end and yeah, that was very gratifying 'cause she's, I hope she comes across as the smart, funny, insightful woman that she is. - And I'm glad she didn't complain about how she looked in the gun panel, but that's always, you know, I don't look like that. - Yeah, no, no, she loved it and we're kind of friends now. Like, I haven't seen her for many years and she's been to a couple of the events and stuff. So it's been great to see her. - Now you mentioned your mom, as she died in early, during 2021, but she didn't get to see the book in progress. - Bits. - Yeah, that's, I wondered, did she see much of it? Did she? - No. - Have anything to say? - Well, I wanted to be very protective of her because she, the central conflict is with her, basically. And it's just very revealing about her privacy. You know, it tells a lot of stuff about her that she would not have wanted known, but needed to be in the book to explain. So, yeah, I was very careful about what I showed her and towards the years that leading up to her death, she was in a very, like sort of steep decline. So she didn't have dementia, but she wasn't quite all there either. So, and she had actually said, "I hope I'm dead before it comes out." And not in a grim way, just like, you know, you get, when you're older, you think about things that way, I think. And having said all that, though, she fully supported the project. I have to really hand it to her. She, whenever I needed some information, and I would say, "Mom, I'm coming to interview you "about a few things." She would be more than willing to talk, and she told me some very private stuff, like about her sex life and stuff, that she answered all my questions. She was so generous with me. - Yeah, siblings? - Siblings? It's fair game. They're in the book, you know? - Yeah, have they? - Yeah, my brothers were fine. My sister-- - I can understand that. - Yeah, my sister was upset, and she and I have worked pretty hard on it and we're in a much better place now, but it's-- - And again, have they seen anything in process or are they kind of seeing just the ad? - Yeah, they had, they had. - Which is why I was a bit surprised at that reaction, but once I heard her side of it, I could totally sympathize with her upset. - It doesn't sound like you're hitting like the Richter scale of memoirs that have caused major rifts and family, so I could do that in achievement. That's a good thing that you're not a, you know? - Yeah, well, and the siblings, they just kind of disappear after a while because they're not really part of the main story. - What's interesting to me is the integration of your sexuality, your personal life as distinct from that, or your family and upbringing, and your professional life. The way all three of those are woven together throughout the book is, it's interesting to me 'cause, you know, often you'll, in general, you'll see the professional thrown out the window and they'll just focus on, you know, the interiority and the personal life, and it's, you don't just include it for the sake of details, but they all seem integral to who you were and are. - Oh, thanks, yeah, well, it was, I wasn't gonna include too much stuff about my career, but my partner sort of insisted because I was-- - He was a good editor then, I was a good editor, and also I was a fairly well-known illustrator at one time with some big clients. And I think the story about the trip to Paris with Fogue is just so comical that you have to include it. - You have to include it, yeah. - That's a piece you gotta put in there. - It's a set piece, exactly. And again, with the chapters that really helped because it's a chapter that could exist on its own in an anthology or something like that. - And it's, like I say, the progression you make as an artist, as a working artist, does seem integral to who you become, you know, overall as a human being, that it's not just a, you know. - Sure, sure, sure, and the subtext of that Vogue chapter is that I've so invested in the work as a way of avoiding-- - Sublimating pure, yeah, again, again, again that. - So how else is response been? You mentioned Seth, you mentioned family members. - Yeah, it's been pretty great. I've been getting a lot of emails from strangers who were very moved by the book, particularly ex-Christians and ex-Dutch ex-Christians. So that's been very, very touching to hear people's stories. And yeah, there's been some travel and great experiences with that and just ongoing attention. And I just found out this week that I'm on the long list for the Toronto Book Award. - Congratulations, yeah, thanks. So, and yeah, we can mention here that Toronto is basically the fourth main character in the book, or the fifth main character in the book. - It's something that this is my first time back in five years and this is my first time here without the comic arts festival or biotech conference and just getting to this more on Ward's Island where Maurice lives, although I shouldn't give it away, it's an undisclosed location. I'm very interested in your Toronto, which you have a few moments in the book where you're living in New York, but for the most part, it's all set here in this city breathe throughout the book. Tell me, tell me your Toronto and how your Toronto is changing and how you put it into the book the way you did. - Well, the book shows a mostly loving, I think, a picture of Toronto. - There's a couple of moments. - Yeah, there's some moments, but yeah, it is a complicated love/hate relationship with this place. There's a sort of, I guess, many cities are like this, but there's this almost the determination to pull things down and destroy things that are important historical sites. So there's this, yeah, like a determination to just wreck the past here that is so upsetting. And then aside from that, I don't really use Toronto that much, like in day-to-day life. So I live here on this island, which is very idyllic. I live in basically a park and we're in the summer season now, so it's very busy, but all through the winter, it's very quiet and it's a great place to work. And we go into town for groceries every few days and that's about it. So I don't really, yeah, as I say, I don't really use Toronto that much. It's all bound up with COVID, of course, too, Tom. So we are dipping our toes back into cultural stuff and we've been going to a few things in particularly this year, which has been great. Kerner Hall is a beautiful place to hear classical music in Toronto. We went to a fantastic concert there recently. And yeah, so getting back into it. There are, the other great thing about Toronto is just, it's very diverse and it's something that I always showed in my work, not as like, oh, I'm going to show diversity because we need to show diversity. No, it was because this is the way the city looks and is. So it was just like in my work as an illustrator, I always showed diversity just because that's what I saw. - It was a weird thing to me early when the Toronto Raptors first launched in the NBA. There was this Sikh gentleman always sitting on his court side and I just, I have no idea what that's about. I asked a local friend of mine who's like, oh my God, yeah, no, he's the biggest superfan. We have a huge Sikh community up here. My God, I've had no idea what it's about. Okay, I'm always glad when cities aren't, as white as the town I grew up in, frankly, it's always neat just seeing the mix. But you know, you convey the city, you convey queer culture in its flagrancy, we'll say in the '80s and '90s and various pride events, you also have some dark scenes where you get attacked, walking down the street for no reason that you can discern. But that the island itself becomes a shelter. And then again, in certain ways as I see now, your character gets cocooned inside the island in some ways. But yeah, you draw a place well into this whole situation and give us a sense of where it's all taking place beyond the fact that so much of it takes place in the tension in your head. Going with the title, I was expecting more Carol Burnett and I'm really kind of disappointed. (laughing) - Oh yeah, yeah. - Has she seen it? - Sorry. (laughing) - Yeah, so well, the title refers, the title of the book is I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together. And it refers to the song that Carol Burnett sang at the end of her comedy variety show every week during the what was eight or nine years of. - Yeah, got a DVD of like the seventh season, a DVD set we got from the library. So yeah, it ran a long time. - Yeah, and so the story, the poignant story for her was that well, the song is very poignant, but also at the end of the episode and at the end of the song, she would pull on her ear, which was a signal to her grandmother who raised her because her mother was an alcoholic. And so her grandmother took over the raising of Carol in extreme poverty. And so this pulling of the ear was a gesture to the grandmother. And yeah, the song, so I was obsessed with Carol Burnett as a child, but as a storyline, that doesn't really go very far. - Yeah, I was thinking it was going to, going into it. I'm like, you know, I understand that we're just waiting a little, I added too much force to the whole thing. - And also many, many people won't get the reference of the title now, but it is such a great, title I feel because it can be read so many different ways. Like it can be kind of sarcastic and it can be straightforward and it can also be very sad. - You mentioned the COVID period and really kind of, you know, just sheltering here on the island. Change your product, we're more or less productive with the book during that first. - Yeah, I was probably more productive, but it also saved my sanity during that time too because I had a project to keep working on and then, oh, the George Floyd stuff too. It was such a time. I remember, so I listened to CBC Radio, Canadian Broad Cost Incorporation Radio during the daytime. I listened to their classical music program and every hour they have a little brief newscast. And I remember at the height of COVID and at the height of George Floyd, then the newscaster was telling the story of how, of George Floyd's brother testifying before Congress. And the newscaster broke down. There's a lot of amnesia for the last couple of years. And it's one of those-- - That's a good understanding of how things black, our minds were in 2020 how everything had grown so. - Disbearing. - And then, yeah, I lost my mother too. And during COVID, she survived two outbreaks in her nursing home and there was a period when the Canadian army was called in to help with nursing homes in Ontario, yeah. And hers was one of the homes that the army came into. And it actually has a fantastic reputation this place. It's one of the-- - But it's just a crisis which is-- - You don't have enough people. - Yeah, exactly. - So we made it through some tough times. - Most cartoonists would tell me that COVID was no big deal for them because they just spent all their days hunched over a drawing table anyway before that. And after, it was just that everybody else was suddenly in the room with them. But yeah, it could still mentally-- - Yeah, no, it was that for me, but there was just this one point where I just was like, I have to see some people. I just have to be with some other people. And it really was oppressive. And it was February and yeah, it was just terrible. - Was there much community on the island or was everybody kind of hiding from each other? - There was a lot of care being taken because it is an aging community. Seems like every week someone new is in a scooter, you know, around here, yeah. - Yeah, envisioning, like locking off the island and all this and just, you know, nobody goes in or out. - Well, they did actually close the park one summer. It was crazy. We had the whole, it was like living in a country club. We had this whole place to ourselves because nuts. - I hate asking this because it says 500 pages, it took you 12 years, but next story? - Yeah, so no, there's lots going on. I finished the book maybe around this time last year. - I remember you posting on Instagram, like last pages and all that sort of matter with that. - And then I took a bit of time off, but, you know, I'm an artist and I just have to get back to the table eventually. So I'm pitching a children's book, which is something that I've always wanted to do. I've always loved them as we talked about before. And having a response from one publisher who turned down the book, but thought that there's something there that is worth exploring. So that's on my plate to return to. And then I'm also, this is gonna tie into many things that we talked about already, but I'm also working on some erotic drawings again. - You? (laughs) - But this ones are different because I'm actually showing myself in them. - Yeah. - And by myself, I mean like 22 year old. - Of course, because that's when we were at a golden age. - Exactly. - When I was at my cutest. And also when I was at my most celibate too. So it's either like incredibly sad that I'm doing this or it's incredibly empowering that I'm going back and allowing myself to have all the raunchy sex that I wish I could have had. - Did the book help with that? - In terms of making you comfortable rendering yourself. - Oh yeah. - Certainly. - So we got one little thing that the book did for us. - Yes, absolutely, yeah, yeah. And yeah, and so I've got a whole storyline worked out. It's a kind of a fairytale scenario. And it's inspired by Jean-Cocteau's la bele la bet. So that's the whole look of it is drawn from that film and the storyline is a little bit drawn from the film as well and the fairytale. - There are other forms or genres you wanted to work in? - Yeah, well, there's also, I should mention, there's also an idea for another graphic novel, a shorter one that I'm just making notes on right now. But yeah, the thing that I've always wanted to do was to do some kind of stage design. - Yeah, so I wondered, in particular, that seems like this would be the Maurice non-comics, non-illustration work. - Yeah, and I have a portfolio of stuff that I've created years ago. So yeah, I hope that that happens someday. It's interesting 'cause there, you know, when I had been an illustrator for a number of years, I had always been very interested in theater and stage design. And I was getting fed up with illustration and I was actually considering going back to school for a stage design, like in my late 20s, early 30s kind of time. And I was researching schools and stuff and then I realized as a stage designer, you were, I love to draw people, that's the most, my favorite thing to do. And as a stage designer, you're doing everything, but draw people. So now I realize it's something I wanna do just once and get it out of my system. So any directors out there? - Do you know somebody in that space who's the partner of a recent guest of mine? So I'll talk about it, my whole thing, as you know, is schmoozing and connecting people. - Well, I'll send you some of the pictures then. - All I'm envisioning is Charles Burns, right? Who worked with Mark Morris? - Yeah, the hard nut. - Yeah, that's a million years ago. And Ben Catcher, I think, did something. There was radio drama, but I think there was a staged piece that Ben did designs for, which is also a weird concept. - I think Mark Reiden did a ballet with either ABT, I think it's ABT. Yeah, it's fantastic. - Favorite opera? - Yeah, I can't decide. - Okay, yeah. - I never know. - I'm not an opera person. I wasn't sure if this is a really dumb question or a you idiot, everybody knows. - So my listening habits are the same as they were when I was a teenager. So I'll pick something and sort of get fixated on it and listen to it over and over and over and over again until I've sucked every last bit of juice out of it. And the thing that I'm obsessed with right now is an opera called A Florentine Tragedy by Alexander Zemlinski, who I believe was a German Jew. And this opera is based on a one act play by Oscar Wilde. And it's from this period in the early 20th century when there was like atonalism was happening, but also late romanticism was really, really flourishing as well. And there was all these obscure composers that were working with these huge orchestras and they were all obsessed with Freud and like dark psychology and this Florentine Tragedy is a perfect example of this kind of thing that I've been into for the last few years. And so it's a very simple story, a little over an hour, the one act opera. And what the story is about is there's a wealthy merchant and his wife is having an affair with a younger man. And so the merchant arrives home and he discovers the wife with this guy. And the whole opera is like this kind of cat and mouse conversation between the three of them, where the tension just rises and rises and rises. And finally, they're all sort of taunting each other. And finally, the husband just loses it and strangles the lover. And at that point, the wife falls back in love with the husband. (laughs) And she says, the final words of the opera "Why didn't you tell me you were so beautiful?" And she says, "Why didn't you tell me you were so strong?" (laughs) And of course there's this huge orchestral like crash at the end with this false note right in the middle of it. So it's, yeah, it just gets me every time. - Do you ever be on the design aspect? Do you ever either thought of composing? Do you have any music? - No, et cetera. - No, no, no, no. I played music for many years and I never, never actually figured out how to read music 'cause I faked it the whole time. - Clarinet in band, in grade school and high school. - 'Cause I was thinking, you mentioned Chip Kidd, at the beginning I've recorded with his husband years ago, his late husband years ago, Sandy McClatchy. And the maybe best part of the whole conversation was him describing how he was adapting one of my favorite novels into a, he was doing the book for, or libretto for an opera of the leopard by Giuseppe Impedusa. - Oh, yeah, yeah. - He was describing the end of the first act, this dressing scene and basically it's just phenomenal and it was the, yeah, I would pay to see that. I think they did end up staging, so I don't know if he ever finished it before his death, but they were playing it down in Florida or somewhere and I'm like, "Oh, it never made its way up here." I guess I would go to the opera to see, you know, Sandy's rendition of the leopard with, you know, his collaborator on this. But yeah, I had no idea if the, that sort of writing interests you, whether there's any, you know, or if it's really much more of the visual and the stage design. - Yeah, yeah, no, no. I'm not, I'm not sophisticated musically enough to, like, I-- - Again, with him, it's just the writing. It's like somebody else is doing the music, but he's still, that's what I'm saying. You might have another direction for your career here. You still got time and a bunch of directions to jump in, but the big question that I always ask people, what are you reading? - What am I reading? So I was in Massachusetts recently and just by pure chance I brought two books that were set in Massachusetts. Yeah, I didn't know that they were. So I read Northwoods. - What is this, oh, I have it right here. This name is Jason, sorry, Daniel Mason. - Northwoods and it's a book about a house. It's kind of like Richard Maguire's home. - Here. - Our here? - Yeah. So it's about a house that's built in, like, the 1600s and we meet various characters from that era up to hours and including the future. - Yeah. (laughs) - And it's kind of dazzling and kooky and crazy. And then the other book was... This is also set in Massachusetts and it's called Followed by the Lark, novel by Helen Humphries, who's a wonderful Canadian author. And it's a book about William Thoreau. And these two books couldn't be more different. So this, the Humphries book is very minuscule and focuses just on all these small details in the life of William Thoreau. And I found it incredibly moving. I was sobbing at the end of it when Thoreau dies. Sorry, I gave away the ending. - No, I'm spoiling. - And even though I loved Northwoods, I just kept thinking, oh, how clever he is. And I wasn't actually that moved by. - That it was, yeah, just the exercise of the book as opposed to... - Yeah, it's fantastic, but I didn't find it a moving experience the way I found this one. - I'll say with the Richard McGuire reference, my wife did ask me a couple of days ago, do we have a book here? 'Cause apparently it's been adapted or being adapted to a movie, which whatever, that's fine. I told her, we have it, but I think it'd be better served reading the eight page short story from Raw and realized, no, that's a guilt thing. I'm not gonna, which I noticed up on your shelves over here, the Raw issue with McGuire. - Oh, okay. - Yeah, it's from the, when they went with that smaller paperback. - Oh, yeah. - 'Cause I look at that again. - 'Cause we're a couple of comics nerds. - Yes. (laughs) - I do look forward to seeing the next thing, although I'm so happy this exists. I probably have not talked enough about just the significance of your story as it's related here. I've been talking about the storytelling and everything that goes into it, but the story that you tell, the honesty that you bring to it is really just, I found very moving. So I think you did a phenomenal book here. I'm glad for the Maurice, who emerges at the end of it. I'm glad that's still who you are, midlife crisis notwithstanding, that's good, but I do look forward to more comics, but that's me just hoping to see a little more stuff out of you and hoping to make more trips up here. But Maurice, thanks so much for the time and for everything you put into making this book. - Oh, thank you, it's my pleasure. Thanks for coming up and seeing us. - You thought it was over, but wait, there is a bonus question. How was Pride? - Pride was nice this year. Gordon and I have been running through the parade in silly outfits ever since we met. - Yes. - And so every year it's kind of a big production. We spend the weekend building costumes and it's kind of a what is that word? We're kind of like kamikazis, like we're not officially part of the parade, but we just roll into it, gorilla, exactly. And in Toronto, I'm sure it's like this in other cities, because of the scale of the parade, there's always these gaps, rather long gaps where nobody's being entertained. And so we kind of play the fool and rush through into those gaps. And it's very intoxicating, but it's also a lot of work and you have to have a lot of stamina to do it. So, but I'm afraid COVID killed us for that too. And we haven't done it for the last three, four years. And I think we might be finished after having done it for 20 years. - No, I don't know, I expect one last hurrah. - There will be, there will be. - If I end up coming up here in month of June, I'll let you know next time. - Okay. - Thanks a lot. - And that was Maurice Velikoupe. Go get his new graphic memoir. I'm so glad we had this time together. It's out now from Pantheon. It really is a wonderful book. And Maurice is such an amazing artist that you can just linger over page after page. He, while we were recorded, after we recorded, he showed me some of the original art for the book. And it's just amazing to look at in the flesh. He goes large and reproduces smaller for the other book. And it's just a joy to see his artwork. Anyway, you can check out more of Maurice's work at his site, morisvelikoupe.com, which is spelled just like it sounds. I'm just kidding. That is M-A-U-R-I-C-E-V-E-L-L-E-K-O-O-P.com. He's also on Instagram as Maurice Velikoupe, spelled the same way, all one word. I will have links to that in the show and episode notes for this one. So don't worry if you missed the spelling. And you can support the virtual memories show by telling other people about it. Let them know there's this podcast comes out every week with interesting conversations with fascinating people. You can also help out the show by telling me what you like and don't like about it and who you'd like to hear me record with or what movie or TV show or book or music or piece of theater, art exhibition or comic or whatever. You think I should turn listeners on to. You can do that by sending me an email, sending a postcard, I love postcards or a letter. My mailing address is at the bottom of the newsletter that I send out twice a week. You should be signed up for that if you're not already. Or you can leave a message on my Google voice number which is 973-869-9659. That goes directly to voicemails. You don't have to worry about getting stuck in an awkward conversation with me. And messages can be up to three minutes long. So go longer than that, it'll cut you off. Just call back and leave the rest of your message. And let me know if it'd be okay to include your message in an upcoming episode of the show. You might have something interesting to share with listeners, but I'd never run something like that without the speaker's permission. And if you got money to spare, don't give it to me. At least not right now. I'm going to ask for money at the end of the year when I kickstart the big book that I'm allegedly doing, which will be self-published. But for now, give money to individuals and institutions in need. You can find people through GoFundMe, Patreon, Kickstarter, CrowdFunder, Indiegogo, all those crowdfunding platforms. You'll find people who need help making rent or car payments or medical bills or veterinary bills or getting an artistic project going. And you might have a few dollars that can really make a difference in their lives. So there's that, there's also institutions I give to my local food bank every month as well as World Central Kitchen. I make other targeted election contributions, freedom funds, Planned Parenthood. They're all different things you can do with your money to try to help build a better world. So, you know, I hope you will. Our music for this episode is "Fella" by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. Should visit my archives to check out my episode with Hal from the summer of 2018 and learn more about his art and painting. And you can listen to his music at soundcloud.com/mayforth. And that's M-A-Y, the number four, TH. And that's it for this week's episode of "The Virtual Memories Show." Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next week with another great conversation. You can subscribe to "The Virtual Memories Show" and download past episodes at the iTunes Store. You can also find all our episodes and get on our email list at either of our websites, vmspah.com or chimeraupscura.com/vm. You can also follow "The Virtual Memories Show" on Twitter and Instagram at VMSPod at virtualmemoriespodcast.tumbler.com and on YouTube, Spotify and TuneIn.com by searching for virtual memories show. And if you like this podcast, please tell your pals, talk it up on social media and go to iTunes, look up "The Virtual Memories Show" and leave a rating and maybe a review for us. It all goes to helping us build a bigger audience. You've been listening to "The Virtual Memories Show." I'm your host, Gil Roth. Keep reading, keep making art and keep the conversation going. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) You