nervous ticks

Nervous ticks…
In Maus, Art depicts himself as constantly smoking cigarettes while writing. This obviously must be very important to him. Rarely there is a scene of him drawing without one in his mouth. On a slightly hilarious parallel, Austin Grossman seemed to have quite the tick of his own. About every two seconds, he would push his glasses up. Even multiple times in a row. Now, as a person who wears glasses, I quickly took note of this interesting habit. I myself at a younger and insecure portion of my life tried to change the way that I pushe up my glasses. I went for a cooler, hipper thumb and middle finger on the two sides rather than the seemingly geeky index on the nose bridge approach. But I simply could not maintain the ‘cool’ style. I would always revert back to my natural motion. This of course, makes me think that Austin doesn’t even realize what he is doing, nor does Spiegelman realize that he is smoking. What is it about writing that brings out these nervous ticks. Be it a toe-tap, glasses push, cigarette (probably not so many of us anymore), or whatever. Is our body simply uncomfortable while writing? Implying that the activity is quite unnatural and we are subcounciously trying to jump out of our skin? Or perhaps these ticks are important to develop a proper rhythm in our writing. As I sit here, in the deepest basement of moffit, I can see people sniffing, twisting their hair, biting their nails, cracking their necks, each person with a movement and style as individual as their writing voice. I call upon all of us, develop a unique tick, make it work, and most importantly, make it your own!

Two post-scripts

I. First, I apologize for making anyone who reads this schitzophrenic and selfconcious of every body-movement made while writing… and…
II. How rad the austin’s glasses push is. I think someday he’ll figure out a way to fight crime with it.

shaunt