Therapy, therapy is vomiting things up. Art is about eating your own vomit.

Comics legend Art Spiegelman (Maus) had this exchange with an interviewer from New York magazine:

I’ve always been intrigued by the amount of inner dialogue and self-analysis in your work. Is drawing a therapy of some sort for you?
She said on the phone, she asked yet again about art and therapy. He said in a fit of pique, as he had done to a journalist a mere month ago, “NO!” Therapy, therapy is vomiting things up. Art is about eating your own vomit.” There’s a therapeutic aspect to all making, but the nature of working is to compress, condense, and shape stuff, not to just expunge it. It’s not just an exorcism.

I hadn’t thought of it that way — therapy as vomiting.
I hadn’t either, until I snarled at someone asking me about therapy one time too many! I didn’t mean to give you a hard time. You asked about the meta, self-conscious awareness thing — I just went into an inner monologue, that’s all!

The Bandana Republic is the first literary anthology written by gang members (current and former).

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