What I got from visiting the St. Nicholas' Kirk Graveyard

By visiting places on Thursday, I gathered a few emotional links. We covered the Tunnels, covered in another post, and we visited the St Nicholas' Kirk graveyard, as well as the old train station at Cult, near Gray's School of Art. This post post illustrated what I got out of the visits.

The first emotional link I got in the graveyard was linked to the story of the prisoner forgotten in the basement when the church use to be a prison/church hybrid.


Yes, I have a horribly dark sense of humour. When told this story, I had to hold my laughter back by respect for the others. I don't have much respect for the dead... they're dead, I don't think they need anything. We kept on talking about burials and respect for the dead (see sentence before to have my point of view) and all I could think of was this:


I think what I got out of the visit in the graveyard is that every day life is funny. If you don't think it's funny, you're not looking hard enough. Everyday has so much to teach us and nothing is more real that daily lives. Isn't everyone sick of going to see the new Spiderman movie or the latest Superman, or massacred Alan Moore movies (save The Watchmen, that's a great adapatation)? What I'm trying to say is that I want to try to make the Scottish Splendor (see American Splendor by Harvey Pekar). The medium the most adapted to simple life comics is a light detached medium: comic books. Television is too real and so is written text. We are so use to seeing the news on television or reading tragedies in the newspaper, that the medium of comic books seems to be the lightest one there. Even comic books like Marjane Sartrapi's Persepolis contains light comedy sweetening the harsh depressing reality for the readers.

Harvey Pekar, has worked on bringing more of the truth to the comic book medium in Macedonia, with Heather Roberson and Ed Piskor. He adapted in comic book form the real life adventures of Heather Robertson's journalism work in Macedonia. When one does have a look at this epic tail (Link to Amazon's inside peak of the book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/reader/0345498992/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link) one can see that the comic book medium has a way of being detached from the harsh truth, and gives the reader the impression to be involved in a more exclusive world, Harvey Pekar belonging to the "underground" comic book world. I need to read Macedonia...