I loved this book and took my time with it. Steadily working through the exercises, I used them to think about books I’ve read, to explore complicated feelings about the death of a family member, and as an ice-breaker at a work conference. What I found was that even when the exercises seem superficial - what do you remember about your day? - they loosen up the contents in the back of the mind and surprising revelations sometimes emerge.
I was especially intrigued to realize that Lynda Barry was influenced by Marion Milner and that the homework exercises in this book are extensions of Milner’s method of connecting with the state of mind she called “image finding,” which brings us “closer in touch with the movement of life.”
For Barry, the homework exercises aren't about getting a certain result. Instead, they’re meant to encourage students in the daily practice of "a certain state of mind, to become present and see where they are and what is around them. To help them notice how memory works, what images haunt them, what their eye is drawn to. This can't be done without daily practice. Without it, this thing I'm talking about will remain unknown."
This thing Barry is talking about is the self beneath logic and reason. It's the deeper self Marion Milner was trying to find once she realized that the needs of the conscious mind often have nothing to do with the true needs that make themselves known through image and metaphor. As she writes in A Life of One’s Own, “happenings of vital importance... had been going on ... just underneath the calm surface of my own mind.”
Lynda Barry's classroom exercises are techniques for dipping underneath the surface of the mind, where the authentic self and authentic artistic expression lay in wait.