A Skeleton Key to CAGLIOSTRO THE GREAT
Drawing Hugh Crane / Cagliostro the Great as both a prisoner and a stage magician was mostly just a straight forward attempt to visually summarize the character as depicted in RAW’s Schrodinger’s Cat Trilogy.
Though as my scribbling progressed I came to notice that this imagery also held personal meaning as a pretty on-the-nose metaphor for how I was feeling with my job as a Graphic Designer & Pre-Press Tech for a direct marketing firm.
It’s a pretty brutal gig in terms of soul crushing drudgery, a pure Rushkoffian nightmare, with constant & unreasonable deadlines, always on call responsibilities, and a pandemic related reduction in staff that saw my department reduced from 4 down to just me.
Though by and large, all of the people at the company, all the way up and down the corporate ladder, are entirely lovely and brilliant people. The people are beautiful, just trapped in the ruthless system of a genuinely tough business.
For the most part the job involves working with really big brands, some of which I’m happy to work with, and others decidedly less so. The credit card companies are the toughest to rationalize, though they’re somewhat balanced out by civil rights groups and some of the better charity organizations.
When rumors began circulating that we might get work from the Trump campaign I panicked and scrapped together an emergency back up plan, just in case they were true. It would have been a reckless and messy exit, but the rationalizations have to end somewhere. The rumors turned out to be untrue, or at least the deal went unsealed.
My back up plan was sincere, but impractical, the beatings continued but morale did not improve…
On particularly bad days I would stay up late applying for jobs somewhere, anywhere else. Though TBH the pure volume of work burned me out pretty good, and with most places still shut down from the pandemic, a feeling of hopeless resignation set in.
When I drew Hugh Crane as a prisoner I was drawing this resignation.
I was trapped, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t still make at least some magic, right?
2 days after I finished my drawing of CAGLIOSTRO THE GREAT – The prisoner, magician, mystic, escape artist, 2 things happened.
We received a project from Trump JR. & I got an email alert that my old teaching position was available.
I used to teach high school computer science in North Philadelphia. The job did not pay well enough to keep me afloat, which is how I ended up where I was.
Before I know what’s what, I’m being offered the same money I’m making at the current gig to return to my teaching position. How can I say no? IDK, bc I didn’t!
Just like that, I give my notice to the once inescapable prison that I’m leaving, and start a new life, closer to the heart.
Cagliostro says 10 people that know what he knows would be very formidable indeed, now I don’t know if I know what he knows, but I’ve just started my second week of teaching 500 7th-12th graders what I know, and that ain’t nothing to sneeze at!
N.B. I don’t think they necessarily mean it as a compliment nor an insult, but there is a strange consensus amongst students, across multiple years, grades and classes, that I remind them of Spider-Man / Peter Parker. They tell me this multiple times a week, not knowing that this is exactly the vibe I’ve been shooting for since I was like 8 years old. My class is a pretty easy A, bc with great power comes great responsibility :)))