Just wanted to highlight and/or revisit this idea from Faulkner’s brain in relation to Bayou. I think the notion that we talked about in class, as the past being a constantly hanging thing, always present and reoccurring, influencing the present and the future is a pretty truthful and complex idea. The fact that a comic in the 2000’s can revisit the planes of the past and make them bright again is a baffling kind of idea to think about. This occurrence of the old rekindling in the form of the new seems to back up Faulkner’s words pretty seamlessly. By taking the recent past (recency depending upon perspective) and shaping something new, “the past is never dead, it’s not even past” holds true. But I’m rambling right now. What I mean is, this notion of creating new from old ideas, ways, existences etc. in terms of time backs up Faulkner’s words in a metaphorical sense: that is, it’s not even past as the “past” representative of time or an idea of time as humans know it. However, if we read Faulkner’s statement more literally, time becomes less important. If we read: “it’s not even past” as “it’s not even itself,” now this statement suggests something about the past being something else entirely, or not entirely.
So if the past is not the past as we know it in terms of just what happened before now, the wtf is it? Your guess is as good as mine. But I guess that maybe it is Bayou that is this “otherly” sort of past. The past is never dead. Yeah okay, we understand, Maus brings back Holocaust, Fun home brings back Bechdels childhood, Bayou brings back the racist South. But do they really bring them back? Or are they bringing back something else? Maybe, I dunno, whatevs. poop