Jean Giraud-Mœbius ~ 1938-2012

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The word “Chaos” symbolizes entropy, but also rebirth. Entropy, for an artist, is the slow, creeping encroachment of age, the passing of years which diminish one’s talent. History tends to show that almost no artist ever realizes that such a thing is happening to him. They blame their loss of form to the increased pressure of deadlines, etc.

In my case, what guides my life is the concept of joy. If the joy I feel when I draw remains as strong and vibrant as it is today, I will keep drawing, even if everyone else notices that I am no longer at my best. I would like to keep drawing until the very end. Like Milton Caniff, I would prefer to die with a brush in my hand. I understand that he was doing a lot less work, and even had assistants, but what he was drawing remained beautiful, because you always felt his passion.

All my striving to find a healthy lifestyle is aimed at never finding myself in a situation where I become mentally or physically impaired, where I would lose my abilities. I want to remain clear minded and in good shape until the end. Even if I stop publishing my work, I still want to be able to draw a beautiful figure, elegant and with a sure hand, until the day I die.

As simplistic as it might sound, I could never forget when I last saw my grandfather, after he had lost all his strength, virtually overnight. I loved him dearly, because he had raised me a good part of my childhood. Yet like most children, I felt I had something to prove to him. I was eagerly awaiting to grow up to be able to confront him man to man as it were, and settle the accounts. When it finally happened, I found that he had, quite figuratively, melted away. He, who was so strong, so powerful, had become a wrinkled old man, full of smiles and gentleness. It was a horrible shock for me. My first confrontation with the effects of age. I then told myself that if I knew people who were waiting to grow up to confront me, I didn’t want them to experience the same thing with me! I don’t want to end up like the character of Don Diego in Coneille’s tragedy, El Cid, to be left in peace and ignored just because I’m physically diminished. In Castaneda’s works, Don Juan explains that one meets four successive foes on the path to enlightenment. They are fear, power, knowledge, and, finally, senility. It is pointless to defeat the first three if you are going to be overcome by the fourth! So I try to program myself to not ever be defeated by senility. Again, to quote from Castaneda, Don Juan says, “I am invulnerable; no one can kill me.” Castaneda then remarks, “but if someone was to ambush you from behind a rock and he had a rifle, then he could kill you.” Don Juan laughs and replies, “No, because no one will ambush me from behind a rock with a rifle!” By saying this so seriously, and believing in it, Don Juan is indeed programming himself so that this event does not happen.

Of course, it is not easy to live that way. You have to make painful choices between immediate pleasure and hypothetical, future ones. It is the same when you want to become physically fit. First, you must do all sorts of painful exercises for a long time. It is a rather disturbing system of thought which, in effect, states that the only way to reach fulfillment is through pain and suffering. The same observation applies to an artist as well as our planet itself. If we truly wanted to make the Earth a better and healthier place, we would all have to abandon many of the comforts and wealth we’ve grown accustomed to. But since we don’t want to suffer today, we’ll suffer more tomorrow.

I know that, one day, I will have to face the situation where I’ll stop drawing for good, and I am working at learning how to live with such a concept. But if, or when, I do it, it won’t be because my hand will be too shaky to hold a pen. Maybe it will be because I won’t find as much joy in the act of drawing, or because I’ll have found greater joys.

-Mœbius 1989 

(preface to Chaos, by Epic Comics 1991)