Travis Hedge Coke
There is Nothing Left to Say (On the Invisibles)
3.0
Back and Forth and Back Again: An Introduction
by Elizabeth Vongvisith
When Travis first asked me to write the introduction to There Is Nothing Left To Say (On The Invisibles), I initially panicked a bit, or perhaps more than a bit. I had (and still haven’t) read the comic in question, although I was vaguely aware of its existence. Comics are something I’ve enjoyed for years, but I wouldn’t call myself qualified to write about them in a professional way, and I’m certainly not as well-read as Travis is when it comes to the depth and breadth of the genre. However, they assured me that it would be just fine, maybe even better, if I didn’t know much about The Invisibles. So I sat down to read with a bit of lingering trepidation, but as open a mind as I could muster.
I needn’t have worried. References to various events and characters in the series make sense even if you don’t have any idea what fictional stories or people are being talked about. It probably helps to have at least a passing familiarity with the work in question, but it isn’t a necessity. As I read, I didn’t know what Travis was talking about half the time when it came to this or that character, or what Barbelith is, but the meaning of each essay showed itself to me when I was attentive. I found myself jumping back and forth and back again to pick up some line of thought from several chapters before, and it seemed natural to do so. There isn’t a lot that’s opaque here, unless you’re just skimming the work looking for things to complain about in the usual comic book fan way.
Travis’s own relationship with The Invisibles, as a reader, an observer, and a dreamer, results in a multi-layered interpretation that you are invited to explore alongside them. The underlying heartbeat of this work, no matter what subject is being discussed otherwise (liminality in person, time or place, social justice, self-reflection, identity and lack thereof) is transformation. That The Invisibles is a transformative work, in the sense that it was intended to have the power to transform its readers, is pretty much common knowledge by now, given how long the comic has been around and the reputation of its author. It’s still surprising to see this play out in such a way that just hearing about it second-hand can give that impression to a reader.
There are different kinds of magic. There’s the illusionary kind of rabbits from hats and sawn-in-two lovely assistants. There’s the formal kind that Aleister Crowley, Israel Regardie, Gerald Gardner and other luminaries of the twentieth century wrote and often argued about. There’s the traditional sort done in darkness: a candle and a knife, a whispered curse or prayer powering the desperate quest to right a wrong or win a battle. There’s the indescribable magic of creation and destruction, music and art, love and war. However, all magic, regardless of how it’s shaped or presented, is transformative. Some of the deepest magic, the kind that etches one’s soul with purpose, can take years to produce effects, percolating its changes through one’s psychic bedrock, opening deep caverns and producing clear springs where none existed before.
This is the kind of magic that a deeply, personally significant thing like a comic or a book or a film can do to a person, even given changes in oneself due to time, circumstances, age and acquired wisdom. Travis makes this more or less obvious in the way they talk about how The Invisibles has shaped and un-shaped their life. But there’s the other kind of magic here, too – this book has several sections of exercises which are deceptively simple and perhaps pointless-seeming on the surface, but not if you’ve been paying attention all along. What is unsaid in There Is Nothing Left To Say is that art (and thus, reality) doesn’t just lie in the hands of the creator, but finds its ultimate fulfillment in the person who takes what is offered and makes it real enough to inhabit their own interior caverns and to drink from those springs that open up with the magic of transformation, and that this gift can be passed along to others who may not have ever thought of things in that way.
If you’re looking for handy instructions for love spells or finding winning lotto numbers, you’re better off looking elsewhere. However, if you are in the business of change – if you’re in the business of magic – then you could do far worse than read There Is Nothing Left To Say. It’s part narrative recollection and part magical tome, grounded in the things one can immediately take away from reading the comic, and unraveling what weight each character, each symbolic mask of the self (or someone else) might carry in the context of both the story and the “real” world we inhabit. As we all know, however, reality is subjective. The world of The Invisibles as Travis experiences it might mesh well or not at all well with yours, but there’s no way to be sure until and unless you give it a chance. This book is a good place to start, because it’s really not (just) about the comic itself. There is, after all, nothing left to say about The Invisibles.
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NEXT: Batman!
And previously…
- Prologue/Series Bible
- Chapter One: I Was a Librarian’s Assistant (Pt. 1)
- Chapter Two: I Was a Librarian’s Assistant (Pt. 2)
- Chapter Three: Robin Roundabout
- Chapter Four: How Did Helga Get in Here?
- Chapter Five: Boy Our Embarrassment
- Chapter Six: Once I Was a Little Light
- Chapter Seven: Sacrificial Greed
- Chapter Eight: Dreams Like This
- Chapter Nine: Whose to Tell
- Chapter Ten: The Dead Weight
- Chapter Eleven: Non-Causal Time
- Chapter Twelve: The Fanfic of the Book of the Movie
Nothing in There is Nothing Left to Say (On The Invisibles) is guaranteed factually correct, in part or in toto, nor aroused or recommended as ethically or metaphysically sound, and the same is true of the following recommendations we hope will nonetheless be illuminating to you, our most discriminating audience.