Here is the full transcript of Liana Finck’s talk titled “Life Is Hard. Art Helps” at TED conference.
In her talk “Life Is Hard. Art Helps,” Liana Finck explores the complexities of life and her personal experiences, using art as a means of understanding and coping. She discusses her career as a cartoonist for The New Yorker, initially creating light, quirky cartoons, then transitioning to more personal and autobiographical work following a breakup.
Finck also delves into the challenges of everyday life, from mundane decisions to broader existential questions. A significant portion of her talk is dedicated to her unique interpretation of the Book of Genesis in a graphic novel, where she reimagines God as a less confident, introspective female figure. This creative process helps Finck connect with her religion and find a sense of belonging, using art as a tool to navigate and make sense of life’s difficulties.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Understanding Life’s Complexities
The ways of the world often baffle me. I sometimes wonder if I missed the memo about the most basic things. What are you supposed to make for dinner? What do you talk about in an elevator? Why do people cut in line? How do you leave a dinner party without being rude? Or do you leave it all? “Why are you still here?” My tendency to see the world, my tendency to see the world like I’m from outer space, was a bit of a liability when I was a kid. True story. [“What’s a noogie?”]
But it’s been helpful in my career. I’m a cartoonist. When I first started making cartoons for The New Yorker about a decade ago, I kept my ideas light and quirky. And please shout out if you don’t get any of them, I’ll explain. “The synchronized swim team quits.” I didn’t draw anything too personal. “Unicorns do exist!” I mean, personal for someone. I figured I was too specific, too hard to relate to and read, possibly, too female. It took a breakup. “I know there would be a time I could wear them without destroying my feet.”
Drawing from My Life
It took a breakup to get me to start drawing more autobiographically. The pain I was feeling, although objectively pretty run of the mill, was impossible to ignore. “Tunnel of love.” I knew that drawing was my strongest problem-solving tool. So I decided to diagram what I was going through. “Tunnel of love. Just kidding. Wall of death.” By making these drawings, I could see how my ex and I had hurt each other. And move on. Onto other breakups. “Again?” Pit of despair.
Drawing from my own life was a revelation to me, not only because it helped me understand myself better, but because it made me see for the first time that people could relate to me. Now that I had this amazing tool, there were so many problems I wanted to solve with it. The problem of scheduling. “Work | Family / Friends.” The problem of too many things happening all at the same time. “I’m having a birthday party! I’m visiting New York!” The problem, relatedly, of time. “Childhood / now.” And finally, dating again.
My Problem with God
There are, of course, problems that can’t be summed up in a single drawing. For these problems, you need many drawings. One more complex problem I have is with God. I’m Jewish, so I’m talking about the God of the Old Testament. My problem with God isn’t actually a big problem. It’s just, I don’t know, it’s stayed with me. My problem with God is that he’s too confident. Creation. For me, creation is an act of solving problems, of figuring things out.
God already seems to have everything figured out. He strikes me as more of a king than a creator. And I’m not sure you can be both. As an experiment, I decided to remake the Book of Genesis as a graphic novel.
Graphic Novel
My version of God is not confident. And maybe not coincidentally, she’s a woman. It surprised me how few changes I needed to make to the original text, which is sparse and ancient and lends itself well to interpretation. For example, the Bible opens in this mysterious, moody way with God floating aimlessly on the face of a dark, mysterious void. In my version, I have her floating this way because she’s feeling despondent about her limitations as an artist.
She’s made this messy, wet, mixed up dark first drafts of the world, and she just doesn’t know where to go from here. My version of God doesn’t know exactly what she’s doing, but she draws a horizon line, and things start to fall into place. God. She banishes Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, not because they disobeyed her, but because, by eating the apple and becoming wise, she feels they have outgrown the world she created for them, and she needs to let them go.
Conclusion
She scatters the builders of the Tower of Babel, not because she’s threatened by their power, but because, like any introvert, she needs her privacy. When she destroys the world in the story of Noah, it’s not because she’s incensed with mankind, but because she’s incensed with herself. She knows she could have done a better job when she made us. My adaptation of the Book of Genesis is a creation story full of false starts and absurdities. But it’s a creation story all the same.
One in which a self-conscious woman, even though she worries and makes mistakes, is nonetheless a successful, committed artist. When I finished my book, I did feel a new connection to the God of the Torah and a new sense of belonging to my religion. I also felt a new sense of belonging, period. It’s lonely being someone who has no idea how to act normal. But it’s profoundly less lonely being that person in a world created for her by an equally awkward, self-conscious God.
These days, when I worry that I won’t know what to make for dinner, I remind myself that God wouldn’t know either.