Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2022 January 12 • Wednesday

"Every single day I want to drop out. I think about it in the morning when I get up, and throughout the day, while I'm in class. Nothing I'm learning will feed me. My friend with a Masters in English works at Starbucks. Even if I get a job in my field, it's almost impossible to survive without another job. Like, at Starbucks."

This is an expression of a depressingly common situation. What would you do with those words? Just on their own, they tell a story clearly and succintly.

If you're Caroline Cash, you make this one of many true to life scenes in a book called Girl in the World, which brilliantly fuses a boots on the ground realist perspective of a young person in a big city with a veritable riot of colors and shapes that make something magical and hallucinatory out of quotidian speech and action.

And here's how that straightforward speech from above is rendered in Cash's extraordinary visual language.

It's hard to say what's more impressive. Is it the use of color? Is it the facial expressions? The subtle emphasis created by the shifting of composition? The silent panel that creates the space for the last line?

And this is one of the calmer pages. In general things are much wilder. Consider this example, how Cash uses a whole page for six words of dialogue and a simple action.

You can open to any page and marvel at what Cash does with the medium itself. Her approach to layout and use of color are new, exciting and brilliant. And she makes it seem effortless, a big hint that we're looking at something truly great.

By all means get your hands on one of these. I recommend the Chicago Quimby's, where you're likely to find a signed copy.