Navied Mahdavian

So one was going to dialysis with my dad.

He's slowly dying of kidney failure.

And then for my grandmother, it was focusing on her hands.

one of my earliest memories is of her hands.

And I think that, um,

when we're trying to dodge grief, like not deal with our grief, we tend to caricature the person that we've lost.

And cartoonings allowed me to like focus on certain details, which then I think opens up into like this complex person and to my complicated relationship with them.

So like with my grandmother, like focusing on her hands was just this like focal point.

because there's so much that I could have written about her.

But like focusing on that allowed me to sort of explore certain memories that were related to that and to also keep it in this very personal realm because my grandmother's not here.

So I'm like in some ways like speaking for her and on her behalf, but keeping it firmly rooted in my experience of her, if that makes sense.

Totally, because, and particularly with, with comics, I tend to think of it as, like, I have, like, these number of panels in order to express this, like, very big experience.

And so that allowed me to.

Yeah, I guess just to focus in on this one specific thing and this expression of my love for my grandmother, because otherwise, I mean, there's just like so much that you could explore.

So you're using vibration to deal with pain.

What is the hardest part of that?

You're making cartoons.

My little doodles, as people love to say.

Yeah, so another commonality, the fear of rejection and not being taken seriously.

Thank you for having this conversation.