Dear Reader,
Giulietta Carrelli, founder of Trouble Coffee, is a kindred spirit of mine not just because we both make toast but because we both have built our own meanings and lives around a simple structure that holds us together and keeps us alive. Her toast story is being shared with the world in a recent episode of This American Life.
The stories I’m sharing are raw and imperfect tales meant to be a dedication to the strangers and friends that have helped me become confident to scribble, write and live my own toast story.
We all have the possibility to transform our own selves and others with our mindsets, attitudes and actions. When you have nothing to lose and have a little hope I think you can do amazing things. When you gain even a little bit of privilege or luck you have the ability to set yourself and others free from suffering.
You’ll notice that I’m not talking about big things that change the world but instead the little things you can do to change yourself and your community. Little things can be Giuleitta’s story of inventing something like Trouble Coffee to battle her mental illness or my story of building a Toastalier (A chandelier made out of bread with real electricit lights) for the Tartine Bakery. It de-lighted people and hopefully added a sense of wonder to their every day life.
The challenge: how do you begin to make the time for personal growth when life is crushing you down?
You don’t make the time: you find it.
You don’t have the skills: you learn them.
You don’t have the resources: you invent them.
This is my story how I used toast as a way to become who I wanted to always be: a compassionate and imperfect human that wants to reduce the suffering of others and myself with simple acts of kindness and the gift of drawing toast.
What is your story and structure that you’ll build in your life? I’ve outlined some lessons I’ve learned to help you find your own. This is mine and yours.
— Karl Dotter, Cartoonist & Designer, San Francisco, CA, March 30, 2014
1. Prepare a bit, then stumble & discover what it means to you.
Giulietta Carrelli, who I don’t know personally, started selling toast in San Francisco in 2005 with intentions of personal survival and helping others. There are many articles about the confusing toast trend that has been sweeping America recently but I believe that none of them have been as meaningful as Carrelli’s. Her’s hits close to home but her toast story has been washed out by the topic of our ever changing economy and wealth disparity in San Francisco and other major cities. The human conversation that she had with This American Life made me want to share to you why I draw toast. I sure wasn’t the first person to do this simple habit of drawing toast (and it doesn’t even look like real toast anymore). I don’t have a bakery or a coffee shop, but maybe I’m the storyteller to deliver this message to you about the meaning of toast to me and how it relates to you.
2. Bee yourself. (even if you’re not lucky and can’t afford it)
There were no toast drawings for me in 2005 or before that. I started drawing comics in the early 1980's as a kid after learning and copying Peanuts Sunday strips and some of my favorite New Yorker comics my dad would give me. I’d eventually drop the drawing habit in my everyday life with no real good reason except becoming a teenager. How does anyone stop so fast at something they love? It seems like some of the best work we do as kids is in the margins of our homework. Take a look at where you started something and you’ll find an on old idea, character or doodle in the trash. I learned very early on that the best ideas are found in the trash.
Side story: Mr. Tharp taught me the value of dumpster diving for ideas.
Hat tip to my first design mentor, Rick Tharp. He looked at my art & design portfolio when I was in high school and told me about to “keep going” and “don’t rely too heavily on computers” for my ideas. He told me a story about looking at what people throw away in the trash can as the best ideas.
Back to the main story: A country mouse becomes a San Francisco city mouse.
Fast forward a bit and I began finding moderate success as a interaction designer after growing up in sleepy Los Gatos, mountain’y Santa Cruz and the valley of hearts delight filled mini-city of San Jose. After dropping out og college and getting a fulltime job I decided to move to San Francisco in 2006 when I was 26 years old. You see, I was a recovering starving artist and a late bloomer college drop out: I had nothing to lose but I also had no time, except for the commute on the train and back. It was the first full time job after years of being under-paid and never creating my own home or point of view. I finally could afford a small apartment to make my own damn house as Carrelli puts it with Trouble Coffee. I found an apartment that I could be myself in 2006 era San Francisco that I wouldn’t be able to afford in 2014 era San Francisco.
Don’t live in San Francisco right now or back in 2006? Here’s some context: We can thank the economy for bringing new art and artists into the city at the time. This is when it happens and what is happening in other cities now, not San Francisco in 2014. The downturn for the economy back then was the upturn for arts and culture: That’s just the truthful toast speaking. We should change that fact with more affordable housing for artists, students, elderly, disabled and anyone else who is struggling to live where they want to in this world. The earth is a small place to share. Why do we encourage suffering for people who want to be themselves and thrive to support positive communities that help generate a different kind of wealth and happiness? This isn’t about #technology versus #art. This is about people.
Crumbled — March 19, 2007
Less than a few months later in 2007 my newly house-warmed space was destroyed by a famous graffiti artist — the one who writes the word PEZ all over the city. This accidental fire started in his 3 floor apartment in my building on Page Street while I was commuting back on a train home from work. I remember calling my girlfriend and asking if we could make dinner at home and she told me about the fire sadly. My reply was calm and humorous, “I guess we’re going out to dinner tonight!” An hour later when I saw the 5-alarm fire scene it felt more real. That fire ended up changing the lives of all the people who lived there: painters, musicians, standup comedians and other artists that I knew lived in the building for super cheap.
The situation was lucky since I didn’t lose too much, but what I did lose was childhood art, clothing and a few precious posters my friends and I had designed. It mostly left me sad but still full of hope. I became homeless for a few months before moving back into the neighborhood many months later. My damage was’t too personal but just enough to help me learn and get tough.
3. Rebuild your house and make something new.
In the year after the fire I started to become confident about letting go of physical artifacts and started fresh with new work. A new job and new space to create meant I could explore and rebuild and grow.
I also started taking the first steps to making my first (un)serious comics and toy design stuff.
One day in 2008 my best friend and I bought a plush toy sandwich made out of sewn felt material that we purchased from a renegade craft faire maker. We made a delightful sewn wallet out of the lettuce and tomato slices and started testing it with friends. It made people smile and laugh so we already thought it was a success. We even had a beta tester list of potential buyers. Even though the dream was a seemingly easy reality to produce it became difficult to keep alive with the reality of friendships that fade and ideas that shine so bright but are just too special and precious to put a bow on and complete when feelings are on the line. The sandwich wallet was forever shelved for someone else to create and that was beautiful to learn how to accept that fact.
Sometimes the best collaborators need to create their own magic individually to keep that spirit going instead of forcing magic to happen. Some of the best ideas I’ve had have never been made, not because I can’t make them but because I’ve moved forward in my life.
And so, the famous sandwich wallet that would have made us the envy of the “tip of the hipster spear” as josie baker put it in the THis American Life piece on toast…..our idea fell apart, but the beauty is that one slice of the felt bread remained. I was left with it staring at me for months. It would look at me with a smile at the end of that experience until I picked it up and started drawing it.
4. Don’t lose the ingredients that got you there.
Later that year I began drawing a small zine based on my experiences and love affair with sandwiches for the 2008 sfzinefest. This was my first ever zine and it made me feel like I could be who I always was in my childhood life for real, a cartoonist with (self) published work.
This little hacked together zine contained a 2 slice love story, Bánh mì sandwich reviews and burnt toast in compromising situations. It was made of a shredded first time mess with kinkos copy paper, scissored rounded corner cuts and most importantly a stapled hand-cut piece of sandwich felt mustard or jelly for readers to put in their pocket and forget about like a piece of lint memories. I gave away the comic out of a suitcase and traded with some great friends that year. I think I didn’t have the courage to give it to more established cartoonists at the time like John Porcellino and Alec Longstreth but I thought about it and later would give them my work.
I had no idea this whole sandwich past would lead me to a meaningful toast cartoonist, installation and performance art future.
In 2010 it led me to co-making a bread chandelier with an amazingly talented industrial designer friend that was photographed in a postage stamp sized photo in the New York Times style section.
Or, I had no idea that I would start dressing up as a toast salesman named Dot at Amnesia and draw toast portraits for free to strangers.
5. Take care of you + friends + family. Make new connections.
These strangers would later become true toast friends that I eventually lived with like Matthew J Harman. Matthew (and Herbie Hatman) encouraged me and supported my behavior to draw at Amnesia and perform my one toast guy act as a toast orchestra that let people bite into a one crunch note sound. I even tried busking the toast orchestra on the street to find that you don’t need a big stage to make people smile.
As longwinded as this may seem these experiences changed the way I communicate with people and share my personal stories to strangers.
Whatever the everyday object in whatever country: a little part of us is inside these objects. Sometimes we fill up a small space with big stories.
I can relate to toast stories. Maybe you can or cannot relate, that’s ok. Maybe you’re gluten intolerant or can’t afford a penny slice of wonder bread and toast is not your thing. A toast story isn’t for everyone that’s what makes it personal and meaningful. That’s what I’m talking about.
Sure, there are many other objects other than toast in this world to explore and reinvent: pick up toys, goods, services, objects and people and connect them with stories: we all have a bit of a sad story inside us. Sometimes that sadness is filled with our hopes, dreams and worries that we share. When do we share it? Well, we share it with a community, friends or family. More publicly, we might be talking to this with a stranger over a beer, coffee or… a slice of toast.
Sometimes we need a prompt to get intimate and share our life stories or we’re just another crazy person talking to the wind. — @k4rl
And so, in summary, I’m not the only toast story, and there isn’t just one slice left. There’s a whole loaf of stories in you and experiences to cut into. Sure, some of use are lucky to have one or two or even three lives in their lifetime…9 lives if you’re lucky.
This American life hit the butter right on the toast with their latest homage to the human story behind crazy trends with a deeper toast story than mine. I love that I can say that making and drawing toast is from my heart and not from a greedy part of my soul that wants to make millions. I think we’d be better humans if we shared our stories — it even might be worth a couple dollars for your troubles to share. Maybe you couldn’t make a living, but imagine that? Getting paid to write and draw? Magic! Try it out.
6. Stories can continue after the visible end. Keep scribbling.
Sure this post is meandering and messy but that is what true stories are. Fundamentally we’re all surviving in this world but why don’t we learn from our mistakes? Maybe it is the people that hide from their shaky scribbles of a life story and origins that will remain perfect and unshaken. Maybe they will never learn from their own story until they tell it.
But not this toast storyteller. I’m a bit odd. I draw my toast like a heart. I like my toast with burnt edges of hope and dreams that look a little wobbly.
This toast is for my heart and yours.
— @k4rl (Dot)
Toast Artist & Human, Written in Toast Heights, San Francisco, March 2014
Thanks for reading ❤ Just so you know, this is the more known true toast story you may have heard about on This American Life NPR:
http://m.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/520/no-place-like-home?act=3
One last idea about (re) inventing ideas and turning them from #usedtouseful. I’m not unique, nor is my story, but it’s really helpful to share this little slice with you.(Thanks @cwodtke for #usedanduseful)
“Your ideas will find their shape if you make them real. It might take short or long bursts of time. If they aren’t thoughtful ideas: you might get lost in toy land, but if you make them for useful and meaningful reasons: you might help others and yourself.” -@karldotter
