Disembodied and alone

Artwork by Andrew Field 11 August 2023

Comic

Panel 1 of a four-panel comic called "Disembodied and alone'', consisting of thick line drawings on a mottled grey background. Two crudely drawn rectangular maps sit in either corner of the bottom half of hte panel, containing coloured lines representing rivers, trees and terrain. The features are labelled with words, including 'scaffolding trees', 'the river of evaluation', 'discipline canyon' and 'social learning mountains'. A block of hand-written text against a white background at the top the panel says "Another moment of intense dissonance came in school. The professor had asked each of us to draw on a large sheet of paper a map of our values as aspiring teachers."

Panel 2 of a four-panel comic called "Disembodied and alone'', consisting of thick black line drawing on a mottled grey and white background. A rectangle divided into areas by thick black curved lines fills most of the panel. The areas are labelled as: meditation, inner child, joy, listening, spirituality and Krishnamurti. Above the rectangle a block of hand-written text says "When we were done, everyone shared their maps. Mine was the only one without any features of topography." Below the rectangle on the bottom right of the panel is the word "Why?"

Panel 3 of a four-panel comic called "Disembodied and alone'', consisting of thick colour lines and text on a mottled grey background. In the bottom third of the panel are two wavy lines. A very thick blue wavy line snakes across the panel from left to right, and a very thick brown line consisting of two humps cuts across the top of the blue line. A block of hand-written text against a white background fills the top two thirds of the panel. The text says "I drew a disembodied map because I was disembodied. I was all head. Drawing rivers and mountains hadn't even occurred to me."

Panel 4 of a four-panel comic called "Disembodied and alone'', consisting of hand-written black text in a white space surrounded by a mottled grey background. The text says: "And if psychosis cut me off from my own body, it also cut me off from my own history. I was no longer Andrew Field, Jewish, interested in poetry, with two brothers etc. I was a stranger without a history, as if my own autobiography had been swallowed by the illness."

Disembodied and alone. © Andrew Field for Wellcome Collection.

About the artist

Black and white photograph of the head of a young white man with short dark hair and large black-framed glasses. He is smiling and looking into the camera.

Andrew Field

(he/him)

@AndrewField48 on Instagram

Andrew Field is a cartoonist, poet, singer-songwriter and librarian based in Southeast Michigan. He is currently finishing up a graphic novella about living with schizophrenia called ‘The Light-Haunted Museum’, which can be found on his website.

Disembodied and alone

About the artist

Andrew Field

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