Joe embarks on his unhinged fire-juggling skateboard-wielding harmonica-playing freestyle-rapping comic-creating cross-country adventure. See how Joe’s trip concludes in Joe Knows.
Story by Victoria Davila
Illustrations by Paul Raglione
Joe knows. While many students are worrying about the real world with graduation looming in the nearby distance, Joe knows. Joe never had a set-in-stone plan like what many others grasp at, but rather, a blurry watercolor vision of the future that he just knows. And it doesn’t bother him. He skates knowing he might fall. He juggles with fire at the risk he might get burned. He travels the country looking forward to sketchy situations that might arise. He knows without knowing. He’s just Joe, a humble guy with a sweet smile and a big grin ready for the world to take notice.
Although he is anything but average, the twenty-something soul searcher Joe Penner is known around the Eugene hip-hop scene as AVGJOE. As a University of Oregon anthropology and philosophy student, Joe worked with Eugene-based music group Critical Masters of the Universe and made connections with various local DJs and musicians from around the Northwest.
That was the past.
After graduating in spring 2009 and spending the summer in Belize and Guatemala with family, Joe is now on track in his station wagon on a ten-month road trip that can only be described as “creatively coat[ing] the countrywide canvas” on a mission for self-reinvention: to become the Postmodern Comic.
Few people know who they are or who they want to be. But Joe does. And right now, he is transitioning from who he’s been to who he is becoming.
Joe knows that as a budding artist he is a small fish in a big pond to corporate eyes. But he’s looking to make a splash. He looks at his MC name as a challenge and says, “I’ve got to break that image of myself as someone who is just trying to rap, which is where the Postmodern Comic comes in.”
Currently, Joe describes himself as a combination of AVGJOE and the Postmodern Comic. He knows he’s “just another kid from Oregon,” but he’s also trying to do something innovative by bringing his art to the streets of America in ways that have never been thought of before.
Postmoderncomic.com is the home base of the project where Joe is documenting the world around him as often as he has access to a wireless signal and a moment to spare. Putting all his talents together, Joe embodies creativity. He is a “lighthearted spark plug of creative energy,” college friend Ko Tanahashi says.
“Art for me in general is about exploring and manipulating reality,” Joe says. Comics, poetry, videos, music, pictures, and more are added to the site weekly, if not daily.
“I want to come back with something so I can say ‘this is what I did, here it is.’ It’s more than just a blog … it’s something in and of itself,” Joe explains. He even plans on superimposing his comics and music in innovative ways that give “the view of a schizophrenic mind.”
“After going to school for so long and putting energy into all these things I was interested in but weren’t really working on me, I was really excited to put all of that energy into my creativity and expression,” Joe says.
Joe headed out from Eugene in December with one final destination: “Black Rock City,” aka Black Rock Desert, Nevada, to attend the annual Burning Man music festival, a temporary city of tents and stages put up to worship art and music known for changing people’s lives.
Joe has always been confident about his trip. “We will manifest a creative and fun path, accomplishing what we have set out to do even if I cannot accurately describe what that is.” He knows without knowing. He rocks and rhymes with a something-special swagger, but without the “I’m-better-than-you” attitude many MCs acquire.
“Right now there’s a lot pieces and it’s just a process of putting them all together,” Joe said before leaving on his trip.
Now, steering wheel in hand, Joe is on what some have called “a creative cross-country crusade,” Ko says.
“I’m your host, Average Joe,” Joe says to the camera on day one of his trip from behind his thinly framed glasses. A slight scruff is already on his face, a look he has been perfecting over the years.
“I don’t really have an exact idea of the finished product, but that’s kind of also part of it – going on the road to find it, to make it happen, to put all the pieces together,” Joe says between a series of um’s and surprisingly un-awkward pauses.
“When we lived in the dorms Joe always had his stuff [music and art] that he did,” Ko comments, “but I never knew that he was as serious about it as he was until now.”
Money’s not a problem for the journey – Joe worked hard for many months to beef up his savings – but aside from gathering as much Northwest music as possible to share across the continent, Joe had a daunting list of prerequisites: Juggling supplies, fire torches, a music stand, and a swank briefcase were all necessary components for a trip like this.
But what the list lacked was a travel companion. As Joe explains, “the trip is its own entity. This is its own thing. I’m in control of it, but I’m not.”
And so, at his first official stop in Redding, California, to visit Brittni Zacher, a friend and fellow “Burner,” as the Burning Man attendees are warmly called, the trip began to take on a life of its own. Brittni is now Joe’s traveling companion, his Sancho Panza if you will.
“It just so happens that she’s part of it. I could have said no, but the trip said yes that she’s part of it,” Joe says.
Many know the Kerouac and Cassady fantasies of hitting the endless miles of black tar with nothing but what’s in the car, and a final destination point that makes the trip worth it. But unlike most people, Joe has turned that dream into a reality of proportions no one could have imagined.
It was during his summer travels that Joe had the realization. Travelers from all around the world crossed the same paths. Hula-hoopers, jugglers, and general street performers who all entertained and bartered their way from place to place demonstrated the possibility of such a trip.
I remember a lot of them telling me if you have three talents you can go anywhere,” Joe recalls. So he is combining three talents into one outlandish street performance: juggling fire while playing his harmonica and skateboarding.
Juggling is the piece of the act Joe is least experienced in. He has been juggling for a year, and less so with fire. He started the harmonica in high school with the help of his father who handed a young Joe some harmonicas and said, “Find your blues.” And although he has identified himself as a skateboarder since he was five years old, he jokes that he should be better at it with his years of experience.
Conan O’Brien fans got a sneak a peek at Joe practicing his fire juggling while in line for Conan’s last show on January 22. The less-than-one-minute clip can be found on YouTube under “Fire juggler entertains Conan crowd.”
Joe isn’t alone in his love of fire either. Brittni joined his act with her Hula-hooping fire skills. “I believe good energy attracts good energy,” he says.
Some of the good energy Joe has attracted in life includes astronomers, psychologists, rappers, disc jockeys, and other creative souls who have only begun to teach him numerous life lessons on his journey of self- and world-discovery.
A good friend with a PhD in psychology, and “self-proclaimed mystic” once told Joe, “When you become more in tune with reality, coincidence is the rule not the exception.” Joe took this to mean that those little fortunate events that seem random or unplanned can to some extent be controlled or created.
Joe’s venture as a postmodern comic is an example of a planned and unplanned process. Joe started making comics as a way to laugh about real-life situations, but the comic characters have now begun to take on a life of their own. Originally Joe’s goal was to write one comic a day, and the hard part he says is making them funny.
“It’s less creating their personalities than it is discovering them,” says Joe.
Wherever the roads take Joe and Brittni, meeting people is an indispensable part of their trip.
Brittni agrees. “It’s refreshing to know that there are people that are just so caring and sharing even if they don’t have a lot. Whatever they do have they share with you and that’s a unique quality that I think a lot of people don’t have anymore.”
Joe wants to go deeper than the niceties on the surface and interview people from around the U.S. and see what this country really means to them. He believes something needs to change in the world and part of his mission is to figure out what others think about the future of a possible paradigm shift.
“I want to find the future. I really want to find where this future that I feel a lot of people envision, meets the present,” Joe says.
When asked what he would do if no solid career manifests from the madness, Joe replies, “There’s always plan C: go back to the parents’ house and save money until you can go on more adventures.” But with his trademark Joe-knows confidence, he adds, “Just so you know, it won’t come down to that.”
See how Joe’s trip ends.
Editor’s note: His quest for answers and the future continues and can be followed online at Postmoderncomic.com.
