is it a fetish?

i'm not sure if there's a connecting fiber that runs through the various creative projects i throw myself into, but when the point was made to me last week by this designer that i'm hoping will be working with me on the "cartoon limbo" book about how i seem to be fascinated with things sort of placed in the background, or things edited out, or subtext, it dawned on me that she might be on to something. in the case of "cartoon limbo," (www.myspace.com/cartoonlimbo) i've put together a book about cartoons, comic art, and illustrations that were turned down for publication, thereby landing in a sort of limbo. sometimes the art gets picked up and published later, but at some point an editor, art director, or person in charge of saying yes or no to an artist's work gave it two thumbs down. with the other non-fiction book i'm working on, "filmserts: film appearing in film," the topic is what the title implies: film that has been placed in another film by presumably a director or writer. for the most part, these bits of film are glanced at for seconds at a time by the characters in the film on a tv set or at the movie theater, then the film moves on. (www.filmserts.com)
when i curated and hosted an exhibit for my good friend karla kuskin a couple of years ago, i was thrilled as we dug through her various files and pulled out art of hers that had been in storage for years that we would include in the exhibit, but what excited me most were her dummies, or raw/rough layouts, of books of hers that got published. here were these quickly-composed illustrations, without refinement and often indicative of her idea, rather than fully-realized or flushed-out, along with, very often, quick scribbles that were meant to represent text and its projected placement in the book. it's these things which fall to the side, often receiving nothing more than a sideways glance, that command my full and undivided attention and fascinate me. in offering some explanation to the designer who had pointed this behavioral trait out to me, it dawned on me that, at least in the case of "filmserts," something was related to the fact that my dad ran a drive-in movie theater that i more or less lived at, at least during the summer months. i would run from car to car, visit with friends and family, make trips to the concession stand, but always the backdrop to these activities was film. often the sound wasn't loud enough to be heard from the various speakers taken from the poles they rested on and placed inside the cars, especially on cool nights when the car windows might be closed, but the image played on and was always in my peripheral vision and a part of my awareness. naturally i would pick up on the films that appeared here and there for seconds in films like "the matrix," in which a few seconds of "night of the lepus" is seen on a television behind a couple of child prodigies playing with gravity-free tumbling blocks. just a smidgen of an otherwise forgettable sci fi flick in this cult-followed classic, but up pricked my ears as i quickly studied and assessed and gave a great deal of thought to it, much like the tossed-aside dummies of karla kuskin's art and the rejected cartoons of the many cartoon greats that have found their way out of limbo and into my upcoming book.