When I was in college at UCSB, I spent a lot of time in the Scholar's Lounge (I was a member of the Scholars Program), reading or messing around with art materials or writing. I had developed my own technique for painting with psychedelic polychrome paints of the sort which young children are given to do finger-painting, except that these also fluoresced under blacklights; I would dip the brush in one pot after another of the different colored paints, and then drop the resultant multicolored blob onto the paper, after which I'd do it all over again. This was for the background of whatever I was working on. In the foreground, I'd make these large, brightly colored cartoon characters and things, and they stood out against that wildly chaotic background like Godzilla on the streets of New York. I was very lonely and unhappy then, and working on these strange paintings of mine was one way to concentrate on something other than my own distress. I was in the middle of doing one of those paintings when this tall, thin, bearded student walked up to me, looked at what I was doing, and said in this voice like he was half-angry, half-astonished, "You're a fuckin' genius, you know that? You're a fuckin' genius!" That was the most wonderful and most badly-needed compliment I'd ever received. I honestly think it kept me from committing suicide, something I was on the border of at the time.