sketches

[libellum]

When I drew Fergus and liriselei in Oxford the other weekend, it was because I was very drunk, and because I was very drunk I gave the sketches to them without looking at them again. I regretted this later: I do draw quite a lot, but on the backs of envelopes or lecture notes, or on my skin, or I give them away, and so I have remarkably little to show for

Comments

[liriselei]

because I was very drunk I gave the sketches to them without looking at them again. I regretted this later

out of curiosity, why the regret ?
i can return the sketch of me if it would help ?

[libellum]

it was more of a "damn, I finally get around to drawing something and I didn't keep it again!" Mainly, I'm motivated by the fact that at some point I want to put all my art online so people can actually see it (I've even bought the domain, but so far all that's on it are these images and no title page) and I might be able to make some money. So you don't need to give it back :) If you ever find the time to scan it that'd be cool, but it's only a tiny thing and really won't make much difference in the long run.

Are you going to be in Oxford on the 10th-11th? I have Things to talk to you about and I want to do it in person rather than email.

[liriselei]

So you don't need to give it back

i'm glad, i like it :)
will see if i can find someone to scan it in.

Are you going to be in Oxford on the 10th-11th?

indeed i am ! i very rarely leave the place.

I have Things to talk to you about and I want to do it in person rather than email.

eep ! capitalisation always worries me...
do i get a hint to set my mind at rest, or must i wait on tenterhooks till then ?

[libellum]

if you can't, like I said, don't worry about it. I can always do another one next time I see you!

It may indirectly relate to my solstice plans. My magic is going in a direction I have very little experience of, and something Helen mentioned to me gave me the idea that you'd be a good person to ask. I was talking to romauld about it this evening and he agreed that you'd probably be a useful person to sound ideas off. If that would be okay?

[liriselei]

If that would be okay?

of course, i'd be delighted ! not sure how usefully i'll be able to answer ( mine runs very much on instinct and shapes and colours and emotions ( which are also shapes ) ) but am happy to try.
< starts humming Idlewild... >

[romauld]

Emotions map to colours and/or smells rather than shapes, with me... Interesting.

[libellum]

for me emotions are colours and three-dimensional internal patterns, often accompanied by sound. I don't map anything onto smells apart from memories, which is why they have so great an impact on me in real life, I guess.

Not that I could transcribe the sounds emotions are. Love has a heart-beat quality to it; anger has violins in. There are some emotions I don't know the words for in English, but for me they're utterly expressed by their sounds.

[liriselei]

my emotions do have aspects of colourness and brightness to them as well, but for me the shapeness is the main thing - and they're very much shapes in motion, as much (if not more) shapes in time as shapes in the space around me, often with a sensation of expansion or contraction, either internal or external (or a mix of the two) depending on the emotion - i think that's one of the reasons i like dancing so much, in a way it's about my body trying to emulate some of the shapes my emotions make.

i enjoy smells in the moment but don't tend to map them much to anything, except the smells of people i'm close to (which map to those people).

as for sound, that's another thing altogether, related to emotions but in my case very much tied up with the animalistic / animistic / totemic side of things.

[libellum]

are you synaesthetic at all? from these descriptions you do the multi-sensory perception *far* more than I do; it's an association for me, rather than something that's a part of the actual experience.

[liriselei]

are you synaesthetic at all?

not directly - i'm fairly sure i always receive external sensory stimuli as what they are, but in some cases (especially with music) the stimuli arouse emotional responses which create other sense impressions, so it's almost (albeit indirectly) as if most music comes in shapes and motions as well as sound.

it's only internal stimuli (emotion, pain, tiredness, et cetera) which i tend to visualise or perceptually manifest, and even then it's merely in a quasi-real sense - for example, an oneiric knowing that something is blue without actually seeing the blueness except in my mind's eye.

from these descriptions you do the multi-sensory perception *far* more than I doit's very much something that's developed over time, as far as i remember i never used to do it much at all but as i've increased my capacity for visualisation it's something i've become more and more aware of

[libellum]

tangentally: on the subject of synaesthesia my parents were telling me about Daniel Tammet, a savant who perceives numbers as textures and shapes and sounds. Each number from one to about 8 500 has its own multisensory shape. And when you relate two numbers to each other, like putting one to the power of another or multiplying them or anything, they rotate around each other and fit together to create a new shape. And he reads that shape and knows the answer. I think that's really beautiful. There's an article about him here.