(no subject)
I’m in my room, looking for a sketchbook with some empty pages. I know I have some old sketchbooks up here somewhere, and I grab two hefty spiral-bound books off the shelf. Curious about what I have sketched in there before, I sit down cross-legged on the floor and open them up one by one. One is from art class in junior high; the other is from even before that. My old drawings are atrocious. How could anyone have seen such budding artistic talent in them? My inherent laziness shows up even then; if not forced to discipline myself, I have always just drawn what has come easiest to me. There are dozens of imagined faces, eyes, and women in strange dresses with beads in their hair. Fantastic animals, witty trees with names like the “Chocolate Tree” and the “White Board Tree” flanked on either side by the “Dry Erase Marker Tree” and the “Eraser Tree” undoing on the first what the second had created. A perspective drawing is spare; a ball bounces off a sidewalk as shown by elementary bounce lines, and a child’s assumedly plaintive voice cries from within, “Mommy, my ball has bounced away…” Teachers had always said that I had so much promise; where were they getting this from?
I turn pages and pages and it’s all the same. I’m disappointed in my past self, remembering how I had proudly showed off my sketches and my wit-“Look! The Marker Tree is drawing on the White Board Tree and the Eraser Tree is erasing it!”-I’m extrapolating that the affirmation I had gotten must have been disinterested and forced.
There’s a blank page and then a full page sketch, done boldly in dark pencil. A whole heart is bursting out of a chasm, energy and heat radiating from it in intrepid squiggles; the cliffs jaggedly thrown down with a confidence I know I cannot recreate. There are no erasures. Every mark was made swiftly, without foresight. “Wholeness in the Chasm,” the piece is entitled. 5/14/02 - AY. My senior year of high school. I turn the page to a roiling confession. It is the counterpart to the drawing before it: a melting heart fractured into three, its contours and jagged edges shaded technically; pregnant raindrops fall from a scribbled sky and run down its broken sides; a flower grows out of a rock and gracefully hangs its head and weeps; a bird sits on a long branch, alone: “A BROKEN HEARTED DALI - 5/14/02 AY,” it is inscribed. If I die, I would like to be known by this work. Awed, I turn the page to a self-portrait. I’m slouched in my computer chair, sketching myself in the mirrored closet doors. Scrawled across the top: “The true meaning of sadness.” Following it are two studies: “THE FLOWER THAT WEEPS” and the bird sitting on its long branch, entitled “LONELINESS.” All dated 5/14/02.
“Damn! I was depressed.” I am alone so I let the exclamation escape out loud. I turn back and study my drawings: bold pencil strokes. No erasures. I know this confidence. This is the concentration; no-this is the fever and single-mindedness of the affliction. Unfocused upon all else, the eye claws into the blank cream whiteness and directs the hand to create. There is no hesitation; there is no premeditation; my hand knows where every stroke should go and my mind realizes it afterwards. I know this type of drawing. Five years later, the same energy has emerged again. I enter into a uncontrollable trance of self-loathing and blankness and when I emerge, I fix the details. Without my affliction, there is no madness; without the madness there cannot be art.
I am still no artist. But will this be the first to go?
I turn pages and pages and it’s all the same. I’m disappointed in my past self, remembering how I had proudly showed off my sketches and my wit-“Look! The Marker Tree is drawing on the White Board Tree and the Eraser Tree is erasing it!”-I’m extrapolating that the affirmation I had gotten must have been disinterested and forced.
There’s a blank page and then a full page sketch, done boldly in dark pencil. A whole heart is bursting out of a chasm, energy and heat radiating from it in intrepid squiggles; the cliffs jaggedly thrown down with a confidence I know I cannot recreate. There are no erasures. Every mark was made swiftly, without foresight. “Wholeness in the Chasm,” the piece is entitled. 5/14/02 - AY. My senior year of high school. I turn the page to a roiling confession. It is the counterpart to the drawing before it: a melting heart fractured into three, its contours and jagged edges shaded technically; pregnant raindrops fall from a scribbled sky and run down its broken sides; a flower grows out of a rock and gracefully hangs its head and weeps; a bird sits on a long branch, alone: “A BROKEN HEARTED DALI - 5/14/02 AY,” it is inscribed. If I die, I would like to be known by this work. Awed, I turn the page to a self-portrait. I’m slouched in my computer chair, sketching myself in the mirrored closet doors. Scrawled across the top: “The true meaning of sadness.” Following it are two studies: “THE FLOWER THAT WEEPS” and the bird sitting on its long branch, entitled “LONELINESS.” All dated 5/14/02.
“Damn! I was depressed.” I am alone so I let the exclamation escape out loud. I turn back and study my drawings: bold pencil strokes. No erasures. I know this confidence. This is the concentration; no-this is the fever and single-mindedness of the affliction. Unfocused upon all else, the eye claws into the blank cream whiteness and directs the hand to create. There is no hesitation; there is no premeditation; my hand knows where every stroke should go and my mind realizes it afterwards. I know this type of drawing. Five years later, the same energy has emerged again. I enter into a uncontrollable trance of self-loathing and blankness and when I emerge, I fix the details. Without my affliction, there is no madness; without the madness there cannot be art.
I am still no artist. But will this be the first to go?