Reflections on Being Drawn

Lately I have been making a little extra money modeling for a drawing class. Four women and one man—all in or past their fifties—make up the class, which is taught by a local portrait artist (who is also my landlord’s sister, hence the job). The sessions take place in a small rural cabin built for precisely this use: the room lacks utilities and is barely heated, but huge glass panes installed on the roof let in beautiful light from the north. I was surprised how difficult it is to sit completely still for twenty-minute intervals, especially early in the morning and while recovering from a cold. Even more surprising was how much I was able to learn about art by allowing strangers to draw me.

I’ve never been able to draw. My mom would disagree with me about this, reminding me that as a kid I enthusiastically produced dozens of the cute, colorful sketch drawings of bugs and cartoon characters and imaginary creatures that kids love to make. And in my early twenties, inspired by the artistic personalities I often found myself surrounded by, I would occasionally scratch little doodles into a journal or in the margins of letters I would mail to friends. But the idea of transforming the contours of reality into images on a page always seemed downright impossible, and the fact that anyone could do it at all struck me as a mystery and a miracle roughly on par with the resurrection of Christ or the invention of language.

So during these sessions, I made an effort to listen. I was fascinated by what I heard. Drawing from life is thrilling because it has nothing to do with imagination: your task is to dutifully record the world of appearances onto a sheet of paper, using only your eyes, hands, and a set of rather rudimentary tools (charcoal, pastels, brushes, chamois, an easel, etc.). You become a kind of conduit, the catalyst by which a moment (or a small, limited collection of moments) is made permanent. Your duty is to closely observe reality—my face, the light falling on it, the point where my face becomes my cheek, the line of my mouth, and so on—to recreate it in static form. And to do this, you must see.

Forgive me this seemingly obvious observation—it’s not as obvious as it might seem. Our sight is regularly clouded by our thought: we try, one could say naturally, to see beyond the merely seen—to capture the essence of what is seen by seeing through the world of appearances. What we think of as sight is, more often than not, a mixture of sight and thought with no clear indication where one ends and the other begins. When we look at a person, we try to gain a sense of their interior dimension—whether that be the content of their emotions at this particular moment, or something deeper and more shrouded such as their soul, personality, or character—by looking for clues on the surface. (This is especially the case when the person in question is a friend or loved one.) A facial expression, a hairstyle choice, the brightness of one’s eyes: all of these things have a double existence, both as a mere appearance and as a clue as to what lies beyond the appearances.

We quite naturally hold the mysterious thing beyond to possess more reality than mere appearances, and we do not typically deal well with subtlety. Ask nearly anyone to draw a picture of a happy woman, for instance, and every image will likely share two qualities: exaggerated feminine features and an exaggerated smile, to ensure that viewers recognize beyond any possible misunderstanding that this is an image of a woman who is happy. It is unlikely, however, that someone so prompted might immediately produce an image of the Mona Lisa, whose wry smile conceals more than it reveals. In creating images, we regularly seek to plainly represent the thing beyond—femininity, happiness—rather than to construct a surface of appearances that subtly hint beyond themselves at what might, with no certainty, exist beneath what is seen.

Drawing from life demands that we remain beholden to reality as it is. If there is a depth beyond this surface—if behind my face there lies a soul, a character—its existence must be somehow revealed in the surface itself. The depth can never be directly represented: it may only be hinted at by subtle clues present in the surface.

In “The Origin of the Work of Art,” Heidegger declares that “All art is essentially poetry” (“Alle Kunst ist in ihrem Wesen Dichtung”). I no longer believe this to be true. Much of our spoken and written discourse reveals the self directly: we regularly and unproblematically communicate our feelings, intentions, beliefs, memories, and so forth. We can, and often do, speak at length about things that cannot be represented in images: love, God, time, space, etc. The relationship between language and thinking is not identical to the relationship between image and thinking. The relationship between surface and depth in poetry is different from that in drawing. Exactly what that difference is, however, will require more thinking. But against Heidegger, I propose the following: all art is either poetry or drawing. And we have yet to fully understand the relationship between the two.

BALCONIES, by Zbigniew Herbert

Balconies I am not a shepherd
a myrtle grove stream and clouds are not for me
banished Arcadian only balconies remain
I must look at the roofs as if they were open sea
where a long complaint of sinking ships is smoking

what is left for me what the cry of mandolins
a short flight and fall to the stony bottom
where one waits among gaping spectators for the tide of eternity
giving in return a bit of blood

this is not what I was waiting for no it isn't youth
to stand with the head in bandages and clasp one's hands
saying foolish heart bird that is shot
stay here at the precipice sweet peas
and nasturtiums are in the green box

the evening wind comes from trimmed gardens
a sea breeze with dandruff on its collar a lame storm
plaster sifts onto the deck a balcony's deck
my head in plaster a remnant of rope like a wisp of hair
I stand in the stony seriousness of senile elements

yes O clock my poison this will be the only journey
a journey by ferry to the other bank of the river
there is no shadow of the sea no shadow of islands
only shadows of those who are dear to us

yes only a journey by ferry only a ferry at the end
O balconies what pain the beggars are singing at the bottom
and their lamentation is joined by a voice
a voice of reconciliation before the journey by ferry

            —forgive me I did not love you enough
            I wasted my youth looking for real gardens
            and real islands in the waves' thunder

thirty communists agree

thirty communists agree
after much deliberation
and spokescouncil meetings
and disputes surrounding
tactics and symbolic action
versus concrete movement
to build a new monument
which will be located at the
exact midpoint on an
imaginary line drawn between
the grave of karl marx and
that of emma goldman which
will consist of a large clenched
bronze fist aimed heavenward
in order to ease certain
historical disagreements
and commemorate the
birth of a new 'tendency'
with a three-letter acronym
and black-and-red logo
involving a circle drawn
around some letter or
something and during the
labor-intensive conceptualization
of this monolith created to
celebrate a landmark
achievement for left-wing
emancipatory political projects
worldwide several million
wives and fathers and
coworkers yawn and stretch
and walk in and out of buildings
and consume cold breakfast
cereal with neutral facial
expressions and are not
affected in any way by
the existence or non-existence
of a giant metallic fist
rising up from the middle
of the dreary northern waters
of the atlantic ocean

I

there once was a time, yes,
when I thought my ass would graft itself to my sofa
and I wouldn't ever stand up again --
I relished the thought of an excuse, I guess,
but really I just watched batman cartoons
swallowed cans of coca-cola
and hoped that one day I would wake up
wipe the sleep from my eyes
and find myself in a two-story house
(you could just tell that at least it was insulated)
where my mother would knit in a comfortable armchair,
my sister and I wouldn't have to share a room,
our cats wouldn't get bitten by raccoons,
and none of us --
the three of us (and the cats I guess) --
would have to fret about our weight
we could just sink into our beds at night
or lay in the bathtub
(there'd be no dirt in the water here)
and be fat and be happy
and grow old
and one by one
fall into the grave

At The Doris Lessing Convention

hidden within portable plastic toilets
aligned carefully in a damp field
squats an indelicate mob
of aging, shitting women

This Is How It Will Happen

(Published in Cavalcade Literary Magazine #3, 2014: www.cavalcadelitmag.com)

This is how it will happen. We will meet sometime mid-day, the sun buried behind layers of low-hanging clouds. A cool breeze will stir the grasses and leaves of unrecognizable trees and whip plastic bags and pieces of litter in amusing little spiraling trajectories. We will be be sitting at a wooden picnic table painted a number of bright colors in no noticeable pattern. To the left (of me – it will be to your right) a sick-looking bush will be planted in a metal garbage can. The dirt will be dry and gray and full of small pebbles and cigarette butts. I will smile and take a number of heavy breaths. This is to show that my brain is processing intense emotions that I am unable to constrain nor express linguistically. I will look at you and smile wordlessly (with one side of my mouth, in that strange way that I do when I am nervous) for five seconds then look wistfully at the words "JUGGALO LOVE" carved into the tabletop. I will say "juggalo love" under my breath in a way that sounds as if I am talking to myself but really I intend for you to hear what I am saying but also to think that I am talking to myself. You will say to me "how was your day." I will say "it was fine." This will be a lie. This exchange will be necessary to open up to the beginning phase of conversation where we will discuss arbitrary pleasantries for approximately 6 minutes. We will ask questions we already know the answers to. We will talk about the weather and decide that it is “strange." We will construct predictions for where our bodies will move to and from in the following hours and possibly days. We will both feel a sense of immanence, the conversation moving toward a particular realm from which we cannot deviate its course. We will think it is becoming "serious." I will say something that I mean and something that I do not mean. I will intend to be provocative. My voice will get slightly louder. I will gesture with my hands in a way that means "I am thinking hard about this." I will not be thinking. I will look in many different directions at assorted colorful or moving objects in my vicinity. You will be doing the same but I will not notice since I will feel unable to look at you except for when I am speaking and then only for seconds at a time after which I will look down at my hands wringing compulsively on the table. You will say something to me and I will only hear 7 words out of 10. I will think hard about what I will say to you next and when you are done speaking I will be shocked by the silence and forget both what I was thinking and what you just said. In an effort to continue the conversation I will repeat something I said earlier in different and more complicated words. I will think about sex. I will say something I do not mean. I will say several more things I do not mean. I will think, "it is impossible to say just what I mean." I will develop a strong desire to read T. S. Eliot or maybe find a way to mention him but will not find a rational way to bring him into the discussion. I will be somewhat frustrated by this and begin to feel tired. I will think "language" and "Wittgenstein." We will say things back and forth to each other. There will be occasional silences. Some will feel awkward and others will not. The silences will grow longer little bits at a time. This will mean that we are both thinking about other things. Our voices will become gradually softer. I will start to take heavy sighing breaths which will mean that I am thinking about standing up and walking away. I will try to think of a logically sound reason to no longer continue talking. I will fail and make something up. This will be another lie. I will feel empty and lonely. I will think "I am hungry" and "..." I will say some things that mean "goodbye." I will stand up and walk away. The garbage will settle on the sidewalk. There will be no sunset.

The Poem I Wanted To Write

The poem I wanted to write was several pages long,
consisting of images of life in the modern city
and how our atomized human experiences
evaporate into a dark, miserable cloud
which rains more misery upon our lowered, sullen heads.

The poem was written in Serbian
by a character I would like to have scripted:
a tall, brooding old man, silent as the moon,
broken and lonely, in a foreign city
whose residents do not speak at all
but spit forth sounds of trauma and heartbreak.

This character would be the protagonist
of the novel I wish I had written:
a novel set in wartime Yugoslavia;
a novel about the depths of bitterness
into which the human heart may sink;
a novel about my degraded, sallow subject,
but mostly about the grinding gears of history
and the mountains of cadavers it produces.

The novel would exist in a series, oh yes,
a five- (or seven-) part cycle,
a collection of colorless, hefty tomes
in which I reveal the secrets of the known universe
in allegorical fables and quixotic aphorisms
with famous quotes from notable philosophers
hidden inside as dialogue between characters;
a cycle of novels which wraps around onto itself
and ends where it began, with no conclusion
and no linearity to speak of
which would baffle experts in hermeneutics
and semiotics
and philology
for decades to come.

The poem I did write
consisted of two simple lines
scrawled in fat, black ink
on the wall of my empty bedroom:
“Please put me to sleep
I no longer wish to feel."