The Sounds of Drawing in the Morning

A Confounded letter doing what I do.

  

Grass in the milk, banging pipe and stories from round the times. First hay cut and lying to dry. Swifts high and screaming. Caught churched arches of colour and single lines of light pointedly between the trees. Infinite green. Sounds beyond normal giving a feeling of emptiness and heat. An evocative mint morning mist of memories failing for once to concern this single persons self absorbtion. The scents, sighs and sweetness tainted by these portraits of waking rather than normally celebrated in lines of personal extended history. This inevitable concern with memories is of some fleeting interest and is extremely unhealthy.

What say this is but a wish to create every day? Why a blatant concern if nothing new is done? Can I do it, can I piece it together? Will it once return? To think about drawing is to not draw. Who knows and who cares. It did before if only with a certain essential moody irony. It I will see again. No doubts. No bother. Nothing attached to the hearing of it.

So record what I see and smell, putting it down in pencil and pen, all usable information before moving on. This romantic walking through sketch book beauty dulling only the inadequate senses and pushing playfully, after all these years,  the still inferior drawings. Grass strokes drawn against the legs. A swish of sea sound, undulations of tone in sound and sight, brush stumbling away into washes of sound.

To force these self seeding dreams into a cold water shock of reality concerns all who truly experience. To hear the underlying music from forms unseen. Darwin's artist drawing in the Summer. High shadows and long horizons infinitely possible with blues. Cannot be so says the concept artist who ruts only in the mire at the bottom of rusty tanks left to rot and therein makes his bed. Unlikely says the stark modernist who looks only downward into a grasshopper field of constant changes.

Mark these changes. The single light line of pearled web. The echo of a vapour. A low buzz from insects moving between elements. A warning warble of tree top song and a high scream of impatience from both hunter and grazer. Infinite tonal depth to the sounds ranging away on slow repeated wave forms through the steamed grass and into the hazed distance. All evoking the scattered memories mentioned before. So why write about these things? Is not enough information gained simply by drawing?

Reviews

[W.k.kortas]

What most writers lack is the visual artist's feel for line and perspective and, perhaps most importantly, composition. So many of us write and write and write and never understand the totality of the picture, how words must fit in their place as a stray cloud or kestrel in the background must fit in a painting or photo. Most of us either don't have that sensibility or just never get it. And then there's the likes of you...

[...]

. oh ... this is one of those absolutely consuming and overwhelming treats for the soul, monsieur ... this is inspiration to draw ... in its truest sense ... i think it'll be tough to stay away from pencil and paper for me now ... your words are just so magical and so compelling ... these images stun my senses ... i can hear your poetic voice ... i can almost visualize all that you etch even though i think that i am not really skilled at visualizing ... i think the way you share your multiple skills with the reader is absolutely fascinating and inviting ... and heavenly ... thank you so much for this post ... you've given me a lot ...

[emmajoy]

In both drawing and painting, the artist needs to draw with his eyes closed, see and feel what's there etched into what he's just studied .. it's not a trick of the trade, it's the gentle power to look beneath.

Seems everything you see has a reflection within a reflection, what isn't to be seen you make feel it should be .. you hear every note and understand its call .. you inhale every scent and make it into something of substance. You, sir, strip life layer by layer .. and then, write these beautiful, heart-stopping words!

Sighing because i've read this twice and so want to stay.

[R J Askew]

'Swifts high and screaming' ach I love you! Great title, absolutely. Perhaps your focus on birds -- the kestrel, the kingfisher, the lapwings, the gannets etc -- makes me think that life is flight from birth to death. We are all high and screaming in our own ways ... and none of us really have any idea what we are or what we are doing. I watched the swifts this evening over st.a...about 30 of them at about 8.30 ... i thought they were heading up high to roost but no, I was wrong, they were just having a swift gig. They were darting in and out of the houses thereafter. And then we are dead.

[SM Davis]

Has it been four weeks since I have been on. OH MY SLAP MY WRIST!!!

An evocative mint morning mist of memories failing for once to concern this single persons self absorbtion. The scents, sighs and sweetness tainted by these portraits of waking rather than normally celebrated in lines of personal extended history.

Come by and see me... I simply don't have layman's words for this.

[Phibby Venable]

Grass strokes drawn against the legs. A swish of sea sound, undulations of tone in sound and sight, brush stumbling away into washes of sound.
The entire piece is very, very beautiful. What an incredible pair of eyes
and of ears you have.

[Ladysue]

Oh, I think w,k. said it...then there are writers like you who write with precision with spot on descriptions. A pleasure to read....

[Emily B]

the artist, the musician, the poet, gods amongst us who can evoke tears or laughter through the efforts of their inspiration. but what happens when the gods falter? when their best work lies flat and and dull? there are times when creative endeavors leave me, when inspiration can't be found, when words won't come and the static noise that fills my mind is almost too much . . . waiting as I am for the the magic of the next phase