Shimmer
“You are so intellectual, too much in your head,” my friend complained to me. “Why don’t you draw instead of journaling?”
I’m sure I sniffed or even snorted, rejecting the idea immediately. Oh, resistance, another of my old friends! I have learned, when he slams a door shut, it is usually the direction I need to move in. I bought a sketch book.
I began with mandalas, a geometric figure representing the universe in Hindu and Buddhist symbolism. With a fine point pen, I drew large circle after circle, each with a design inside, careful lines and figures. After several months, I burst through the perimeter, and experimented with pencil and charcoal. Set loose from order or even beauty, I embraced abandoned.
In the last fifteen or more years, drawing has became key to my artistic process. I draw to explore my personal feeling, I draw when thinking about a new musical composition; I draw to see deeply. Many times, it is not so much to create something, but to let my mind rest. The act of selecting colors, resting the side of my hand on the paper, moving up and down, side to side, eases my brain from the intellectual chatter. The strokes soothe me. Like dreaming, without control, I am swept by images that rise from the deep.
In my drawing journal, I often draw in sequence, four to five drawings at once. Nothing is important or perhaps even meaningful. Just this throwing my head into neutral, and falling into the dark rich color. I draw fast, and attempt not to think.
I might start in anger or distress. Pressing hard on the point of the pencil, I put charcoal on black, smearing with my fingers, even ripping the page. After several drawings I began to relax, and a new understanding emerges. Or a path to claim my authority, my choice; a way forward.
Pastels take me out to my garden, or into a dense wood. I move away from an accurate depiction towards capturing energy or motion. Even as the fall leaves are released downwards, my sense is upward. I want to see into the interior, the between. Holding the intensity of color between my finger tips, soft and delicate medium. Pure color. Direct color.
Drawings for a new music composition are the start of my understanding my next piece – an exploration. When I find a title, or word, my hand begins to move. I look at both architecture, as well as an emotional context in line and color. These drawing suggest the geography of a work, and direction.
Shimmer, I think. Perhaps something with ornamentation. At concert recently of Monteverdi’s Orfeo, the counter tenor’s ornamentations of the melody were strangely physical. He embellished with his body; he shook.
A note, like a long glistening string, shaken in different ways. The absence of vibrato, slightly out of tune, almost a metallic ring to the sound. More guttural than musical, more earth than sky.
Shimmer, growing into its own fabric, interwoven, thickening and deepening.
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