A Journey Called Drawing
How does a song come to life? Is it the thing you hear when you listen carefully? Does it wait for you deep in the woods? Do you need a secret map to find one or a textbook to write one? You can make a song if you’ve got a mind to, but whom or what is it for? I like songs that come naturally—from somewhere or someone—and are there at your bedside when you wake up. Or those you hear in a whisper when you look at the starry sky on a sleepless night. I like songs that resonate in the rain, while you walk along drenched to the bone. Or those played by the morning air, reflecting gold in the silent ascent of the sun. I even like the jarring notes that bounce around in your head on a hungover day.
I like songs that just happen. Those you don’t have to strain to hear because they’re already there. Although technique and the ability to analyze songs are important, simple tunes that anybody can sing are the best. Not solemn ones that rely on a host of instruments played at earth-shaking volume, but those that might come from the mouth of a little kid or a bird’s beak. Songs you can empathize with; songs you can share. But I can’t sing the songs I love. My voice can’t keep up. I try to sing well and look cool, but get lost halfway through.
The lyrics and music are always on the tip of my tongue. But the moment the melody leaves my lips, it turns to rust and falls to the ground. That’s why you’ll find these rusty clumps wherever I’ve been, scattered amongst the pebbles. Nobody picks them up, so they’ll be there until the world collapses.
What’s going on here? I’m trying to write about drawing and all I can think of is music. Maybe all the drawings I’ve done are only ghosts of those rusty melodies. Maybe my drawings belong where no one will notice them, lying on the road somewhere. Or maybe they should have been plastered all over my walls without anybody knowing. And maybe that room should turn into a clump of rust, waiting for the world to end.
No, that’s not quite it. Those clumps of songs that never were—that never could be—are broadcasting radio waves from their cores. For the most part, the frequencies are faint and don’t range far, but some of the good clumps have a message. And they were all once a part of me. Maybe I’ve spent my whole life flinging out things I should have nurtured longer. And I’ve flung so much out by now that I’m full of holes, like a corpse pecked at by crows.
After writing down thoughts of the day in a diary, you close the pages knowing you can open them again. We have to be able close the pages of our hearts in the same way. And yet, like some sleepless paranoiac plagued with worry, I can’t help rereading these pages, even from the beginning, and keep drawing the same thing again and again.
At least, that’s how it was until yesterday. Now, I’m now longer an insomniac. I go back and forth on the road I’ve walked, picking up pieces of myself I’ve dropped and sewing them back together. Dragging this patchwork body four steps forward and three steps back, I think I’m making some progress. And though I still can’t sing, I can keep making drawings that are something like songs.
Drawing is a journey. As long as I’m alive, I want to keep on traveling.
