connecting the dots

When the art class was asked who here dislikes drawing, mine was the only hand that went up. Awkward. My instruments were always music and writing; charcoal belonged to other people. But the studies kept coming, so I kept going back, and going back is where it gets interesting.

The poetics of a curve live in what you leave out. Shade the big shapes honestly, let the small truths stay foggy, and the figure reads clearer, not less: which is how seeing works anyway. Nobody takes a room in detail by detail; you catch the big picture and your mind fills in the rest.

Listening is the same lesson from the other side. An ear has no lid; it stays open all night, hearing while you sleep, so the privilege was never hearing, it's attention: someone arriving with a story to tell, a question to ask, and you choosing to receive it. And the anatomy is in on it: the three smallest bones in the body live in there, next to the sense of balance. The organ that listens is the organ that keeps you standing.

Maybe that's the real subject: not the things, the space between them. Drawing a figure pulling on a rope, what comes out is the pull itself: no face, the rope barely there, everything leaning toward a force you can't draw directly, only show. The connection is the drawing. Draw the middle, and the rest explains itself.

So no, I still wouldn't call drawing mine. But go back to a thing often enough, look at it long enough, and something connects, something works out, and you catch yourself thinking: maybe, what if? I am connecting the dots. (an artist?)