The Direction of Intention

The artist, Joe, had us write our names again and again until the lines lost their meaning, until we realized the lines were…lines. And shapes. Until we realized that our names were drawings. Unique and easy. His message? Everyone draws. And, more importantly though less obvious, the lines do not carry the meaning, the person infuses the line with meaning.

Visiting a pal in the hospital, I watched a heart monitor. More lines. Pattern. Waves. Visual indications of the drumbeat of the body. The drumbeat of the body propels the rhythm of the poet’s pen. Iambic pentameter. Short, loooong. Short, loooong. The poet’s lines reach through time and space, heart-meaning yearning to pulse through another person, to perhaps synchronize with their heart-wave pattern. Centuries may have passed between the inky scribbles from the poet’s pen to the person absorbing the meaning into their beating heart. Time travel. Ancient heart touches the living. “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought/ I summon up remembrance of things past…”

Watch a child learning to “write” their alphabet. Assigning meaning to shape. Crayon fist making lines. The refined adults see the shaky line as crude. Cute. Titanic imagination squeezes itself into alphabetic parameter. The little hand becomes a giver of meaning to shape and line. Expression. Learning to combine the limited shapes for greater and greater complexity. The conundrum: among the first lines we learn to scrawl are our names yet these few lines carry a question that can never be answered. Who am I?

The artist, Joe, had us dash off our names again and again until the lines seemed nothing more than a doodle. The meaning is not found in the lines; the lines and shapes merely point the way to the question.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE CONTRAIL LINE

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Filed under: Creativity, Energy, Language, Merely A Thought Monday | Tagged: artistry, big questions, complexity, crayon, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, drawing, drumbeat, expression, imagination, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, line, meaning, meaning making, pattern, questions, shakespeare, single heartbeat, story, studio melange, the melange, William Shakespeare |