Sketchy habits
Sketchy habits
Count to five and take a deep breath for a dip beneath the surface (and an attempt to catch the naked guy).
One of the effects of self-education is that nobody really tells you what goes where. Nobody really explains how things are connected. Some do but are incomprehensible without formal training. Others write popular books that claim to tell the history of all in less than five hundred pages. Which is the equivalent of a picture book on physics, easy to understand but rather incomplete and often ridiculously wrong.
I will not fight ridiculous reductions. It’s okay to get it wrong. Essential to simplify. To draw a representation is a tool of enchantment. It is not okay to force-feed the ink-stained paper as the real and only value.
You could say education mostly provides answers. Answers collectively accepted as true. It is a pyramid of shared assumptions. The most widely accepted consensuses make up the bottom of the build. The higher you climb the artificial educational mount the smaller the collective agreement. Only the very top sits with the unanswered. One may not touch the questions before several degrees of initiation. While they may have a good grand view up there, getting any higher demands all the subfloors to slavishly build another level. Working as one. They must keep building or go down. Those are the options. Up or down. Massively impressive but not my idea of a good life.
My dumb head does not understand. How can people be content with a piece of the puzzle and not have a million questions about even the most basic? How can they all accept the explanations given, trust the story of the big picture pyramid without finding out its sketchy foundations? How can they be content with one story, claiming it to be the only coherent image of the world? Why do people trade their own perspective for someone else’s? I no longer like pyramids. Too often they represent something nasty.
A big pile of sketches
Because after all it is just an image. A very detailed collective representation. A map of the world. Compiled pieces of the puzzle gathered by fellow limited humans. A big pile of sketches. And big doesn’t even begin to describe the size of the bloody heap. By now we can only guess what the whole sketchy map looks like. If you have to work your way through all the drawn pieces and then come up with a coherent image, the questions indeed are at the very end of the path to knowing. Then the perspective is the vanishing point at the coming together of converging lines. It all bleeds into one. A summit so high it starts resembling a tower. Yes, the famous one.
The ultimate insanity has become normal. It seems they now make the map first and then adjust the landscape and everything in it to fit the plan. Cartographers turn in their graves, almost ready to rise against this sin of sins.
That towering pile of answers is too high for me. It was and always will be. And while I enjoy dealing with maps of the world I choose and have chosen for a long time now, to find out for myself. To scribble and tape together my own map. Figure out on my own what it is all about and sit with the questions without the credentials. It’s a sketchy habit. A habit of the field.
People don’t like you questioning the shape of the sphere. They aggressively defend the big sketch. I don’t give a shit. And by now you probably won't give a hoot’s arse too, because you wouldn’t be reading this if you hadn’t at some point found out about the unanswered questions. About the problem of the map. You too have doubts about the basic assumptions.
Local coherence
To be clear, I am not questioning the local coherence of the jigsaw pieces here. Those are mostly fine in themselves. Honed by proper fieldwork they are true drawings. They deserve love, care and attention. But while almost everybody is working on the intricate big-picture-show by grooming their assigned puzzle piece behind the microscope of their virtual laboratory desk I make sketches with a bit of charcoal on scraps of paper of the whole damn thing. Attempting to make my messy mad maps matter.
That’s a fools job. I know. My sketches are very humble faulty images of the world. I can make them in a blink. And discard them or put them on one of the keep-for-now piles very easily. No pain if you decide to tear one to bits. I’ll just make a new one.
The naked guy
Sketching is sketchy business. You can draw with your eyes closed. You can sketch by only looking at your paper and the movements of the pencil and be fascinated by the lines until the end of the world. But sketching suddenly starts to yield some interesting results when you shift that narrow focus from the point of your tool to whatever it is you try to catch. You still have to keep an eye on the tool of course but the main attention goes to the subject, or the object, the thing or the scene, or the person, or the naked guy, or ....
This is not just wide visual attention, it can involve the whole body. Translating what is out there to an expression asks all of you.
As soon as you try -and I recommend you actually do pick up this sketchy habit- you realise the task is impossible. The naked guy stays out there. He can’t be caught in the lines however hard you try. There is no doubt if you compare your scratchy results with the vibrant body - who by then is having great difficulty keeping the pose - out there. No high speed camera capturing the tiniest detail in an illusion of flow changes that fact. I can’t be caught. It still is a sketch. Despite the amount of work put in to make the thing resemble reality. And while you sit there nibbling your pencil stub you wonder what the hell you should focus on to catch the essence? What matters? Which detail must you pick from the overwhelm of parts and surfaces and textures and shapes. It seems you are forced to ignore most in order to see. You are forced to reduce, to translate, to leave out and capture all at the same time. And the enormous amount of choices you must make. What point of view to take, what to frame, what size. Impossible. And the results stay very... sketchy.
Not so sure it is wise to invest so heavily in detailing the thing that stays a sketch after all. I’ll keep to my sketchy quickies because representing the complex world out there with a simplified version is a very useful navigational tool. I like my little maps. I like maps in general. I don’t like people who no longer have awareness on what a map is for and kicking me for pointing that out. If you want to throw me out the door for touching the map, for questioning the plan, so be it. I'll make a life of my own outside of the establishment, but it won’t keep me from sketching. Or from offering the sketch to passers-by like you. I think it is time to go beyond the mapmaking and start inhabiting the place. Life is slipping away while we’re busy making plans.
Bertus’ Fifth
Here’s a sketch of mine. Metaphoric of course.
Have you ever wondered what a fifth dimension would look like? The leap is not as giant as you might think. Don’t worry I’m not referring to the mathematical inventing that tries to tie gravity and electromagnetism. And also not to the spiritual constructs utilized to explain the unexplainable. It is way more sketchy.
The tip of the pencil is the first dimension. On it’s own just a point. The second comes into play when lines are formed. The map, classically, is two-dimensional. Its incomplete representational skills were reasonably clear for a long time. With a bit of practice and some paint we started making fine illusions of the third dimension on a flat bit of cloth. Screens, with their dancing lights and thundering sounds finish the mapmaking takeover of all known dimensions. Claiming the representation of time in 3D. What a spectacle it is. The projection of reality. (I never got why it is called 3D though? Wasn’t cinema already the illusion of 4D from day one?)
So where’s Bertus’ Fifth in this grand show?
By the way, did you ever notice that the motif of the famous fifth has just four notes. I guess Ludwig never planned the title in advance. And it has nothing to do with dimensional theories anyway, I think. Maybe this essay too could be an ominous knock at the door of fake reality. My Sketchy Fifth proposes an alternative fourth. Tadadadaah.
Here we go. Time - the now popular fabulous fourth - is a stretch. A spectrum. A wide panoramic scene. A theater of time that - left to right - consists of past, present and future. A familiar landscape. A harmonious chord of three tones making a fourth consonance.
Total fake. The past no longer makes any sound. And the future hasn’t even started considering blowing the flute it hasn’t yet come across. There is no soundness in that stretch of the imagination.
The length, width and height of this thing is not completed by the movement through time. That doesn’t make music. It is too flat for that, despite the apparent depth. There’s more.
The stretch of time as imagined by many is two dimensional. Linear. Even one dimensional if you from there choose to be mindfully in the now only.
We are in need of flexing our imaginal muscles to make up another dimension. Giving the skinny model of time pacing the catwalk some flesh and curves.
This moment - the infamous now - does not only have the horizontal spread of arms, it also takes a vertical stance. It has depth.
Can you see in your mind’s eye where the horizontal intersects the vertical? That’s the now you reside most of the time. The accepted now. A bright and fascinating place. A sphere of magnificence given shine by past and future. I get why we long to live there.
Causality plays a big role in that place. It seeks the origins of things in the past and projects purpose towards the future to complete the illusion of the image. To attain depth. A functional mode of being.
An incomplete one too. It is not enough. And I am not claiming adding a fifth is the end of it. The answer that wholes the halve. I am just proposing a new handle on the ungraspable way. A less idolized little sculpture, to be used as an additional compass.
The cross resembling symbol that I was brought up with has a twist. While we cannot escape being nailed to the center of the horizontal beam there is a forbidden movement available. Up and down the vertical. That’s my fifth. Presented as hell and heaven. We are warned not to leave middle earth. I think it is much more nuanced than that. We need to oil the elevator, find the buttons for the other floors. Carefully explore the levels of now. There are many.
You know at least some of the other floors, but weren’t aware of traveling up or down while visiting. The vertical fifth does not simply contain the things between heaven and earth; the metaphysics and the angels and demons. The names given and the stories told are metaphors for the other levels. Often exaggerated tales of journeys into the depths stretching above and below. Of course I haven’t been to the end of them. I can’t judge any claims. I do know several generally unvisited levels. And while an integral part of everyday reality, they are not ordinary at all. They are places of wonder and enchantment and not more or less dangerous than the average daily life. The vertical presence of this fifth dimension of depth can not be commonly ignored much longer though. The bigger now has started to bite us in the rear end.
Most live on the surface. The horizontal beam, where the appearance, the results, the products, the directly measurable builds the picture of reality. Things happen because someone or something has initiated the moving. Things are because something has caused them to be. Nice and circular. Very rational and reasonable. Superficial clarity.
If you, like me, seek the origin of a thing, start looking for the source, and follow the trail back from product and result to the previous. Diving into history is not enough. You must live the process, experience the transformation first hand and discover it in the deep now. A change takes place when you travel the full trajectory. An understanding of the landscape occurs that doesn’t involve any map. The source or cause does not lie in the past at all, it is present. All is present. The sphere reaches out and in.
Attending that present opens a door to potential. If that sounds like a rule of magic, I must confirm from experience that it is nothing less. Being involved in the cause of a result is pure magic. It literally is healing. The knowledge of the connectedness of all things makes the opaque present permeable to your light of presence. The world has become more transparent. The heavy solidity steps back and shows a fragile nature. The outside appearance no longer stops you from interacting with it. The details merge back into the scene. You step through the looking glass into a strange unfamiliar world that augments the flat reality. The hard stuff offers a softness unseen. A certain pliability shows in the unmovable. Inertness looses the leading role. The feeling of being cornered dissolves into a range of possible actions. Unbearable could become enjoyable overnight. Reality, gets rid of unnecessary clothing, undresses before your eyes and invites you to move along.
New dangers also appear out of nothing. Invisible ‘monsters’ suddenly populate the gaps. Yes, the widening brings that too. It does not mean they weren’t there before. I think it’s better to be able to see the demons, imagined or not. And there are levels. You still will always be at one point. Your perspective. Slow exploration of each new floor is best.
Don’t get stuck on the first floor just because most agree it is for our own good to settle there. We have done that for too long I believe. It’s time to move on, find new places to live and play. Not to get there, but to move with. We may need scouts. Guides to lead the way. Visionaries. The ones with the good questions, not those distributing the answers.
It is not about colonizing. That’s a horizontal movement, an unreal expansion. A delusion. A loss of perspective. The fifth dimension way of enlarging the sphere uncovers how other orbs are not at all next to each other bouncing agitatedly in conflict. The transparent permeability shows them sliding into each other in an almost erotic way. Eros is a god of the vertical. Which is not just phallic at all. It is both, entering and being entered, at the same time. Now there is an image of how I would like to live. How I long to interact with my ecology. The big homecoming picture I would love to sell to you at this very moment. The exchange will be worth your while. It might have taken place already. I recognise me in you, in all things surrounding me. I long to interact, to be part like you. For that you enter the fifth dimension. Still an imagined representation but one that at least has no impact on the climate.
Or does it? Might this descent into the underworld bring us closer to the true power source? Find us alternatives for waste? Won’t a more grounded perspective make way for lighter footprints without the sketchy calculations? Questions in need of sketchy habits. Of whole body attention. Of becoming vertical beings.
Keep scribbling....while holding the one true perspective. Because while drawing, you only have a single point of hold. One reference that makes sense of the sketch. That point is your perspective. It is not out there, it is your specific viewpoint that determines the design. That is the deep rooted relation you grow by drawing in what surrounds you. Bound voluntarily. That is the authority you bow to first. You are held suspended. Originally created to create originals, not reproductions.
There’s more to the fifth but that’s for another meet up. Subscribe to find me again in the horizontal chaos, buy the painted picture if you like or just hit the heart shaped sketchy button....welcome to my sphere.
Oh, and check out the poor naked guy below, aiming for the vertical. If he does manage to shoot straight up he’s in for a surprise.
Wow, your sketching style is really impressive.