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Monstrous Spelling Mechanism / Zen practice of giving thanks to a teacher

Monstrous Spelling Mechanism / Zen practice of giving thanks to a teacher

Art is time travel, no question. I didn’t know I still carried this monster around – but here it is. I learned how to read pretty early, before school, scanning my grandfather’s newspaper and imitating the strange throat clearing sounds he produced every now and then while reading. It was quite literally his newspaper, he was a co-publisher of some small town daily newspaper, back in the days when they were still independent.

Anyhow, reading and drawing quickly grew into something alike to breathing and running around for me. Imagine my bewilderment when in first grade I discovered that someone had torn all the words apart and stuck them into a strange primer expecting me to study each one of them separately. I decided not wanting to have anything to do with it and skipped to the end of the book where most letters founds themselves tidily arranged back to sensible words and stories.

I was quickly found out though by our teacher who then consulted with my mother, complaining about my absolute messy reading habits (being able to read but not to practice sound exercises with random letter-combinations). The following week she caught me with a book under the table again – and I still refused to fill out the worksheet according to the primer. We were at war. She took away my book and I kept busy studying the colophon in the reading primer.

Before you give me credit for my precocious rebellious behavior I have to admit that I plain did not understand what was expected of me, and for some reason the teacher had such a vague personality that I found it incredibly hard to focus my attention on that pale, almost transparent if upset presence who did not stop elaborating on how I was not supposed to read what I hadn’t been taught to read. It seemed to me that I could see the squiggles on the chalkboard behind her – through her. I could literally look right through her. It was a mess.

At home my mother followed up on my homework assignments and had me fill the lines of my notebook with squiggles and squabs. It was monstrous, it really was. I had absolutely no clue what I was doing and why. My mother meticulously instructed me how to fill a page with doodles, then she left me to it. When she left the room I took out a book and read instead. There were tears that night.

I don’t know what would have happened had we not moved to a new suburb. I got a new teacher who very nice about my keeping a book under the table and even encouraged me to put it on the table instead. While in the first school my teacher had insisted on my using the phonetic approach which was still brand new back then to acquire a skill I already possessed, in my new school I was allowed to spell with the whole word sight system which happened to be the way my reading comprehension just happened to work anyways.

Later I did learn to take the words apart, by the way. Today I am the master of the monstrous spelling mechanism. I wonder if the second elementary school teacher ever knew that she was a life saver. Thank you, Frau Bock.

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Celebration

Celebration

I like this illustration for it’s neither jolie, pretty, nor ugly, it’s a celebration, a meeting of some of the characters that constantly remind me that I want to draw instead of doing whatever else it is I have to do. It’s probably actually a fairly accurate illustration of my (non-verbal) thoughts when I am not focused on law or writing and it explains why it sometimes costs me quite some effort to focus on the mundane aspects of life when all these people are spoking around in my brain.

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trop jolie … too pretty

trop jolie ... too pretty

Back to the subject of pretty: Even after granting myself the liberty to let go of my need to create things that are at least scraping on the verge of comical, ugly, surreal, infantile I still do get a slight stomach ache looking at these new works. The drawing you see here at least is a bit dark, the creature in the front displaying its rib-cage like an x-ray – but the execution is doubtless pretty, shining dark (Edding marker and Poyurethane) and gold with snippets of legal text incorporated on glass.

I have two large, eight medium and multiple small acrylic plates waiting for me, and I think I will continue drawing in this very calm and slightly upsetting manner of “pretty” even if it is just to find out WHY it matters so much. Maybe it is the surface itself, the ephemeral, light quality of the glass pane rather than the coffee and potato sacks I was layering paints and disposed off objects on before.

The only rule I play by is that there must be no preliminary drawing, no careful execution – and I am thinking about incorporating more precious materials (chocolate wrappers, glitter etc.) to make it even more intolerable to my eyes.

Yes, there is a fun element here, observing myself how much “pretty” I can take.

Interestingly, parallel to these glass drawings I am working on a translation from a small English novel I have published some years ago into German, and I find that this folk-tale that sounded sober enough in English to work for me now has a pretty ring to it in the translation, too, as the words just have different associations (while pointing towards the same thing).

Ideas about that difficult relationship between pretty, sober and ugly, would be very welcome at this moment.

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How social media changes our reading ability … just a passing thought from a conversation with a fellow writer

contemplation of minor bugsWriting for social media forums is still essentially writing and provides those of us who are not so fortunate to have their writing published in a traditional forum with a most welcome audience but also with the equally welcome company of other writers. I do very much enjoy those (few) who do write/blog well, taking time and effort to polish their work and obviously making it part of their working day to keep their blogs interesting, well researched and engaging. How will social media change our writing? And will it change our reading ability? In my observation it does and I am actually always feeling hesitant to use the opportunity to publish excerpts and ramblings for fear of contributing to something that I see as a competitor to peoples’ traditional reading time. Already, traditional reading is a generational habit, starting to loose the audience under 30 if for no other reason than just a lack of time. Storytelling and reading of traditional stories does take up real time, it also takes a willingness to accept a certain reclusiveness that reading in social media forums never requires – the next diversion always being just one click away. There is something about the whisper of the page, my own breath, the loneliness of reading that I find necessary for engaging in a text whereas I often leave digital reading with the often not followed up upon wish to return to the thought or the writing – later. This is my main reason for still striving to see my work published elsewhere in traditional form.
The 140 characters of a twitter post can be as much of an intellectual challenge as a Haiku. Certainly, the length of a piece does not say much about its quality – and sometimes quite the opposite. But I am tired of hearing that something I have taken time to write is too long to enjoy reading. We have to be careful not to cut down our reader’s ability to process 140 character bits.

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… consequently there cannot be an edge over which to lean to catch a glimpse of eternity

English version / German translation

Few travelers have ever reached the end of the world, even in the days of the Aelvor, for it is such an awful long way to go and full of obstacles, too. Yet when my grandmother told me about the Willow as I tell you about her now, it had seemed to me that I almost remembered her as if I had seen her with my own eyes and touched her with my own hands but couldn’t quite remember anymore where or when that could have been.

Of course you know that the earth is a ball and that consequently there cannot be an edge over which to lean to catch a glimpse of eternity. And yet, our elders might not have been as naïve as we are told today by believing that the world is located on a disc and that you can walk only so far before reaching an end. In our hearts we are closer related to ways that must end eventually than the Aelvor were who soberly talked about the eternal cyclic renewal of all times and beings.

Wenige Reisende haben jemals das Ende der Welt erreicht, selbst in den Tagen der Aelvor, denn es ist ein furchtbar langer Weg dorthin, wie jeder weiß, und,  wie es die alten Märchen erzählen, voller Hindernisse und Gefahren. Und dennoch, wenn meine Großmutter mir von der Weide am Ende der Welt erzählte, eben so, wie ich Dir jetzt von ihr erzähle, belebte sich ihre sonst oft müde Stimme und sie sprach so lebhaft und anschaulich, als erinnerte sie eine Geschichte aus ihrer eigenen Jugend, und mir, die ich ihr zuhörte, kam es wirklich so vor, als könne ich mich selbst beinahe erinnern, dass ich den Baum einst mit meinen eigenen Augen gesehen und mit meinen eigenen Händen berührt hätte, auch wenn ich, gefragt, nicht mehr zu sagen gewusst hätte, wann oder wo das hätte gewesen sein sollen.

Natürlich weißt Du, dass die Erde eine Kugel ist und dass es also keine Kanten geben kann, über die man in einen Abgrund stürzen oder über den man  sich auch nur hinauslehnen könnte, um einen Blick der Unendlichkeit zu erhaschen, wie es in den alten Geschichten heißt. Und dennoch waren die Menschen früher vielleicht nicht so naiv wie wir es mit ein wenig Überheblichkeit heute gerne glauben wollen, nur weil sie annahmen, dass die Welt eine Scheibe sei und man nur so weit gehen konnte, bis man an ihr Ende kam. Wenn wir aufrichtig sind, ist uns auch in unserer Zeit die Vorstellung, dass jeder Weg schließlich endet, immer noch vertrauter, als es die Geschichten der Aelvor sind, die nüchtern von der Unendlichkeit und der zyklischening, Wiederkehr aller Zeiten und Kreaturen zu erzählen verstanden.Bild

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Art. 1 GG The dignity of a person shall remain untouchable.

Art. 1 GG The dignity of a person shall remain untouchable.

The first article of the German Constitution. Actually the wording in German (“ist unantastbar”, tranlslated: is untouchable) could be read in two different ways, one being “it cannot be touched”, the other “it shall not be touched”. Last week, in my legal class, I started a discussion with my students about whether human dignity can actually be denied or be broken (by the state, an authority, a group etc.), or whether there might be what could maybe be called a core of human dignity that remains untouched no matter which forces are used against it and under which circumstances a person is forced to live. No wrong answers, a strong discussion ensued.
It is a strange reality that humans are bound to such an abstract idea, dignity, something that is expressed in and through circumstances of their lives but also seems to reside deep within them, that they are bound to this in a way that life will seem desirable no longer once “it” – dignity – is effectively denied and that they, we, are incredibly inventive to defend at least a display of individual dignity in the face of even overwhelming adversity.
This illustration seems to lean towards the interpretation of human dignity actually being the unchangeable core of an idea, located in the brain but held by our hands (actions). I do know it can be denied like but I believe that it can’t be broken. The naive quality of the drawing insists on the relevance of the question in the face of a reality that is unforgiving and not as much in need of such contemplative studies and pretty pictures but of real change.

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no fear

no fear

The title offers itself as an afterthought to the completed drawing. Or: almost completed as these are works in progress. “No fear” seems like a big title for such a pleasing drawing but it actually refers to the relative beauty of the subject – very unusual for me. I do have a deep appreciation for the seemingly ugly, small, cheap, scratchy, discarded quality of objects and ideas, for those scraps and pieces deemed not to measure up. I am deeply suspicious of the superior quality of a single piece of work (not mine), of the brilliance and self-sufficiency that is in no need of a contribution by whoever may chance to look at it because I feel that our visual environment is saturated with ideas that are complete and in no need of further discourse, thereby actively discouraging original creative failure. Seems at times we all live in a society of mad overachievers. So I love the frail, the ugly to the point where I censor my own work when it’s getting too pleasing. But these drawings I have let go uncensored by myself, not even knowing why. Maybe I am in need of some beauty. And far be it from me to think that these are perfect. Maybe quite the opposite. So for a while, I will be like a child at play, drawing and arranging these small characters, without fear that they shall be considered too light. Let there be some light ….

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Time is but the clockwork of a frightened heart

Time is but the clockwork of a frightened heart

Drawing on acrylic glass panes. It’s been about 6 months that these black and white, sometimes gold drawings keep evolving, taking up a lot of my time recently. Sometimes I almost despair of them because I don’t know where they are going, I don’t understand them the way I would like to and quite honestly they feel like a well disguised vice. Then again I feel they are too beautiful, too blank to be allowed to take up so much of my time. They started, simple enough, as a way to find back from painting to drawing for an illustration project. At first it was plain black marker on white paper. I had chosen marker because it allowed me not to think “small”, not to think “precious”, and as usual I was drawn to the ready availability and comparative cheapness of the technique which seems like a quality in itself to me. Now I am still using marker, but the creatures have freed themselves from paper, have migrated to glass panes, they cast shadows on walls and mirrors, they congregate to create 3 dimensional theatrical settings, and I still don’t know where this may lead me and why I still draw these night after night (instead of now taking up ink and the fine pens and engage in the illustration projects I had been meaning to prepare for). The saying “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans” seem to perfectly apply here. Some small insignificant but very persistent kind of original thought seems to defend its way against my larger ideas. Art is what happens when you are busy making other plans …

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She seemed to be right out of a historical reenactment society

 

I was so completely startled by this sudden change in behavior that I wasn’t even shocked to feel a hand grabbing my shoulder and yanking me down from my boulder and back to shore.
The hand was firm and muscular. It dragged me away from the shore a few steps, beyond the tree line and I had to oblige, stumbling backwards. When we reached the shelter of the tree, the hand let go. I turned around. The strong and determined grip had been misleading. Standing in front of me, inspecting me gravely with birdlike, black eyes, was a tiny, old woman. She wore a long rough shirt with an apron over a grey flannel shirt. Snow white hair done up in a tidy bun, her narrow shoulders wrapped in a grey woolen, triangular shawl, she seemed to be right out of a historical reenactment society. “And what did you think you were doing there, laddie,” she inquired with an authoritative voice. Apparently she mistook me for a boy, addressing me as laddie. “Speak up,” she demanded, quite clearly being used to be obeyed immediately and not one prone to put up with any nonsense. I shivered. She stepped closer again, then reached out and pushed my tangled hair out of my face. Taking a sharp look at my face she murmured to herself: “In a bad shape we are, aren’t we.” And inspecting me a few more moments she added: “A girl in a lad’s clothes, if I ever saw such a thing, lost too, I take it.” She put her hand on my forehead. I started shaking violently. “You are burning up,” she observed, again more to herself than to me. If I had had any more strength left in me, I might have inquired right there and then why she had yanked me away from the boulder. If I had been in my own time and place, I would have protested most decidedly about being ordered about by a woman who was a complete stranger to me. But here I was, meek, shivering with fever and cold and lost. The tiny lady took off her shawl and wrapped it around my shoulders. “That’s more like it,” she stated grimly, referring to my state of clothing, I am sure. Then she simply took my hand and pulled me along.