Wednesday, October 14, 2009

The World of Art

When it comes to artistic ability, I’m no Michelangelo…or even Mr. Ed. Drawing, painting, even sculpting with Play-Doh have never been among my gifts. I remember working with clay in elementary school, crafting what may have been the highlight of the artistic efforts of my early years. It was a duck. It wasn’t obviously a duck or even a painstakingly crafted duck—instead it was a glob of clay that sloped at a reasonably steep angle from a vaguely shaped head to a flat tail. On the front was a face that, regardless of my initial intentions, turned out to look something like that of a duck. So I made some curved lines on the sides for wings and some lines on the tail to simulate feathers and voila...I called it a duck and home it went. I remember seeing that duck around the house for years afterwards on one shelf or another. It was really the only art project of mine I remember seeing around the house. No wait—there were some simple Sunday School Christmas ornaments I made that for pity’s sake hung around for a while. Just the same, it’s clear my art career peaked early.

I mention this for two reasons: First, Nan and I went out to eat last night and stopped at a bookstore on the way home to look at maps and travel books; and second, a half hour ago Joelle used the "Dad—do you want to draw with me?" ploy to stay up a little later. Being a sucker for such tactics, I said, "Sure, I’d love to." So we sat down in the kids’ school room and I looked around for something to try and draw. There on the wall facing me was a large map of the world, so I took a shot at sketching it. Keeping things in proportion was the toughest challenge as I clutched one of Joelle’s spiral notebooks and tried to capture the world. How big is South America compared to Africa? What’s in line with Australia and how do I squeeze in all those islands? Do I have the slope right on eastern Canada? How many countries am I leaving out, and would their many peoples be offended by my carelessly erasing them from existence, even on my own flattened little version of the planet?

Maps, of course, "aren’t the territory" (a point I studied in school that was made, if I remember correctly, by Alfred “Bat Cave” Korzybski, and that always reminds me of comedian Steven Wright's joke, "I bought a map of the United States. It's actual size. I spent all summer folding it"), but they’re (maps, if you've forgotten) amazing just the same. I have no idea how they used to create maps before people could go up in space and, looking down while clutching one of Joelle’s spiral notebooks, draw what they saw. Speaking of wonders, I remember one year an international student was going to do a presentation in one of my classes. Before she started, she got up and quickly sketched the world on the chalkboard to serve as her backdrop. She didn’t get the proportions exactly right either, but it was freehand with chalk and from memory so who can blame her? As she worked the class got quieter and quieter until, when she finished and turned around, there was an audible "Wow!" of awe followed by spontaneous applause. We Americans aren’t so hot at world geography, so I think it surprises us when we see such clear evidence that others actually know in their heads what we just let maps remember.

Anyway, while I was doing my own drawing I found the world feeling like a big place, and as I considered the scale of things I wondered how small a dot I’d be if I was going to be included in my drawing. Microscopic? At least... And honestly, that gets to me sometimes. As we plan for the Big Trip, I’m fine with everything until I do something like sit with Nan in a bookstore looking at highway maps of this surprisingly big country. I’m a guy, so asking for directions goes deeply against my nature, and that means lots of reliance on maps as we move from place to place. Even with "Condescending Connie," our GPS guide, I wonder how many places we’ll get lost as we try and follow the maps and the many roads they sometimes vaguely represent. How many times will I have to fight the urge to keep driving and actually stop to ask someone for directions? Maybe I’ll work out a deal with Nan and agree to stop if she’ll agree to ask. That way I can roll my eyes and act like a bozo in the background while we still get directions. Or maybe I’ll grow up enough between now and then to quit worrying about the whole guy thing and do the asking myself. (No need to post a comment on the likelihood of the latter.)

Either way, over the years I’ve lived in four states and holed up in a wide range of houses, apartments, dorms, and neighborhoods, and after awhile every one of them started to feel, if not like "home," at least homey. The roads became familiar, I knew where the cereal was at the grocery store, I figured out which Pizza Hut would deliver to my place... And it’s comforting to know that everywhere we’ll be going we’ll find people for whom that place is home (or at least homey). In towns big and small we’ll find people who know where the roads go and the cereal is and the Pizza Huts deliver. The map isn’t the territory, and that’s a good thing. "The territory" is full of people, most of whom are kind enough and willing enough to help point some lost tourists on their way to wherever it is they’re going. Or at least we hope so. Otherwise Condescending Connie's going to wind up horse from all the "rerouting" she'll be doing...


Ok—if you want to make fun of my art skills, here’s the world according to Scott’s impulsively uncoordinated pencil...

1 comment:

  1. Nothing could be worse than fighting on a road trip. Repeat this mantra: if we get lost, meh, we get lost...there's a mcdonalds with a playground around here somewhere.

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