Drawings shape us because drawings give shape to our experience. To draw the sun is to draw a circle, a line forever returning to itself in circular motion. The never-ending line of a circle gives shape to continuity and constancy, and from there we conceive of eternity (a spiritual experience).
One horizontal line separates earth from sky, and defines the environment.
Add two lines to the horizontal line and you can make a triangle. Make the triangle three-dimensional and there is a pyramid, the tomb of pharaohs and the underlying composition of Raphael's Holy Family. It is a shape of balance and symmetry that points upward.
A cross is two lines intersecting and looks basically like a body with two arms extending outward. A cross gives shape to our fundamental reality—it is us, and it is others. A cross becomes a signature and to sign with a cross is to leave "your mark"—that is, you.
Leave a handprint on a cave wall, and that is an autobiography. The artist was here and lived, and created. The handmade drawing of a hand both tells this story and confirms it.
These simple drawings—the single line, the circle, the cross--are among the most universal. Humble in means, they can be the most revelatory. A few common marks serve to identify us and the world we occupy: being is expressed. Life is recognized and recorded. Once made, drawings may be meditated upon. We see ourselves, rightly, as participants in the world.
From the simple grows the complex. In nature, the tree grows from the seed. Both exist, the seed and the tree, both participate in the world. The seed of one story is that a man searches in vain to kill a whale only to die while the whale lives. That story grew to over two hundred thousand words to become Moby Dick. No one could memorize that book. Almost anyone could well remember the essential story.
A poem of few words, a melody of few notes, a story told over a cup of coffee can convey a world. The tiny poem speaks the mystery, the spare melody clarifies the heart, the short story peels back human nature. One could well and wisely realize that additional detail most often is unnecessary, though often desired. Need and want are separate conditions. I need the story, I may want it expanded.
If the simple can tell the story, however, the simple must simultaneously be complex. When complete unto itself, the simple is at once the core and the conclusion of an experience. Detail may decorate the essential, or disguise it. But detail does not replace what is essential. Cut it away, and the jewel remains. The jewel of Moby Dick is wisdom: seek revenge and the reward is emptiness.
Look for the simple, and it may be found. The forest is dense, yet a single leaf within it reveals the color of life and rhythm of growth. And it is the leaf you may hold in your hand, breathe into your body, and fold entirely into your eyes. You may hike the forest and be exhilarated with every step in what is really a wonderland of life. It is the tiny leaf in your pocket that you take home to remember it by. The leaf stands in for the whole of the forest.
Meanwhile, in your wallet or purse or more likely now on your phone are pictures, each a little leaf that stands in for a life. There is a spouse, a child, a friend. We carry pictures as magical charms that can bring forth the spirit of that special person: To see their face is to conjure their life. Thousands of words are not needed to share your joy, only a single image. An essential one.
Likewise, when someone dies we search for just the right words to express and share sympathy. Thousands of words would only trivialize great loss. Silence says more. One hand resting upon another is an immeasurable source of comfort and condolence.
And, has this ever happened to you: a melody is suddenly heard on the radio or in a restaurant or being played by a street musician, and an entire lost summer of love comes back to you in waves of emotion and images? A simple refrain, played over and over in your mind, is the soundtrack to an entire chapter in life.
Upon making a new friend, how best to begin to reveal who you are (or, who you believe yourself to be)? Relate the place of your birth. That small bit of information carries a large cultural story. Share your favorite songs, your favorite books. These are biographical markers, and as you layer one on top of another they begin to make a drawing. Of you.
Drawings may be mercilessly explicit. The broken lines running through the freeway separate lanes of traffic—ignore these at your own peril. Or, they may be frustratingly abstract. Leonardo's faint silver lines composing the head of an angel capture the moment and mystery when one soul encounters another through the eyes. Ignore those moments at your own peril, too.
There are drawings (called maps) that can show you exactly how to get from point A to point B. There are others that suggest harmony is possible though it appears in endless forms. There are drawings (called architectural plans) that show how to build a house to live in. Other drawings exist to inspire the passion of living.
Somewhere there is a drawing to convey the idea of beginning and another the idea of ending. Somewhere there is a drawing that illustrates a mystery, and somewhere there is a drawing that is mysterious in and of itself.
Somewhere there is a drawing depicting the scales of justice, with a tray to the left and a tray to the right. Another drawing is out there that is completely abstract and yet far more balanced.
There are drawings that have consumed huge quantities of energy, others that emit energy Another drawing is wholly aloof.
In a world of constant interaction, there are purely restless lines and there are searching lines. There are lines elegant in their fragile economy.
And yet and ever-growing number of drawings in the world are nonetheless slaves to description, others coerced toward some vague idea of pleasure. Still others are purely rhetorical. It is the drawing that exists of its own accord, as lines of interaction flowing from ineffable mind and sensitive hand, that tells the bigger story, that stands in for the dense forest, that jogs our memory and lets us look again at life as lived. We want that essential experience, that essential drawing, and they are out here.
And, they are in us, too.