Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Pencils, Graphite, Depression, Knifer

the earlier post about a visit with julije knifer—invited by my friend and knifer's friend zarko radakovic (those were the days when a zagreb painter and a belgrade writer were linked by the yugoslav "highway of brotherhood and unity")—elicited a comment by the flowerville blogger:  


like the drawings. besides i was at the pencil factory in cumberland where they make the derwent pencils (derwent is a lake and a river maybe and a mountain, no idea, at any rate it is a lake and a pencil....). it's always inspiring to see how writing equipment is being made and it is inspiring to see too other people use it like you.


i started to respond that my awkward drawing of knifer's pencils from germany and england, pencils used by a master of graphite works, didn't have anything to do with my own work other than being a quick note. but then i remembered that the 1995 trip led into the next several years of depression and finally divorce and to do something, anything, during that time i bought some pencils like knifer's and did a couple of drawings like his just to get a feel in my hands and back and shoulders of what it felt like to blacken paper with graphite, dark and darker and more dark, the sound of the pencil rasping against the paper, hours slipping past with something, anything, to show for it.




4 comments:

* said...

see scott, you can draw better than me, i can't even doodle.and your handwriting is mor elegible than mine too. i have such pencils as well, for "reading and underlining."
it's always good to do something whatever, drawing etc, something comes out and does something to one and maybe that's a good thing, this externalization, for its inner effect might be more important than what comes out, but how could i know that....

Scott Abbott said...

i like your thought that it's good to do something, whatever. your most recent post on your blog—the one about the tapestry and about the construction of meaning—is a related thought.

wir ordnen's. es zerfällt. . . .

* said...

yes that's the one. wir ordnens wieder und zerfallen selbst.

i do think that, it's good to do somethign whatever. and if it is countering the black of depression with the black of graphite.

yesterday i gave a paper in which in the end i proved myself wrong. as if this is the only necessary way. you talk about it and sort it, ordnen and you get all excitied about but then i found myself getting excited about its zerfallen too....

Scott Abbott said...

isn't there a great line, perhaps by nietzsche, about the joy of proving oneself wrong?

congratulations.

there's hubris in thinking anything we create will last forever; and some kind of forgiving humility in creating something while knowing it won't.