This Is Not A Pipe

Drawing is stupid.

OK, maybe stupid is the wrong word, in a global sense.  There must have been a point (or a long stretch) in human history where the ability to create two-dimensional line representations of three-dimensional objects seemed nothing short of miraculous.  And that can still be the case.  I’ve stood in front of classrooms full of fidgety schoolchildren who became transfixed, just bowled over by the fact that I could conjure up an army of their favorite cartoon characters with a piece of chalk and a few quick strokes of my arm.  That’s gratifying.

On the other hand, though, here’s a sketch I did sitting at the counter of a diner, while I was waiting for Gloria’s engine to be repaired:

Now, what the hell good is that?   It isn’t a terribly accurate representation of what the cup and saucer and spoon really looked like over those moments (which I guess you’ll just have to take my word for, being as how I was there, and you weren’t.)  It serves as a mnemonic for me of what it was like to sit at that counter at that moment, in front of that cup of coffee, but the greater part of that experience has nothing to do with the drawing (or the coffee) and is not communicated by it in any way:  you can’t divine by looking at that drawing what the smell and taste of the french fries with mayo that were sitting right next to it were like, or how I was starting to feel washed out because I was about to come down with bronchitis, or perceive what the head waitress sounded like bitching out the other waitresses about how the coffee in the pot was too old, or get the general sense of daily life’s minutiae that I did as old men ambled up and took seats on other side of me, placing small variations on the same orders they’d no doubt placed a hundred times before.  You can’t even really tell too much about the objects the drawing is supposed to represent, other than some bare suggestion of their physical arrangement:  whether the cup and saucer were white or beige;  whether the spoon was clean or dirty;  whether the coffee is hot or cold, flavored or not, or if it even is coffee.  If you think you can, it’s because you’re bringing your own experience to it;  reaching into your internal database of coffee-china-warm-beverage-related associations and calling them up in your own head, at the drawing’s instigation.

I can type this:

COFFEE ON A DINER COUNTER

…and it does the same thing.  With the same efficacy.  And that only took me two seconds.  The drawing took 10 minutes.  Maybe more.

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On the third hand, I kinda dug these creamers: