Moments, Memories, Barns and Rural Ruminating
Is It Me (f)or A Moment? Rural Recollections and The Who
I am compelled to record some of the memories of places I lived as a youth in the rural piedmont of North Carolina. These places are constructed of an architecture rural in its roots and eternal in its existence: the barns and outbuildings of small tobacco farms. The testimony to these memories requires accessing the recollection, separating the basic shapes and forms contained therein, and then reorganizing and expressing them in a manner that (re)creates a sharper and more vivid memory. I find myself drawing images that seek redemption at a time when their meaning could be lost in a place where memory can be elusive.
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The Lord make His face shine upon you
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It has been in these moments of remembering where the music of The Who has slipped into the sounds of my sights. In the bridge between verses 2 and 3 of the song “Dr. Jimmy” from The Who’s rock opera “Quadrophenia”, Jimmy asks, “Is it me for a moment?” (Townshend, 1973). Until I read the lyrics, I mistakenly thought I was hearing, “Is it me or a moment?” This chance mishearing coincided with a growing awareness of my sketches as memory places. My drawing moments have caused me to think that it is a (my) memory that does the drawing. To be sure, there is the physical act of making a mark on paper, but I sense I am not watching my hand draw so much as my hand follows where my mind wanders, and wander it does. There is no straight-line path, no unique event, no concrete single-item memory that is the moment. It is just a pen and a hand and a time and a place.
of the earth
I have begun seeing the lines I sketch with more clarity and depth, where they are placed, and how they speak of my thinking. Each item and mark is unique and distinct, but comingled they play a common role in communicating the sights (and/or sites) in a memory place. Each successive layer of information represents some measure of one memory or moment blending with or informing still another to deepen the richness of the drawing. Drawing feeling (its emotive content) is paramount in conveying the moment. Sometimes the moment is remembered; sometimes it is created in order to remember. Well-defined lines and crisper shapes and forms are necessary to fully express meaning. The more lines I use, the longer it takes to develop the drawing. As a result, the memory gets deeper. The deeper I go, the greater the chances of having other recollections sneak into the drawing that aren’t necessarily bound by any one unique time, place, or event in the current sketch.
good company and reflection must finish him - john locke
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I sense my sketching has become an act of reclamation - an attempt to recover the ephemeral visual links of a past connected to the soul of a place I once occupied. It also gives me a chance to walk in, around, and through other places that I could not or did not in my youth. Today, they are backgrounds to my adult transience. I see similar places now but only from a distance and always in motion. I am drawing, literally and figuratively, on my past to remember a measure of my present. So…is it me or a moment?
Townshend, P. (1973). Dr. Jimmy [Recorded by The Who]. On Quadrophenia [vinyl]. London, England: Track Records.
from whence cometh my help
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