Musings.15: Barbara

elissa's dreams have been criss-crossing my actual life in a number of ways, but yesterday morning this happened in a wholly new manner: my work with this character crossed over into my dreams. Until this dream the process had worked in the reverse; I dreamt on occasion and on occasion aspects of my dreams would appear in Melissa's story.

Yesterday I dreamt I was sitting somewhere happily minding my own business, painting with a luscious light blue color and some creamy frothy whites when some unknown woman shows up and looms over me. She leans over my right shoulder (she is behind me) and begins berating me for not following her instructions and insisting she had told me the "assignment" was to do a piece in "black and white."

I was thoroughly confused because, until she appeared, I had no clue I was in any sort of instructional setting. I'd just been playing with the colors, having abandoned an attempt at design to let the colors 'do' what they would 'do'. (To do or not to do, that is the question, eh?)

So, anyway, she persists in her harangue so I decide to go come up with something in black and white to silence her. I told myself I would go around looking for white pieces in "the sweepings of a street" and put them on a black background. As I left the room I wondered whether I should tell 'her' I was leaving and what I was going to do, but I decided she didn't deserve any explanation from me.

In searching for refuse through what appeared to be school corridors, I saw jaguar costumes on display in a large glass trophy case. There was a sign saying that these were the new costumes for the dance team, or something like that. I remember stopping in my tracks for a moment, blinking and thinking, "Oh! The jaguars are back," and feeling rather

comforted.

Awake and pondering the dream, waiting for my tea to steep, I suddenly realized that in developing the character of 'Melissa' through a fictional dream journal structured, in part, around William Butler Yeats' "The Circus Animals' Desertion" - which includes a line about masterful images beginning from "A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street" - I had produced 31 original drawings in graphite on white paper. Black on white, but then mounted on dark blue and black paper.

The last art instruction I received was in elementary school and, I confess, it left me feeling totally incompetent. Forgive me, but I used to dread that one hour a week art class. I loved the array of colors in the box of 64 Crayola crayons, especially the periwinkle for some reason, but I could never figure out how to get the opalescent scenes I dreamed up in my child's mind onto the paper in a way that would satisfy myself and not add a failing mark tomy report card.

When I decided to explore Melissa's character using a device designed to be an intimate personal journal my journalistic instincts told me I needed to break up the text with visuals of some sort. After trial-and-error I discovered that the graphite drawings promoted that idea of impromptu sketches made while writing - like Monet or Matisse including impromptu sketches in their letters. For the sake of individuality and visual harmony I chose to present the drawings in a uniform style.

So, I sit here nearly four decades after those dreaded and dreadful weekly art classes feeling rather surprised to discover I have done over thirty original graphite drawings. I was just minding my own business, letting this project be what it wanted to be, and ... I am a bit non-plussed.

[Photo: the author's, of a copy of Michelangelo's "David" at a stoneware shop a few blocks east of The World Peace Cafe; Atlanta, GA; 2010]