The Artist

One day, while I was a student at UBC, I sat in a small seminar directly across from a dark-haired woman whose name is long lost to me – I can’t even fully recall what she looked like. But what I can still see with crystal clarity all these years later is a gorgeous pair of eyes she was doodling on the paper in front of her that day. Clearly she was a talented artist, and I watched as those “pools of ink” came to life before my eyes, almost seeming to stare straight into mine. It was just black ink, from a normal pen, but she made them real – and my romantic imagination made them into a larger reflection of the process of creation. The artist can only create; an audience, even of one, is needed to appreciate and “see the beauty into them.” Once something is out there, it is in the hands (or eyes) of others to read “between the lines,” to interpret, process, even construct meaning out of what they see or hear. It would be another several years before I took up the poem I wrote that day (as I’ve been known to plunder my own juvenile poetry for song ideas) and set it to music. The opening chord was the impetus for all that, a taut suspended sounding open E played up the neck that immediately suggested all the rest of the chords and the simple melody that formed around my ancient words.