One thing I hear a lot when I make a time-lapse drawing video is, “You make it look so easy!” Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. But the illusion of time lapse even takes the labor out of my memory and smooths the SLOW, painstaking nature of achieving a likeness. It condenses the magic of the drawing process for me so that it feels like something that happened on its own.
The truth is, I wouldn’t draw in this way if I didn’t love slowness, or precision, or losing myself in this sort of devoted attention. “Losing myself” is an interesting reversal in terms, for putting the whole of my attention into a drawing feels more akin to restoring myself than any kind of loss. This was particularly true while drawing this man, JR, who was a dear friend to many. His life was all about giving and loving, and cultivating awareness.
And can we toast to slowness while we’re at it? Slow has become almost a bad word in the hyper-productive, conveyer-belt reality we have constructed. It is the last thing we want, to be slow. It is dreaded and condemned and dismissed. Yet to my complete surprise, my sister recently reflected to me that my slowness is one of my greatest qualities. I was dumbfounded, having judged this quality in myself my whole life. She said, “You don’t cut corners. When you learn something, you learn it fully. When you create something, you create it fully. You let it change you, all the way through.” She explained that when our father died, I was able to mourn him fully and come to a completion. I took six months to write my wedding vows but I felt absolutely full of bliss when I read them to my wife. I spend months on drawings. I’m an intolerably slow cook.
I love efficiency as much as the next person. But when the water runs too quickly across the land it can’t penetrate deeply and recharge the aquifers. It has to slow for the tree roots to drink it in. And wisdom, well, we can say many things of wisdom, but it never was quick.
I raise my cup to you… and to slowness.
Cheers,
KG