Since arriving in NYC on Saturday, I have already sketched a good dozen people or so, most of them being on the bus ride here, or the train in the morning to the evening. People are surprisingly still at these times of day, most often because social code conducts them to be so, but also because they're tired, from the night before or from the day they had.
In this city, it's easy to see why. It's exhilarating and exhausting all at once. I feel like a scientist on the train rides--analytical and calculating, trying to capture the light on that man's cheekbones, or the bridge of that women's nose. There's so much to record, and I know that there is a good chance the subjects will move at any moment.
Despite my initial technical approach, I find that my drawings make me more interested in the people around me. I find myself biting my tongue, keeping myself from interrupting their brief rest to ask them their names, their history.
As I trace the lines below their eyes on my paper, I yearn to know what these people do that had merited such a permanent trace of tiredness. As I shade the wrinkles by their lips, I want to ask what has made them laugh, and who they kiss at the end of the day, or if they have anyone at the end of the day to begin with. Sometimes I wonder if they've even got a home to go back to or if their day is really just starting, rather than ending. I want to know what kind of work they do, and why they do it.
These people cannot know that I am still thinking of them hours, or even days later, but I am. Whether my drawing skills are actually improving for it, I can't say. But I can attest to the fact that these sketches change the way I think about people, and if believe it's stirred a Divine curiosity and communal love in me, somewhere in my heart.
