Reverie 3: I draw to know a thing ...

In her article, ‘Sipping Water: Reverie and Improvisation’ (Critical Studies in Improvisation, Vol 8, No 2, 2012), Amanda writes of ‘free drawing’ as a method (if that’s the right word) of achieving a state of reverie. I don’t know if Kate got into a reverie when she went back to the estate to do some drawings of the spaces and places we saw and talked about, but the drawings are fabulous. Some of them can be seen in her piece below: 

I draw to know a thing… Kate Genever

From Georges Perec – Species of Spaces and Other Pieces.

Space [Continuation and End]

I would like there to exist places that are stable, unmoving, intangible, untouched and almost untouchable, unchanging, deep-rooted places that might be points of reference, of departure, of origin:

My birthplace, the cradle of my family, the house where I may have been born, the tree I may have seen grow [that my father may have planted the day I was born], the attic of my childhood filled with intact memories….

Such places don’t exist, and it’s because they don’t exist that space becomes a question, ceases to be appropriated. Space is a doubt: I have constantly to mark it, to designate it. It’s never mine, never given to me, I have to conquer it.

My spaces are fragile: time is going to wear them away, to destroy them. Nothing will any longer resemble what was, my memories will betray me, oblivion will infiltrate my memory, I shall look at a few yellowing photographs with broken edges without recognizing them. The words ‘Phone directory available within’ or ‘Snacks served at any hour’ will no longer be written up in a semi-circle in white porcelain letters on the window of the little café in the Rue Coquilliere.

Space melts like sand running through one’s fingers. Time bears it away and leaves only shapeless shreds: To write: to try meticulously to retain something, to cause something to survive; to wrest a few precise scraps from the void as it grows, to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace, a mark or a few signs.

(Paris 1973-1974)


So I care to wrest a few scraps from the void and in doing so reflect that I care to look, to see and commit in drawing that engagement and care for myself through their production. I care to know more, to give myself to the moment and see what returns. I care to believe that beauty and looking can have profound a/effects. I care to imagine a revolution of everyday life, to daydream. I care to move forward and accept change. I care that these drawings aren’t enough.