Doodling

[Hawkman]

I’m taking a line for a walk.
I shall let it run and follow in its wake,
tracing its path in vectors,
curlicues and planes,
across a page
white as a farmyard goose.

Letterforms or pictograms,
the shapes are immaterial,
ethereal constructions of a vacant thought,
wandering on autopilot
through a sky-mind shot with blue
but brushed with clouds of memory.

I watch as echoes die,
repeating fractals of diminishing returns,
reduced in amplitude by contact
with each yielding surface,
overwhelmed by absorption factors
and the entropy inherent in creative thought.

Don’t know why I bothered really.

[MystyrMystyry]

Interesting. Are you going to post the doodle?

[Delta40]

I liked the idleness of this piece, especially given the end line.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Contrary to Delta, I object strongly to that last line. It seems to alienate the purposeful, overly (?) conscious you from the you that lived for a time in your finger- and pencil-tips, which I much enjoyed following.

[blank|verse]

I have to say I'm not a fan of that last line, either, I'm afraid Hawk. It does bring things back down to earth with a bump - as if the narrator has realised he's going off into the ether a bit too much... but perhaps if the third stanza were more controlled this could be more subtly expressed. It feels like the poet has backed away from making any grand statement (understandable) but maybe there was a telling observation or two he could have ventured from his heightened position...

And funny how these things work - I started a poem recently about a pen which opened in a similar way. Must be cosmic vibes, man! :)

[Hawkman]

Thanks to one and all for reading and commenting on here.

MM, Sorry, but no :D

Delta: thanks for getting it :)

Prince: I'm sorry you don't like the last line but ultimately it indicates the futility, not only of doodling, (for who, except those utterly convinced of their own greatness, preserves their doodles?) but of expending the energy in describing it. The poem is itself a verbal doodle. Personally, I consider the final line entirely appropriate as doodles are completely expendible.

b/v: Please see my response to Prince vis the last line. No one seems to have picked up on the reference to Paul Klee, who coined the phrase, "Taking a line for a walk." Hi ho...

Live and be well - H

[MystyrMystyry]

I thought I'd heard that line before, but if I was asked who'd said it, even for a million, I couldn't have told you.

As for doodle preserving - everyone interested/involved in design do this, because you never know when one random squiggle may become an inspirational breakthrough.

There are examples throughout history, but Klee is, after all, the consummate doodler.

[kittypaws]

Hi Hawk....sorry I am late!

I too am a doodler
I doodle here and doodle there
and am always late
for very special and important dates.

take a deep breath and blow a kiss
as i liked the last line
and got it's jest.

doodle here and doodle there
follow that lines every where
like dilly and dally who come to play
life is a doodle dally way!

ummmmm....sorry don't know what came over me! That just spilled out ~ I'll get a towel and clean that up. must have been the silly in me!


kittypaws

[Hawkman]

MM: I think there is a difference between consciously playing with ideas for a design and doodling. Design ideas are consigned to notebooks whereas doodles are born in the margins of newspapers and the backs of old envelopes. One doodles in moments of distraction, when on the telephone or at meetings when listening to boring speakers :D Of course, when Picasso doodled on a napkin people would fight for it and ask him to sign it. It was not that the doodle had any intrinsic worth but the attributution of his signature gave it provenance and made it valuable.

kittypaws: I think everyone doodles. :) I'm glad you enjoyed the poem.

Live and be well - H

[MystyrMystyry]

There can be both designing for a purpose and subconscious creativity - doodles that hit on a new aesthetic (not necessarily in their entirety, but just a few details here and there) can both be employed in a final design. The designer may get their ideas from nature, other design/ers, even from dreams and daydeams - there's no carved-in-stone law that explicitly states that ideas or designs may come from a handful of particular sources or methods only.

[Hawkman]

Whether creativity is consious or subcounscious is not really the issue here. My argument is confined to the definition of a doodle. Whether the idea behind the doodle is retained and/or subsequently employed is immaterial. I maintain there is a difference between doodling in the margins of a telephone directory, on a scrap of newspaper or even an excercise book. If it is deliberately retained, at some point it has ceased to be a doodle and a conscious effort of will in expanding the design has taken place. By the time it's in a layout pad it most definitely is not a doodle, it is experimental design. JRR Tolkien retained the Celtic spiral patterns he drew on newspapers and they became the heraldic devices of the Elves. For this reason I don't consider them doodles, they were the conscious practicing of a traditional form, even incorporating multiple colours.

Your statement that,

"The designer may get their ideas from nature, other design/ers, even from dreams and daydeams - there's no carved-in-stone law that explicitly states that ideas or designs may come from a handful of particular sources or methods only."

is not in dispute.

[Haunted]

The poetry is so fine that it transformed doodling into an art form, painting a pretty landscape as one's imagination wanders with the line. But oftentimes a doodle is a doodle is a doodle and nothing more, and the prosaic nature of the last line reflects that thought. I said that to myself a lot at the end of my own doodles, not on a dinner napkin or the edge of a newspaper but just lazily in my mind.

[deryk]

I've always hated geometry, but you've tempered it golden with life using just the right strokes of everyday imagery.

[Hawkman]

Thanks Haunted, glad you found something to enjoy and relate to :)

Cheers Deryk, much obliged ;)

Live long and prosper - H