How to draw an orange
This week’s question comes to us from Minky:
I stopped making drawings for a couple of months and now everything I do sucks. What should I do?
TL;DR: Keep drawing.
I very much doubt that everything you do now sucks. But for the sake of argument: so what if it does? More importantly: Who is telling you that? Oh, the calls are coming from inside the house. Right. But who’s placing them? Let’s dive in there.
Human beings draw because human beings are genetically programmed to draw. We like to leave marks on things. (Anyone with a small kid at home is nodding along furiously.) We start making marks the minute we can figure out how to grasp something that can make a mark and drag it across a surface that’s markable.
Everyone reading these words drew when they were a child. Everyone who drew as a child enjoyed drawing.
A couple of weeks ago my friend Betsy shared a drawing in our Slack group. It was a drawing of an orange. Since Betsy is an artist, and we often share our work in our Slack group my first thought was that Betsy had drawn an orange. Turns out I was wrong. The orange was drawn by a 9-year-old kid in a class that’s Betsy’s teaching. According to her, the kid walked into class, saw the orange, saw paper, saw oil pastels, and said “I’m gonna draw this orange.” (And listen, I wish I could post the orange here for everyone to see, but I didn’t get the kid’s permission on time, so you’re gonna have to trust me on this—it was a magnificent orange.) After drawing an orange so amazing that it would make 95% of people with an underused BFA seeth with jealous rage, the kid moved on to drawing other things until class was over.
No one told that kid they couldn’t draw an orange, so they drew an orange.
We are born with hearts that tell us all things are possible.
At some point, and I hope I’m wrong, someone will come along and tell that kid they can’t draw that orange. Perhaps they’ll be so excited about drawing oranges that they’ll draw the orange on the living room wall and be told not to draw the orange there. Which is quickly truncated to drawing oranges gets you yelled at. Perhaps someone will tell the kid they’ve seen better drawings of oranges. They might tell the kid it’s a childish waste of time to draw oranges. They might tell the kid to focus on a career that allows them to earn enough to pay off the debt they’ll accrue learning the traits of that career. Perhaps the kid will make it all the way to art school, and be told on their first day that the odds are stacked against, and “only one of you will go on to earn your living as an artist.” Or, most likely, the kid will wake up in a few days and decide that hitting things with sticks is more fun than drawing oranges. Kids are fickle.
But here’s the thing: if you ask a group of kids whether they can draw they will all raise their hands. Fiercely! Of course they can draw. If you ask a group of teens whether they can draw they will mostly ignore you, because teens, but there will be a few hands that go up. Ask a group of adults the same question, and unless you’re in a group of self-proclaimed creative people, you’ll get maybe one very tentative hand. Someone who’s unsure of whether they can admit to this. The hand-raising will most likely be followed by “…but I’m not very good.” I know this because I ask this exact question in my workshop. And that happens every single time.
We are born with hearts that want to leave a mark on the world. This ability is not lost, it is taken from us.
So what? Not everyone is going to be an artist, right? Well sure. Except for the part where drawing is a primal urge baked into our DNA. Leaving marks on the world is how we announce we’re in the world. It’s how we announce ourselves. We want the world to know we are here. It’s a confident gesture of taking up space. And every human being on the planet deserves to take up space.
Another question I ask people during my workshop (I swear this isn’t a workshop advert) is how good they are at what they do. And again, the answers are incredibly tentative. Most people feel like it’s a trick question. (They’ve told me as much.) They’ll then minimize their competence.
“I think I’m ok.”
“There are certainly people better than me.”
And while odds are that there are most likely people better than you, that doesn’t change the fact that you are good at what you do. I also found that the longer people work in the corporate world the more likely they are to minimize their own competence. The very traits that got them hired begin to be questioned first externally by people around them, and ultimately internally by themselves. Which is a very efficient way to keep people under control.
When I start to write an email, my email program offers to write it for me, because I’m obviously not competent enough to write it myself. When I open an email, my email program offers to understand it for me, because I’m obviously not competent enough to understand it myself. When I write this newsletter, my writing program offers to write it for me, because I’m obviously not competent enough to write it myself. Fuck that, I am and you are too.
Being told we cannot draw is the first step to telling people that no, they are not as competent as they believe themselves to be. Once you can convince a human being they cannot draw, you can convince them of mostly anything.
Someone is benefitting from making you believe you are incompetent and it is not you.
We are born with confident, competent hearts. We believe we can do things. We yearn to do them. Until we are told we cannot. We believe we can befriend our neighbors, until we are told “they are not our kind of people.” We believe we can love who we want to love, until we are told “that is frowned upon.” We believe we can do things the right way, until we are told “that’s not good for business.” We are born so amazing, so strong and yet so fragile at the same time. I’d say it’s heart-breaking, but that’s too passive of a sentence. Our hearts are broken by the very people, systems, and places we put our trust in.
As a kid in Catholic school, I was taught that I’d been born with Original Sin. Meaning I was fucked from day one. Born into debt that could only be paid off if I followed their creed up to the day I was put in the ground. I was terrified. So I listened. But I failed to see how a history of violence brought me closer to a state of grace. I failed to see how a history of misogyny brought me closer to a state of grace. I failed to see how a history of colonization brought me closer to a state of grace. I failed to see how a history of raping children brought me closer to a state of grace. So I left.
Leaving the corporate world was easier than leaving the church. Once you can picture a world without hell, it is easy to picture a world without performance reviews.
We give our hearts to people and places that do not deserve them. We should stop, because there are people and places that do deserve them. And we should fill each other’s homes with drawings of oranges.
We are born with whole hearts. We are born with hearts that ache with possibility. We are born with curious, loving, accepting hearts. These weren’t lost, they were taken from us. We can be who we were meant to be again.
Fix your hearts.
🙋♀️ Got a question that needs answering? Ask it!
📣 LOL. Maybe this was an advert for workshops. Next one is on March 6 & 7. Sign up. We’ll draw oranges.
🍆 My friend Dan Hon told be he hates emoji bullet points.
📚 Mule Book Shitty Pulp Editions are now up to four! Get them all, they’re stupidly amazing!
🎼 You’re probably already listening to it, but the eight hour remix of the Severance theme by ODESZA is great for writing newsletters to.
🍉 Palestinian children very much need your help. Donate what you can.
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