38/100 - Like birds
There are sentences sprinkled here and there in my sketchbooks. I hear them while listening to podcasts, or I pin them there if I read them somewhere. An example from today, I heard it on this episode of Where should we begin? with Esther Perel: "Freedom in confinement comes from imagination".
Or this one from several months ago: "To observe the world is the greatest gift you can give yourself for free", said by the CEO of Weta Workshop on Adam Savage's podcast.
But honestly they rarely turn into anything. And I say rarely because there is this one exception. I was browsing this book of poetry a few days ago and I read this poem by a friend (who is also the editor of the book) and this verse really stuck with me so I wrote it on my sketchbook:
We open our throats and language
like birds, bursts from our lips, words
The poem is called Language like birds by Pireeni Sundaralingam, and I didn't get her permission to reproduce it here but you can read it online, and you should because it's dark and beautiful.
I didn't quite set out to illustrate the poem, but it was a helpful springboard. It helped me unify a couple of loose sketches I had. I'm still pondering about the meaning of one character on the shoulders of the other, for now I can only say that it made sense at the moment, and it still makes sense now, but I'll wait a little longer for those birds to burst from mi lips.
This one is 2.75" by 5" and its available here (update: sold).