Cross Pollination ...!

When Sandra showed her lightening sketches of faces on her blog (see  http://www.sketch-mad.com ) the other day, I commented that I never draw people or faces. But of course I do ... but not as 'art,' not as part of drawing!   I draw them as part of Writing!

For example, I wrote a short story, "Coat Tales" (pun intended) for a Literary magazine, about an event that happened to me and a friend when we were in Kabul, Afghanistan, in the 1970s


Basically we went off the beaten track in search of cheap Afghan coats for our wives. We came across two Afghan men, they looked like father and son, and they were sewing the coats by hand. Now their English was as non-existent as our Pashtu. We tried writing numbers (as prices) in English and then in Arabic ... but we got nowhere, they understood neither. 

Then I spotted a young lad carrying schoolbooks, I grabbed him before he ran away from the fiendish white men. Soon we were all friends, they were smoking our cigarettes and crying with laughter as we coughed ourselves to death over their local weed... those far off days when everyone smoked.


 We all sat scrunched together on this rickety wooden platform: that kept them out of the dust in the summer and mud in the winter. The old man sat on a pile of blankets, and the schoolboy knelt between them his arm on the old man's shoulder. 

I wrote my opening bid on the schoolboy's book in Arabic, and he translated the number verbally to the Tailors. They laughed and told the lad how much they wanted, he wrote their figure down and I translated. Finally, after a thoroughly entertaining half-an-hour of too-ing and fro-ing, with much laughter we parted company with arm breaking handshakes and slaps on the back. 

From the glint in their eyes it was obvious that they thought they had made a killing, and made it fairly ... this wasn't a rip off.

My pal sold the coat he had bought, when we got back to the UK - he got £500 ($1,200 at that time). They had only cost us £25 ($60) each!

I wrote the short story as fiction, and told it from the Afghan tailor's  son's Point-of-View. But I had to sketch the three of them  before I started writing ... just to be inside the group and understand the how they all saw it.

Susan (over on susansmolenskyfineart.blogspot.com ) wrote about how her ballet characters take over and develop the situation, she is never sure where they will take it (fantastic pictures she paints btw).  And so it is with writing: these three Afghans were not content with a role in a  short story they now play a significant role in my thriller, 'The Othila Paradigm,' which agent's and publisher's permitting should be out by the end of the year.


But this cross-pollination across the 'arts' doesn't end there. When I write a poem, full of deep philosophical stanzas - nobody takes ant notice. But when I cross a 'silly' poem with boatbuilding and drawing and convert poetry into boatry.... it gets published and there are demands for more ... 

Boatry

       

                                                        

                                                                    I like flags.

                                                                    Do

                                                                                a  Set

                                                           fore  Sails

                                                     sail  is     Flapping

                                               not for sale   In the wind.

                                           you  may find   Makes one think

                                       that you need it    Of  flying far off like

                                    rather badly in a     Some Albatross set free

                                 wind or in a gale        From land and those grassy ties

         I                   and  without it  find       That shore can bring, although I do

            do      others quickly up your tail    Like being a landlocked Shipwright it's part

                  like                                                   of

                        boatbuilding it's                       my                                                     

                                 such a  large part of my life. I love the smell of the wood as I cut and I plane it.

                                     listen to the music of the parts that go to make a boat, each word such poetry:

                ~~~~~~~~~~ tumblehome and transom; hog and hogson; apron and the thwart~~~             

                                                gutter and garboard strakes of planking: clinker & hard chine

                                                       but alas without a keel

                                                              where would we be

                                                                   capsized and upside

                                                                       down, swimming

                                                                                far beneath

                                                                                          the sea.