‘In That Moment’s Flight Between The Picture and Her Canvas’: A Student on Being Wrong

 Many of my students struggle with finding their subject, even on the level of the sentence, especially on the level of the sentence. I think this has to do with being too far away from their materials because they believe the materials themselves – their texts – aren’t good enough. (from Sally Bayley’s blog post, “What makes a better sentence? A brief writing lesson.”)

Here - below - is a response from one of my current students. She turned 18 this summer.

I think in the opposite way that Sally proposes, but to the same effect: when writing, I believe my materials – ideas, skills, and thought-processes – are not “good enough,” and so there is an increasing distance between me and the text. In moments of frustration with myself, the page blurs, shrinks, and is further in my mind’s eye. Yet, this whole scene is overly dramatic, almost comical.

If I do commit the utmost ill of wrongness, which could consist of putting a comma where a breath is not needed or writing unoriginal ideas – very tragic, indeed – an earthquake will not strike (shock!). But to that end, these mistakes are somehow mentally predestined; I imagine that they are already waiting, behind a bush, for me to fail. This creates an internal divide between right and wrong – black and white – opposing free, discursive intellectual-thought which thrives among the inbetween.

As a recent high school graduate, entering college this fall, I have found a remedy, creating an engine of thought, in self-teaching and independent learning. This provides me with freedom and curation…repetition and rhythm…process and practise…

She could see it all so clearly, so commandingly, when she looked: it was when she took her brush in hand that the whole thing changed. It was in that moment’s flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child.

(from To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, page 27)

It’s about picking the right colours for the canvas, the right sized paintbrush to create the quarry; it’s about choice. In this quote, Woolf depicts Lily Briscoe’s fleeting feelings of artistic control as she devises a painting, watched by her friend, Mr Bankes. As she processes the landscape into a painting, her method is exposed to be transient, discordant – terrifying, even. There is “that moment’s flight between picture and her canvas,” the passage, which unsettles her to the “verge of tears” – she is hesitant, afraid.

Lily has a cavity of “courage” and so reassures herself by repeating “...‘this is what I see; this is what I see.’” Who are these demons? Herself: her lack of courage, her trepidation at drawing the wrong line. These demons are part of an artist’s creative decision making, a natural form of self-doubt, yet they affect Lily to the point of paralysis. But there is another processor here, another agent of control which threatens her own: Mr Bankes. So, while it appears that Lily is fretting over her artistic licence, Mr Bankes – the viewer – may already be projecting his will onto the scene. Not to mention Woolf’s reader. Who sees? Who rules? Who owns the choices?

Zadie Smith declares in Intimations: Six Essays, “to plant a bulb (I imagine, I’ve never done it) is to participate in some small way in the cyclic miracle of creation”; however, “writing is control” (9). You cannot act with artistic control – the harnessing of your liberty, organisation of thoughts – if you do not have confidence. Lily struggles to paint – despite “[seeing] it all so clearly” – when she becomes involved in the scene. In the moment she picks up her paintbrush, as a writer hovers a pen before a page, she evolves from a passive viewer, to an additional will. This is her muddle. The artist’s challenge is to complete the work of imaginative perception, as Lily must mentally filter the scene.

There is hope. For Lily, and the other controllers among us. Within time’s “passage,” Lily enters a provoking grey area of potential. Woolf reveals seconds of an inbetween, a moment without time or place: Lily about to put brush to canvas. With fear, the passage turns “dark,” – corroding the artist’s sight – but it need not be. It is a point of travel, returning again to choice. She cannot be free of the passage, the point in which she becomes an agent of transforming picture to painting, scene to sight. So, which pathway to take? Lily must decide.

Of course my writing, even on the topic of another author’s text, will include me – I am processing through body and mind. It is another, more subtle form of translation. Lily will also soon learn that her paintings cannot be free of her, no matter how many anxieties she produces. She must concede that she is not the sole source of influence, because there are other participants – other forms of consciousness. An artist cannot adhere to any categoricals, right or wrong, when they are a processor, exploring the passage.

FOR SALLY. Thank you for everything.