The Music of What Happens - Bill Konigsberg Page 0,39
part. Seeing what isn’t there.
I like the shovel in the poem, but in this picture I see a person above there, crouching down in the dirt, just as dirty, just as invested in the scene as Jordan.
Is it me? Am I above the ground, digging down?
I turn the page sideways and charcoal sketch a boy’s face staring down, right against the ground. His hair falls forward in the face.
Shit. The damn paper’s too small.
Too damn bad. I continue.
But first I look at what I have and my heart jumps. Two boys staring at each other but unable to see, the ground separating them. It’s intense, like very.
I sketch the boy on top’s hand against the dirt. His palm is inches from the other boy’s claw.
Damn. I am the boy on top. And I’m as close to the ground as I can be. And hopeless to help, which sucks the worst. I want to help, but I can’t. I’m waiting for Jordan to dig himself out.
I turn my attention back to Jordan’s face. It’s not what I intend. Jordan looks like Jordan but not like Jordan at all, and there’s no way to make him more Jordan. There’s no space for all that Jordan-ness to be added.
I add a knee to my aboveground boy, who doesn’t look like me but I am definitely him. The first knee I sketch with charcoal is too high, so I lower and shadow it, and then I give my character strong eyebrows and I see for a second the real me crouching there on the ground, and it’s scary.
Damn. Betts and Zay-Rod would not get this at all. I would never show them this.
I sharpen a dark black pencil, its shavings twirling out like a little mushroom head.
I place a piece of white paper below my right forearm and lean in to focus on the eye. I want a very specific emotion there, like, I’m not sure what but something. It could be panicked, but it’s almost like the person on the top knows more than the person on the bottom.
Like he’s been there before, underground.
I use white pencil to pop the top guy’s eye out a bit more.
Man. I didn’t know so much about this drawing would be the guy on top. I thought it was going to be a shovel but the shovel didn’t want to be there.
I turn the page upward so I can check the perspective. It looks about right. Sometimes when you draw flat, you can’t see how things will look right-side up.
The upper character has dirt under his nails that I create with more black pencil, and sweat on his face, which I don’t want to be perfect drops of dew but more just like black lines that add to the movement of the piece.
I add some white smudges to make him more three-dimensional.
Hmm. The boy has no clothes. No clothing line. Maybe shorts? I don’t know yet.
I stand up and move over to my bed. Sometimes I need to get away so I don’t lose perspective. When I come back, what I see is a mess that might turn into something.
I focus in on the tree. Maybe it’s an avoidance so I don’t have to deal with Jordan’s face yet. I switch to a different pencil to give the tree its own texture, different from the rest.
I realize I’m drawing a tree again and I smile, thinking about Mr. Zimmer’s comment. Well, maybe I am a jock. Maybe I can’t do this. But I like it, you know? I like trying.
I can’t find the guy on the bottom. I smear some color together, and focus in on the outline, and suddenly it’s like, There you are. He shows up and what’s so funny is the guy on the bottom is darker than the guy on top, which is opposite. But somehow it just works. I strengthen the jawline with more charcoal.
I wonder if Jordan would let me draw him. This isn’t him even if it stands in for him. It would help me get beyond skin texture and eye color. Man, I need to ask him. I wonder what he would say if I asked?
I sketch in his top eye. I won’t know the emotion for sure until the eye comes through. Then I’ll know if it’s right or not.
I flare his nostril more to make him more panicky.
I erase his ear. I do not like what happened there at all.