The Mothen Craft

There's a moth on my window. Stuck to it, like it's watching me. It's the light, obviously. The light of my office piercing the dark of night, through the worn-out windowblinds. It's the night hours that prove the most amenable to my interests. Long, uninterrupted stretches of time. Some move out into an isolated cabin to help their creative process along. It's the knowledge that there is nothing else that could reasonably be done in that time that drives me, the knowledge that if I did anything else, the thoughts would get stuck in my head, swirling in tight spirals around my consciousness and obscuring the clear view upon any other, perhaps more pertinent issues.

I place the charcoal pencil against the large canvas, eyes still locked on the moth, two creatures of the night staring at one another in bound- and baseless fascination. Neither has much of a use for the other, I imagine. The first stages of the progress is almost mechanical. It serves to place the structure of the idea upon the space it's meant to inhabit. In almost all artforms, it's called a _sketch_. The sketch is ubiquitous and nearly all-consuming. It is the Alpha and Omega of the process. Without a sketch, the changes have minuscule chances of manifesting, the concepts will be repelled by the blank nature of the page, will evaporate the moment it leaves the safety of its creator's regard. But few things ever leave the confines of the sketch. Its unreality makes it a comfortable place to remain, where the works can continue holding on tightly to the near limitless potential they are able to hold until the moment the decision to manifest is made, and all of that future splendor collapses in on itself like a popped balloon. The sketch of a novel loses its luster, once the final words are placed onto the page, and by the time the first chapter is penned, it will have had to content with its cavernous averageness. The critic might call it mediocre, but that word is often far too strong for the simple reality that a work emerging from its sketch usually holds.

I place the canvas on the floor next to the easel. It holds a sketch of a moth, against a silhouetted cityscape, partially obscured by clouds. I find it best to let sketches rest for a while. Their state of completion mirrors the process of their creation. A mess, barely directed, and captured in time, a collection of loose thoughts and delayed decisions, lines to contain space whose removal will complete the finished work. I step away from the easel. The moth has left in the time it took me to balance the canvas safely against the wooden leg. That brief moment of inattentiveness seems to have been enough to break the spell.

I survey the attic, where the myriad of sketches that never made it past their infancies reside. I feel no particular attachment to them. They are, to me, practically unrecoverable. The sketch only works in collaboration with the intention to complete it, and the visions that conjured them have long since faded. Drawing the intentions that created them back out of the canvas should be possible, but isn't worth the effort. There's a reason they're up here. I consider depositing this night's sketch there as well, but I'm not sure I should. Its vision is not as lofty as the ones that likely conjured the rest of these smeared charcoal silhouettes. It's simply an observation. Exaggerated, sure, but far more grounded in reality than the imaginary landscapes, portraits of strangers and strange people. Say, the moth were to return, it would likely reproduce what has produced it.

It's silly to assume the moth might return, so perfectly framed on the glass of the window. I keep the canvas next to the easel regardless. I could always switch what I'm working on, should another moth sit in that same spot and watch. It might have been an easy piece to complete on my own. References for moths exist, and the cityscape is static behind my window. I could complete it, and put it out of my mind, but seeing this canvas leaning against the easel brings me a strange ease of mind.

There is impressive detail in a moth's body. It's foreign and fascinating, large, unfeeling eyes, scaled wings and curious, expressive antennae. Life can be fathomed in this odd combination, in it's weirdness, so far removed from human anatomy, and initially unsettling. Its pattern hypnotize, like a snake might hypnotize its prey. I finish several pieces, and discard many times more, before I decide that the time has come for the moth to move to the attic as well. The moth has never returned to finish what it started, and so neither will I. I would have liked to finish this piece, but it's just as much its art as it is mine. I looked up the standard lifespan of a moth. It's not particularly long, about as long as I suppose an idea can be circling the drain while still being fresh and full of intrigue. It's time.

I survey the attic, again. There is some order in the way the sketches are arranged. The hopeless ones toward the back, the bad ones smudging the charcoal on each others' canvases, and the ones that I think could have been great, toward the front. I place the moth next to the door the the attic, facing the wall. It could have been great. Should have been great. But I don't want to see it for a while.