This afternoon I drew the tip of my pencil with itself and the nib of my biro with itself. I drew them in my line drawing book, which makes them the first traditionally representational drawings on its pages. They continue my exploration of the line as a representational tool that joins word to thing, and here the pencil and biro use the paper as a pivot for representation. There’s a little bit missing from the very tip of the pencil and the very end of the biro nib where they join on to the lead and the ink of the drawing utensils themselves. As I drew, I lined the lines up with the edges of the utensils, and as the utensils moved so did the lines.
I’m not sure what I’m doing by calling them beaks. Beaks speak. They open up. Out of them come whistles, and into them go worms, I suppose. You could peck if you had a pencil for a beak, but you couldn’t eat anything. Could you even breathe? You couldn’t whistle. Maybe you could learn to write if you were desperate.
