In a recent creative Zoom call, I read aloud from the first chapter of a story/book/? I have been picking away at over the last few years. It’s a story that is piecing itself together based on drawings I have also been doing for years.
Reading the story was difficult first because I don’t do well with that sort of performative reading but second because I don’t really know where the story is going yet. I suppose three because the craft of fiction writing feels like a dark art. My friend Mark is adept at plotting out stories and having arcs that lead to new arcs worked out. Like making visual art, writing for me is more like I type the words and see what happens next.
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Let me back up a bit and talk about the drawings that prompted this story and the film that prompted the drawings.
The film is Agnès Varda’s bleak and beautiful film Vagabond. The film is a uniquely told story of a woman living on the fringes of society in rural France. I won’t talk too much about the plot, it can be a tough watch but it’s also one of my favourite films. The original French title of the film is Sans toit ni loi — without roof or law. I highly recommend it.
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Since I first saw the film in the mid-90s, it has come back into my thoughts many times. Occasionally that has been in the form of spontaneous drawings. Sometimes I do not realize the origin of the drawings until after they are made and other times I have drawn with the intention of making something that connects to Varda’s narrative or at least its tone.
Primarily I have come back to drawing a character that sometimes looks a bit like Sandrine Bonnaire in Varda’s Vagabond. The character will often share similar clothing but then be a completely different person under the dirty, worn, and patched transient garments.
The figure can be a woman or a man, young or old, of various seeming ethnicity—but always in a similar set of jeans, military castoffs, boots, often with a heavy pack. They can have a variety of tattoos. They can be mid-travel or at some weary stop along their way.
In drawing these figures, I didn’t begin with the thought that I wanted to tell their story. The drawings are all from my imagination and are more about expressing humanity and emotion.
Along the way, in thinking about these people that came out of my head, I couldn’t help but wonder what their story could be. I wondered if I could write their stories but also felt unworthy of expressing the life of someone truly “living rough”.
But one day in 2020 I began with a few words describing a person waking up in a forest. That became the first short chapter in a story that since then has taken more form.
I began to think of these various vagabonds as one being. Or maybe a series of beings in a single form. The thought of possibly eternal transience, a person that lives between other more mundane lives and is alternately seen in different physical forms.
I’m not as interested in this premise from a sci-fi or fantasy standpoint. My interest in the story is more about following a longer story of transient travel through different viewpoints.
I honestly don’t know if I can actually write anything well enough to match the type of story I would like to read. But it’s inside me so I might as well try to externalize it and see where it goes.
I have also thought that maybe this story would be best as a graphic novel but that is also another huge undertaking on top of even writing a compelling story. But it does make sense because when I think of these people and settings I can’t help but want to draw them.
The other day when I read out that first short chapter, I had the thought that part of what makes this harder for me is that the story only lives in my head and in a folder of notes and chapters on my phone.
With visual art, I have realized that sharing work as I make it can further the process of making more. Not in terms of receiving praise or recognition but simply because I kind of let the tension out of holding onto artwork for too long. There’s a freeing sense I can get from sharing something in progress. Even something Im not sure about. Maybe even more so in those cases.
There’s a type of enigmatic “magic” throughout the vagabond drawings. A sense of power despite a life of deep struggle. I will sometimes draw that as fields of energy or fire coming from the vagabond. I’m not sure what it means but that’s also part of the interest for me. Will my imagination reveal this story to me?
That’s where I am with this right now. I am thinking of releasing the few chapters of this story I have so far—serializing them without any fixed schedule. I want to free them from just being here on my phone and see it that prompts me to go further.
It’s not a promise that a whole novel will spill out of me but I believe in shared open experiences so I’m going to give it try with writing.
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The story is called, We, Vagabond.
More soon.