Okay, so this is from a leather sketchbook that I drew and wrote in in 2003. The title says that it’s page 40 or it says number 40, and I assume that means the page. I’d have to go and check, or the spread, I guess, because it’s two pages. So maybe it’s the 40th spread which would make it pages 79-80? I’m not sure.
On the left is a nude with a fish and a little, note that says, come in slowly to my life and choose to share with me what disappointments do you feel – No question mark, and I think that what my intention there was, share with me what disappointments you feel. I’m not certain, um, I was, it was a long time ago.
The right hand side has a sort of poem. It tells us:
It only takes
one glass of wine
to make me feel like being
honest with you.
Two can make me feel sad,
like feeling sad
when what I had is gone
and irretrievable.
Three glasses of wine can
make me miss the girls
I haven’t slept with,
but tonight, I’ve only had
two,
and I feel sad, alone
and without you.
I should have been
more decisive and sure.
That last line probably is exactly right, because when I look at this, I assume, I think I know who it was that I was thinking about when I drew this and wrote this. But I’m not 100% sure it could have been one of two different people, and that speaks to the indecisiveness and the lack of surety that I had back in those days, at least when it came to love.
So, it’s a sweet little thought and recollection in a nice sketchbook. I’ll have to dig it out. If I look at it and find the context, I’ll be able to know more about it.
These drawings, this sketchbook, a lot of these things were thoughts and images that led to the 14 questions for Eve series that I think I completed a couple years later in 2005, but I was working on these all along while I was living on Altair, in Venice between 2002 and early 2006.
Later thoughts: Given the time period – 2003 – and the drawing itself, I realize more clearly who must’ve been on my mind the night I wrote this, and it makes sense – indecision was definitely at play in those days. Lovely memories though – even if they were sometimes the result of painful evenings.