Five Songs

7/27/12, Copic Multiliner SP pen, watercolor, Hand Book sketchbook

I had been sketching the saxophonist at Phinney Farmer’s Market for a while when I sensed someone looking over my shoulder. I glanced up, and the woman watching me asked if I came to the market regularly to sketch. “I try to come every week,” I said with a smile, then went back to painting the busker. (He knows only about five songs, and in the hour that I spent at the market, I heard each of them at least three times. But I like jazz, so who’s complaining?)

When I looked up again at the woman watching me, she wore an expression I couldn’t quite read. Wistfulness? Sadness? Just lost in thought? She admired my sketch and said quietly, incompletely, “I want to do that, too. . . I should. . .I guess I. . .” Chewing a lip, she let her words fade away, and soon she walked off.

As I finished my sketch, I wanted to say to her, “You can! You should! Come and sketch!” I understood her expression then, because for most of my life, I think I wore my own version of it.

Saxophonist who knows only five tunes – play on, play on.