A Few of My Favorite Lines

When I was in college, I used to head downtown to McDonalds during lunch hour on a regular basis. I’d recently become a vegetarian and had no interest in ordering anything off the menu, but I’d also recently developed a somewhat panicky distaste for crowds and thought that by standing in those jam-packed lines, I could learn to distance myself from my body by focusing on my breath, learn to live outside of my own experience.

 

A few years later, in the Peace Corps, I was desperately waiting in line for the bathroom at a bus stop when an older British tourist asked me: is this the queue to the loo? It was such a musical phrase that I found myself chanting it, as the pressure on my bladder grew more and more intense – and afterwards I thought about the power of language to frame, even transcend, our experiences.

 

Don’t get me wrong, there are limits, too, to what a line can transform. Back when we were single, my friends and I used to head to the bar and see who could come up with the best pick-up line. We were amazed by how easily women saw through our lines – all that wit and cleverness barely clothing our most primitive desires.

 

In geometry, a line is considered a primitive term – a concept so intuitive that any attempt to define it would be circular.

 

In drawing, the line is much more complex – it can control the viewer’s eye, define form and indicate movement, even offer the illusion of light.  It is the variation of lines in a work of art that creates dimension and texture.

 

I was once in a play with someone who used to vary his lines every performance – the words stayed the same, but the tone, pauses and inflections changed each night. I was flustered at first but grew to love his approach – what it taught me about the ambiguity and flexibility of a line, the need to be entirely present, the difference between replying and responding.

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