18 November

Another example of how perspective drawing fundamentally screws with our experience of the world. Take this standard example, of ‘moving’ from point A to point B. What we call movement relies upon us first isolating points like that - A and B - as if they’re separate things. And then ‘movement’ is us getting from A to B. The problem is, at every moment ‘between’ A and B, and at A and B themselves, we’re living a full context in the world. There are no points. In a 3D perspective space there are points, but there are no points in the actual world. There’s just world, all of it, everywhere we go. We can’t move between A and B, we can’t actually move at all in the way we usually mean, because there is no separate space or points in space in the first place. Sounds a bit abstract, but the consequences are huge. For example, see how your movement or sitting or standing becomes completely effortless, if you give up the idea of moving from A to B. ‘There’ is already part of ‘here’, if I keep my attention here while I’m moving to there, all the way, I don’t strain because I’m not trying to get somewhere - straining - that I haven’t arrived at yet. I’m being at A and B at the same time, in my attention, rather than straining towards B and ignoring all the surroundings at A.