It begins with a dot ~ Malinda Words

I had always taken dots for granted, like most things, when I was a child. I never knew they needed to be defined or indeed if that was even possible. I would have been about 11 years old when Mr Liyanage, who taught woodwork (lee vaeda) in my school and therefore earned the nickname ‘Vadda,’ offered the definitions. As per geometry.

So I learnt that a dot, when it represents a location, is called a point which of course does not have any specific length, width, shape or size.

Then he moved to ‘line,’ again something I had taken for granted. Vadda duly informed me that a line is formed when two distinct points are connected. It had no width. It is made of an infinite number of points.

Vadda taught me these definitions and I had no reason to revisit them. I reverted to taking dots and lines for granted unless someone asked me to define them. No one has, so far.

And then I met Gamini Abeykoon, an Art Director at Phoenix-Ogilvy who in his spare time produced exquisite line drawings. And this morning, I remembered Gamini Aiya when I chanced upon a line drawing of the standing statue at Gal Viharaya (that of the Buddha according to some and according to others of the grieving Agra Upasthayaka or Chief Attendant of the Enlightened One and the Dharma Bhandagarika or Repository of the Dhamma, Ananda Hamuduruwo).

Gamini Aiya exhibited his line art at the Lionel Wendt Gallery some years ago. By way of providing some publicity for the event, I featured one of his drawings every Sunday in ‘The Nation,’ along with a poem inspired by the particular drawing, the first published several months before the event and the last just before the exhibition was launched.

I vaguely remembered writing about him around that time. A quick search yielded the article which I posted on my blog (‘Gamini Abeykoon: inscriber of ‘exquisite’ into the humbler line’). Reading it for the first time since I posted the article, I came across his response to a question about the degree of control required in his work. Here’s the extract:

“‘Maybe I was born with some of these skills,’ he explains in his self-effacing way. On further prodding, he elaborates, again slowly and rather reluctantly: ‘I think it is because I began by using dots. I drew pictures with dots. They had to be the right size, otherwise the effect is lost. That might have trained me to be extra careful and therefore acquire the requisite skills of control.’”

Every great accomplishment starts with ‘a dot,’ so to speak. The grand edifices can be imagined and designed, but transferring blueprint into something on the ground begins with a dot. Someone must cut the earth to lay the first brick. Someone has to cut the earth to draw the clay that makes the brick. Come to think of it, blueprints don’t fall from the sky. The designer, the architect, the engineer and bricklayer have to learn the trade from scratch. A dot.

We forget that we begin with a dot. We quickly move to lines and from lines to innumerable configurations, geometries we are required to or are inspired to produce. And in the end, when we people these brick-mortar edifices of one kind or another, we forget all the dots that made them and all the dots that were connected by those who made them.

The world in pulse
in inhale and exhale gives
movement and stillness
warm and cool
dust and sorrow
joy and departure
mendicant and mendicancy
a festival for perpetuation
but eyes can gaze like caress
stillness is learned
and learning
when stilled
yields truth
and finitude eternal
they say.

I extrapolated and in the process failed to see a single dot.

Gamini Aya’s line drawing began with a dot. In the mind of the unknown sculpture a dot must have materialised about what a rock face could yield. In both we see the image but not the individual lines and within them the innumerable dots. Not a crime of course, but if contemplation has some worth, reflection on the ‘dot’ could be immensely meaningful.

We can extrapolate from dot to sculpture and sculpture to line drawing. We can obtain a sculptor and an artist. We can extrapolate beyond the work of art and artist. We can learn of infinities, the constituent elements and perhaps, as Gamini Aiya might say, all the truths embedded in the definition that Vadda taught me half a century ago: a line has no width but is made of an infinite number of points, none of which does not has any specific length, width, shape or size,

We could travel from dot to line to a work of art. We could travel back and if we can find a way of moving from work of art to a line and a dot and ‘beyond,’ we just might chance on some eternal verities that may very well enlighten and make us at least as humble as Gamini Abeykoon.

02 May 2023

It begins with a dot

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is a new series. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below]

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