Charcoal Woman

What should you do, when your imagination is more real than reality?

photo by Pixabay

They say that life is what happens while you’re busy making plans. I look back now, and my life seems reasonably ordered and sensible. I have few regrets. Yet I never really planned any of it. I’m a different man, in many ways, than what I was. But that’s true of anyone, I guess. I’m forty-seven now, married eighteen years, and have the usual two kids and a house in the suburbs. My sister is so proud of me. Sometimes I think I should have led a more adventuresome life, but I look at the life I have, and at the memories of my life, and I don’t know what I would change, even if I had a plan.

But sometimes things, forgotten memories, push their way to the front of your brain, and make you think, what if…

The trigger was a routine AI image of a beautiful woman. I checked, and there’s countless numbers of them out there. They are all different, and yet all the same. In any event, it’s amazing that such detailed images can be created in seconds, by software that has no personal judgment concerning beauty.

And that triggered me to recall a drawing I have, tucked away in the bottom of a drawer in an old desk in the basement. I think of it sometimes and pull it out and regard it. I’m in the basement now, with the drawing sitting on my desk as I type. It was drawn a while back...Gawd, it’s been a long time! The artist took great pains to make that drawing, put heart and soul into it. And here I am now, comparing it to AI images. It’s not just the images themselves, but the thought of how they came to be. The AI algorithms sort through countless existing images and present, well, an average. Ask for an image of a beautiful woman, give it whatever specifics you want, and the software looks thru maybe a million images, averages them out, and then gives you that average.

Not so, with my charcoal woman. She is, I guess, one of a kind. She is a singular vision, a fabrication of a single man’s mind, seeking some ideal concept of the perfect woman for him.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. It must be over twenty years ago that I came to have this drawing that I hide in a drawer in the basement. Why do I hide it? What am I guilty of? It is not in deed that I might be guilty, but perhaps in thought. I have a good life of normalcy, if less than perfection. Somehow this charcoal woman reminds me that there might have been more. And that makes me feel ill at ease.

Below is my story of me and the Charcoal Woman. I wrote this story all those years ago and have kept it with the drawing. I minored in English, after all, and I can tell the story. I read it now, and it is dated. There was no TSA, you just walked into the airport and went to your plane. Businessmen wore suits; casual meant coat and tie. I wrote the story on a typewriter! But I think even the lifestyle is dated. I think of how we are today, and it makes me nostalgic for the past.

Here’s my story about the Charcoal Woman, from a different time in my life.

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All I feel certain about is that it's something about the airports. I go there, mostly to catch the shuttle between New York and Boston, and I see the business types in their tailored suits, men and women. Like they’re members. Members of the airport.

I'm a business type too, but I wear a coat and tie. Usually brown, sometimes blue. I guess the point is I'm not really a business type, I'm just in business. More or less by default. I graduated from college with an economically unviable liberal arts degree. So, my father got me a job working with an associate of his, Harvey Baldwin, who runs his father in law's conveyor business.

“Conveyors?”, you ask. Conveyors. Conveyors that carry materials from one end of a manufacturing plant to another. Conveyors that feed a product into one end of a machine, take it out the other end, turn it around and feed it into another machine. Conveyors that flip the products over and stack them for packaging. If you need something conveyed, we can convey it.

And the humorous part is that we don't manufacture conveyors. We buy them. We buy components from maybe 50 different sources and put them together so that they move and arrange whatever the customer needs moved and arranged.

But you don't want to hear about all that. I was hired to be a salesman. As a favor to my father. Harvey sent me out to quote jobs that he figured we wouldn't get anyway. I didn't surprise him much, but I was tenacious. After all, I was on commission. So, like the other four salesman, I went wherever I was sent, generally on the northeast coast, and tried to put together conveyor packages that the customer would buy.

Of course I would consult with Harvey, and with the other salesman when they felt they had time to waste with an upstart like me. After about six months, I knew my way around the conveyor industry. (Did you know they have conveyor conventions?)

But after 18 months, my sales had leveled off, and I was still selling half as much as the next lowest salesman. I was discouraged. I was barely making a living.

One day, Harvey called me into his office. Actually, his secretary called me into his office, which was unusual, so I figured this was the end.

“Have a seat, Dwayne,” Harvey said. He gave me the meaningful pause appropriate for such occasions. “Dwayne, you were never meant to be a salesman.”

A wan smile came to my lips. “I know that as well as you, Harvey.” I wanted him to know I was ready for what was coming.

It worked. We both relaxed.” Dwayne, you just don't have the instinct to get a job sold and yet get the highest price.”

Granted.

“But I've seen how hard you've worked at this. I've seen how much you've learned. And I've seen something else.”

Curious.

“When your jobs are installed, they work, period. The first time, and they give the customers exactly what they need.”

I thought that was the idea.

“Almost invariably, with the other salesmen, there are callbacks and replacements, because the salesman are trying to sell the least equipment for the most money and there are always problems. But, like I said, you're not a salesman.”

Am I fired? Or what?

“I've considered this carefully and I think I found the solution to all of this. I want you to be our quality control man. We've never had one. I've done what I can, but I have too many responsibilities. So, you're it. I’ve crunched numbers, and in your capacity as quality control engineer, I can pay you $48,000 a year.”

That was more than anything I’ve even dreamed of.

“How does that sound?”

Stuck dumb. Then,” You'd know better than me whether I'm suitable for that job. If you say I am, then I'll do it.

I was pretty sure that $48,000 was more than any other salesman made, even in a good year. But it didn't change my style. I'm just a coat and tie kind of guy.

I think the salesman thought I had been demoted. By their standard, I had been. But Harvey had been right. Profits increased almost immediately.

But that's not why I sat down at this typewriter. I just wanted to explain why I was at the airport so often in a coat and tie. The reason I'm writing this, I guess, centers around another coat and tie kind of guy.

I guess he'd be called a commercial artist. That would be his job description. He was sitting at the terminal for the shuttle to New York. His coat had leather elbow pads, the badge of the artist. Of course he had that big portfolio case. And he was drawing on a sketchpad. It was evident that the others at the terminal wanted to see his work, but they were too nonchalant.

I wasn't. I sat next to him, on his left side, so as not to obstruct his right elbow as he drew. It was a woman. A head and shoulders view. He was an excellent artist. She was beautiful. To my eye, he was nearly finished, but he kept finding places to touch up with his charcoal pencil, and the woman became more and more real.

“Who is that?”, I asked.

“I wish I knew,”, he answered, still touching up.

We sat silently for a while after that, me the silent observer.

“It must be several years ago,” he continued, “I was sitting at this terminal. I pulled out my sketchpad as I usually do. But I usually work on preliminary sketches for my commercial jobs. I'm in advertising art.” He sounded apologetic. “But I pulled out my sketchpad this one time and started drawing her. Now, every time I'm waiting for a flight, I draw her.”

It seemed reasonable.

When we boarded the plane, I was ahead of him and took a seat in an empty row, expecting him to sit next to me. But instead, he took a seat farther back in the plane.

By the time we landed, my mind was on other things, and he and his charcoal woman were relegated to the back of my mind.

But about a month later, I saw him again. Same situation, but now we were on our way back to Boston. I sat down beside him. And he was finishing another version of his charcoal woman. He said a cordial hello without looking up. It was no more than a moment before we were called to board the plane. Again, I seated myself first, but this time he sat next to me. We acknowledged each other but said nothing more as the plane taxied and took off. He had left his portfolio case in the airplane's closet, but he had the sketch pad with him. I eyed it discreetly.

Shortly after takeoff, he handed it to me. Just handed it to me. I felt like it was some sacred thing and that I should first have his trust before viewing it. I waited a moment for him to recall it, but he didn't.

I flipped the cover over and looked at the first sketch he had ever done of her. Not surprisingly, it was less defined, but it still showed his skill. As I slowly passed from one sketch to the next, I got to know this woman. He always showed the head and shoulders front view, but each sketch showed a different mood. I saw her curious, worried, happy, scornful, disinterested and desirable. I compared her with women I have known, favorably and unfavorably. Mostly favorably.

By the end of his sketchbook, I felt I had known her for years. I wanted to say something about her inner beauty, but it would just sound corny.

“I met her,” he said.

I just looked at him.

“Only a few weeks ago. I was meeting with a new client at his office. I stepped off the elevator into the lobby and there she was. She was the receptionist. I just looked at her like a fool.”

I continued to regard his sketches as he talked.

“I don't clearly remember what we said. Of course, she started off with ‘May I help you.” And I told her how I already knew her. Karma or something.

“Of course, she must hear that five times a day. Then I showed her the sketchbook. She looked at it pretty much the way you are now, only I think she felt she had been secretly revealed.”

After a while, she handed back the sketchpad and said something to the effect that she couldn't believe how well they had captured her. It wasn’t just the physical likeness, but the various expressions. That’s how I knew that my drawings weren’t just like her, they WERE her.

“But then my client walked out of his office and saw me. I had to leave her there while he and I went to his office to discuss print ads about ladies' underwear. It went pretty well. I got the account. I wanted the account because I wanted to keep seeing her.

“After the meeting, my new client invited me to lunch. I apologized that I'd already made other plans. My plans were to take my charcoal woman to lunch. She got someone to cover for her, and we were gone.”

He stopped for a moment, apparently trying to collect his thoughts. I looked at him briefly, then went back to his sketches. Then he continued.

“She took me to some lunch place she knew about. It was after the lunch rush, and we could sit quietly.”

He paused again, briefly. Obviously, he was reliving, not just recounting.

“She's normal! She's average! I like her, but no more than any other women. I don't love her. I don't want to have her. We talked. She had broken up with her boyfriend the week before. She still kind of loved him, but wasn't sure it could ever work. Talk about your foot in the door! But I just sat there and listened, like a brother or something”

“We tried to make some sense of the sketches. They were her, no doubt of it. But we couldn't, and I can't, figure out what it means. I don't love her.”

That artist and I run into each other once in a while at the airport. The two coat and tie guys. He still has that client, so he sees her periodically. They go out to lunch. He says that she's found a new boyfriend. He's watched the relationship grow and according to him, it is getting to be a serious sort of thing.

“You know what really pisses me off?”, he asked. “She introduced me to him, and he didn't seem the least bit threatened. He’s seen my drawings of her. He ought to suspect that we have a deeper past.”

He glanced over at the sketch pad as I continued to look from one page to the next.” Fact is, he knows I'm no threat. I'm just some Cyrano de Bergerac and no real threat as a lover. I'm no threat! The guy is an auto mechanic who thinks two NFL games on Sunday and a six pack is as good as it gets.”

He was still watching me leaf through the sketches. Even as he talked, I could sense that he was mentally critiquing his work. “I keep telling myself that I'll give her that book, but I don't. I feel like if I give it up, there's just nothing left. All modesty aside, I'm one of the best artists I know, but I spend most of my time drawing underwear ads. My mind creates great paintings, and I know I could do them, they just don't get it done. That sketch pad you have in your hand is my life. It's the only thing I've done that matters. And then I realized that if that sketchpad is so great, why does its subject view it as little more than an oddity. Why doesn't her boyfriend see me as a threat?”

I wanted to give him an answer, a real answer that would work for him. But I guess for him there will never be an answer.

This is where I should draw a moral to the story. I kind of hoped when I sat down at the typewriter that I would have one when I got to this point. But I don't. But I can tell you anything you care to know about conveyors.

So, how was that, Gretchen? See, I can do ‘normal’ if I need to. But why would I want to? I like it fine the way I am, even if it offends your sensibilities as a psychologist. If I may say, and I do love you, but if I may say, you always were quite the overbearing older sister. I guess I still try to please you, because here I am writing all this self-examination stuff, like I guess you think I’m going to reveal to myself that I’m delusional, or something. So, who decides what’s delusional? Maybe I’m normal and YOU’RE delusional! Maybe we each should just make our own choices and live life according to our own vision. How about that, Gretchen? What if I judged you the way you judge me? Oh, I know you do it ‘for my own good’, but really. What if I judged you the way you judge me? I don’t, of course, because I’m too busy having my own life to butt into yours. Maybe I've found your neurosis. Your neurosis is that you have a compelling desire to judge others and to tell them how their life should be. Ha! Could you imagine a life without you being in everybody else’s business?! That’s your neurosis, Gretchen. Maybe you should write something for me, imagining how a normal person would see a busy body like you. And then I’ll read it, and I’LL judge YOU!

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I know you love me. I know you’re trying to help, whether I need it or not. And I love you. But I’m not you, and don’t want to be. Can you get over that? I’m your little brother in name only, now, and I no longer need you to watch over me.

In case it matters to you, that conveyor belt guy is real. I met him at the airport, pretty much the way I tell it, here, although I have of course taken some artistic license. He was a nice enough guy. He kind of intruded into my space, but in a nice way, so I was OK with it. But I heard far more about conveyors than I ever wanted to know. He was truly curious about my charcoal woman, and DIDN’T JUDGE ME. That’s the thing. We each seemed weird to the other. He couldn’t fathom what I was doing, and I couldn't fathom what he was doing. But we were both OK with each other, and had a fairly interesting conversation, with NO JUDGEMENT. Gretchen, you should try that sometime. A conversation. One where you don't presume you’re right and have all the answers.

I imagine that guy with a wife and kids. Actually, I don't think he's married, but he will be someday, and they'll love each other and they'll have the kids and the happy home. Her name will be Betty or Jill, or some other wholesome name. And he'll make the conveyor belts of the world work. Like silk, until the day he retires, And then he'll take up golf.

I still have the sketchpad. In the drawer, in my desk. No, I won’t be destroying it. Not in any ritual ceremony commemorating your efforts to make me normal, and not in the trash, either. And I've just returned from their wedding. I think they invited me out of pity! I guess I am to be pitied, since I went.

Gretchen, I do love you, and I know you love me. But I know you better than you know me. Leave me alone. I don’t want to change. I like this life. I like me. So, I’m not normal. I’m me. Leave it at that.

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All of the above is fiction. But I did write Charcoal Woman over twenty years ago, and then pretty much forgot about it. As I’ve seen AI take hold, it did trigger thoughts about Charcoal Woman. I then wrote the introduction as both a plot device and a means to explain the time lapse between then and now.

Is art the product, or the process? Can a soulless computer bring anything to life? Not really, I don’t think. Yes, it can create the image of a beautiful woman, but it can never appreciate the beauty. Perhaps AI is the Mr. Spock of software, highly capable, but no emotions.

Technology has continually made it easier to produce things. Some of what we have today cannot be made without automated production. This computer cannot be handmade. As a person who spent his career in the world of fabrication, I have seen technology make things more efficiently and more accurately. But not necessarily better. Processes that are easy enough for a human but difficult for advanced technology get dropped, in favor of that efficiency and accuracy. But much of the soul is lost. A product becomes a thing instead of a representation of human endeavor. Toys, for example. The first toys were nearly always made from wood, by hand, by a father or grandfather. There were no manufactured toys. Now, there is nothing but.

Have we not lost much of our soul in that? What have we gained, in that toys can be made efficiently and accurately? Contemplate what we have lost. Most of us would cherish a beat-up old toy or doll made by a father or grandfather. Not so much something that was made by the kazillions on an assembly line. If you look around you right now, you might not be able to see anything that was handmade. It all came out of some factory, somewhere. Once upon a time, an entire house and household was handmade, made by mothers, fathers, grandfathers and grandmothers, as well as by neighbors. That is what we’ve lost. We've lost our collective soul to technology.

When I look at art, I don’t just see what is there. I contemplate the artist, his mind and his time. I contemplate what it is that the artist is trying to tell me. AI is soulless. Well, who needs soul to make a computer? Or a phone, or kitchen device. But we tread where it would be best to not go, when we let AI create our ‘art’, whether it be paintings, drawings, literature or any other art. AI may do it technically better, and certainly quicker. But it will disconnect us from what makes us human. It will disconnect us from true communication with each other. Worst of all, it will coral us all into being ‘normal’, ‘average’, and ‘acceptable’. Is that what you really want?

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