laughter

Laughter: a sound of or as if of laughing (Merriam-Webster)

That’s pretty obvious, not very illuminating. Let’s dig a little deeper.

Laugh: to show emotion (such as mirth, joy, or scorn) with a chuckle or explosive vocal sound
(Merriam-Webster)

Working as a freelance illustrator in advertising my achilles heel was rendering beautiful young female models with their heads tilted to allow their hair to flirtatiously frame their face. The eyes with perfect makeup were hard enough to capture, but the smile, that airbrushed perfect smile mocked my ability. I like to think my struggles were because the artificiality was beneath my artistic integrity. But the fact is I just wasn’t good at it.

The summer of 2019 France was hit with two extended heatwaves of over one hundred degrees. The stone masonry of our hundred and twenty year old apartment building in Lyon usually kept us cool in the summer. No one had or needed air conditioning. However, after four days of a hundred plus temperatures our apartment became a tandoori oven slowly roasting us as we slept. Refrigeration failed in grocery stores causing food spoilage. Late at night people wandered the streets like zombies looking for relief. Into this cauldron our friends Paul and Ellen arrive.

It is 11:15 in the evening in my drawing and the temperature is ninety five degrees. My wife Nancy and her friend Ellen are laughing with joy at the absurdity of the surrounding circumstances as we wander past ornate public buildings on our way to the Rhône river in search of a cool breeze. Nancy and Ellen have been friends since high school, their laughter comes from a deeper place.

My old foe, the rendering of the smile of beautiful women confronts me once again. Adding to my dilemma I know these women. I can’t let them down. As a youth I was a skier of modest ability. I would get a lump in my throat looking down from the top of a mountain at the distant ski lodge at the foot of the mountain. How was I going to get down from the precipice. The only way down for me was to point my skis and push off the edge and let gravity do its work. I would just have to make it up as I went careening down the mountainside of snow and ice. I approached the drawing in the same way. I just let my hand do its work, weaving this way and that from the building to the women and back again. The smiles became part of the whole gesture of the moment.

What do you think?