Babcock Doddered

56 x 32.25 inches, colored pencil and graphite on paper

I discovered a long line of text in my sketchbook from a few years ago. I had no recollection of having written it or of how I came up with the language. This was a strange phenomenon—not remembering something that I had conceived. It sounded so specific. I decided to make a drawing about this experience. I began by writing the text that began with “Babcock doddered…” in the center of the drawing, using the Snellen eye chart font. For several days after that, just before falling asleep and as soon as I woke up in the morning, I tried to remember the modified text. I drew these similar but mis-remembered texts above and below the original. Then, the next night I tried to recall this altered sentence and in the morning I tried to remember that modified text. I was trying to engage the mental states of hypnagogia (the moment when you transition from wakefulness to sleep) and hypnopompia (the moment moving from sleep to wakefulness) as a means of visualizing memory of narrative language. In each state, disorientation occurs and memory is affected by various stimuli. The language of this drawing gives form to these transitional states of consciousness, as well as the dissolution of memory through repetition over time.