Drawings are made both consciously and unconsciously, and not always with our hands or by humans. Some drawings are traces of repeated activity and desire paths fall into this category.
There is a certain timeline to the evolution of the road system. Roads have evolved from animal tracks; first the animals wear down the vegetation, then humans follow these tracks on foot. In another era humans will ride these paths on horse-back before eventually widening them as track ways for horse-drawn carriages and then eventually in times much closer to now, they will have become metalled roads for cars. Eventually what were desire lines become fixed by an ordnance survey as roads on a map.
I've recently returned from West Wittering and we foolishly decided to let the sat nav direct us back to Leeds and we had a very strange journey, it was almost as if the sat nav was arbitrarily deciding which roads to take. It reminded me of being a boy and staring at maps and wondering where those roads might take me and what sorts of experiences they might lead to. The idea that following a road can lead to self-discovery or mystical transformation is a common theme in literature and philosophy. It suggests that the journey, both physical and metaphorical, can be a powerful catalyst for personal growth and spiritual awakening, in particular, the concept of the "road less traveled," means that venturing off the beaten path can lead to unique insights and experiences. Following a road may lead us to discover a lost part of ourselves or help us to undergo a mystical transformation. Each desire line when begun, is indeed a newly beaten path, taking its maker into spaces as yet untrodden.
In our present time, desire paths are made when we step off Google map and let our intuition decide our fate. They seek out connections between where we are and where we wish to be. Instead of being worn into shape by the pressure of passing feet, they are perhaps unique connections being made between information sets, or possibilities being seen for the first time; they’re indications that there is another way. A desire path is also a trace, often left behind because of someone following an impulse; or a desire to find a new territory.
If we reverse engineer a road, we might at some point come back to its past existence as an animal track. Most animals are territorial. They walk between places to feed, to drink, to rest and to find others. The landscape itself will direct which route to take, as it provides trees and rocks to move around, gentler and steeper slopes, trees as rain cover or grasses to eat on the way. In effect the landscape wraps itself round the animal. The desire lines animals follow are also in effect, like the lines of an animal 'Wyrd', whereby the invisible lines of each animal's psyche are wrapped around the world as they pass through it and as they do the animal's destiny is woven. The word wyrd comes from the Proto-Germanic word 'wurđiz', a noun derived from the verb werþanan, meaning "to become". As we pass through life we become who we are, this is our fate. This Anglo-Saxon concept, still seems to myself to make sense, like all animals, our life lines are inextricably entangled into the world we inhabit.
Desire is what shapes us; as we are shaped we begin to define ourselves and to do this we use tools, one of which is the mirror. The mirror allows us to see ourselves from the outside, in effect we become part of the landscape we inhabit. Like all the landscapes we traverse, we can change them by stepping off the desire paths we have chosen and starting a new one. One desire line can be our hair parting and by simply changing the 'normal' line of parting taken by our hair, we can in effect change our personality.
There is a widespread cultural belief concerning how hair partings change a person’s looks. The general consensus seems to be that parting on one’s left makes a person look competent and masculine, whereas parting on the right makes a person look warm and feminine. In the Christopher Reeves Superman films when he was acting the Clark Kent character, his hair was parted on the right, but when he was Superman, his hair was parted on the left. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to research this and then to persuade the make-up department that this was an essential part of the character transformation.
For most people, the way you part your hair is instinctive. But there are times in your life when you feel the need to change, just as when you decide to step off the pavement and head out over rough ground to see if you can get to somewhere else. When you do that, eventually the new direction is worn into your path, you in effect own it, it is a sort of 'signature' path.
Desire lines can of course also be found in the markings you make in your own artwork, some drawings reveal traces of repeated activity, certain forms recurring over and over again.
The wondering wobbly circles that pass through this drawing by Theresa Murdza, are her desire lines. Just as desire paths are ones we take as we walk towards something, these lines are ones made as she draws towards something. Once decided upon and enacted we tend to repeat our journeys, which is why artists tend to repeat the types of marks they make.
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