Dali doodle…

This doodle didn’t start out to be Dali, it didn’t start out to be anyone at all really. I was on the phone doodling away with my fountain pen, when one of those faces that I always seem to be doodling when I’m on the phone started to appear.

I glanced down as the person on the other end of the line went off on one of their long and tedious monologues. As I looked closer something about the nose, the chin, those eyes looked familiar - now who was it? And then I realised that through some subconscious message from my inner mind I’d drawn someone that (with the addition of that famous waxed moustache) was probably Salvador Dali.

Quite apt really given that the surrealist artists used lots of techniques including sensory deprivation, hypnotism, automatic writing, and drugs to tap into their subconscious minds, bringing out images from deep inside and dragging them, kicking and screaming, into the open.

It’s a strange place in there, inside the subconscious. Anything can happen. Up is down, there is no distance, perspectives are distorted, objects morph from one thing to another, time flows any-which-way it chooses, people long gone wander around, or float, or fly, or become a steam train coming through a fireplace. Yes, it’s a very strange place indeed.

Anyway, by the end of my telephone call there was Dali on my post-it note, the egg from ‘Metamorphosis’ floating above his head and a melting clock hanging from his moustache.

And then from the silly part of my subconscious mind came a thought – ‘What would Dali have for breakfast?’
‘Why breakfast surreal of course.’ It answered.

Yes, I groaned too. But the subconscious mind must be obeyed so that is what I drew - a bowl of Dali breakfast surreal with burning giraffe, goldfish tail, melting clock and added vitamins.

The subconscious certainly has a lot to answer for, maybe next time it can draw out the winning Euro Millions numbers for me.