The Girl With Many Questions
“the girl with many questions”
Oil, colored pencil, and ink on paper. 8 × 6 inches. 2025.
Dearest Doodle Soupsters,
Hmm bum bum bum
hmm bum bum bum
hmm bum bum bum
hmm ba ba ba
The melody is haunting and sweet. Both somehow.
Who's in a bad mood, who's in a taxi?
Turning the clock back, avoiding a fight with this man he is meeting
Stands in the lobby, counting his questions in the neon light
Sinking under the river, sewer line touches the edge of the suburbs
Back to the beach where a family is waiting on rumors of summer
Lay out a blanket, bring something to feed the birds
These lyrics in a song I came across this week, “Reading In Bed” by Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton.
With all the luck you've had
Why are your songs so sad?
Sing from a book you're reading in bed
And took to heart
All of your lives unled, reading in bed
How does music, art, poetry, etc. do that? There’s something in a song … that you didn’t know existed a moment ago and then it feels like you’re listening to a piece of yourself, a piece you’ve been missing or searching for … that surpasses its structure. More than the sum of its parts, right?
Music can be notes on a page translated to sound, sound translated to notes on a page, and vice versa. But it can also be more.
A painting can be a mere depiction of a scene in front of you. But it can be more. It can do more.
What is that more? Something emotional? Spiritual? Human? Soulful?
What makes a drawing pop off the page and curl up all cozy in your heart? What makes a song stir something lost inside of you, striking some chord that causes you to shudder, fear turned to something beautiful, something you can live with, accept?
Sometimes, I think I know what that more is. Sometimes, I believe in God. Sometimes, I don’t. Sometimes, I believe that it’s our souls. Sometimes, I doubt that we’re anything more than our bodies and minds, here, now, why, who knows?
Sometimes, I think that if I could just believe in one thing, if I could just decide, have faith, whatever, life would be easier. I’d be confident. I wouldn’t feel afraid. Uncertainty wouldn’t have such a hold on me. If only I could believe. In something. Anything. For more than a week.
Right now, I think that believing in one thing in some constant, fixed way just isn’t how my brain works. It’s not who I am. I can get all excited about an idea, that ecstasy of wow, can this be the answer? Inevitably, the thrill subsides. I’m left with the simple fact that I don’t know.
Once again, I return to this poem by Mary Oliver, “The Man Who Has Many Answers" …
The man who has many answers
is often found
in the theaters of information
where he offers, graciously,
his deep findings.
While the man who has only questions,
to comfort himself, makes music.
Earlier this month, I made a new artwork called, “the girl with many questions” … what do you see?
Look closely. At the top, an open space… do you see it? Barely perceptible, there nonetheless? What’s there? Possibility? Hope? Meaning?
Then, more words …
these vignettes become who we are, don’t they? i want to know the answers but there are no answers are there? only questions i am the girl with many questions
A woman with many questions making music to comfort myself,
Nicole Sylvia Javorsky