Latest / The Culture Club: Books, Art, Film, Music & Entertainment / Drawing Strangers on the Subway: The Art of Being Seen | The Culture Club
Transcript
- There is a specific kind of terror that lives in the space between your pencil and the person sitting three feet away, pretending they do not exist. It is the fear that you will be seen, really seen, before you are ready to be known. We have all been there. You are on the L train, or maybe the N, somewhere in the humid belly of the city where the air smells like ozone and old rain. You pull out your sketchbook. Not because you are an artist with credentials, but because you need to anchor yourself in this moving metal box. And then, it happens. You look up. You catch someone’s eye. Just for a second. A glance that says, I see you looking at me, and I am choosing to ignore it so we can both survive this commute in peace. This is the great modern ritual. The subway is a theater of avoidance. We wear headphones like armor. We stare at screens until our eyes burn. We construct invisible walls with our posture, turning our bodies into shields against the intimacy of proximity. But when you pick up a pencil, you break the spell. You invite chaos. You admit that you are paying attention. And for many people, being paid attention to is terrifying. It feels like exposure. It feels like vulnerability. So they pretend not to notice. They shift in their seats. They adjust their bags. They look out the window at the black tunnel rushing by, as if the darkness outside is more interesting than the hand holding a graphite stick five inches from their face. Let’s dig into the velvet of that moment. What is the texture of being watched by a stranger who wants to capture your essence? It is slippery. It is cold. It is warm, too, sometimes. There is a strange electricity in the air when you try to draw someone who is actively trying to disappear. I remember sitting across from a woman in a yellow coat last November. She was reading a paperback, her thumb marking a page she had read a thousand times. I started shading the curve of her shoulder. I could feel her awareness like a heat source. She didn’t look up. She didn’t smile. But her breathing changed. Her shoulders dropped an inch. She stopped turning pages. She let me take her stillness. That is the secret. People don’t want to be drawn because they think they will be judged. They think you will see their wrinkles, their tired eyes, the way their hair is frizzy from humidity. They think you will expose their ordinary-ness. But what if the act of drawing them is actually an act of reverence? What if by slowing down to capture the line of their jaw or the slope of their nose, you are telling them, You matter enough for me to stop. You are worth the time it takes to translate you into ink and paper? I think about the ghosts in every rail car. The people who rode these tracks ten years ago, twenty years ago. We are all just passing through each other’s orbits. But when you draw someone, you freeze them in time. You create a tiny monument to a Tuesday afternoon in October. It feels illicit, doesn’t it? Like eavesdropping on a soul. I once tried to sketch a man sleeping with his head against the pole. He looked so peaceful, his mouth slightly open, one hand clutching a worn leather briefcase. I felt like I was stealing something sacred. I wanted to stop. I wanted to close my book and pretend I hadn’t violated his privacy. But then he stirred. He opened one eye. He saw my sketchbook. He didn’t get angry. He didn’t tell me to leave. He just nodded. A small, almost imperceptible dip of the chin. It was permission. It was connection. In that nod, we acknowledged each other as human beings sharing a cramped, vibrating space. That nod lasted two seconds, but it stayed with me for weeks. What’s the texture of this? Of being vulnerable without consent? It is rough. It is uneven. It is the feeling of walking a tightrope over a canyon of social norms. Society tells us not to stare. Not to engage. Not to make eye contact with strangers unless you are asking for money or directions. But art asks us to look closer. To linger. To find the beauty in the mundane. When you draw a stranger, you are resisting the urge to scroll past them. You are resisting the digital numbness that keeps us all isolated in our pods. You are saying, I see you. I see the fatigue in your neck. I see the hope in your hands. I see the story you are carrying. And here is the thing about strangers. They are mirrors. We project our own loneliness, our own desires, our own fears onto them. The woman in the yellow coat might represent everything I wish I had: calm, focus, color. The sleeping man might represent the rest I am too anxious to allow myself. Drawing them becomes a way of processing our own internal landscapes. We are not just capturing their likeness; we are capturing our relationship to them. Our longing. Our distance. Our shared humanity in a city that tries to keep us apart. So how do you do it? How do you bridge that gap? It starts with permission. Not always verbal permission, because that can be awkward. Sometimes it is visual. If you catch someone’s eye and hold it for a beat longer than usual, you are sending a signal. You are softening your gaze. You are making yourself approachable. Then, you open your book. You don’t start drawing immediately. You let them see the blank page. You let them see your tools. You are showing your hand. You are saying, I am creating something. I am safe. I am curious. If they look away, respect that. Close the book. Smile softly if you can, and move on. But if they stay? If they lean in even a fraction? Then you begin. Draw lightly at first. Let them watch you work. Let them see that you are not judging, but observing. Often, people will ask, Who are you drawing? And that is the moment the magic happens. That is when the stranger becomes a friend. That is when the transaction shifts from surveillance to collaboration. Tell me more about that feeling. The feeling of being invited into someone else’s world, however briefly, through the simple act of paying attention. In a world that demands constant performance, where we curate our images for algorithms and audiences, there is something radically subversive about drawing a stranger on the subway. It is unrecorded. It is unshared. It exists only in your notebook, perhaps, or in the memory of the person who sat across from you. It is private. It is intimate. It refuses the logic of the internet. It does not seek likes. It does not seek validation. It simply seeks connection. I think about the soap sculptures I mentioned in a previous episode, those tiny, fragile architectures that melt away. This is similar. The drawing will fade. The memory will soften. The stranger will never know your name, and you will never know theirs. But for those few minutes, you were real to each other. You were present. You broke the silence. You created a small, temporary sanctuary in the noise. And isn’t that what we are all looking for? A moment where we are truly seen, not for what we do or what we own, but for who we are, right here, right now, in the dark tunnel, moving forward together. Stay soft. Stay curious. I’ll see you in the next tunnel. Love, Stella.