On listening before painting

Before the brush, there is a long quiet. I sit with the canvas the way one sits with a guest who has travelled far — offering nothing, expecting nothing.

The Kinnera taught me this. Its makers listen to bamboo for weeks before they cut it, waiting for the wood to say which note it already holds.

So I have learned to wait. The first mark is not the beginning; it is the answer to a question the room has been asking all morning.