# Following the Brush *Zuihitsu*—the Japanese word means "following the brush"—names a form of diary-essay whose founding work, *The Pillow Book*, was set down around the year 1002 by Sei Shōnagon, a lady of the Heian court. In it the hand is allowed to lead: you record what the day, or the mind, offers, in the order it offers it, and trust that the wandering has a shape of its own. Paul Klee described the same freedom in drawing. A line left to itself, he wrote, is "an active line on a walk, moving freely, without goal... a walk for a walk's sake" (*Pedagogical Sketchbook*, 1925). I remember my friend and teacher [[Rod Paton]] paraphrasing him for music: to improvise, he said, is to take a melody for a walk (see Paton, 2012). Brush, line, melody—the same small act of setting out without quite knowing the way. What follows are my scribbles, essays, and other writings, none of them published anywhere else. They are semi-private: sometimes passed round a circle of friends, sometimes kept back, perhaps waiting for a wider reading, perhaps not. Either way, here they are, following the brush. ### Sources - Sei Shōnagon (c. 1002), *The Pillow Book*, the founding work of *zuihitsu* ("following the brush"). See the [Academy of American Poets glossary](https://poets.org/glossary/zuihitsu). - Paul Klee (1925), *Pedagogical Sketchbook* (trans. Sibyl Moholy-Nagy). Quote via [Tate](https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/paul-klee-1417/a-z-paul-klee). - Rod Paton (2012), [*Lifemusic: Connecting People to Time*](https://books.google.com/books/about/Lifemusic.html?id=zeNeLwEACAAJ).