He always wanted to explain things but no one cared.
So he drew. Sometimes he would just draw and it wasn't anything.
Other times he wanted to carve it in stone or write it in the sky.
He would lie out on the grass and look up in the sky
and it would be only him and the sky and the things inside him that needed saying.
And it was after that he drew this picture.
It was a beautiful picture.
He kept it under his pillow and would let no one see it.
And he would look at it every night and think about it.
And when it was dark and his eyes were closed he could still see it.
And it was all of him and he loved it.
When he started school he brought it with him.
Not to show anyone,
but just to have with him, like a friend.
It was funny about school.
He sat in a square brown desk like all the other square brown desks. And he thought it should be red.
And his room was a square brown room like all the other rooms,
and it was tight and close and stiff.
He hated to hold the pencil and the chalk with his arm stiff and his feet flat on the floor,
stiff, with the teacher watching- and watching.
And then he had to write numbers and they weren't anything.
The numbers were tight and square and he hated the whole thing.
The teacher came and spoke to him. She told him to wear a tie like all the other boys.
And he said he didn't like ties. And she said it didn't matter.
After that they drew.
And he drew yellow.
It was the way he felt about the morning and it was beautiful.
The teacher came and smiled at him.
"Why don't you draw pictures like Ken draws? His pictures are beautiful."
After that his mother bought him a tie and he always drew airplanes and rocket ships like everyone else.
He threw the old picture away.
And when he lay out alone looking at the sky it was big and beautiful;
and all of everything but he wasn't anymore.
He was square inside, and brown, and his hands were still.
And he was like everyone else.
And the thing inside him that needed saying, didn't need saying anymore.
It had stopped pushing.
And there you have it. The basis for my philosophy on life. I didn't write it, and I can't tell you who did. This was given to me in an acting class at American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco.
And i kept it with me. I called it Draw Yellow because it didn't have a name.
It spiraled from there in my mind. Yellow became the symbol of what is creative, and truly me. If you wish, carry it with you, like a friend.