I think it was '92 or '93. I'd picked up a fascinating little flora on a toenail--the result of a brief and highly out-of-character fling with a gym--and was telling the derm precisely how it had evolved over the past few weeks. ("It flowered upward from that initial line in a kind of crystal pattern, which was white, but then the left side of it took on a yellow tinge...")
She said "So you're a biologist."
"What? No, why?"
"You describe things so precisely."
"But I'm an art historian." Which at the time was true; I was a master's candidate knee-deep in Odilon Redon, Gustave Courbet, and the Yoruba and Dogon, with a couple of Hopewellian monitor effigies thrown in (scroll down).
She was not convinced. "You must be a biologist."
"No, but it's the same skill set." So obvious when you think about it--in both cases, you have to learn to really see what you're seeing. And say so.
Comes in handy for writing too. The complication there is that you have to learn to really see what you're seeing--*in your head*. Which is sometimes a little less straightforward. ("What's over there in that corner? Yeah, that one. What do you mean 'nothing'? Turn the light on. YAGH!" Raw subconscious goo. You've only got a limited number of times you can look at that before you start to see the tentacles of Chthulhu. "I need the rest of the room, Herman. No, in point of fact, I do *not* know if I will actually include it in the story. But I need it. I will go eat some breakfast while you project Somebody-or-Other's personality out into their space in ways I would not have anticipated. Get going.")
It actually has its similarities to Method acting. Actors and writers should form a Union of the Living Out Of Our Heads Batshit Insane. Actors are frequently very good writers of scenes because they're smart about the ways people bounce off each other--but they can have problems with overall priorities, the same way they often do when they direct. Their brilliant pursuit of the moment can handicap them when it comes to seeing the bigger picture.
Of course when you're talking about a toenail, the moment *is* the bigger picture.
"We're going to treat this very topically," smiled the derm. "Simple as pie." She wrote out a scrip and flourished it over.
I stopped going to the gym. Really, I don't know why I ever started.
