+12

“Hung my head as I lost the war and the sky turned black like a perfect storm.” – Taylor Swift

Another run of bad luck — one mini-crisis after another — is conspiring to keep me out of the studio. It makes me mad at the world. Pissed off at myself for letting too many things slide out of view while I had on my sale blinders. Frustrated that I know what I want to make next, but I keep having to wait to get to make it. Already anxious that if I fall behind, November will be a repeat of April, and April pretty much beat me to a pulp.

This is nothing new. Most every sale cycle — 32 of them so far — creates a long lag between working at the wheel. It takes me forever to glaze and fire. The sale itself is a multi-week event, including the promo, setup, weekend, teardown and follow-through. So each time I watch the steadily-retreating thread of momentum and continuity with wet clay; I stand paralyzed and furious that I can’t chase it before it slips around a corner and is lost again. Starting from scratch is so hard. I hate it.

Priorities; traumas; conflicting agendas; promises. Legos. Maintenance. A million chinks in my armor of health. Some great reward for diligently working my ass off for months and months to pull off the sale. Why would I think there’d be a reward? Oh, I lied to myself that there would be, as a goad to grinding day after day after day for so long.

“Band aids don’t fix bullet holes. You say sorry just for show. You live like that, you live with ghosts.” (Yeah, so I pretty much know all the lyrics to 1989 now. Sue me.)

On top of all the other shit, it seems that every year around this time we have to have the whole “can we last here another year?” debate. The Admiral and I. Our budget has been stretched like a paper-thin porcelain wall for years now; it could collapse under its own weight and the steady spin of inertia at any moment. It’s sickening how fragile it is. I blame myself for not being a better or more conscientious thrower, then I think back to the hundreds of things I’ve done to try to get better or do more and yet it seems to be never enough. This house eats money for breakfast. It was probably more than we could ever afford, and now I wonder how we’ll know if it’s finally crossed the virtual line in the sand from which there’s no return?

Yeah, I’ve still got the part-time job. “Only” the part-time job. I hear you. I’m not soliciting your pity. (As I’ve said before, I’m well aware tha there are 6.9 billion people who’ve currently got it worse than me, not to mention winning the historical lottery at birth.) Sure I could add a second one; or hustle to freelance on the side (and it’s not as if I haven’t been); or trade back to a full-time gig at the U. I could do those things. And that’d be the end of me.

I’d rather sell the house; or downgrade to a place with less studio and no salt kiln; or retreat to an apartment for a few years; or almost anything than go back to being that person. God, we were so naive when we moved here 11 years ago. So many dreams, so little substance. “I’ll be a full-time potter!” “Let’s fix up the barn!” Always trying to have more than we can reasonably hold.

So that was fun, right? Veering pretty hard into Alms territory here, which isn’t exactly holding up my end of our stated bargain. OK, I’ll leave it at that for now, but that’s what’s up. News flash: everybody’s got money problems, even me.

No time in the studio since I made that first tiny group of mugs; maybe more coming this weekend. Maybe. But I’ve been settling accounts and shipping out a few pots and tending to all the post-sale tasks, and preparing the ground for the next crop.

Bowls order, shipping out!

A photo posted by Scott Cooper (@stearth) on

I went up to W. Lafayette to pick up 800# of new clay last week. It’s a long haul, but Standard is so much better than Amaco; not even in the same universe. Worth it. I got 50/50 porcelain and stoneware, plus a box each of two Jack Troy clays that I’m curious about. Will be interesting to see how they’re different. Like the Turner Porcelain that I tested years ago (which was lovely, but just a little too flimsy for me at ∆10 1/2), I admire the man so much that I can only imagine his choice of clays as being wonderful. Optimism strikes again.

The new owner of the clay supply business pointed out that the clays I order are pretty much the most expensive ones that Standard makes, which gave me one of those proud/mortified grins. Proud that without ever even looking at the price per pound, and trying at least 8 different bodies, I detected the finest and best and most subtle property differences. Embarrassed because of the paragraphs 4-6, above. Pleased, later on as I was reflecting on this one morning at 5:30 while stretching my shitty spine, that without even trying I stumbled into fulfilling Clary’s “your materials must be of jewel-like quality” directive. What’s a few more cents (or dimes; or quarters) per pound of clay when everything depends on it? What’s the cost of the way that light passes through a glaze and bounces back off the clay wall just so? Or the feel of the bottom of a cup? Or the exact shade of yellowish-ochre-brown in the slightly dry flashed back spot inside a handle? What’s the cost? Everything?

“And now I know we’ve got problems. And I don’t think we can solve them.”