“We have acutely sensitive hands, but we handle the world with thick gloves and then, bored, blame it for lacking shape.” – Charles Foster
I tried, during my sabbatical week, to get some thoughts down in type, but they mostly kept eluding me. There was either simply no time to put it ahead of all the other great stuff to do — talk, throw, decorate, talk — or I was so mentally wiped once a slice of time appeared that I could barely concentrate enough to put sentences into WordPress.
Which, in my book, is fine. Trying to liveblog such a unique event is like spending an entire vacation looking through a viewfinder (back when cameras were a thing): you might capture it for your audience or posterity, but you miss most of it yourself as it’s actually happening. I opted for the happening.
A few things did slip through along the way, though, so I thought I’d jumble them in here. Apologies for the randomness (but not really).
1.
Witt is here. It’s crazy. I’m completely fading out at 9pm each night, from the nonstop looking at pots, thinking about pots, making pots, talking about how we do things, why we do things — speculating if there are even justifiable reasons as to why we do any of them. Ah, the heady intersection of pottery and philosophy! What to make next, who’s going to put the handle on which mug, if I should slaughter more of his pots with my surfaces (we just had a conversation thread about whether to call it ‘decoration’ or ‘deco’, and what those might imply; and sarcasticaly/ironically minted the horrific term ‘final finishing’). (Yes, that’s exactly how most of these conversations go. Most of them would make your ears bleed, but between he and I, it’s glorious. I mean, like podcast-worthy, several hours per day.)
He prompted Pixel to try her hand at some of our pots, and she happily slathered white slip on them, thick drips running down to the feet or bases. “Who doesn’t like drips?”, I asked. She also did a ‘final finishing’ onto the bats themselves, so the pots were stuck back down to a giant puddle of white slip. “What the heck do we do with this?”, we wondered later, after she’d retreated back to the house and Minecraft or the animal parade or an apple or something. (I was slightly tempted to just shovel the whole damn thing into the bisk, Plasti-Bat and all, to see what happened.) (Yes, it was that kind of bonkers, free form mental state going on in there. At times it was practically taking the paint off the walls.)
Later, I tried to do something similar in spirit over her slip, adding those third and fourth layers, in flashing slip and underglaze, that I’m so drawn to lately. Pixel so wants to be an equal member of our little club. I love that she’s getting to see two artists not just engaged in the studio work but having a blast at it; almost consumed by it. Witt is great at engaging with her, thoughtfully answering all her questions, encouraging her to join in. Very sweet.
2.
The last month and a half since the sale are still too raw. What a clusterfuck. And even this week leading up to the big day, when I was planning to already be warmed up and humming along in the studio, all the junk from the long firing cycle and then the sale clutter and then the house debacles, when all the tools come out and scatter onto every horizontal surface. Jesus God Dammit, I so wanted for this to start on at least a blank slate, instead of the usual dumpster fire.
So that crap, and the prevailing mood/mindset of it, definitely did linger, like a background noise from some device I can’t find. If I could find it, maybe I could just turn it off. Or take the batteries out and throw it in a drawer.
Lacking that, I was hoping the blare and triumphal fanfare of this week would smother it — or even blast it out of existence — but it’s such a strong signal. I think I wore myself out in the run up to the sale: too much, too hard. Then, probably as a consequence, I got sick, then I went nuts of bad luck and projects, so I’m at the point now where I’m exhausted. Paying off the debt of time already spent on credit. It clouds my brain; makes me distracted; anxious. Mildly pissed off at the universe almost all the time, despite what’s actually happening in the moment. Gah.
For lack of a long, deep rest, I’ve been substituting liquid courage (eg. caffiene). With this brain, I fall into the old familiar trap of swapping quantity for quality, trying to cram as much into each moment as possible. So dumb.
3-
It took a few days for my six-week-plus funk to fade; all that habit of daily frustration and anger. But it finally gave way under the flow of pots off the wheel, past my brushes, onto the shelves — and, of course, the flow of amazing conversation and ideas, going almost from morning to night. I kind of needed that intensity to distract me from the other pattern, to break the negative feedback loop. Whew! Now we’re rolling.
4.
And, as these things almost always go, just as we’re really hitting our stride it’s time to stop. Probably for the best; everything’s been great; I mean great! But we’re both tireder each day, and a little slower on the uptake. How many days in a row can you really have Fruity Loops and pancakes? If we had scheduled a second week, we would’ve both needed a good three day weekend in the middle here… which we undoubtedly would have screwed up and just run right through at full speed/volume. Ha. And better guest accommodations would help, too. It’s a lot to ask anyone to sleep on a mattress on the floor for more than six nights in a row.
And, the old life is calling. Ring ring. All the things I’ve gratefully put on hold, or just fucking let go to voicemail for a solid week. Gotta answer those calls now. Gotta mow, gotta earn, gotta fix; and sort and shuffle and answer and plan and sweat and fight. “Oh and now you’ve had your fun, under an incandescent sun.”
And it was fun. Worlds of fun. So great. As good as I’d not let myself really hope for, and in a lot of ways, better. Definitely the closest thing to Penland since Penland, AND now with the promise of all those fresh, crazy pots on the shelf waiting for me to finish them off; tons of new ideas and things to try, when I can; a glimmer of refreshed or expanded perspective.
My brain didn’t explode, my hair didn’t catch on fire (not that there’s much to burn there anymore), my ambition didn’t sink the ship. For now, I’m calling it a success. One more thing, perhaps just barely, where I looked an my ocean of dissatisfaction and decided to pull the levers in another direction; to try to slowly move this enormous cargo ship of my life into a space that might matter a little better. That’s as ambitious as I get lately, but if I look past all the hell and daily drama, there are a few of those little peaks above the waves; little islets of satisfaction. I built a chimney. I levered three potter friends’ work onto my showroom shelves. I dragged my friend into our lives and my studio for a week and it was glorious.
But now, as always, life goes on, even after the magic ends. You can steer that ship, but only if you do all the scut work to keep it afloat. Earn it, then burn it. Maybe if I keep grinding and absconding and denying and trying, I — or even we — will work our way to another little slice of island magic again, a calm inside the storm, in some future week.
Maybe.