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“I don’t want to start, but I will. This is an invocation for anyone who hasn’t begun, who’s stuck in a terrible place between zero and one.” – Ze Frank

So I hope you get it that the idea here is to be not nothing. Maybe not quite the anti-nothing, but at least an attempt at balancing the equation. Which equation, you ask? The only one that matters, friend…

Yesterday's plates.

A photo posted by Scott Cooper (@stearth) on

Or, to loop back and take another run at a beginning, with my fist full of re-sharpened pencils:

Maybe this is a try at getting past the nothing and back to that other story I was telling. You know, the one that dwelled in wet clay and hope.

‘When you finished, I accepted it like a book with a deeply unsatisfactory ending. Yes, the barn had fallen in the second half, but there should have been more and it should have been better because the characters were good and it wasn’t a fair ending.’ – K

Yeah, I liked those characters, too. And it’s a shitty thing to do to a reader, really — leaving them with an unfair ending. It paints a false picture of the world. And I still aim to squeeze as much truth into these abstract paintings as I possibly can.

Let’s see… So if you liked that old story mostly for its pictures, I recently started doing that again here. I like that format for them; images only with minimalist captions is nice. And it’s an easier, immediate way for me to get them out of my head and onto the public web. I’m thinking this time around [turning and turning in the widening gyre;], I’ll mostly put the words here — ‘words, words, words’ – and the pictures there. Except, then again, I just realized I can embed an image from that feed here pretty easily, which you saw up top there, so maybe I’ll do that. I dunno.

At least for now, that’ll work.

So… so so so. I guess we’re doing this again.
I have been making pots. It’s been going pretty well. A good run through porcelain after getting another sale off my back in early December. Some weird things with holes that I’m very unsure about and am hol-ding in reserve to share later. Maybe. More likely if the glaze runs down and semi fills the holes as intended. Less likely if they end up feeling like derivative crap.

Lots of tumblers, simple cylinders, as I got my feet back underneath me; and as I continue to learn how to throw on my feet, instead of sitting on my butt. Taller and vertical-er are hard in new ways. I’m slowly figuring it out.

Lots of horizontal black underglaze stripes, because the last few batches with the pale aqua and amber glazes bleeding the black to verboten cobalt and blurring all but the shadows of my fragile intent were fucking killer.

And shit — goddamnit — but I’m sorry if you’re only here for the pottery talk and can’t handle the swearing. But for the love of god, that’s how I talk, and now that I’ve tasted that freedom on AfO, it’s too late to go back to pretending that my blog can live within the constraints of a Sunday morning from my childhood. There’s no foul language in the Instagram feed, or on Facebook, if that’s how you want to roll; but here, filtering is OFF.

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Now I’m back to stoneware, good ol’ hearty stoneware. And more of that luscious white slip poured and dipped at the greenware stage, which was also pretty dang rad last fall. Flashing and subtleties that I just can’t get from the bare clay body or the bisque flashing slips. Drippy and loose and fun; a new hard fun to explore. I’m trying to throw bigger and taller. Trying not to torch my back. Trying to try my best. Trying not to forget that if I don’t enjoy it a decent chunk of the time than it’s really not worth doing at all.

So I’ll still write the occasional Alms post. Because, of course, there are still many dark or darkish days. And — there are certainly a slew of them to come. But I’m aiming to be that compressed rim, rather than that failed wet sock of a collapsed, unrealized form. All that chaos has potential to be fuel, if I can just sort my shit enough and get lucky long enough to set it alight.

After ten years and sixty-odd firings in the dumbest, smallest salt kiln in the world, I gave in to despair/ambition last fall and tore down the old chimney. That one got me roughly from Pixel’s birth to her seventh year; firings 20-something to 60-something; six feet then eight feet then twelve feet of barely helpful metal. On advice of counsel (who I’ll name later and extol with praise if this new hack works; and who shall remain anonymous if it doesn’t, since the whole thing is my fault anyways), I’m replacing the metal with brick. Engineered (I dearly hope) to stand up in the air over the burner and suck that damn flame through. Without falling over at ∆7 or the next time there’s a strong gust.

Maybe it will be enough to get me through a couple more years, a few dozen more firings, without wanting to drive my car through the thing by the end of each cycle. Maybe enough to bridge to the tw@se-long fantasy of a new kiln. Big, proper, a useful engine.

Maybe. Which also means, of course, maybe not.

Time hath a wallet at his back. Mine’s empty, and I can feel his hot breath on my neck. Pots in the queue, pots in the bisk, pots on the shelf… not enough pots in the showroom, not by half, so this kiln’s got to get working again and then cranking, up and down, in and out. Deadlines.

So OK. Not great, but perfection is kind of an asshole, and no one invites him to their pool parties. Or something like that.

It’s good to be back. Thanks for re-inviting me in.

‘Let me take the idea that has gotten me this far and put it to bed. What I am about to do will not be that, but it will be something.’ – ZF


cf. & TL;DR

  1. An Invocation for Beginnings
  2. An Invocation transcript
  3. ‘be aware of the difference between thought and awareness. that is where you will find all your answers.’ Uh huh. Yeah, sure.