“Under a dark star sail…” – Sting
I think the fifth movement takes evil back out of the world. Like a theoretical drawdown of carbon from the atmosphere, it recaptures something that never should have been set loose in the first place; some dark angel we allowed to escape over generations, through our collective, selfish ignorance. That last step to the dance returns that specific evil to a container that fits its amorphous intent, and will hold it fast until we forget why we need it to. Again.
No, I haven’t turned evangelical on you. That’s my analysis/micro-review for the astounding Netflix show, The OA.
[‘Astounding’? Is that the best I can do? Remarkable? Lovely? Ugh. ‘Astounding” is less generic than ‘amazing’, but maybe overkill. I hate how everyone always says everything’s ‘Great’ now, with three exclamation points. I suppose the defensible justification for that is because we’re all now crucially dependent on being understood through unadorned text. Which is OK, I guess — languages and their expressions evolve. But it’s also like grade inflation set loose on all of society; hard to pull back from the superlatives. (“We are living in a society!” – George Costanza).
Anyways, there are probably glancing spoilers in there, and I’m now sorry about that. This isn’t what I was imagining writing this morning [timestamp: 6:55am], but The Muse doesn’t wait for you to finish breakfast. (“Can’t you see that I’m driving?!?” – Tom Waits) And she doesn’t let you choose which fruits you get from her cornucopia. You should be so lucky as to chance upon the occasional chunk of unripe honeydew, you ungrateful motherfuckers.
Real-world spoiler ahead: if you don’t want to know the meaning of life before you’ve seen the whole thing for yourself, skip ahead to the next post!!! (Probably arriving in your feed in 5, 4, 3, 2…)
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OK, you brave bastards and glorious womenfolk, here it is:
I’m pretty sure The OA is The Muse.
Yep — I know, right? Like: mind blown.
Like Prairie herself isn’t magical or divine, but she’s an incarnation of it, a momentary conduit. Like a musician mid-improvisation, or a writer on a caffeine high, or a potter on that third, on-the-edge-of-control pull.
OK, seriously, since none of you have watched the show I’m talking about, why don’t you all go do your ten hours of S1 homework, and I’ll go stretch and take a shower. I think this’ll get better after I don my ‘guy living in his mother’s basement’/semi-professional pottery blogger garb.
[oh shit. Note to self: call Mom.]
Aww, man… I had it and I lost it. The first rule of Pottery Blog Club is we make you wade through hot garbage; the second rule is when The OA arrives, you humbly acknowledge her presence, but you don’t face her directly. (“Don’t look her in the eye, she’ll break your heart.”) The third rule, I guess, is never stop to go take a shower. “Stupid girl, I should’ve known, should’ve known.”
So when you think the OA appears to you, I suggest that you supplicate yourself, quietly. Breathe. And open your mind and your fingers to wherever she wants them to go, but you don’t actually write about her, and especially not about how she comes and goes, in mysterious ways. Fastest way to lose her is to chase her.
That’s OK. I was going to go into a long, real spoilers block about that show, and how I keep thinking about it; maybe bracing myself to take another run at it. It’s that good; like a favorite novel, you don’t want to loop back through it with an unprepared mind and risk squandering the magic of the last time.
Here’s last night’s pots, so that some people can blissfully skim this thing and have no idea that the text and the images have virtually nothing to do with one another.
Not sure about the bowls, but I showed remarkable restraint to not blast off another post at 9pm, or 3am, or 5am.
Streak broken.
“Sometimes I see Your face ::: Stars seem to lose their place.”