It is often a simple and easy slope which leads us to forgetting the deep, physical, visual, emotional, and spiritual pleasure that comes to the heart of potters in the creative making of pots.
Potters are often thought of as craftspeople who make pots in order to make a living, and that is somewhat true — somewhat. Be careful not to get distracted by partial glimpses!
As with many activities in the creative domains, the underlying and motivating energy for making is a mongrel-cross between an inner, stirring yet undefined feeling, and a outwardly pushing desire. These are often in the company of the recognition that I, this human being, this ordinary, living person, can create wonderful things and engage in exciting adventures while immersed in plastic rock.
It’s a heady atmosphere indeed, occasionally enshrouded in mists.
These inner, almost not felt but compelling experiences, are a deep source of energized movement, and often frustration, uncertainty, and hope. In it all, a measure of simple fun presents itself!
Fortuitously, the making, the transformation of mud into finished object is such an honor, such an exhilarating realization, that the anguish, uncertainty, lack of preparedness, all fade slightly as the pot itself flourishes and comes out of the kiln in its finished form.
There is always, however, a trashcan nearby so that those that do not have an inherent needs-satisfying quality, can be discarded, and the hoped-for quality passed on to the next work.
Rhythm, order, vision, generation, realization, the flow of seeing-knowing, the time-measured learning, and the relaunch. The new from the old, the creative within the most stable, the unbound emerging from constraint.
Often lived beyond words.
