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(In response to Elise's #38 query)

I'm gonna talk with my fingers here, so this may be a bit long & byzantine, and it may wander from topic to some extent. Hope that's okay.

When I'm at the potter's wheel I sometimes find myself just watching my hands, and at those times the pull (or push) seems mostly to come from somewhere down inside. (I don't actually feel it as originating in any specific location, as far as I can recall; but I may just have failed to notice.) When I'm trying to learn a new form or technique, throwing becomes somewhat more cerebral. Seems to me, though, that there are "things going on in the back" essentially all the time, even though I notice them more when I'm just throwing than when I'm being thinky/effortful/analytic. For one thing, there's the way I can tell when I get a shape right: it feels right. Tiny changes in the contour have remarkably large effects on my feelings about a piece... guess I should take photos at some point.

W/r/t the stuff in the back: recently, in email correspondence with another potter, I've been talking about "Og, the cave-scientist" (whose name I seem to have gotten from Brian McNett). Og is more in my guts than anywhere else, but I sorta pretend that there is this dissheveled figure in the smoky darkness, 'way in the back of my head, pointing at things and occasionally becoming rather excited. Sometimes the figure obliges me to fire tests of glazes even when I "know" they are going to fail, or even for no obvious reason at all. Og often has considerable influence on aesthetic issues as well -- the way I trim a footring, for example, which is something I seldom decide on in advance.

The more I think about all of this, the more it seems to me that Og's criteria and interests are mostly aesthetic, rather than "scientific". This could partly be an artifact of my own [strongly kinesthetic] inclinations -- I get a feeling that I should [or shouldn't] do or try something; and if I can't attribute the feeling to anything obvious, I attribute it to "Og". (I'm not single-tracked, btw; sometimes I get other kinds of sensory indications as well -- 'Oop. I have several yellow warning flags on that.')

Music seems to be different from mud: I hear something in my head, and if it seems particularly interesting or pleasing I try to write it down. I don't feel any particular pull or push from anywhere, and I don't fully know how to encourage music to happen, though hypnagogic states are very conducive, and I can sometimes use distractions of various sorts to deflect some kind of attention [conscious? I'm not really sure] that seems otherwise to get in the way.

Playing is different, perhaps because of the kind of music I'm involved in. With Balinese gamelan, which I only started last year, I first had to wrap my head around the ways in which it was different from Javanese gamelan, which I've been doing for quite a while. Since then, it seems to have become largely a matter of "monkey hear, monkey play", which is to say that I try to let the hands do as much as possible, and just stay out of the way. ...But playing gamelan of either sort seems to me to be more a matter of merging with the flow than of making, and I'm not entirely sure how relevant it is to Elise's question.

I can't really speak to calligraphy; I'm not a professional, and I do calligraphy mostly in order to see the nice forms. That is, the feeling seems to arise from examining results, rather than the doing resulting from a feeling. I mention this because it forms a potentially interesting contrast with other doings and makings, ...except that there are no one-way streets, and I also throw pottery partly in order to see [and feel] the nice forms.

Writing: I often want to write, but I rarely have anything fictional to say, and I'd much rather do something else than sit there grinding the gears on empty space, which is frustrating and extremely uncomfortable. That said, I think there is a physical component to the urge; though if anything it seems more likely to be in my throat and down my front than in my hands...

I wrote the Willow Pattern story as an exercise, btw, so see whether I could create a certain structure and, if so, whether the result would be readable. I'm not sure how I came to set myself that particular exercise as opposed to some other, or as opposed to writing something that wasn't an exercise at all. Unfortunately it has been a while, and recollection is hazy. If I were to hazard a guess now, I'd probably chalk it up to Og.

Sorry to blather...
jon

Hi!

Wow! I don't know whether it fits here, so you may want to answer this question via email, but what was it like to train with Takaezu-san? (I haven't met her, but I've seen some work and I think I read an article on her at one point. IIRC, she sounded like a remarkable person.) If my email address is not available here, you will find me at a cryptic revision of a@b.com, where you can replace the b part with joss, and the a part with my first name, which consists of just 3 letters (omit the usual "h").

Is Tudball amazing, or what? I attended a one-day workshop with her, and it was outstanding. Lovely organic forms, thrown and altered... she did a teapot, and even the feet were made from a thrown piece. I doubt that I will ever do work of her particular sort, but that did not prevent her from being incredibly inspiring.

the potter knowing what one can control and where one has to let go of control...

It's funny - the potter friend with whom I have been discussing "Og" has a PhD in Materials Science from MIT. She is considerably more in control than most potters, but even so she has to let go from time to time, something she is still learning how and when to do. (She admits that glazes are far too complex for anyone to understand fully. That's pretty good, coming as it does from someone who can build very good models of glass structures at the atomic/molecular level.)

Is part of being comfortable in the world of the interstitial being comfortable with letting go of control?

Good question. I suspect that the answer will prove to be 'yes' for most Interstitial people, but will there be a minority who can either be Interstitial without letting go of control, or for whom that turns out not to be a significant issue? (I think I'd be willing to be on the existence of at least a few of the latter. It would seem reasonable that the further outside the box one is, the more variability/flexibility in approach and stance one is likely to display.)

There is also another side to this: what about those who are in the World of the Interstitial, but are not comfortable in it? People one might describe as Howard-the-Duck Interstitials, 'trapped in a world they never made' (as it were)?

Cheers -
jon