Give Me Trouble: in search of the new
Laurie,
Have you ever accidentally made something good while trying to make something terrible?
Monica
Dear Monica,
Accidents are for amateurs. I have disasters. Unretrievable obliterations, abhorrent avalanches of horror.
Though I’ve made my share of landfill over the years I don’t think I've ever set out to make something terrible. Conversely, I have made plenty of pots with the highest aspirations only for them to come out totally shit. But never by accident. Within my practice there are no accidents, only incidents - because everything is an adventure. If you put yourself on a path of discovery, any so-called accidents are an incidental part of the journey. Often the most memorable and valuable part. Semantics I know, but useful when you're out on a limb, being battered about by the cruel winds of failure. Put simply the term ‘accident’ has a stink about it. It smells like a defeat when it’s often a useful reminder, a revelation or an unexpected victory.
Incidents are for adventure. Give me discomfort, give me trouble in search of the new.
The terror in terrible is the pain of failure. The waste of material, the loss of time or blow to confidence. But the goo in good is the breakthroughs and the creamy ecstasy of a delicious outcome. Having an accident implies that something negative has happened quickly and unavoidably, like dropping a mug or catching your sleeve in a pug mill and having your arm torn off. But most things in ceramics happen slowly and are often the result of something you did or didn't do weeks earlier. Maybe the worst thing in the moment is the best thing in the future. Ceramics is a long game and what seems like a negative today might be a positive tomorrow. The trick is to not be a panic monkey. Give yourself room to capitalise on the unexpected. Making ceramics is not for the inflexible, sometimes it's better to be the drunken sailor in the pottery, laughing as the sails catch fire.
Accidents are altruistic. Golden gifts in drag. Segues beyond existing knowledge.
Hey Monica, I’m going to make more terrible pots. I'm going to take my own advice, so thanks for the leading question. I want more mess and confusion. I want more questions than answers and an invigorated practice seasoned with chaos. Let's all make more mistakes, let's bend it till it breaks, let's go so hard and so fast that everything starts falling apart and we can finally see the bloody insides. Let’s view these serendipitous, incidental moments for what they are, the road less trodden, education in a whip.
Incidents adjust the tempo. Interrupt the format. Turn up the volume but not the noise.
To make good pots you have to be prepared to make bad pots. You must accept that discomfort and failure are part of the game. I say all this knowing full well that tomorrow I’ll return to the studio and practise what I've preached. That it will go bad and that I'll get the dull sense of defeat and I’ll have to read this letter back to myself, like a fool. Eating my own sad motivational poem for dinner. But I’ll forgive myself for the beautiful blunders along the way, and power on, embracing them as old fashioned teachers from the 1920s. The ones that beat you out of kindness and then gave you a toffee apple.
XL
*Image courtesy of Brickell Brac