Hold the Dolby

I remember when I got my first cassette player with "Dolby® Noise Reduction". It was pretty cool. Gone was the hiss of the tape. Gone were the crackles and pops from the LPs I'd recorded into homemade cassettes.

But the polish came off that apple pretty quickly. Gone along with those vanished hisses, pops and crackles were the sounds of fingers on guitar strings, and breathing woodwind players, and sounds of picks on fretboard ends.

Dolby sucked the life right out of my favorite recordings. Perfect was, in this case, not perfect. Those extraneous noises were very much a part of the vitality of the recordings. The noise reduction that Dolby offered me came at a too high price -- lifeless listening.

Perfection, as a craftsman's goal is admirable. There's a strange balancing act. Always a balancing act -- achieving an end result that, in its perfection both appears to transcend the means of its production -- while at the same time leaving the hint of the humanity behind in the creation.

Craft has historically thrived when technology is perceived as a threat to our human expression. Man vs. Machine. The Steam Drill vs. John Henry romanticism. In this digital age when even much of our "art" is computer generated, there are still those of us who aren't ready to give up the hands-on exploration of human trial and accomplishment.

So, should thrown pottery be perfect?

Yes. In the sense of a craftsman's results coming close to meeting his intentions, yes. Perfection is a worthy goal. Control the medium. No excuses.

But just maybe that craft should also be a celebration of the idiosyncratic material -- clay -- a cussed substance that doesn't always stay where you put it, warps, shrinks, and cracks when handled poorly.

And just maybe the marks of the potter's hands as a reminder that process matters -- matters to lots of us humans -- should not be erased from surfaces, rather, be enjoyed as the part of a better whole.

It's not about celebrating imperfection or rationalizing lazy practice. It's not trying to accept a "it's good enough for..." mentality. The striving should always be there. The striving should always be evident.

I want my recordings to hiss and pop if it means I also still hear the squeak of fingers on strings letting me know that there was a living, breathing human behind the recording -- a human who was participating in the activity of filling the world with exciting, beautiful, thoughtful work.

And I want my pottery to have finger marks, double stamps, bent walls, irregular trailed lines -- not for their own sake -- not as added affectation to elicit calculated response -- but as evidence of process. I want those things that remind me that there was a striving human with lofty goals willing to risk time, talent, and not a small amount of hope that he/she'd be putting something of value into our shared world.

Me & David

Me and David*
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*David is and always was unaware our our 30 year "collaboration" and may or may not have approved. ;)

Barnabas

This is a pretty good metaphor in picture. There's been no bigger encouragement in my life of creative endeavors than my sister, Jackie, pictured here letting me out of an antique Wells Fargo trunk.

I'm guessing it's fairly unusual to have a sibling as such an encourager.

I mean, our siblings are the ones we grow up with. Our siblings know our weaknesses better than anyone else in the world does. They grew up sharing the medicine cabinet in which we hid our Clearasil, they saw our tantrums, they smelled our gym clothes.

Similarly, our siblings look out at the world from a same shared perspective that sees all the accomplished, smart, talented, creative people in the world and measures our collective selves -- our family -- not quite as accomplished, smart, talented, or creative. If you're one of us, you must be as ordinary as we are.

Our families see the errors by which we learn. It's hard to see past them. We don't see those same errors that were the avenue to success in the accomplished others.

But somehow Jackie heard the 6-8 year-old me tooting melodies poorly on dad's harmonica and she was the first to buy me a Yamaha chromatic harmonica of my own.

Somehow Jackie heard the 10-11 year old me stumble through Paul Simon and Peter, Paul, & Mary songs on a borrowed guitar and heard enough good to think me a guitarist worth listening to.

And when the only way I could cope with the rhymes and words and thoughts that crowded my mind as I worked at the wheel was by typing them into a blog, it was Jackie who first called me a "writer". And then she even compiled some of my early musings into a book.

So, yeah, the image of her letting me out of the trunk is apt. It's a good metaphor. I wish everyone could have a Jackie in their lives who sees more good than bad in them, who sees something worth encouraging and nourishing in them, who would tell them that no matter what else the world was saying about their creative offerings, there is still at least one person in that world who sees great value -- and who opens up the trunk for them and unleashes them on the world.

It's A Wonderful Life

I took a break from making these to go across town to the art fair and say hi to my friends exhibiting there.

While there I bumped into Mark. I see Mark once every ten years or so since we both graduated from college back in the '70s. Odd that in a town as small as ours I don't run into him more frequently.

Anyway, every time I see Mark I'm prone to wonder about how things might have been. See, when the potter who gave me my start back in '76 was looking for an apprentice to help him out, I wasn't the first student he called. Mark was.

When I see Mark I always wonder what I might have become if Mark had been more interested in making pottery. I might be a rich stock broker or a famous musician today.

Damn you, Mark.