On beginnings
ALT HED: In which I’m slapped around by a piece of clay
Recently, I started taking a beginner wheel-throwing class at my neighborhood pottery studio. Before walking in on the first day, I did not prepare in any way. I did not buy supplies. I did not watch YouTube videos or talk to friends about it. I had never seen “Ghost.”
Spoiler alert: wheel-throwing is super hard. Unlike other craft disciplines, there seems to be an inverse relationship between exertion and outcome. The harder you press on a piece of clay, the wonkier it becomes. There have been whole afternoons in which I sat in front of a wheel, chucked down mounds of beautiful white stoneware, only to end up with slimy mounds of nothingness after clay wiggled out of my control. Rather than my hands sculpting something round and symmetrical, pieces of clay would beat me up and take me for a ride.
My wobbly creations next to those of someone else who is definitely, probably not a beginner.
Instructors advised me to “feel it out” and that it “comes with practice.” This was quite frankly frustrating as far as advice goes. I wanted to be good and I wanted to be good right off the bat. I have a long list of ceramics that I need for the house.
The crafts I already do prepared me poorly for this new endeavor. I was able to pick up knitting a few years ago and pretty quickly began making my own sweaters; during the pandemic I started sewing my own clothes from indie patterns. And while those are complicated in their own right and require dedicated focus and practice, they are more straightforward, quite literally. You generally create straight lines and don’t have to deal with the centrifugal force of a wheel spinning at like 50 miles per hour.
The best advice I’ve gotten so far is that in pottery, you have to work to tell your mind that what it wants to do is not the right thing to do. It wants your hand to press down to force a block of clay down during the koning process; you actually want to gently tip the clay forward. That way, with the turning of the wheel, the clay has nowhere else to go but down and you don’t tire yourself out in the process. You kind of have to fight your natural instincts and develop new ones.
All this is to say: It’s helpful to be humbled by being a beginner every now and then. To be reminded of how much you don’t know, and how much what you think you know can get in your way. To be slapped around by a piece of clay. It’s helpful to be reminded of the importance, as Rilke said, of resolving to always be a beginner.
