A couple of months ago R and I took a pottery class. Marketed as a “Date Night” and designed for beginner duos wanting to learn how to throw on the wheel, the two-hour class took place at the pottery studio where I shopped for Christmas gifts last year.
The studio’s classes are popular and sell out quickly, so on the day they were to be listed I was ready, refreshing the page until the clock struck 10 am and the classes became available. We got lucky—some of my friends said the classes were all sold out when they tried to sign up—and registered for a Friday night class.
Good Clean Fun
When I was younger, I took lots of ceramics classes, molding lumps of clay into lopsided mugs and animals, glazed in shiny, cheerful hues. I loved creating things out of unassuming blocks of cool, damp earth, conjuring shapes and companions, vessels and treasures.
Though I took ceramics as a kid and again in high school, I’d never had the opportunity to throw clay on the wheel. Yet when I sat down in the studio in front of a lump of unassuming red clay on a wheel, it felt familiar. R had the same feeling. Neither of us had done it before, but somehow we felt as though we had, a comforting kind of deja vu.
That was as far as the familiarity went; what I created indicated that I had indeed never thrown clay on a wheel before. Of course R’s creations were much more sophisticated than mine (she’s good at everything she tries), and it was a herculean task to keep my perfectionism at bay during the two hours of wrestling clay, trying to move with it rather than against it, but it was also fun.
I am ashamed to admit that initially I took satisfaction in the miscalculations and mishaps of those around me; I wasn’t the worst one! I know, this competitive, perfectionist streak is one of my worst qualities, and completely besides the actual point of the class: not making something perfect, just enjoying the process of a new experience, creating something with our hands.
As I focused on the clay in front of me, rather than the clay in front of others, everything else kind of ebbed away. For two hours, there was no news cycle, no sense of impending doom. Doing something with my hands, something that felt primal and ancient, allowed me to suspend time, to forget that I was scared.
Well, I was scared, but scared of ruining the misshapen bowl (?) that was beginning to form beneath my hands. I was scared of stretching the clay too high, too thin, of losing control. But I wasn’t scared of the world.
I think most of us know intellectually that using our hands for more than eating and scrolling or typing on a computer is beneficial. That touching the earth, communing with where we came from and what we will return to, is deeply grounding. We know this, and yet we are consigned to live much of our lives in front of screens, indoors, disconnected as we are ever more “connected.” We know this, and there’s only so much we can do.
What we can do is steal small pockets of time and attention back, when and where we can. We can let perfectionism go in favor of trying something new, even if only for two hours, in the interest of preserving our humanity. In the interest of serving only joy, novelty, delight.
As we know, perfectionism is a symptom of the white supremacist capitalist culture we are all ill from, a culture that views us as products, as machines. As we become more intimate with artificial intelligence and prioritize shortcuts and ease over doing something fully, with difficulty, we lose ourselves.
When we lose ourselves, we become prime vessels for the system that indoctrinates us, the system that wants us empty and compliant, ready to receive outdated ideologies and harmful beliefs instead of listening to our own wisdom, the wisdom of community and of nature.
I know I’m getting a little woo-woo, but I think leaning into the woo-woo, into the actual dirt, rather than the dirty games being played all around us, is going to help us on the road ahead. Nature and art will save us, I really believe that. Last time I wrote about music and style aiding us, and this week I felt compelled to relive the pottery date night, the evening R and I spent creating something new out of cold, clean dirt.
It was not a night free of worries or cares, but the cares and worries I had were so silly, and in that light, I could see them as such. Little petty cares, tiny teeny worries about if my bowl would sustain beyond its squat shape (it did not). And if it did not extend, so what? I did not need to create an elegant vase, a pristine bowl. I could make little lopsided pots that would end up being perfect little homes for succulents. That was not what I intended to make, but I hadn’t really intended to make something else, either. I had allowed myself to be open, to see what arose.
The Friday Finds
Action. Sign up for the Action Center on Race and the Economy’s June 11 webinar, The Billionaire Power Grab and How We Fight Back. Not today, Elon!
Listen. “Healing Creek” by Talibah Safiya.
My heart been heavy
My mind been weak
I’m off to drink water from the healing creek
Watch. We just finished the newest season of Black Mirror on Netflix and while I can’t really say I enjoyed it, it did stick with me, as it always does. A lot of the episodes this season weren’t as strong as past seasons, but “Common People,” an episode featuring the excellent Rashida Jones and dynamic-as-always Tracee Ellis Ross, is an eerily realistic depiction of what our future may become if we continue to valorize technology and money over humanity.
Read. I am still living in the Maas-verse, and after finishing her ACOTAR series I moved on to the Crescent City series. Wildly entertaining, I devoured the “urban fantasy” trilogy at a breakneck pace and am now making my way through Maas’s Throne of Glass series. If you’re looking to escape reality and preserve your sanity (and aren’t looking for “highbrow” prose), you can’t go wrong with any of these series. For all her faults, no one can say that Maas isn’t a damn good storyteller!
Thank you for being here. Enjoy the weekend.
In solidarity,
Emma
I love that you were throwing a pot and thinking about how to throw off the system we were taught to accept.