Here is how things are going. Yesterday I started 3 projects, I studied sheep anatomy; I started reading a book about slips, tested slips and tested glazes, I glazed my own pieces and helped Finn with his own and then we loaded the kiln where 5 of my pieces are being cooked!
My brain can barely stop, my body can hardly hold.
I ride my bike every morning for an hour to reach the studio, but I already start working in my brain even before I open my eyes, I normally happen to have an abstract idea of ‘how to’ create whatever challenging idea or request I got.
Somedays I feel totally blurred, or I start sharp and I get blocked in the middle of the day.
Sometimes I can hear a noise into my head but I cannot identify what it means, I guess it is the sound of the ideas warming up. But during the time I hear the noise I normally stop to what I’m doing and move to another thing or I stay sitting until the inertia of my body leads me somewhere,
but then,
I feel my eyes are blank, looking to no fiscal place.
My eyes look far and beyond to a place that my body can’t go. The see things I cannot reach.
The eyes, and only they, can go to meet and bring those things into this world.
I call that place Beyond.
I can also hear that sound, the noise.
Sometimes I see that there is a door, and sometimes there is just a hole, a tiny hole but a very significant one.
That is a golden hole where the ideas are born.
Somedays the noise is so loud that it becomes tinnitus*, and that is the noise that call my eyes away.
When I allow my eyes to go they stop there in front of the hole; right there where the noise gets louder, rowdy, confusing and bewildering.
They see the ideas all pulling together towards the hole, they all want to cross
They all want to jump out
But the hole is not big enough
Then they get stuck, right there at the hole and suddenly it is all dark.
No light can come in or out, all the ideas are baffled
Pushing at each other, yelling, screaming, discussing, annoying one another
Sometimes, when the eyes stay there long enough it seems that when the ideas see them they calm down.
Some of them suddenly surrender and become quiet, some others are shy, so they run away, and some others are still very noisy, and they claim to the eyes, they wonder who they are and what they want, they are noisy ideas, they are like those who talk loud but never act
Those noisy just fight, they keep yelling at the eyes.
But as the eyes remain there, looking at the hole, observing attentive to what is going on, then, sometimes, if they look hard enough, deep enough, openly enough, and long enough they can see those ideas who are standing out of the crowd.
Once the shy are gone, and the noisy keep muttering to the air, then, the eyes can see.
There they are, those who stand out. They are normally alone, quiet, just waiting and showing their understanding that their very presence is good enough, they just ARE.
They won’t run away either push too much, they just wait, stand still.
They know that if they are strong enough to stand in the crowd without mixing up, just being strong enough to not be pulled out or away, strong enough to resist the fights that are all around them, then, they become present, they become real. They are the only STILL thing that the eyes can see, the only thing that is real enough in its own presence, in its own being, so the eyes can see them, and sometimes those ideas can perceive the eyes, and when the moment is right they will cross out the hole, and the yellers will shut up, and they will also run away, and suddenly the shy ones will come back, and look at the lonely one, the STILL one, moving out heading to hole, trusting that it will meet the eyes.
A Day in my life
Barbara.
*Tinnitus: I suffer of this very often when I have a creative block.
Still in the woods
