The Pottery Wheel, a Punishment Tool
I’ve done a lot of soul searching, and I’m ready to admit to myself that… I think I’ve been using the pottery wheel as a form of punishment. When I first started taking lessons, I loved the pottery wheel so much. I mean, I thought I loved it, but I think I just loved that I was making time for my creativity and that I got to spend an hour or two just being present with something. If you want to quiet your overthinking, the pottery wheel is the best tool you can turn to. It forces you to be present and connected to your body because every little movement you make can make or break your piece. Mostly break to be honest.
The more I practiced though, the less it became about the present moment and more about perfectionism. Because now I wanted to become “good” at this craft. Too bad that, as a lefty, I never quite recovered from having to decide between throwing clockwise or counterclockwise. I still don’t know which one is right to this day, they both feel weird. On top of that, I became obsessed with trying to make the perfect cylinders and shapes that looked flawless. Oh, and I wanted to throw big, like everyone else I’ve seen on Instagram.
The interesting thing was, when I thought about the shapes I wanted to create, perfect and round were the last things on my mind. I feel called to build shapes that have movement, that mimic water, that float. Things that feel out of this world. Yet day after day, I kept sitting at the wheel and tried to throw perfect shapes. Why?
Fast forward a couple of weeks—and I’m driving to Montreal to deliver my Wonky vase collection for Petit Magasin at Bref. I was too late, and too scared to ship them in time for the pop-up, so I thought I would drive there instead. I always enjoy a long drive, it helps me think of new ideas and sometimes I get big breakthroughs from it. Ideas unfold in movement for me.
I was listening to the radio when a CBC podcast episode came on: “On Drugs” with Geoff Turner.. It was speaking to our relationship with alcohol and how it’s so embedded in our culture. I found it interesting because I don’t drink, and I frankly never had the urge. I don’t get the appeal at all.
One of the guests on the episode went on to talk about how people enjoy drinking because it does them a little bit of injury. He spoke about Freud’s death drive, and how drinking can be a form of masochism that keeps people wanting to do it again. He described it as the idea that everyone enjoys hurting themselves a little bit, one way or another.
That really got me thinking. If I don’t enjoy drinking, how do I enjoy hurting myself? The first thing that came up was maybe that’s why I keep doing crazy challenges like running marathons, or chasing big goals that often leave me exhausted. The other? The pottery wheel.
I started thinking about it, and the urge to throw on the wheel is almost always when things are looking up. As soon as I start to feel like I’m improving at this craft, I will feel the urge to throw. And it’s never just, “throw for fun”. It will be something like, “let me see if I can throw a 15” thin cylinder” (after not throwing for 6 months). Or, “let me try and make 30 mugs today on the wheel” (even though I probably haven’t even made that many in total on the wheel so far—go figure). So there you have it. I think I’ve been unconsciously using the wheel as a self-sabotaging tool. A way to keep doing myself a little injury, to keep myself small. We all get in our own way somehow and I think as soon as we gain the awareness of one of the ways we self sabotage, a new way comes to life. Maybe we can never get rid of that resistance, and maybe we need it to help us grow.
