Monday, June 13, 2011

Thinking with your Hands











Making pottery is like thinking with your hands.


There's this almost mythic connection between a part of your mind that commands your hands and touch and that place in your head where you daydream.


The brain shifts into neutral--like coasting.


A free-floating, altered, but intuitive state--almost self-hypnosis.


Is it shifting into Alpha Brain waves?


Is meditation the same kind of state? Like driving down long, boring freeway, looking at the ribbon of asphalt laid out to the horizon?


Or like standing a steam-filled shower--just you and the water drumming on your back--and you're just there; Being?


Throwing clay: Your hands and your mind suspended in a dream. That's when you make magic.

1 comment:

Lori Buff said...

It's almost like not thinking with your hands. Like you said, just being. Sometimes it's fun to work with the clay of a pot that has broken during throwing, just to be playing without hopes of saving.