Making Our Selves

The barrel-chested guy was a master potter. Clay spinning on the wheel effortlessly rose under his hands and seemed eager to form itself into cylinders, bowls, jugs or whatever shape came into his mind. There were also erstwhile contestants, another judge and a hostess, but it was Keith, the master-potter-on-the-wheel, who has stayed with me even after the seven episodes of The Great Pottery Throw-down have completed.

In his judging of the contestants on different throwing and building challenges they were given, he was generally fair and articulate about their relative merits. But every once in a while some small detail of a piece would surprise him with the beauty of its proportions or strength of its creative expression and he would tear up. It probably happened only four or five brief moments over the course of the show, but it’s a memorable thing to see a grown man publicly moved to tears in response to beauty. (Only a slight choking up, mind you, if he had gone to full blubbering or wailing we would have worried about his mental health.)

I’m reminded of my high school band director, Mr. C. He too was fair and demanding. He would not hesitate to stop all thirty of us to correct some small variation of rhythm or missed cue from the saxophone section where I did my best to keep up. When he got really upset, he would tell us we sounded like a high school band—the ultimate insult in his book. During one memorable rehearsal that was near a concert and not going well, he stopped us and, without saying a word, got down on his knees on the floor and pounded the floor in lament.

Needless to say, this made a great impression on a high schoolboy. Not many of the adults in my life got this dramatic. I never quite understood Mr. C, but I knew he cared a lot and thought that something very important was within our grasp. The music he heard when he read the score was the beauty he tried to coax out of us. Personally, I was more concerned about looking cool with my buddy Jeff so we could impress Jackie and Pattie with our fifteen-year-old manliness in hopes of a few surreptitious kisses after rehearsal. But Mr. C clearly cared and felt there was some ephemeral beauty in music that was important enough for a man to be emotional about. I was impressed, wary and intrigued.

So Keith, our master-potter, attracted my attention. He had clearly devoted himself to a life of making clay vessels and had reached some pinnacle of accomplishment and recognition. But it was painful to watch him move. His head perched atop rigid shoulders and always seemed slightly in front of where it should be. I wouldn’t say he was deformed, but he was in the neighborhood. I don’t mean to make fun of how someone looks, but I had the sense that his restricted movement was one of the outcomes of his passionate pursuit of beauty and a livelihood through making clay forms. The years of bending over the potter’s wheel had not only molded countless clay vessels but had also molded the shape of his body.

I suppose our lives do this to us. Emerson (or was it Thoreau? or Einstein?) once said that after 40, a person’s face is their own creation. As we create and influence the world around us, we are in turn being influenced and created by that same world. The choices we make shape not just our lives, but our selves as well. It’s a subtle, complex and ongoing process.

I admire men (and women) who care about things and are willing to show it. I have learned that there is little return on playing it cool – though I have to admit that it is still my first instinct. Being vulnerable, being surprised by beauty, being touched by the tender heart of life—this is worth everything.