One question can change your life.

1/11/10

A little background material is needed for me to tell this story to my satisfaction. As soon as I was old enough to answer the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I always said, "I want to be a doctor." By high school and heavily under the influence of Jacques Cousteau specials on TV my answer had changed to Marine Biologist. The point is I was a science geek. Other girls had dolls and I had microscopes,chemistry sets, dissection kits... you get the picture.

I applied to the only two schools in the country with undergraduate programs in Marine Biology at the time (1969), was accepted at both and went to the one in Florida versus the one in California. It didn't take me long to figure out a degree in Marine Bio was far more likely to get me a ticket to a little basement lab somewhere studying some one celled plankton for the rest of my life and not a first class berth on the Calypso as Cousteau's new sidekick.

I dropped out of college in a bit of a tailspin and when the dust settled decided I wanted to study creative writing in as small a school as possible (no more Intro to Bio classes taught by television in a 300 seat auditorium for me baby!). That decision led me to the college I graduated from, Bennington College in Vermont.

I had signed up for a load of pretty heavy courses and my adviser recommended I drop at least one and replace it with something I thought would come easy to me. I took his advice and opted for an art course...what any not quite reformed science geek would think of as an "easy" choice (how wrong I was but that is a story for another day).

My first day in my ceramics class was a revelation to me. My teacher was a smallish, middle aged man. During his introductory remarks the way he talked about clay alone let me know I was in the presence of someone extremely unusual, someone I definitely wanted to have as a teacher.Whew... we are finally at the story I came to tell today.

So, I was making my second pot (we weren't allowed to use wheels yet so we were "hand-building") and came to the studio one afternoon to discover it was cracking along the bottom. I found the teacher and showed him my barely started and cracked pot and asked the question that changed my life:

"How can I fix the crack in the bottom of this pot?"

He just stared at me for a few moments. He was known for his lengthy pauses and I had already been instructed by some of the long time studio regulars to just wait him out. To this day I wonder what he was thinking before he spoke. I can tell you just about any other teacher on the planet would have told me to chuck the thing and start over. But he was the most remarkable teacher I have ever had and when he finally spoke he said to me:

"Well it depends on whether you believe in the Western philosophy of perfection or the Eastern philosophy of perfection."

You can imagine the blank look this drew from a former science person who had taken her last art course in Elementary school. He pondered my vacant expression and decided to press on. He spent almost an hour explaining the two philosophies but I am going to condense. In the West the crack is seen as an imperfection and the solution is to fix it or toss the cracked item and start over. In the East the crack is seen as the medium, in this case the clay, having its say and the artist has to decide whether or not to listen. In the East sometimes it is a flaw that makes something perfect.

So he gave me this totally beautiful and amazing talk on the two philosophies of perfection , did another lengthy pause, then told me how to use vinegar, water and pudding consistency clay called "slip" to fix the crack in my pot and walked away.

Well, I stood transfixed in that little chicken coop of a studio. Major shifts were occurring in my brain and it felt like the light filtering in through dense forest branches. There was more than one way to look at even the simplest things. I was conscious of the extreme beauty and simplicity of things on the one hand, and the extreme beauty and complexity of things on the other. Both existing side by side and each one informing us if we let them. My way of seeing everything for the rest of my life was altered because I asked that question to the right person who took the time to really give the whole answer.

So here is what I think. Never be afraid to ask a question, and if someone asks you one, stop and think and give them the best possible answer you can. There may be other forces at work.