Loaded gun

30 Oct 2011: Here we are a year later or so and I facing another challenge. I do like the interaction and am amazed by the effect my bowls and Shauna's stories have on both our creative lifes. I've been reading and rereading Shauna's story "possessions" of which you could catch glimpses in earlier posts.

I will honestly say I read fantasy and history novels most of the time and Shauna's writing is different, realistic, not avoiding the hard facts of this world. There in lies the challenge to connect that world with my porcelain world, which is fragile, cute and happy.

In the first line of "Possessions" Shauna mentioned a loaded gun and I feel the pressure of this gun by now, for months I've let the story brood, but nothing will come to mind..... So I picked the story up again today and reread it again.

And I can find some happiness in there too. Is it too easy to take this glimmer of happiness, of a world the main character tries to escape too in his mind, and turn this into a bowl?

There is hope in there too, how to express hope in a story bowl.There's some vivid description in the story too, about radiating sunlight light, blinds and 50 denier flesh coloured tights.

There's so much in there, why is there no bowl coming from my hands, my mind, the porcelain, well wherever it has to come from....

4 Jan 2012: over 2 months later, about time I should at least publish this post. And no there's still no bowl, it as so easy to let it be with my daytime job as busy as it is since November, hunting for new a new house and the busy Christmas period for the creative side of my business. The days slip by, the nights too. But now I'm awake, too much on my mind, knowing I will still be stuck for time to concentrate on this wonderful project and I feel bad about it. Can I set a date in my diary somewhere in the next 2 weeks and force myself to create the long awaited bowl that day. Don' think it will work that way, but I can take that time to concentrate on this project and hope the inspiration will follow soon.

Where we started out....Lucky Horseshoe & Storybowl

I'm taken by differences in the use of bright colour and imagery (lots of light) now and from where we started out. We started last autumn, when the sky was (marginally!) greyer, thoughts were moving towards winter......

This is where we started:

Lucky Horseshoe by Shauna Busto Gilligan

Her husband, after months of procrastination about whether it would be unlucky or not, finally fixed the silver horseshoe to the front of the car, just above the grill, just below the registration plate.

“Look,” he said to her, pride shining in his smile. “Look how it glows.”

And she nodded, watching how his head cocked to the left, ever so slightly and aware suddenly that he had a look of a magpie about him as he observed her. She smiled, then, pausing.

“You’ve polished it nicely,” she said.

He hugged her, his arms lingering, like he knew how much effort it had taken for her to speak.

“Are you taking it for a drive?” she asked, mimicking him with a turn of her head, looking at the way the metallic paint shone in the sun. The car was slim and long and sliver. His hair matched and his wiry frame made him look like he had come as an upgraded accessory with the car.

“Coming?” he asked in reply. “I’ll just go up the road a bit, see if I can catch any pheasants.”

“You’re alright,” she said, her heart beginning to pound. He had been right not to use the horseshoe until now, she realised, it would do nothing but undo all his good luck. “I’ll get going on the dinner, then.”

“Okay.” He paused, half-in, half-out of the silver beast. “I do love you, you, know.”

“And I love you.”

She turned away and walked into the tall house. She would cope with whatever the horseshoe brought. It would be okay. She paused, thinking she would create her own luck in her own time, before climbing the steep steps to her favourite wooden chair, old and square. She would sit a while, and look out the window at the roads winding, squashed between the hedgerows, greenness splashed everywhere. Perhaps, she thought, she might even spot the fleck of silver in the distance as the land swallowed it whole.

*

That was the story Annemiek responded to with the story bowl (below). The car in the story was silver but what most struck Annemiek was the image of the winding roads in the distance.

Bath and Butterflies

I wondered what Annemiek would make of my daring challenge.

I thought about the fact that we had adopted an unspoken rule of communicating via the blog rather than discussing how we would proceed or what we hoped to get done by a particular time. We let – in essence – the creativity lead the process and the time. And yet, it seemed to take a lot of strength or courage to do this – to communicate via a world wide web. Part of it, somehow, seemed unnatural or at odds with the process of combined creativity. Or collaboration.

And yet, seeing such a surge of response – something tangible, concrete something (unlike how I see words!) real made me realize that yes this to-and-fro business of stabbing in the dark does and is working.

Butterflies are, to many, a sign of hope. They are an emergence of something.

They literally are a growth, a becoming, an emergence of beauty from something which-is-not, which is doubtful and not-permanent in its form – from caterpillar to butterfly; despair to hope.

An image of a hill in Bath, England comes to mind: a circular row of houses, a view of the city, the sulphur of the baths, a movement or shift in the atmosphere, a becoming beauty. It's a memory from walking through this beautiful city in Somerset, something that the butterflies or the idea of butterflies has triggered.....