Fail Forward

The goblets workshop with Jeff Mack wasn't what I expected.

I'd been blowing pretty well in Philadelphia, not quite production cups, but I was finishing off the spring with thin, centered cups with color and avolios, blown feet, correct proportion. I took the class thinking that I had the basic bubble happening, and that now I'd build some stems, try some new techniques and move on. But I couldn't.

I was stuck - my hands weren't opening vessels, my blow partners weren't the same old Philly crew I knew like the back of my hand. My timing was off, I kept missing the beat. I was too cold, and a year in front of the glory hole couldn't warm up my glass. Maybe the laws of physics were actually being applied differently in my corner of the studio. The information I was receiving in demonstrations and museum lectures was overwhelming and awe-inspiring. Watching the other students, seeing their work product was humbling. Quietly listening to the conversations in the lunchrooms, with these glassworkers from all over the nation, even the world, sharing information and technique, was every idealistic thing we ever dreamed about on the front stoop of our tiny hot shop in Philadelphia and never even came close to achieving in our own little world. Everything was changing, my head restructured the way I was thinking about glass. I just couldn't do anything with it.

By Wednesday, I was beginning to wonder if I could ever do this - glass - if after four years of giving it all I've got, I couldn't get in the studio enough, practice enough, problem solve enough to fix this, to make a stupid cup happen. The few pros I knew back in Philly were right - this can't happen without being in the studio and working your ass off everyday. The work you put in to pay your rent and then get to the studio doesn't count. It won't teach your hands a thing. That night I rallied and banged out a nice enough cup with tall avolios and an optic stem, but by Thursday, it was gone. Some cruel little voice in my head told me not to quit my day job, but I already had.

I asked Jeff Mack what I could do to be a better glassblower, and I think I was waiting for official approval to go back to the hobbyist corner forever. He talked about about a book called Zen and the Art of Guitar Playing and told me to look it over and replace "guitar-playing" with "glassblowing". He said that frustration was just part of the process, that it would never end. And something clicked, I remembered something else entirely. A shock of recognition.

After all was done, and I settled in Philadelphia, after the first year there, I had just started my first intermediate class under Chris. I had been blowing glass for four months. I went to Brooklyn to chill at Coney Island and crash with Gregory. I talked glass half the weekend, like a naive little thing. We were outside on the concrete steps in a summer night, just like growing up, and I said that I had never failed so miserably at anything in my life, and that I thought I might have achieved enlightenment.

It's been a long time since I thought about enlightenment, but now I think I remember why I'm here.

So the Jeff Mack class was about countless failures, open possibilities, a series of minor epiphanies, and small victories in the form of a series of ampolinas and twisty cups in the box. Plus one sweet, tall cup.