Calgang:
I’m not a Gane person, but I read with interest your rapturous
reply about watching the “real” craftspersons. I used to feel
this way in my pottery days about Bernard Leach and Hamada and
Michael Cardew. However, there is a saying, “if you have a hero,
look again, you have diminished yourself in some way”. I think
we all admire the lifelong discipline required to acquire some of
the skills we see in master craftsmen. I remember the stories
about learning to throw pots in Japan — you throw 100 cups and
the master comes and looks and breaks 99. I, too, would like to
study with masters, but I think we can all become masters with
enough self discipline.
I remember with great pride my singing lessons in my twenties
— thought I would be an opera singer. For two years my lessons
consisted of nothing but exercises, mostly funny noises. It was
great training, any singing technique I have today I owe to that
foundation. If only I had studied four years on just those
exercises!
A little Jewish boy with a violin case was walking down the
street in Brooklyn and stopped a distinguished old Jewish man and
asked, “how do I get to Carnegie Hall?” The old man looked the
little boy and the violin case up and down and said, “ah, my son,
practice, practice, practice.”
Roy (Jess)