easy Come…

 

Well, you know the rest.  I have heard a phrase from customers (very few artisans will say this) at almost every encounter: if you love what you do, it must be easy.  This may be a reaction to the drudgery and unhappiness many of us feel in our work.  We are in large organizations where our point of view doesn’t count.  We are making products or services the beauty or value of which escapes us.  We are moving at someone else’s pace.  An old cowboy told me, if you ride a horse and lead one, the one you are leading will drop dead first.  We feel no power in or even connection with what we do.  Artisanal work seems to counter this situation.  People see me in a shop, by myself, making things of beauty, of my own design and at my own pace.  This is not accurate.  I make unique items to the final specifications of the customer.  This means that I don’t have one boss, but many.  Every day I tangle with beauty.  Beauty is a hard and boring taskmaster.  It involves color and size balances among other things which call for much repetitive work.  Until you realize that a problem is a door to a new direction in your piece (either in the design or technique) beauty can drive you crazy.  Sometimes a piece does unfold in an easy and orderly manner, but in my experience this is not often the case.  There is a paradox here: the difficulty I find in creating a piece is directly proportional to the resistance I feel in releasing it.  So, yes, I love what I do, but like everyone else I don’t like it all the time.  I’m like a woman I met who told me she was not a good mother.  We talked a bit, and it turned out she didn’t like the 2:00 a.m. feedings and the dirty diapers.  She spent a lot of her time mired in bad feelings and depression.  Still, every day, she clawed through all that to care for her children.  That’s what draws the value out of all of us into what we establish.  I’m not saying the time to change the direction of our efforts never comes.  It’s just that whatever enterprise we choose – if it’s worthwhile – will be one we don’t always like.