This Month at Green River Pottery: November 2009
Inspiration
I’ve been reading The Conquest of the Useless, the recently-published diary Werner Herzog kept while making Fitzcarraldo—so vivid, so filled with observations of minutiae, so seemingly random, wide-ranging. He writes without giving any overall description of his project, without explaining or justifying it, taking the vision he has of the movie he wants to make for granted, doubting he’ll succeed in realizing it but never wavering in his commitment to try. The dangers and difficulties he encounters are huge but the tone of his writing is humorous, patient, filled with forbearance.
Couldn’t you shoot the movie on a set? Herzog gets asked. Do you really have to go to the headwaters of the Amazon, actually have the boat dragged through the jungle? Isn’t there an easier way? Sometimes in the studio I’m tempted to make compromises: firing to cone 6 instead of cone 10…using commercial clay instead of mixing my own…developing a glassy blue glaze that might actually sell at craft fairs…logical ideas, often pitched by well-meaning friends, but not good ideas. It’s great to read this journal and encounter Herzog’s total commitment to his vision, and his total emancipation from any concern about what others might think.
I notice that he spends an enormous amount of time doing things other than actually directing, actually making the movie. He’s in the jungle for a year or more before shooting even begins; at one point he flies to Rio de Janeiro and spends an afternoon waiting in line at a local radio station to make an on-air announcement: does anyone have clothing belonging to their grandparents’ generation that they’d be willing to donate? For costumes. In my studio, there are weeks that go by, sometimes, when I don’t even touch the clay. There are so many things—learning CSS, doing carpentry, chemistry—that demand attention and that seem, sometimes, unrelated to my work. It’s good to consider that some of this is okay, that sometimes this is just the way it goes. Self reliance pulls you inward but it pulls you in a lot of other directions too, demanding involvement in a lot of tasks you might otherwise be happy never to touch.
But most delightful to me, reading The Conquest of the Useless, is a little glimmer from Herzog of something that comes through in Fitzcarraldo itself, and in others of his movies: his profound feeling for the river. No doubt much has been written about this, his ability to convey the elemental power of the river, the rhythm of it, the metaphor it expresses, and the joy of immersion in it.
| As we descended to the Rio Cenepa, I was staggering, and I slid down the muddy slope through brambles. Once arrived at the river, I plopped in the water on my stomach and drank. |
I would like to be more like this at the moment. The river does not question its destiny, it does not wonder if it has chosen the right course—after all, it’s always at the lowest spot, the only spot for it. And though in the end, the river succeeds only in erasing itself—disappearing into the sea—at each spot along its course it fulfills itself, becomes itself: it simply is.
Maybe today I can be a little more selfless in the studio, a little more patient and confident in my vision—and also, maybe I’ll put Fitzcarraldo in my Netflix cue.
