Episode 35: Whirl Without End: On M.C. Richards' 'Centering'

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2018

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The first step in any pottery project is to center the clay on the potter's wheel. In her landmark essay Centering: In Pottery, Poetry and the Person (1964), the American poet M. C. Richards turns this simple action into a metaphor for all creative acts, including the act of living your life. The result is a penetrating and poetic reflection on the artistic process that values change, unknowing, and radical becoming, making Richards' text a guide to creativity that leaves other examples of that evergreen genre in the dust. Phil and JF get their hands dirty trying to understand what centering is, and what it entails for a life of creation and becoming. The discussion brings in a number of other thinkers and artists including Friedrich Nietzsche, Norman O. Brown, Carl Jung, Antonin Artaud, and Flannery O'Connor. Header image: NASA REFERENCES M. C. Richards, Centering: In Pottery, Poetry, and the Person J. S. Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier American pianist David Tudor C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections Weird Studies, Episode 33: "The Fine Art of Changing the Subject" Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy Antonin Artaud, The Theater and its Double (translated by M. C. Richards) Rudolf Steiner, Alchemy: The Evolution of the Mysteries Norman O. Brown, author of Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy Flannery O'Connor, "Novelist and Believer" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Specter Vision Radio.
0:03.3	Welcome to Weird Studies, an art and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martell.
0:21.8	For more episodes and to support the podcast, go to Weird Studies.com. It occurs to me that we might want to announce to our listeners that we are going to
0:56.7	in every other week schedule for a while.
0:59.6	Well, that's a good idea.
1:01.2	Yeah.
1:01.5	Yeah.
1:01.7	So I hear with announce that we are going to in every other week schedule.
1:06.3	These podcasts are extremely fun to do, but also massively time-consuming.
1:11.5	And JF and I've been just burning out, banging out an episode a week throughout this term.
1:16.6	I don't know about you, JF, but like I could do with the slightly slower pace.
1:21.6	Yeah.
1:22.3	No, I agree.
1:23.5	The pressure got a little intense there recently.
1:26.0	At least for a while, we're going to do a new episode every other week and see how that goes.
1:30.8	I don't know.
1:31.3	Maybe we'll get bored again and just be like, oh, my life is so meaningless without spending hours every day editing.
1:39.8	Yeah.
1:40.8	Well, it is fun to do.
1:43.0	It is fun.
1:43.6	Yeah, no, it's true. I don't want to give the impression that I'm down on it because I really love doing this show. Yeah. Well, it is fun to do. It is fun. Yeah, no, it's true. I don't want to give the impression that I'm down on it because I really love doing this show.
1:47.7	Yeah, I know. You know, maybe once we start our Patreon and we're rolling in dough, we'll be able to, like, justify the time it takes every week to put an episode together.
	...

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