DAY THIRTY

Well here we are, the end of the first month of this project, 8.33% of the way there. 
 
"I feel like a chipped cup, I won't ever be the same again." 
 
The context of that statement is distressing, and I won't mention it, but I want to write about broken things, imperfect things. We live in a throwaway world, or at least we did. Call me an optimist but it does seem things are changing, though, call me a pessimist, that impression could have been formed by fashionable media commentary. It's hard to tell. 

Everyday creatives are probably more conscious than the average person of the need to conserve resources; reuse, repurpose, recycle is not only a mantra for the green movement, but also a practical approach to hobbies and interests. Speaking personally, nothing gives me greater pleasure than finding a new way to use something. I've always been like that and it connects with notions of creativity which I wrote about a day or two ago.

As with many things, Japanese culture has raised the act of reuse or repair to an art form and imbued it with deeper significance. I am talking about the practice of Kintsugi, which is the repair of broken objects by 'glueing' them together with gold. 
 
The story goes that a 15th century nobleman or emperor had a favourite pot which became broken, and so he charged his local craftspeople with repairing it. Realising there was no way they could make an invisible repair, the craftspeople invented the technique of holding it together with gold, in so doing not only fixing the pot, but knowingly accentuating the damage it had suffered. They presented the repaired pot to the nobleman with some trepidation, fearing for their lives as this was at at time when a Japanese lord's power and judgment could be total and severe. The Lord studied the pot in silence for some minutes while the craftspeople waited anxiously. Eventually the Lord pronounced himself pleased with the results and ordered the pot to be replaced in his collection. And so a new artform was created.

This tale could be read at many levels - necessity as the mother of invention, fatalism (may as well try something rather than tell the Lord we can't do as he asks), human ingenuity, the advantages of wealth (if it hadn't been for a Lord would the craftspeople have been able to use gold?) and so on. There is also a tale of bravery to be told, the sort of bravery that a creative person might demonstrate when they step beyond existing boundaries to try something new. There is something about the artist or craftsperson having faith in themselves and not giving in too easily to fate.

But the story doesn't end there. The practice of kintsugi has led to a philosophy developing around it, the gist of which is to respect experience, imperfection, the story or journey embedded in the history of an object, and by extension other people and oneself. It urges that we should not be too quick to dismiss that which isn't exactly as it might be, or as it used to be, but to embrace and to reflect on the inevitably of chance and change. It suggests that even unwelcome experiences can lead to something which though different, may have its own beauty and meaning - stilll reflecting of the old, but at the same time very much of the new.
 
That person who's experience left them feeling like a chipped cup was right, they will never be the same again, and it is harder to repair the soul than it is broken pot, but that isn't the end of the story. 

Onwards...philosophically.



Picture Credit: Haragayato, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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