While being serious about my art, I want to remain more unassuming than everybody
To comment on my nature, I am both rather serious and perhaps more unassuming than most folks. To wit, I can even despise who I am. On the flipside, however, I am able to praise myself for not being too lazy, and for also being, quite daring in my actions as is required. Additionally, I can be quite crude, and unexpectedly masculine, while concurrently displaying certain feminine traits. Having mentioned such a gamut of inputs, however, I do not really understand how others perceive me, and on occasion I will actually recoil from myself. Similarly, a sense of self-pomposity sometimes comes to the fore. Thus, I am also occasionally perplexed as to the true nature of my being. Having confided all that in the reader, however, I know for certain that when I was a child, the adults around me often said that I was of a rather serious disposition.
Having offered that brief and perhaps conflicting self-appraisal of my personality, I remember one evening ending up at a certain Goin pub while in the company of some adult pottery students whom I was teaching. As to my companions, there was a group of older ladies whose fashion sense was quite gaudy. Likewise, there were others about whom it was readily apparent that their daytime occupation was quite a dangerous one. Meanwhile, there was also a great difference in how the individual students went about completing the tasks that I set them as part of the syllabus. To wit, in almost all cases my charges seemed to welcome any offers of assistance on my part. However, there were exceptions to that rule. In particular, I remember one woman who was normally quite the chatterbox. Nevertheless, she would clam up and not speak at all when I was in close proximity. Additionally, certain others never seemed to ask for help. That in turn just highlighted the range of mindsets among the group as a whole. Indeed, at one point, I wondered as to whether or not the individual traits that were on display were merely a continuation of each individual’s day-to-day personality, or whether among my charges, there were certain individuals whose external persona was constantly changing and in the state of flux.
Among the group, I also remember one male student who was both physically intimidating and had a face to match. It took him about two hours just to produce a very small guinomi cup. I remember being literally transfixed by watching him beautifully form his piece with his massive fingers, and I readily admit that what he ended up creating had quite a beautiful shape. Upon realizing what I had witnessed, it dawned on me that this rather big fellow was deserving of my sympathy in that his true personality was both quite serious and unassuming.
Likewise, among the same group there were also chefs and pottery shop owners who were the epitome of such character traits. There was also another individual about whom it was said that he lacked any professional qualifications despite working as a chef. In both of those cases, the individuals concerned seemed to be more cautious than anybody else, to take more time over the details of the tasks I had set, and to be of unassuming personalities to the point of despising who they were. Thus, in conclusion, among my adult students at the time, there were quite a few whose personalities were very much suited to a career in creative arts.
To speak of myself again, I feel a certain affinity with others who share my tendency to be thorough about matters. Indeed, I view people whose disposition is not like that as essentially being like “oil and vinegar” to myself. To wit, the apparently scary individual who spent two hours not speaking while executing his own piece might well have been a gentle soul. Nevertheless, he did give off a definite aura of not wanting to be interrupted.
