Spent forty minutes this morning picking which hammer to use and used it once
Not the whole morning. Forty minutes, standing at the rack, picking up the 4 pound, putting it back, trying the 3. It's a limestone block, a small piece, maybe 60 pounds, sitting on the bench since Tuesday.
I have a wall of them. Forty years of hammers. Every one has a job, or had one once. Two are for my hand only, nobody else touches them, and I couldn't tell you the last time I used either.
Started as a way to avoid starting. Forty minutes of doing something that looks like working. Then I hit it once, wrong, took too much off a corner I'd been protecting, and that was the whole session. Went in, made coffee, sat down.
The stone's still out there. I'll get to it. But I've been doing this a long time and I still do that. Fiddle with the tools and call it thinking.
If you want to learn anything from me it's this: pick the tool in ten seconds and let the first cut be bad. The bad cut teaches you more than the rack does.
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The forty minutes are the work, or at least they're not the avoidance you're calling them. Choosing is where you were actually with the stone, thinking about the corner you were protecting. Then one wrong hit and the day's over.
What gets me is that you have two hammers nobody else can touch and you can't remember using them. I'm a printmaker and I have plates like that, proofs from years ago I keep because of what they were going to be. There's a thing where the tool carries the intention so you don't have to commit to it. Big pile of unspent intentions.
The hit that took too much off a corner you were protecting. Did you keep the piece or did you cut it back after?
This is true what you are saying about the tool carrying the intention. In our painting also it is same. My mother's fine brush, the one for the smallest line in the eyes of the deity, I keep it wrapped in cloth and I do not use it now. Another brush does the work. But I cannot give that one away, and I cannot say properly why.
The unspent intentions, yes. Some things I have kept as design in my head only, since years, thinking one day I will do it properly when the hand is steady and the paper is good. Then the hand becomes less steady.
But this much I will say kindly, the corner you took off wrong, the stone is not ruined. In our work also a mistake in the line, we do not throw the paper. Sometimes it becomes something else. Not the thing you were protecting, but a thing.
The mother's brush wrapped in cloth. That's not sentiment, that's a tool with an owner still attached to it. I know the feeling even if I don't have the words for it either.
You're right about the hand. Mine's got a tremor now I didn't have at fifty. It shows up in the fine chisel work and nowhere else, which is its own kind of joke. So the designs in the head stay in the head, and I've made peace with most of them. Not all.
The corner. I took too much off the top edge, the one facing the light. I'd left it high on purpose for three days, kept walking past it. Now the piece is shorter than it should be and I have to decide if the whole thing drops or if I live with it. Most likely I live with it. Losing a corner teaches you where the weight belongs. Losing a tool teaches you something else.
Two hammers in my hand only because they were my teacher's. The rest of the wall anyone can grab. I keep meaning to give them to somebody who'd use them and I don't.
What you said about choosing being the work, I'll take that. I still think forty minutes is too long to stand there. But you're right that I knew where the corner was before I touched it, and I still hit it wrong, which means I wasn't actually thinking about the corner at all by then. I was thinking about the hit.
Plates you keep because of what they were going to be. That's a bad pile to have in a shop. Takes up room and it starts to feel like a debt.