FLOW (part two) >>>> "...then finally collapsing exhausted into bed with the taste of silver and copper in my mouth and on my skin."

If you were to ask me why I love to make jewellery I could give you all manner of answers. The most objective would be those that are connected to the activity itself. There is the problem solving. There is the satisfaction of overseeing the entire process from its start, with just raw materials, through to the end. There’s the pleasure linked to the knowledge that your goal will be a tangible object that you can see rather than an abstract ‘something’ hidden from view. You can also flex your creative muscles at every step towards your goal.   There is something elemental about it, the fire, the heat, the smell. The pleasure in having the right tool for the job. A day can be a thousand possibilities or it can be a monotony of sameness, but even at its lowest ebb there is still the prospect of the result to look forward to. If you have been given a free reign artistically there is the satisfaction of a beautiful finished object that you were responsible for bringing into being. An object that your client entrusted you to create or, an object that you made because you wanted to.

 Already. What’s not to like?

 Then there are the more subjective opportunities for satisfaction. There is the potential longevity of the objects you make from metal. A nascent germ of future history. A work ready to soak up the stories of its owners, to become a part of them. Then, additional pressure aside, there is often the bonus of being linked to a special occasion. Of making objects designed to encapsulate feelings like metal songs or poems. Jewellery to reinforce a bond, to resonate emotions without words. A silent thank you or an acknowledgement that forgiveness is required. A permanent emblem representative of a promise. A Hot Metal Code. This is the reason I chose the name. There are future reasons and possibilities that the Hot Metal Code will grow to represent, but for now this is more than enough.

I want the Hot Metal Code to start small, to find out what customers like, put work out there, refine and perfect so that when it gets the chance to reach its full potential it will have earnt its place.

I will have earnt my place.

I came back to jewellery making after a long absence to find that experience had granted me more patience and ability than I’d had when studying for my degree twenty or so years before. The experience I’d gained could be effectively translated into a new-found ability to learn; it was as if during the intervening years, I had learnt how to learn. I was quickly making things far beyond what I was capable of before. Granted, I was also obsessively at work in my workshop. I managed this because I had no ‘everyday life’ to get in the way. We control and shape each other’s destinies without even knowing it. Suggestions, ‘corrections’, and connections are made, and before you know it you are somewhere you never planned to be. For me, I kept on course by being a hermit. Whether this choice constitutes a life lived to the full is up to you and your view of the world. For me, all I can say is that [T1] solitude gives you the opportunity to get to know yourself without interference. Knowledge that means a lot to me.

It was not just experience coupled with obsession that enabled the new level of achievement though. It was also that one word representing a state of mind.

Flow.

When I was learning in my workshop the hours would fly by. Sessions of twelve hours or more with a piece became an everyday reality. My last experience of this was whilst making presents in the run up to Christmas 2016. I was lucky enough to have a few weeks clear and I had three complicated pieces to develop for Christmas presents. The deadline was artificial, parents are never really customers, but I was working with a travel deadline in mind and the prospect of having nothing to give them for Christmas if I failed.

The days and nights merged into one another. Waking, showering, working, grabbing a single standing meal, working again, and then finally collapsing exhausted into bed with the taste of silver and copper in my mouth and on my skin.

I was learning so much. I’d come across a problem, perhaps it was a way to attach something, or a new setting, and I’d know the technique, but I’d not done it quite the same way before. It was the same with all the pieces, they each required elements that were at least partially new to me. The first piece was a woman’s necklace and cross with a moss agate setting. The second a woman’s bracelet with an emerald setting and the third a gent’s laminated copper and silver bracelet with a haematite setting. All of them were sufficiently challenging to keep me enraptured. And really, I was. I had full artistic freedom, and no client expectations apart that the finished pieces would be designed and made by me.

Perfect.

All the necessary ingredients for flow were there within the challenge, but more than that, there wasn’t any prospect of being interrupted or of even receiving an invitation to leave my work. I’d removed all possible impediments to just, working. I’d found my Goldilocks zone. It was unrealistic to think that it could be maintained indefinitely. Of course, I aspire to having a normal everyday life, but for the moment it was bliss. What I’d created for myself was really a working holiday within my workshop. I have ideas around how I can recreate this environment whilst running a business and living a more normal life with other responsibilities, but it will take some organising and some understanding to get the balance right.

In the film below a couple of stone setters are interviewed. You’ll only need around 30 seconds of the film to see a stark contrast in the complexity of the work they are creating in comparison to my own. They are from the world renowned XXX so it should come as no surprise. There are some similarities though. One of them describes his work as not a job but as more of a way of life. They both seem very content. I don’t think that it is much of a stretch to conclude that these guys are experiencing flow as part of their everyday work. They are experts being constantly given new and exciting puzzles.

One of them explains how he requires absolute silence from his surroundings, and that if he were working with emeralds (I think he is working with diamonds in the film) he would not even be talking. For him noise upsets his flow and so must be avoided.

Although we have already ascertained the relative levels of the work going on in Van Cleef & Arpels in comparison to mine. So what if I just wanted to mention them in the same article as Hot Metal Code? You never stop learning and you can be in flow at whatever level as long are you are suitably challenged by your task. So, allow me to talk about my own experience and a phenomenon I have recognised when I am in flow, or Deep Work as Cal Newport would put it. I am sure the phenomenon is perfectly normal. On any journey of self-discovery one is constantly impressed with what one finds out about oneself, only to find out that it’s totally bog-standard-normal. Like the curious but uninformed individual who thought that they’d discovered orgasm, we are all destined for eventual normalcy once we emerge from the training pool of our own minds into the ocean of broader knowledge.

Before I go on I should explain that I have listened avidly to radio drama ever since I discovered BBC Radio 4 back in the 90’s. I was studying for my Art Foundation in Stevenage, and my landlord had it on constantly. Thank you, Julian. Since then the spoken word has become the backdrop to many chapters of my life, initially alongside music and then eventually becoming my favoured form of entertainment. You can learn while you do, but first you must learn how to listen.  If you do anything enough you become good at it. When I first began listening to audio-drama and books I really had to concentrate on it or my mind would wander and I’d lose the thread. Then I would have a nightmare trying to find the exact place where I’d lost the thread. I’d sometimes try to lie down and listen, eyes closed, allowing myself to be transported off but there’s an art to that too, especially if you are tired. So, over the years I have become something of an expert at listening whilst doing something else. And now I can listen to an audiobook whilst working in my workshop, whilst in flow.

It’s not that impressive, like I said I am just used to it. And when you are working on a piece all you are really faced with is a series of tasks that must be completed successfully in the right order. Some of those tasks are so common that they quickly become second nature. Whilst working on these common, easier tasks I find that I can follow the drama of a book without a problem. But the moment my full concentration is required the voice of the narrator may as well disappear. It turns into nothing but acceptable background noise. Then, after the period of intense concentration has passed, I can quickly find the last phrase that I remember the narrator uttering and re-join the drama.  So over time, I’ve got better at the practical side of getting back into the narrative too. Though to be fair, it was far more difficult when it meant finding your place on a cassette or a CD.

Incidentally, I had a recent delusion of specialness built up and destroyed that is connected to listening to audiobooks. As I ride around Antwerp there are places that I automatically associate with snippets of books. Geography that for me is forever branded with a sound bite. I went to Middelheim sculpture park to begin writing the first part of this piece and as I went to sit down I had the strangest recollection. I couldn’t help but think of the first Roman Emperor to give property rights to commoners, essentially inventing the mortgage. Then there was an impression of high powered families and all kinds of factional infighting. I forget the names of the Emperor and the families so it’s no verbatim quote. I’m terrible with names, but I love the broad strokes). I must have recorded the impression by taking in and enjoying the environment around the bench whilst thinking about what I was listening to. Wow! I thought. There are patents for geo tagging and advertising and here am I doing it without needing any technology. Shortly after though, my bubble was burst. I heard, I think it was in the Nature podcast or in an episode of ‘In our time’ that the phenomenon is completely normal.

Back to the stone setter setting his diamonds. Talking for him while setting diamonds is the equivalent to me carrying out one of my common tasks (like fusing jump rings) whilst listening to an audiobook. But, when he switches to setting emeralds (much softer than diamonds) he can no longer talk whilst working. When I switch to a task like a fiddly small solder join, I can no longer listen whilst working and the narrator automatically changes into an aural blur. Now, if it could be accurately measured and plotted on a graph, surely it makes sense that the tasks that I am able to perform whilst being able to concentrate on an audiobook will correlate to the level of my learning. Both should be rising at a similar rate. If this is the case all I can say is that I hope that my audiobooks continue to be regularly interrupted as that will mean that I am continuing to learn and create challenging work.

This leads me to an interesting conclusion. Surely, given enough time and an infinite supply of emeralds, our stone setter could get to the stage where he could talk whilst setting them. Human beings prove themselves to be flexible when faced with adversity, whilst insisting they are not when unchallenged. I also think that he could get over the need for absolute silence. Otherwise, if the entire planet was constantly noisy would there be no stone setters?

The pieces that I made for Christmas last year were all successful. Unfortunately, I did not have my camera to photograph them properly at the time. There are some low quality photographs at the end of this piece though.

As ever, there are things that I would do better if I was to make them again. I aim for perfection and admire its excellence especially when practiced at the highest level. I’m hoping that my philosophy will ensure that my work is always unusual. I am learning quickly and am enjoying that every decision, beyond what I know as a certainty, is an adventure, an opportunity to fail, to compromise or innovate.

You are, as a potential customer, a sponsor of this process.

I love the possibility of my work becoming part of your story.