Lessons from Calligraphy and Ira Glass

Happy belated New Year everyone! 

I made this neat banner in calligraphy class in January and I am actually quite proud of it. The large characters say "New Year" and the small ones on the side say my name, which is "Ro-ren," in Japanese.

Usually, my calligraphy is pretty sub-par. I was never particularly interested in calligraphy, in fact, I only went to the class in the first place because my students kept haranguing me about it ("Please come to calligraphy class Lauren Sensei! Here is a map to where the class will be held, along with the dates and times that we will be there. Come, come!"). 

But the teacher, Yamakura Sensei, won me over. She's super funny, and a great mentor who is always genuinely concerned about her students' lives. 

Also, did I mention she's a badass who teaches martial arts when she's not teaching calligraphy?

Yamakura Sensei holding a katana

This week, when I attended calligraphy class, Yamakura Sensei told me that she could see my brush work was improving. I kept pointing out my own mistakes as I made them, and she would laugh.

After I made the piece pictured above, she told me, "Your heart and my heart are the same when we do calligraphy. Maybe you make mistakes, but you can now see your mistakes. So you can fix them and do better!"

Her words strangely reminded me of something Ira Glass said about taste in art/creative work. How when you first start something, you have this sense of how things should be, or "your taste is killer." But when you try to actually create that thing, there's a frustrating gap between what you're making and that sense of the perfect thing. Put more simply, you know what you want this thing to be, but you don't quite have the skill required to make it like that. 

I feel like my calligraphy skill level has finally gotten to the point where I have some sort of taste. I know what things are supposed to look like. But it'll be awhile before my skill level matches up to that, so I guess, for now, I'll just keep plodding along, doing my best.

But I suppose that's all we can ever do, in calligraphy and in life.