It’s a different kind of thinking, isn’t it? All of us have experienced some kind of creation. Mostly, when we’re really into something, it’s so filling and so intense that we are not able to simultaneously back up and name what’s going on. I have tried, which is a little bit like lucid dreaming – trying to wake yourself up to watch yourself dream. And when I do, it is a little like watching a stream go by, seeing different things emerge, fish and rocks and tadpoles and bits of leaves, as you sense the flow and fall and push of it.
Sometimes I might feel something like a query that is just on the verge of words. I thought of a new torch-fired design that started by putting the hole for the finding in the middle and bending the two halves over. How do they relate? Where one goes out, does the other go out, or does it go the opposite way? What is the nature of their dialogue? Do they rhyme or contradict each other? Can you peek at one through a hole in the other? What do you see?
Maybe there is a word that comes to the surface, like “playful,” or the name of an animal or animal part, “birdwing” or “paw.” But for me it’s almost never an attempt to copy whatever that might be; it’s just a feeling, a memory that is printed on the line I’m cutting in the metal.