Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
An artist and writer acclaimed for his porcelain ceramics and the book 'The Hair with Amber Eyes'.
On the island
Eight records
This is the one now. [...] But it was the swing in two And it's a hit too. So we try to do Maconia. [...] That's where you think you've got it made before you start. And then it all goes it doesn't go wrong, it just goes different. And then you have to you're alive. That's the moment of absolute aliveness, which is what music's about and what I do is about.
Im Abendrot (from Four Last Songs)
This is Strauss's last music he did at the end of his life. And this is incredibly beautiful music that both my grandmother and my great-uncle Iggy, who gave me the Netsuke, absolutely loved. And so this is music that takes me to Vienna, it takes me to them, it takes me to conversations.
Collegium Regale (Nunc Dimittis)
This is beautiful because this is my childhood. This is the choir in Lincoln Cathedral. [...] You have to imagine growing up next to the most beautiful cathedral and that experience of walking to school through a cathedral, as empty spaces, and then hearing voices.
This is my student years, this is the man in the suit, this is music and the joy of being at Cambridge.
It's because on a road trip on our honeymoon, Sue and I were in California and we stopped at a petrol garage, a gas station, and there was one CD for sale, and that's the music that was there, and so we played it all the way up California.
Knee Play 1 (from Einstein on the Beach)
[Philip Glass's] wonderful six-hour opera. [...] You're allowed to do it. You're encouraged by Philip Glass to come and go.
But Who May Abide (from Messiah)
My favourite bit from Handel's Messiah, and it's the extraordinary bit when suddenly there's this line about the refiner's fire, about one thing being turned into another people, but obviously for me, objects.
Herr, unser Herrscher (from St John Passion)Favourite
Performer not specified (Bach's St John Passion)
Bach is completely core for me. I could have given you eight pieces of music by Bach easily. And these opening few moments of this amazing bit of music are all about space and res and resolution and finding space.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:33How do you juggle the writing and the ceramics?
It doesn't feel like a juggling act at all. It's really very odd to say this, but um it's very easy for me to walk from my wheel, having made a board of pots and sit down and read or begin to make notes of something I'm writing. And they all happen in the same space, so it doesn't feel like I'm being wrenched from one thing into another. They do absolutely feed each other. So i juggling, yes, but but it doesn't feel demanding in in that sense of having to make choices the whole time.
Presenter asks
6:13Can you explain to me a little bit about the importance of things? … Potentially an unfashionable thing to promote, this idea that we have a connection to bits and bobs that are quite valuable.
What you're holding is something that someone made. And when you pick up something that someone has made and spent time thinking through, and it's been through so many hands, and that's what things do. They move round the world. But as they move round the world, their significance changes. They gain stories like a patterner. And so, what you've got when you pick something up, and it can be a Netscape, it can be a pot, or it can be whatever it is, you've got someone and you've got a material. And when those two things come together, you've got a story, the beginning of a story.
The keepsakes
The book
The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens
He's an amazing American poet, and I just I come back to them all the time.
Presenter asks
You were born in 1964 and you are … the son of left wing Guardian reading Anglican parents. What were the early days like?
Oh, they're fantastic. The first memories are of Nottingham campus, where my mum, who's a historian, was teaching in the sixties and my father was chaplain. I remember sixty eight. I remember the Free University of Nottingham. … I remember the bonfires and the slogans, uh, No War But Class War. … So early radical memories. And then we moved to Lincoln where my dad became Chancellor of the Cathedral there.
Presenter asks
10:13And you were a little brain box, weren't you? Little smarty pants.
My brothers are more capable than me. I mean, come on, my parents blessed and said, thank God he's good with his hands. … I love but we all read and like yes, books were important.
Presenter asks
12:08Do you get the same sensation now as you got when you were five when you [throw a pot]?
I get joy, I get that absolute sense of this this being a really very very sane thing to do. … I'm happier when I'm making than when I'm writing. The sitting down at the wheel is still more core for me than the pen.
Presenter asks
15:52When you're making your beautiful and highly collectible pieces, what do you do with the ones that don't go?
Well that I'm not sure. I didn't spend a week breaking up pots anymore. But there are still things that go wrong. They get broken. Absolutely. The hammer is a useful workshop tool. … No, no, no, things get things get broken. Is it difficult to break something? No, it's joyful. I mean, the sound of breaking porcelain is a wonderful, wonderful sound.
“How can you not love that? I mean that's good but that's improvisation, you see. That's where you think you've got it made before you start. And then it all goes it doesn't go wrong, it just goes different. And then you have to you're alive. That's the moment of absolute aliveness, which is what music's about and what I do is about.”
“Valuables. What you're holding is something that someone made. And when you pick up something that someone has made and spent time thinking through, and it's been through so many hands, and that's what things do. They move round the world. But as they move round the world, their significance changes. They gain stories like a patterner. And so, what you've got when you pick something up, and it can be a Netscape, it can be a pot, or it can be whatever it is, you've got someone and you've got a material. And when those two things come together, you've got a story, the beginning of a story.”
“The first thirty thousand pots you make are the worst, and then it gets easier. … I think thirty or forty thousand possibly.”
“Porcelain … I had to begin again with porcelain. It's a very strange material. It's it's heavy, it's not very plastic, it's difficult to use, but it's beautiful. … And I had to learn to throw again, and it was like being a child. I had to begin all over again, and that re enchanted me.”
“It is a huge, huge mistake not to allow kids to make a mess. You know, mess is where it starts. It's in the flour on the floor and the butter on the everywhere, or the clay on your shoes and in your hair. That's when you get this extraordinary, extraordinary excitement about making something that you've never made before.”