Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Episode 35: Whirl Without End: On M.C. Richards' 'Centering'
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Episode 35: Whirl Without End: On M.C. Richards' 'Centering'
The first step in any pottery project is to center the clay on the potter's wheel. In her landmark essay Centering: In Pottery, Poetry and the Person (1964), the American poet M. C. Richards turns this simple action into a metaphor for all creative acts, including the act of living your life. The result is a penetrating and poetic reflection on the artistic process that values change, unknowing, and radical becoming, making Richards' text a guide to creativity that leaves other examples of that evergreen genre in the dust. Phil and JF get their hands dirty trying to understand what centering is, and what it entails for a life of creation and becoming. The discussion brings in a number of other thinkers and artists including Friedrich Nietzsche, Norman O. Brown, Carl Jung, Antonin Artaud, and Flannery O'Connor.
Header image: NASA
REFERENCES
M. C. Richards, Centering: In Pottery, Poetry, and the Person
J. S. Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier
American pianist David Tudor
C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
Weird Studies, Episode 33: "The Fine Art of Changing the Subject"
Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy
Antonin Artaud, The Theater and its Double (translated by M. C. Richards)
Rudolf Steiner, Alchemy: The Evolution of the Mysteries
Norman O. Brown, author of Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Flannery O'Connor, "Novelist and Believer"
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
View all episodes
By SpectreVision Radio
4.8
571571 ratings
The first step in any pottery project is to center the clay on the potter's wheel. In her landmark essay Centering: In Pottery, Poetry and the Person (1964), the American poet M. C. Richards turns this simple action into a metaphor for all creative acts, including the act of living your life. The result is a penetrating and poetic reflection on the artistic process that values change, unknowing, and radical becoming, making Richards' text a guide to creativity that leaves other examples of that evergreen genre in the dust. Phil and JF get their hands dirty trying to understand what centering is, and what it entails for a life of creation and becoming. The discussion brings in a number of other thinkers and artists including Friedrich Nietzsche, Norman O. Brown, Carl Jung, Antonin Artaud, and Flannery O'Connor.
Header image: NASA
REFERENCES
M. C. Richards, Centering: In Pottery, Poetry, and the Person
J. S. Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier
American pianist David Tudor
C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
Weird Studies, Episode 33: "The Fine Art of Changing the Subject"
Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy
Antonin Artaud, The Theater and its Double (translated by M. C. Richards)
Rudolf Steiner, Alchemy: The Evolution of the Mysteries
Norman O. Brown, author of Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Flannery O'Connor, "Novelist and Believer"
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More shows like Weird Studies
View all
Entitled Opinions (about Life and Literature)
508 Listeners
Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio
430 Listeners
Rune Soup
759 Listeners
Team Human
359 Listeners
Desert Oracle Radio
798 Listeners
Why Theory
564 Listeners
This Jungian Life Podcast
1,559 Listeners
Hermitix
343 Listeners
TrueAnon
3,236 Listeners
Acid Horizon
177 Listeners
Joshua Citarella
221 Listeners
What's Left of Philosophy
264 Listeners
Nymphet Alumni
297 Listeners
The Nietzsche Podcast
182 Listeners
Ordinary Unhappiness
222 Listeners