"Where there is choice, there is misery"

...(or How I Painted a Groovy Mug at Claytopia)

Though the messenger of the first half of this title is an actor playing a Swami in the movie HEAD, it is a Buddhist belief.
The second Noble Truth is "The source of all suffering is attatchment" and this seems to be an extention of this. I may be wrong, just being a dabbler in Buddhism.
In any case, the bit about choice and misery seem to be at the root of my initial reaction to my first visit to Claytopia, the shop in Northampton where one purchases an unfinished clay bowl, mug, kitty, sheep, butter dish, etc etc, and can paint it however they wish.
I arrived with no plan and wondered if I should have thought ahead. I'm glad I didn't panic or approach it with cynicism. I, in fact, was in awe and fighting what I kept jokingly/seriously referring to as "the fear".
Here was this blank slate. A tall mug (I went for the useful rather than the decorative). Here were these colors of paint that I chose. Like with my musical choices while playing, I let a sixth sense take over. I don't want to be haphazard, but I don't want rules and rational thought make this an unpleasant experience.
I let the colors pick me, much like, when things are going well, I let the sounds pick me when arranging a song, or I let the words pick me when writing/editing lyrics, or let the beats and fills play me when drumming.
"The fear" in this case came from the misery that lurks beneath the surface of freedom of choice. I'm no painter. Why? I have visual ideas and sketches of things I'd love to paint one day. I even have two small blank canvases that someone was nice enough to prepare for me a year ago.
But unlike writing or recording, you can't so easily erase, edit, cut out, overdub, look up a synonym, etc. It all just seems so permanent. And its painting! A form I have such reverence for. It takes patience. It takes training. It's bulky and messy.
You don't just hit "delete" when you don't like something.
Thank god we had a time limit. Or else I would have produced nothing. We had about 90 minutes to create our things. The Beatles, then the Cars played in the background. There were cookies, crackers and cheese, and red wine. There were friends, all creating their things.
I was about to discover what my style was. How frightening. One way to find it out is to define what you are not.
There was no hope of me doing anything as intricate as DW or AD (I wasn't going to use stencils or anything) nor was I doing to paint anything solid or symmetrical. I all but ignored the wine and let the shapes tell me what and where and what color. Henning told me I was sitting there smiling at the mug while I worked.
In the end, it was a pretty awesome expierence. I tapped into a creative channel I wasn't aware of. It was meditative. It blended the relaxing feeling of reading (without the fighting sleep) with the creative satisfaction of writing/recording a song (without the noise).
The finished product? I love it. It looks like something between an 8th grader's project and something that would cost $90 at a gallery.
Perhaps I'll just have to take out those canvases. Oh, but which ideas will I pusue? Uggh! Choices! Misery! The comfort of ignorance! The short term comfort and long term frustration of unproductiveness!
As Ning says, "all we ever want is a chance and all we ever get are chances". Genius.