På mit skrivebord på kontoret har jeg en lille lerpotte, som jeg lavede i gymnasiet. Den er af raku, som er en slags keramik der opstod i Japan for flere århundreder siden som en måde at lave skåle til de Japanske teceremonier på. Denne her er mere end 400 år gammel. Hver og en blev knebet eller skåret ud af en klump ler, og det var skønhedsfejlene, der blev skattet.
On my desk in my office, I keep a small clay pot that I made in college. It's raku, which is a kind of pottery that began in Japan centuries ago as a way of making bowls for the Japanese tea ceremony. This one is more than 400 years old. Each one was pinched or carved out of a ball of clay, and it was the imperfections that people cherished.
Hverdagspotter som denne kop tager otte til ti timer at brænde. Jeg tog denne ud af ovnen i sidste uge, og ovnen selv er endnu en dag eller to om at køle ned, men for raku går det rigtig hurtigt. Du gør det udenfor. Du varmer ovnen godt op. På 15 minutter når den op på 1500 grader, og ligeså snart du kan se, glasuren er smeltet derinde, og du kan se en svag glans, så slukker du for ovnen, og så griber du en af disse lange metaltænger og tager potten med, og i Japan ville denne rødglødende potte straks blive sænket ned i en opløsning af grøn te, og du kan nok forestille dig, hvordan den damp vil dufte. Men her i USA skruer vi en anelse op for dramaet og smider vores potter ned i savsmuld, som der så går ild i. Så tager du en skraldespand, og sætter den ovenpå, og så begynder røgen at sive ud. Jeg ville komme hjem med tøj stinkende af trærøg.
Everyday pots like this cup take eight to 10 hours to fire. I just took this out of the kiln last week, and the kiln itself takes another day or two to cool down, but raku is really fast. You do it outside, and you take the kiln up to temperature. In 15 minutes, it goes to 1,500 degrees, and as soon as you see that the glaze has melted inside, you can see that faint sheen, you turn the kiln off, and you reach in with these long metal tongs, you grab the pot, and in Japan, this red-hot pot would be immediately immersed in a solution of green tea, and you can imagine what that steam would smell like. But here in the United States, we ramp up the drama a little bit, and we drop our pots into sawdust, which catches on fire, and you take a garbage pail, and you put it on top, and smoke starts pouring out. I would come home with my clothes reeking of woodsmoke.
Jeg elsker raku, fordi jeg kan lege med elementerne. Jeg kan forme en potte af ler og vælge en glasur, men så må jeg overlade den til ilden og røgen, og det smukke er de overraskelser, der opstår, som dette krakelerende mønster, for det er virkelig stressende for disse potter. De går fra 1500 grader til rumtemperatur på blot et minut.
I love raku because it allows me to play with the elements. I can shape a pot out of clay and choose a glaze, but then I have to let it go to the fire and the smoke, and what's wonderful is the surprises that happen, like this crackle pattern, because it's really stressful on these pots. They go from 1,500 degrees to room temperature in the space of just a minute.
Raku er en skøn metafor for den kreative proces. Jeg oplever gang på gang, at spændingen mellem hvad jeg kan kontrollere, og det jeg må give slip på, hele tiden er til stede, uanset om jeg er i gang med en ny radioudsendelse eller blot derhjemme i gang med at forhandle med mine teenagesønner.
Raku is a wonderful metaphor for the process of creativity. I find in so many things that tension between what I can control and what I have to let go happens all the time, whether I'm creating a new radio show or just at home negotiating with my teenage sons.
Da jeg gik i gang med at skrive en bog om kreativitet, indså jeg, at processen var omvendt. Jeg måtte give slip til at begynde med, og jeg måtte fordybe mig i historierne, som de hundredvis af kunstnere, forfattere, musikere og filmproducenter fortalte, og mens jeg lyttede til deres historier, indså jeg, at kreativitet opstår ud af hverdagsoplevelser, oftere end du måske tror, og det indebærer at give slip. Det var meningen, den skulle gå i stykker, men pyt med det. (Latter) (Griner) Det hører med, når man giver slip. Nogle gange lykkedes det, andre gange gør det ikke, for kreativiteten opstår der hvor uheldene sker.
When I sat down to write a book about creativity, I realized that the steps were reversed. I had to let go at the very beginning, and I had to immerse myself in the stories of hundreds of artists and writers and musicians and filmmakers, and as I listened to these stories, I realized that creativity grows out of everyday experiences more often than you might think, including letting go. It was supposed to break, but that's okay. (Laughter) (Laughs) That's part of the letting go, is sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't, because creativity also grows from the broken places.
Den bedste måde at lære om noget er gennem historier, så jeg vil fortælle jer en historie om arbejde og leg, og om fire af livets aspekter som vi må tage til os, for at kreativiteten kan blomstre. Det første, vi må tage til os, er noget vi tænker er meget nemt, men det bliver faktisk sværere og sværere, og det er at være opmærksom på verden omkring os. Rigtig mange kunstnere taler om behovet for at være åben, at kunne tage oplevelser til sig, og det er svært at kunne, når du har et lysende rektangel i din lomme, der stjæler fokus fra alt andet.
The best way to learn about anything is through stories, and so I want to tell you a story about work and play and about four aspects of life that we need to embrace in order for our own creativity to flourish. The first embrace is something that we think, "Oh, this is very easy," but it's actually getting harder, and that's paying attention to the world around us. So many artists speak about needing to be open, to embrace experience, and that's hard to do when you have a lighted rectangle in your pocket that takes all of your focus.
Filmproducenten Mira Nair taler om at vokse op i en lille by i Indien. Byen navn er Bhubaneswar, og her er et billede af et af templerne i hendes by.
The filmmaker Mira Nair speaks about growing up in a small town in India. Its name is Bhubaneswar, and here's a picture of one of the temples in her town.
Mira Nair: I denne lille by var der omtrent 2000 templer. Vi spillede altid cricket. Vi voksede nærmest op i brokkerne. Den største inspirationskilde for mig, det der førte mig denne vej, det som i sidste ende gjorde mig til filmproducent, var de omrejsende folketeatre, der kom til vores by. Jeg så disse storslåede slag mellem det gode og det onde, mellem to mennesker i en skolegård, uden rekvisitter men med masser af, du ved, passion - og hash også - og det var fantastisk. Det var folkesagnene om Mahabharata og Ramayana, de to hellige bøger, de store heltesagn som alt i Indien udspringer fra, siger de. Efter at have set det Jatra, folketeateret, vidste jeg, at jeg selv ville ud og, du ved, optræde.
Mira Nair: In this little town, there were like 2,000 temples. We played cricket all the time. We kind of grew up in the rubble. The major thing that inspired me, that led me on this path, that made me a filmmaker eventually, was traveling folk theater that would come through the town and I would go off and see these great battles of good and evil by two people in a school field with no props but with a lot of, you know, passion, and hashish as well, and it was amazing. You know, the folk tales of Mahabharata and Ramayana, the two holy books, the epics that everything comes out of in India, they say. After seeing that Jatra, the folk theater, I knew I wanted to get on, you know, and perform.
Julie Burstein: Er det ikke en skøn historie? Du kan se den slags pause i hverdagen. Der er de i skolegården, men det er det gode og det onde, og passion og hash. Og Mira Nair var en ung pige, der sammen med tusinder af andre så denne optræden, men hun var klar. Hun var klar til at åbne op til hvad det satte i gang i hende. Og det ledte hende, som hun sagde, den vej hun skulle for at blive en prisvindende filmproducent. Så at være åben for den oplevelse, der måske kan ændre dit liv, er den første ting, vi må tage til os.
Julie Burstein: Isn't that a wonderful story? You can see the sort of break in the everyday. There they are in the school fields, but it's good and evil, and passion and hashish. And Mira Nair was a young girl with thousands of other people watching this performance, but she was ready. She was ready to open up to what it sparked in her, and it led her, as she said, down this path to become an award-winning filmmaker. So being open for that experience that might change you is the first thing we need to embrace.
Kunstnere taler også om, hvordan nogle af deres stærkeste værker opstår ud af de hverdagsoplevelser, der er sværest. Forfatteren Richard Ford taler om en barndomsudfordring, der fortsatte og blev til noget, han kæmper med i dag. Han er svært ordblind.
Artists also speak about how some of their most powerful work comes out of the parts of life that are most difficult. The novelist Richard Ford speaks about a childhood challenge that continues to be something he wrestles with today. He's severely dyslexic.
Richard Ford: Jeg var langsom til at lære at læse, gik hele vejen op gennem skoletiden uden egentlig at læse mere end det absolut nødvendige, og den dag i dag kan jeg stadig ikke læse indenad meget hurtigere, end jeg kan læse højt. Men for mig var der mange fordele ved at være ordblind, for da jeg endelig accepterede, hvor langsomt jeg blev nødt til at gøre det, tror jeg, at jeg meget langsomt begyndte at værdsætte alle de kvaliteter ved sproget og ved sætninger, der ikke blot er kognitive aspekter ved sproget: synkoper, ordlyde, hvordan ord ser ud, hvor tekstafsnit deles, hvor der er linjeskift. Jeg mener, jeg var ikke så svært ordblind, at jeg ikke kunne læse. Jeg blev bare nødt til at gøre det meget langsomt, og ved at gøre det, ved at dvæle ved de sætninger, jeg blev nødt til, opdagede jeg sprogets andre kvaliteter, og det tror jeg har hjulpet mig med at skrive sætninger.
Richard Ford: I was slow to learn to read, went all the way through school not really reading more than the minimum, and still to this day can't read silently much faster than I can read aloud, but there were a lot of benefits to being dyslexic for me because when I finally did reconcile myself to how slow I was going to have to do it, then I think I came very slowly into an appreciation of all of those qualities of language and of sentences that are not just the cognitive aspects of language: the syncopations, the sounds of words, what words look like, where paragraphs break, where lines break. I mean, I wasn't so badly dyslexic that I was disabled from reading. I just had to do it really slowly, and as I did, lingering on those sentences as I had to linger, I fell heir to language's other qualities, which I think has helped me write sentences.
JB: Det er så stærkt. Richard Ford, som har vundet Pulitzerprisen, siger, at ordblindheden hjalp ham med at skrive sætninger. Han blev nødt til at tage denne udfordring til sig, og jeg bruger det ord helt bevidst. Han behøvede ikke at overvinde sin ordblindhed. Han skulle bare lære af den. Han måtte lære musikken i sproget.
JB: It's so powerful. Richard Ford, who's won the Pulitzer Prize, says that dyslexia helped him write sentences. He had to embrace this challenge, and I use that word intentionally. He didn't have to overcome dyslexia. He had to learn from it. He had to learn to hear the music in language.
Kunstnere taler også om, hvordan det at skubbe til grænserne for, hvad de kan, nogle gange skubbes ind i det, de ikke kan og hjælper dem med at fokusere på at finde deres egen stemme. Billedhuggeren Richard Serra taler om, hvordan han som ung kunstner troede, han var kunstmaler, og at han boede i Firenze efter universitetet. Mens han boede der, tog han en tur til Madrid, hvor han tog på Pradomuseet for at se dette maleri af den spanske kunstmaler Diego Velázquez. Det er fra 1656, dets titel er "Las Meninas", og det er et maleri af en lille prinsesse og hendes hofdamer. Hvis du kigger over skulderen på den lille prinsesse, ser du et spejl, hvori du kan se hendes forældre, kongen og dronningen af Spanien, som står omtrent, hvor du står for at se på maleriet. Som han ofte gjorde, har Velázquez malet sig selv ind i billedet også. Han står til venstre med sin pensel i den ene hånd og sin palet i den anden.
Artists also speak about how pushing up against the limits of what they can do, sometimes pushing into what they can't do, helps them focus on finding their own voice. The sculptor Richard Serra talks about how, as a young artist, he thought he was a painter, and he lived in Florence after graduate school. While he was there, he traveled to Madrid, where he went to the Prado to see this picture by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez. It's from 1656, and it's called "Las Meninas," and it's the picture of a little princess and her ladies-in-waiting, and if you look over that little blonde princess's shoulder, you'll see a mirror, and reflected in it are her parents, the King and Queen of Spain, who would be standing where you might stand to look at the picture. As he often did, Velázquez put himself in this painting too. He's standing on the left with his paintbrush in one hand and his palette in the other.
Richard Serra: Da jeg stod og så på det, indså jeg, at Velázquez kiggede på mig, og jeg tænkte, "Aha, jeg er motivet i maleriet". og jeg tænkte, "Jeg vil aldrig blive i stand til at male det billede". Jeg var nået dertil, hvor jeg brugte et stopur og malede kvadrater af ren tilfældighed, og jeg kom ingen vegne. Så jeg tog tilbage og smed alle mine malerier i Arnofloden, og jeg tænkte, at jeg bare måtte begynde at eksperimentere.
Richard Serra: I was standing there looking at it, and I realized that Velázquez was looking at me, and I thought, "Oh. I'm the subject of the painting." And I thought, "I'm not going to be able to do that painting." I was to the point where I was using a stopwatch and painting squares out of randomness, and I wasn't getting anywhere. So I went back and dumped all my paintings in the Arno, and I thought, I'm going to just start playing around.
JB: Richard Serra siger det så henkastet, at du måske gik glip af det. Han tog altså ind og så det her maleri af en mand, som har været død i 300 år, og indså, "Det der kan jeg ikke", og så tog Richard Serra tilbage til sit atelier i Firenze, samlede alle sine værker sammen og smed dem i floden. I det øjeblik gav Richard Serra slip på malerkunsten, men han gav ikke slip på kunsten selv. Han flyttede til New York og begyndte at samle en liste over verber — at rulle, at krølle, at folde — over hundrede af dem, og som han sagde, så begyndte han at eksperimentere. Han gjorde det med alle slags materialer. Han tog en kæmpe plade bly, rullede den sammen og rullede den ud igen. Han gjorde det samme med gummi, og da han kom til "at løfte", skabte han denne her, som udstilles på Museum for Moderne Kunst. Richard Serra måtte give slip på malerkunsten for at kunne påbegynde denne legesyge opdagelsesrejse, der førte ham til de værker, han er kendt for i dag: enorme stålkurver der skal kræver tid og bevægelse for at kunne opleves. I skulpturen kan Richard Serra gøre, hvad han ikke kunne i maleriet. Han gør os til motivet i sin kunst. Så erfaring og udfordring og begrænsninger er alt sammen noget, vi må tage til os for at kreativiteten kan blomstre.
JB: Richard Serra says that so nonchalantly, you might have missed it. He went and saw this painting by a guy who'd been dead for 300 years, and realized, "I can't do that," and so Richard Serra went back to his studio in Florence, picked up all of his work up to that point, and threw it in a river. Richard Serra let go of painting at that moment, but he didn't let go of art. He moved to New York City, and he put together a list of verbs — to roll, to crease, to fold — more than a hundred of them, and as he said, he just started playing around. He did these things to all kinds of material. He would take a huge sheet of lead and roll it up and unroll it. He would do the same thing to rubber, and when he got to the direction "to lift," he created this, which is in the Museum of Modern Art. Richard Serra had to let go of painting in order to embark on this playful exploration that led him to the work that he's known for today: huge curves of steel that require our time and motion to experience. In sculpture, Richard Serra is able to do what he couldn't do in painting. He makes us the subject of his art. So experience and challenge and limitations are all things we need to embrace for creativity to flourish.
Der er en fjerde ting, vi må tage til os, og det er den sværeste. Vi må også tage sorgen til os, den ældste og mest konstante menneskelige oplevelse. For at kunne skabe må vi kunne stå i rummet mellem det vi ser i verden, og det vi håber på, vi må se afslag, hjertesorg, krig og døden lige i øjnene. Det er et svært sted at stå. Underviseren Parker Palmer kalder det "det tragiske mellemrum" tragisk, ikke fordi det er trist, men fordi det er uundgåeligt. Og som min ven Dick Nodel ynder at sige det, "Du kan holde fast i den spænding som en violinstreng og skabe noget smukt".
There's a fourth embrace, and it's the hardest. It's the embrace of loss, the oldest and most constant of human experiences. In order to create, we have to stand in that space between what we see in the world and what we hope for, looking squarely at rejection, at heartbreak, at war, at death. That's a tough space to stand in. The educator Parker Palmer calls it "the tragic gap," tragic not because it's sad but because it's inevitable, and my friend Dick Nodel likes to say, "You can hold that tension like a violin string and make something beautiful."
Den spænding frembringes i fotografen Joel Meyerowitz værker. Han var i starten af sin karriere kendt for sine gadefotografier, for at fange øjeblikket på gaden, og for sine smukke fotografier af landskaber -- af Toscana, Cape Cod, af lyset. Joel er newyorker, og hans atelier lå i mange år i Chelsea med udsigt ind til World Trade Center, og han fotograferede disse bygninger i al slags lys. Du ved, hvor denne historie er på vej hen. Den 11. september var Joel ikke i New York. Han var udenbys, men han skyndte sig tilbage til byen og ned til stedet for ødelæggelsen.
That tension resonates in the work of the photographer Joel Meyerowitz, who at the beginning of his career was known for his street photography, for capturing a moment on the street, and also for his beautiful photographs of landscapes -- of Tuscany, of Cape Cod, of light. Joel is a New Yorker, and his studio for many years was in Chelsea, with a straight view downtown to the World Trade Center, and he photographed those buildings in every sort of light. You know where this story goes. On 9/11, Joel wasn't in New York. He was out of town, but he raced back to the city, and raced down to the site of the destruction.
Joel Meyerowitz: Og som alle de andre forbipasserende stod jeg uden for kædehegnet på hjørnet af Chambers og Greenwich, og alt jeg kunne se var røgen og lidt murbrokker, og da jeg hævede mit kamera for at tage et kig, bare for at se, om der var noget at se, var der en betjent, en kvindelig betjent, som slog mig på skulderen og sagde, "Hey, ingen billeder!" Og det var sådan et slag, at jeg vågnede op og det var vel nok det, der var meningen. Og da jeg spurgte hende, hvorfor ingen billeder, sagde hun "Det er et gerningssted. Der må ikke tages billeder." Og jeg spurgte hende, "Hvad hvis jeg var medlem af pressen?" Og så sagde hun "Ah, se derovre", og en blok tilbage stod pressekorpset presset sammen i et lille indhegnet område, og jeg sagde "Nå, men hvornår kan de gå ind?" "Formentlig aldrig", sagde hun så. Og da jeg gik væk derfra, stod alt krystalklart for mig, sikkert fordi dette slag på skulderen på en måde var en fornærmelse. Jeg tænkte, "Men hvis der ikke er nogle billeder, så bliver det ikke dokumenteret. Vi må dokumentere det." Og jeg tænkte, "Jeg må sørge for, at det bliver dokumenteret. Jeg må find en vej ind, for jeg vil ikke have historien forsvinder."
Joel Meyerowitz: And like all the other passersby, I stood outside the chain link fence on Chambers and Greenwich, and all I could see was the smoke and a little bit of rubble, and I raised my camera to take a peek, just to see if there was something to see, and some cop, a lady cop, hit me on my shoulder, and said, "Hey, no pictures!" And it was such a blow that it woke me up, in the way that it was meant to be, I guess. And when I asked her why no pictures, she said, "It's a crime scene. No photographs allowed." And I asked her, "What would happen if I was a member of the press?" And she told me, "Oh, look back there," and back a block was the press corps tied up in a little penned-in area, and I said, "Well, when do they go in?" and she said, "Probably never." And as I walked away from that, I had this crystallization, probably from the blow, because it was an insult in a way. I thought, "Oh, if there's no pictures, then there'll be no record. We need a record." And I thought, "I'm gonna make that record. I'll find a way to get in, because I don't want to see this history disappear."
JB: Og det gjorde han. Han trak i alle de tråde, han kunne, og fik et adgangspas til World Trade Center-området, hvor han fotograferede næsten hver dag i ni måneder. Når jeg ser på billederne, minder det mig om lugten af røg, der hang i mit tøj når jeg gik hjem til min familie om aftenen. Mit kontor var kun et par blokke derfra. Men nogle af billederne er så smukke, at vi spekulerer på, om det var svært for Joel Meyerowitz at få så stor skønhed ud af så megen ødelæggelse?
JB: He did. He pulled in every favor he could, and got a pass into the World Trade Center site, where he photographed for nine months almost every day. Looking at these photographs today brings back the smell of smoke that lingered on my clothes when I went home to my family at night. My office was just a few blocks away. But some of these photographs are beautiful, and we wondered, was it difficult for Joel Meyerowitz to make such beauty out of such devastation?
JM: Jo, det var grimt, jeg mener, voldsomt og tragisk og frygteligt og alt muligt, men det var også som i naturen en enorm begivenhed der efterfølgende blev transformeret til bundfald, og som mange andre ruiner — du går ind i ruinerne i Colosseum eller ruinerne af en katedral et sted — og så får de en ny betydning, når du betragter vejret. Jeg mener, der var nogle eftermiddage dernede, hvor lyset blev pink, og der var tåge i luften, og du står der midt i brokkerne, og så kunne jeg pludselig se både naturens iboende skønhed og at naturen faktisk, med tiden, heler såret. Tiden er ustoppelig, og den forandrer begivenheden. Den bringer os længere og længere væk fra den dag, og lyset og årstiderne mildner den på en måde. Og det er ikke fordi jeg er romantiker. Jeg er egentlig realist. Og realiteten er, at der er Woolworth-bygningen indhyllet i røg fra gerningsstedet, men nu er den som et lærred i et teater, og nu bliver det pink, du ved, og et sted dernede sprutter vandsprøjterne, og aftenens lys er blevet tændt, og vandet er blevet syregrønt, fordi natriumlamperne er blevet tændt, og jeg tænker "Du godeste, man kunne ikke engang drømme sig til det!" Men faktum er, jeg er der, og sådan ser det ud, du bliver nødt til at tage et billede.
JM: Well, you know, ugly, I mean, powerful and tragic and horrific and everything, but it was also as, in nature, an enormous event that was transformed after the fact into this residue, and like many other ruins — you go to the ruins of the Colosseum or the ruins of a cathedral someplace — and they take on a new meaning when you watch the weather. I mean, there were afternoons I was down there, and the light goes pink and there's a mist in the air and you're standing in the rubble, and I found myself recognizing both the inherent beauty of nature and the fact that nature, as time, is erasing this wound. Time is unstoppable, and it transforms the event. It gets further and further away from the day, and light and seasons temper it in some way, and it's not that I'm a romantic. I'm really a realist. The reality is, there's the Woolworth Building in a veil of smoke from the site, but it's now like a scrim across a theater, and it's turning pink, you know, and down below there are hoses spraying, and the lights have come on for the evening, and the water is turning acid green because the sodium lamps are on, and I'm thinking, "My God, who could dream this up?" But the fact is, I'm there, it looks like that, you have to take a picture.
JB: Du bliver nødt til at tage et billede. Den følelse af nødvendighed, behovet for at dokumentere, er så stærk i Joels historie. Da jeg mødte Joel for nyligt, fortalte jeg ham, hvor meget jeg beundrer hans passionerede stædighed, hans beslutsomhed om at bryde igennem al bureaukratiet for at kunne arbejde. Han lo og sagde, "Jeg er stædig, men jeg tror, at hvad der er vigtigere er min passionerede optimisme."
JB: You have to take a picture. That sense of urgency, of the need to get to work, is so powerful in Joel's story. When I saw Joel Meyerowitz recently, I told him how much I admired his passionate obstinacy, his determination to push through all the bureaucratic red tape to get to work, and he laughed, and he said, "I'm stubborn, but I think what's more important is my passionate optimism."
Den første gang jeg fortalte disse historier, rakte en mand blandt publikum hånden op og sagde, "Alle disse kunstnere taler om deres arbejde, ikke deres kunst, hvilket får mig til at tænke over mit eget arbejde, og hvor kreativiteten er der, og jeg er ikke kunstner." Han har ret. Vi kæmper alle med oplevelser og udfordringer, begrænsninger og tab. Kreativiteten er altafgørende for os alle, uanset om vi er videnskabsfolk eller lærere, forældre eller entreprenører.
The first time I told these stories, a man in the audience raised his hand and said, "All these artists talk about their work, not their art, which has got me thinking about my work and where the creativity is there, and I'm not an artist." He's right. We all wrestle with experience and challenge, limits and loss. Creativity is essential to all of us, whether we're scientists or teachers, parents or entrepreneurs.
Jeg vil afslutte med endnu et billede af en japansk teskål. Denne her er på Freer Gallery i Washington D.C. Den er mere end hundrede år gammel, og man kan stadig se fingeraftrykkene af den pottemager, der lavede den. Men man kan også, at denne her gik i stykker på et tidspunkt i løbet af de hundrede år. Men personen, der limede den sammen igen, besluttede, i stedet for at skjule revnerne, at fremhæve dem ved at reparere den med guldlak. Skålen er smukkere nu, efter at være revnet, end da den først blev lavet, og vi kan se på alle disse revner, og de fortæller historien om, at vi alle lever i et kredsløb af skabelse og ødelæggelse, af at tage kontrol og at give slip, at samle skårene op og lave noget nyt. Tak skal I have. (Bifald)
I want to leave you with another image of a Japanese tea bowl. This one is at the Freer Gallery in Washington, D.C. It's more than a hundred years old and you can still see the fingermarks where the potter pinched it. But as you can also see, this one did break at some point in its hundred years. But the person who put it back together, instead of hiding the cracks, decided to emphasize them, using gold lacquer to repair it. This bowl is more beautiful now, having been broken, than it was when it was first made, and we can look at those cracks, because they tell the story that we all live, of the cycle of creation and destruction, of control and letting go, of picking up the pieces and making something new. Thank you. (Applause)