To those whom this question has chosen, it is a life's work to understand the complex mechanics which typically short-circuit or inappropriately reverse the flow of energy across this spiritual gradient. The interplay in craft between function, kinesthesia, and mystery is a quiet, hopeful awakening to this challenge. This interrogation into a possible connection between the ordinary and the extraordinary embeds itself uniquely and primitively into the traditional crafts. These boundaries and their implications are reflected as precise analogs in the objects and processes of serious craft. The inherent silence and intellectual isolation of craft is required in order to ferry this ancient, practical question safely across an era which no longer thinks to raise it.
Craft floats patiently through the darkness of an age like a wordless, unopened book.
The silence of craft is essential, and we should note the irony in speaking of it. Maybe the lacquer fumes are finally getting to me, but it seems to me now that something old, faint, and vast has always been coming slowly into view. As a map aids us in spatial navigation by a correspondence between paper and landscape, a craft by a subtle correspondence between material and sentience aids us in navigating the gloomy territory along the border between these worlds. Diverse materials, opposing formal concepts, and explicit functionality stand in for the Beautiful, the Terrible, and the Everyday. I have a sense I cannot shake that my shop is a laboratory.