The Explosion Itself

The Explosion Itself

There’s a time when a vase is just almost done when most of it will have already cooled down and settled into whatever color it’s going to be, but some of it’s still unfinished. Spots and patches that continue to burn with that volcanic incandescence of enflamed glass.

This is what I was trying to make, a finished vase that was mostly the blue of lapis lazuli but with specks and streaks and whole splotches that still glow as if on fire inside.

I’d already shaped the body. I was happy— the tint I’d used had come out just as I’d thought. I put the glass back in the furnace so I could finish the mouth.

I waited for a few minutes, but it still looked the exact same. So I left it in.

Suddenly the whole thing pulsed. I grabbed it back out.

It burst— crinkles cracks breaks splits snaps shatterings all the same instant louder than the most I could hear at one time. Pieces exploding out countless illuminated lapis stones flying out filling the space the entire space at once and then, in a great shimmering, all turning dark together; more than the most I could see at one time. A long, loud hush as it all fell to the ground. Disappeared as quickly as it had exploded.

I gasped, was breathless, didn’t move. I was sweating.

Then I did it again, exploding another vase the same way.

I showed Audre. She was silent, then incantatory.

We started to work together. We used different colors— kelly green and deep onyx black and violet and vermillion. We made wider and wider explosions, then tighter, thicker, narrower ones. We figured out how to make it so that one part of the vase burst before the rest, and then we made it so the vase would explode in a quick sequence, furl out in a sudden spiral.

We were neither of us proprietary over our own ideas. She suggested something— we tried it. I suggested something— we tried it. She suggested something which gave me an idea. I suggested something which gave her an idea. We tried them both. She suggested something which I misheard but my mishearing gave me another idea which in turn made her think of something totally different. We tried them all. And ideas that neither of us really even worked out, neither of us ever actually put into words, possibilities which we were unknowingly moving towards together and we just began experimenting with spontaneously but both of us simply understanding what we were doing, neither of us needing any explanation.

We did nothing else for days.

We had to stop. There was no way to keep using so much glass and kindling, no way to turn this into a public art.

We returned to doing regular glass glowing again, but both of us gave it up quickly. Now Audre does intricate, room-wide stone mosaics. I do iron-sculpting.