What Makes Me Tick

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My world narrows to a blue-white flame, rods of color, and the will to make what I see in my mind's eye become reality.

It helps if there's music playing, but honestly, I've never needed it. Two-thirds of the time I'm on the torch, I'm teaching, and distractions are a little dangerous at 1400 degrees Fahrenheit. When it's my flame, and mine alone, then some music is a welcome distraction so I can focus on the vision-to-reality ratio. The world has already receded, courtesy of the Wall of Hiss. The sound created from converting MAPP gas to light makes its own barrier; if you're in front of me, I can't hear you. Only if you venture to the side to ask questions can I respond correctly.

The best music, in my opinion, is Ed Sheeran's "Give Me Love." If he ever decides to put that beat, with all its wonderful riffs, on a three-hour loop, I'll be first in line to buy six copies. "The Greatest Show" is also marvelous for the driving beat under the lyrics. Honestly, both Hugh Jackman and Ed Sheeran can sing to me while I'm on my torch, I don't mind in the slightest. Would someone be so kind as to pay me enough to make that happen? I promise to let others listen, as long as I get my torch time.

But I digress.

Making glass beads is one of the easiest things you will ever do, and one of the hardest at the same time. Teaching the basic steps is easy. Taking those elements, and multiplying by all the colors of glass rods that are available... Your possibilities become infinite. And yet, for all the people I've taught in twenty-seven years behind the torch, people who've never been that close to such a hot flame in their lives will come up with color combos and designs that I would never think of, not in a million years. If I were the jealous type, I'd be as green as some of my rods. But if I were truly the jealous type, I wouldn't teach. And hundreds of people would never know that yes, they CAN do this thing they thought impossible hours before. So I tell my jealousy to do us both a favor and waft off and get a pizza or something, I have some awesome teaching to do while it's absent.

No, I don't have a studio. I do most of my beading in my kitchen - or someone else's. Dangerous? Not the way I set up my kit. With a cross brace and clamps and a fan running somewhere to prevent gas buildup when the house is closed up in winter, that torch head is going absolutely nowhere unless there's an earthquake - at which point, I'd suggest we have much bigger problems. I point this out by wiggling the MAPP tank, which gives me the covert opportunity to test the L-bracket and clamp. If I (cough cough) screw up that joining, I'll know it's too loose in moments, and correct it with the screwdriver I keep handy. In twenty-seven years, I have yet to burn a house down. I've counted, twice, so I'm sure of my math. (Much to my mother's chagrin, who is terrified I'll do just that. She wishes I took up something more ladylike, like crochet. It's hard to get yarn near the torch, especially the acrylics, they burn and melt and it's just no good. But I digress again.)

Even the equipment is easy. There are kits available from glass studios. My first kit was a hundred dollars, plus six for the MAPP gas. I was beading the afternoon my kit arrived. Before that, I was at the mercy of a friend who was pleased to teach me in her garage while minding her father. It gave her company, and a chance to talk about something other than her dad who was dying and there was nothing anyone could do about it. A little pool of normalcy, when Life's chaos was whirling around outside the door. She would make some beads when I wasn't around, hand them to me when I came over, and I would try to figure out how she made them and attempt to emulate them. It's one teaching style, though mine is a bit different - if someone is interested in a particular technique, I'll demonstrate it with a running dialogue while they sit aside of me, then turn off the torch and scoot over to the "hot spot." That's the chair right aside of the person on the torch: left side for right-handers, right side for left-handers. If there's a defective rod with an air bubble or some other impurity in it, and the rod isn't heated properly, the Hot Spot is where shards of glass will be launched in their direction. I wear safety glasses and a leather apron that covers neck to knee, and natural cotton or linen fibers under that, and leather closed-toed shoes. So, why the grandstanding? Because by putting myself in the dangerous zone, and being absolutely serene, it gives my students more courage than you could ever imagine. They can't hurt my equipment, and I've just about seen it all on the torch, so any "interesting" circumstance that's created by inexperience I can counter and take over within seconds to prevent it from actually becoming a disaster. My calm and faith in their ability has allowed people who were terrified of fire to make beads. People with ADHD can hyper-focus and create amazing works of art they never knew they had inside them.

Sometimes, I'll even get a thank-you present. One of the best I've had on my torch made me a bracelet of four of her first set of beads, strung on an old C-string wire from her guitar. it's hanging from my computer as I type, within easy reach. It is a good reminder of the changes I can make in this world, one glass bead at a time.