The Lesson Written on the Wrong Page

As a piano teacher, Hamid was used to being the person who knew what came next. At his first pottery lesson, he listened carefully, copied the instructions and still produced a bowl with a hole in the base. The tutor laughed kindly. Hamid smiled, but spent the journey home constructing reasons why the lesson had not been organised effectively.

During the next week, one of his adult piano pupils struggled with a passage they had practised repeatedly. Hamid almost delivered his usual speech about patience. Then he remembered the wet clay collapsing between his hands and how irritating encouragement had sounded when he could not make them obey. He asked the pupil which part felt most confusing instead.

The answer surprised him. She understood the notes but could not coordinate the movement. They slowed the passage until it no longer sounded like music. Hamid found the process uncomfortable because progress was difficult to hear. At his second pottery class, he asked the same sort of specific question rather than pretending he only needed one more confident attempt at the wheel.

His next bowl was thick and uneven, but it held water. He put it on the piano to collect spare pencils. A pupil admired it and asked whether he had made it as a child. Hamid laughed before deciding whether to be offended. He said he had made it last Thursday. The pupil examined it again, and the lesson began with neither of them looking especially accomplished.