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- Rebellious Thoughts #77 - 🤘 What I Learned Holding 1300°C Lava on a Stick
Rebellious Thoughts #77 - 🤘 What I Learned Holding 1300°C Lava on a Stick
By Gus Balbontin
Edition #77
Hey!
As always, I promise to provoke you in less than 5 min once a week so that you can stay adaptable and on top of your game.
Most of you know that this year I started glass blowing - one of those things I picked as novelty to push my brain into the unknown.
Check out the crazy article The Age did with Billy and me a few weeks ago, and how rad the images are:
Anyway, it all happened fairly fast, as if it was meant to be.
I’ve been googling “glassblowing Melbourne” and clicking on studios for a while (since last year or even earlier) and although I would stumble on a handful, for one reason or another I never progressed - too far, no classes, closed… but in one of those searches a studio popped just around the corner from my house!
Check it out:
www.studiodokola.com | @studiodokolaglass
It wasn’t a new place, so clearly I have missed it for some reason, but I loved the vibes - circularity, acknowledgement of country, super creative pieces.
I clicked through to the Google Map entry and clicked “Call” straight away.
Billy picks up… side note: I get really nervous on the phone sometimes, I think it’s cos I am scared of not being understood -a combination of constructing weird sentences in my second language and my accent- so I get louder and quicker- hahahaha.. on top of it - I am excited and surprised that I am finally talking to someone about glassblowing!.
So I reckon the first 5 min of the convo was Billy trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
I reckon I asked at least 100 questions, from: what do you call a glass blower? to: can you just teach me directly starting now?
A few days later, I started my first class. He didn’t have a cohort then, so I started on my own.
Before starting, Billy sent me an email with some instructions (which I kinda read) and a few links to some videos (I watched those) - primarily the material covered “gathering” glass from the furnace.
See, it’s tricky to gather glass for a few reasons, it’s hot (like 1300 degrees C) so you have to do it quick, you can’t see properly inside the furnace because of blackbody radiation so the surface of the glass itself is super reflective and creates like a mini mirage type effect (photons travelling through hot and cold air with different densities which have different refraction results = mirage)
Billy walked me through the equipment - answered more questions, and started warming up the tip of the pipe in the glory hole (don’t laugh).
“Ready?” He says as he hands over the pipe to me.
There was no:
“Let me show you” “Be careful with” “Here are the common things you may get wrong” “This is hard so don’t get frustrated” “I’ll do this for you and you can just do the other stuff”
This is my kinda learning - zero negative priming. Go ahead, do it.
As he opens the furnace door and I get hit with a trillion photons, I try not to waste time and follow what I remembered from the video.
Billy just watching, providing the tiniest of verbal cues “pull up” “slide your hand forward” “keep turning” - this is a signature in his teaching style.
Here I am - holding lava at the end of my pipe, mesmerised by the colour and heat, absent of worry and consideration for the next step.
“Blow a bubble” he says.
Me: “Wait, how do I do that?“
“Blow hard at the end of the pipe and cup it with your thumb”
Anyway - at the risk of this turning into a story, what I wanted to highlight and explore is how incredibly and rare it is to find a teacher who fully Mr Miyagis you. The ones that are 100 steps ahead of you and you feel like you are being educationally played…
The least amount of guidance at the last possible time.
Err on the side of failure and recovery. Less/late rather than more/early.
Silences are masterfully created - time mysteriously disappears.
He carefully uncovers the lesson in every failure, not by pointing out the mistake but by letting you discover it.
CHALLENGE OF THE WEEK:
Who have been the best teachers you have ever had?
What was it about them that made them amazing?
What can you emulate?
Love
Gus
Below is the podcast I recently recorded, just in case you missed it last week - it’s fun to relax and dive into topics I can’t during keynotes - have a listen, tell me what you think!
Recommendations:
If you’re curious about how to actually use AI in real life—not just read about it—check out HumanAI, a newsletter by my good friend Lucas.
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