The Sculptor's Hands | Mythology-Inspired Sleep Story

In tonight’s mythology-inspired bedtime story, you are a devoted sculptor – an artist and a craftsperson. You are hard at work completing a pair of sculptures for display in a Romantic garden, which you hope will become your masterpiece. The figures are Prometheus and Pandora, of Greek myth. But you are stuck on certain features; you struggle to sculpt their hands. Reflecting on the nature of craft, control, and power in mythology and art, you mold countless iterations of the sculptures’ hands before bringing the pair to life. Concludes with a Yoga Nidra-style body scan.

Music & Sound: A Glimpse of Avalon by Flouw, Meditation Aquatic by 369, via Epidemic Sound

Transcript

Catch the tailwind of inspiration in tonight's mythology-inspired sleep story. Sleep and Sorcery is a folklore and fantasy-inspired sleep series. My name is Laurel, And I'll be your guide on tonight's fantastical journey. Sleep and Sorcery is one part bedtime story, One part guided meditation, And one part dreamy adventure. Follow along with my voice for as long as you like, And when you're ready, Feel free to let go of the story and relax into sleep. If you're still awake at the end of the story, I'll guide you through a relaxing body scan, Inspired by Yoga Nidra. In tonight's story, You are a devoted sculptor, An artist, And a craftsperson. You are hard at work completing a pair of sculptures for display in a romantic garden, Which you hope will become your masterpiece. The figures are Prometheus and Pandora of Greek myth, But you are stuck on certain features. You struggle to sculpt their hands. Reflecting on the nature of craft, Control, And power in mythology and art, You mold countless iterations of the sculptor's hands before finally bringing the pair to life. The greatest artist does not have any concept which a single piece of marble does not itself contain within its excess, Though only a hand that obeys the intellect can discover it. Michelangelo. The tools of a sculptor from the eye of an observer are many. The variety depends on the medium, Of course, But a casual visitor to your studio might itemize your tools as such. Chisels, Wire loops, Saws, Calipers, Hammers, An assortment of wooden implements in various lengths and sizes. They are the sword and the wand, Additive, Subtractive, Or otherwise transformative devices. But if you were asked what your tools are, You wouldn't gesture to any of the gadgets that clutter your studio. You wouldn't grasp a favorite stylus, Or tell the story of the hammer and chisel that unearthed your greatest works. Instead, You would answer thus. It starts with the hands. They are your instruments, Ordinary and ubiquitous as they are. Your hands are your craft. Under the skin, They are the stuff of cosmic architecture, Cathedrals of interconnected muscle, Bone, And joint. Even in the moments, Few and far between, In which you are not working, Your fingers twitch and prickle, Itching to plunge themselves into clay or lay strips of wet plaster. They conduct silent symphonies, Mold invisible media. Yours is a pursuit, An art, Characterized by resolute stillness. You labor to capture the motionless moment in stone or bronze. Yet your hands rarely find such a state. Restlessness defines them. They ache. They yearn to interact, Create, Shape. And it is this dance of tendon and touch that so inspires you to sculpt. The way the flick of a finger engages tiny muscles at the base of the hand. The arching dynamism of even the subtlest movement. The hands, In motion, Convey action, Sentiment, Urgency, And elegance with infinite expressiveness. Though you've spent years in the trade of lifelike sculpture, Fashioning the full figures of humans, Gods, And all the denizens of the earth, It's in the molding of the hands that you dedicate the most effort. That is where you find your deepest satisfaction, Your greatest challenges, And your most extraordinary triumphs. No work of art is complete, You feel, Until you've gotten the hands just right. Until the whole story can be read in the position, Power, And emotion of the hands. It's hard to say when your preoccupation with sculptural hands first emerged. In your mind, You've constructed elaborate mythologies to explain your artistic origin story. Early in your career, You dreamt you were visited by the spirit of Michelangelo. Now, You've told the story of the dream so many times, It's spiraled into a defining event in your development. In the dream, The great sculptor and painter of the Italian Renaissance, Whose marble masterpiece David, Is noted for the exceptional detail and unusual scale of his hands, Appeared to you. He held out a hand of his own, With index finger extended, Much like his depiction of God in the creation of Adam. You reached back for him, And just before your fingertips touched, You awoke, Energized, And inspired to create, As if the master had somehow transmitted his genius to you through an electric spark. But if you were to strip away the mythic memory of it all, The appearance of Michelangelo's ghost, And really say when you were first gripped with this obsession with hands, Well, Fittingly enough, You suppose it happened in Rome, The same city where the fingers of God and Adam nearly graze each other on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But it was in another building, An elegant, Baroque villa converted to a gallery of artistic wonders. Upon its walls hang the like of Titian and Caravaggio, And throughout the villa's many rooms, A visitor can look upon the greatest works of the sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini. He came after Michelangelo, And he reinvigorated Italian sculpture with a sense of dynamism and motion and ecstasy that had never been seen before. The city of Rome is punctuated with Bernini's work. He was the artistic mind and the hand behind the Trevi Fountain and others. St. Peter's Basilica and many other Roman churches feature his artworks. But in the Galleria Borghese, The villa-turned-museum, Your artistic passion was set aflame. There is a marble of Bernini's which depicts the abduction of Proserpina, The goddess of spring, By Pluto, Lord of the underworld. Every aspect of the work is extraordinary. From every angle, It ignites the imagination, Provokes emotion, And seems to breathe, Even in the stillness of stone. But where Pluto's hand grasps the thigh of the goddess, Her flesh, Though chiseled from unyielding marble, Seems to give. The artist gives softness to the stone. And all this alchemy, This transmutation of the solid material, Is conveyed through the positioning of one hand. And there is another sculpture, Similarly central to a chamber in the Borghese, In which Bernini's glorious hands command rapt attention. Here, The golden god Apollo throws his arms round a fleeing Daphne. The sculpture presents the pair at a transitional moment in Daphne's metamorphosis. The nymph, Caught, Pleads to her father, A river god, To transform her, To destroy the beauty that entices such unwanted advances. According to the myth, Her father heard her plea and answered by planting her feet in the ground as roots, Letting her body twist into the knots of a trunk, Her hair become leaves, Her arms, Branches. Daphne, Who ran so swiftly once, Became the slow-growing laurel tree. In Bernini's depiction, The maiden's hands, Reaching skyward with fingers splayed, Blend seamlessly into delicate bay leaves entangled with her windswept hair. In those fine details of Daphne's hands, Expressing her occupation of the liminal state between nymph and laurel, You saw the apotheosis of sculpture, How stillness could produce motion, How heavy stone could emulate the exquisite frailness of leaf or feather, How an entire story can unfold in the subtlest of gestures. These hands, The hands of Michelangelo, David, Adam, Pluto, And Daphne, Haunt your every artistic endeavor. You never aim to imitate, Only to approach the level of care placed by the artists who came before you in the sculpting of these most miraculous features. Every sculpture you've ever made, Whether molded from clay, Cast in bronze, Or chiseled from stone, Tells its story through the placement of the hands. You've been praised for your artistry with these details, Arped upon by critics and lay folk alike. At this stage in your career, Hands are something of a signature. And so, As you look now upon your disheveled studio, And at the two life-sized yet unfinished forms, You feel a pang of dissatisfaction. When you took your latest commission, You never suspected you'd find yourself at such a creative crossroads. It was a landscape gardener who approached you with the project, And you've been toiling away at it for so long, It seems a lifetime. The garden in question needs a whole suite of sculptural and architectural follies, Including a number of figures from Greek and Roman myth. With a team of studio assistants and considerable resources at your fingertips, It's been a relatively smooth process. The winds of inspiration have blown consistently, Stirring you to creative fervor. You're telling a story through the figures in the garden, One that will interact with the botanicals, Evolve with the seasons, And delight the wanderer through bleached alleys and dripping grottoes. But there are two figures left to complete. The two you consider most important, Most central to the artistic fulfillment of your commission, To the narrative of the garden design. And also, Two figures you've longed to bring to life for years. These are two mythic characters, Deeply implicated in each other's stories, And also integral in the continuum of human creativity. They are Prometheus, The titan best known for stealing divine fire from the hearth of Zeus to bestow on humankind. After receiving his gifts, Humanity could create for themselves through technology and art. But Prometheus was also the original sculptor. In Greek mythology, He was the one who first molded humanity from lumps of clay. By his titanic hands, Mortal life arose. And the other figure is Pandora, The first human woman whose name translates to all gifts or all giving, Who was forged by Hephaestus on the orders of Zeus. She was created as a punishment for Prometheus' crimes and equipped with gifts from all the Olympians, Beautiful adornments from some, Talents and cunning nature from others. Athena taught her the art of weaving, Which would become the craft of women across the ages. Hermes gave her a voice with which to deceive. Lastly, The gods gave her the pithos, A jar. And within the jar, All the ills that had not yet plagued the mortal world, All evil, Disease and destruction. Many myths and legends and fairy tales contain forbidden things. An attic never to be opened. A fruit never to be picked. A last look never to be taken. A lid never to be lifted. As a species, You think, We are fascinated by what we are not meant to see, Not meant to know. And as in every story which features a forbidden action, Pandora's inevitably climaxes with the breaking of the taboo, The spilling of the jar. After which, All the potential ills, All the sorrows not yet known, Wreak havoc on the human world. Pandora, Who is the wife of Prometheus's own brother, Becomes the progenitor of evil merely by tipping the jar. She is also the first human mother, A primal creator in her own right. These figures, Thus, As avatars of creativity and forbidden knowledge, Captivate your artistic mind. Whenever you recall your dream of Michelangelo, You feel charged with the nearness of your hands and his. The spark that almost ignited between you, The transfer of some divine knowledge you were never meant to know, And your continued efforts, Your iterations and revisions with clay and bronze and marble. These are excavatory. These are your investigations into the heart of that secret, Creative alchemy. Where better than in the figures of Prometheus and Pandora, Those original makers, To uncover such wisdom? The final figures are meant to be produced in marble. But as with nearly all your projects, Clay is the first material in which you work. You feel like Prometheus when you work with it, Experimenting, Extruding life from the limp and formless. It engages your hands in such a way that the model and the muscle become one. Marble, Stone carving, Is a different world. When working in stone, You begin with the most immovable material, The stuff of mountains and quarries. It is hard, Unyielding, And holds untold secrets. There is faith involved in stonework. You know not what veins run through each slab of marble, Or where, Or how those imperfections will interfere with your vision. Sometimes they enhance it. But all this is happenstance. To work with stone, You must believe the sculpture and the story are already within the seemingly steadfast rock. As Michelangelo himself once reflected, I saw the angel in the marble, And carved until I set him free. In the initial rush of excitement and inspiration, You shaped study after study for the characters. You sketched, Molded miniatures, And created plaster casts of the faces of various models. The forms emerged effortlessly, Almost, The clay springing to life under your hands. Now, However, Your creative fires have receded. You grasp for the spark and find yourself wanting. This pair of sculptures could be, Should be, Your masterpiece. But they are unfinished, And it's down to the hands. How do you sculpt the hands of the original sculptor? How do you make your maker? And how, Then, Do you fashion the gesture of the woman blamed for all the ills of the world? With her hands, Poised to open the lid, Willfully releasing all that pain? Or do you fashion her hands as hesitant, Defiant, Oblivious? You've sent your studio assistants home. You have nothing for them to do until you've cracked this. Being stuck as an artist is a fairly familiar state. If you inhabited the ancient world, Which copied down the stories of Prometheus and Pandora, You'd simply appeal to the muses, Compose an invocation, Lift your voice to the slopes of Mount Helicon, And beg for their blessings on your craft. You'd invite them, Goddesses of music and inspiration, To work through you, To guide your hands. But you fear no muse can light the way out of this tunnel for you. The only way is through. The only recourse is to work through the block. So, As the hour grows late, And darkness creeps in at the corners of your studio, A wisp white moon peering in from the open window, You work. You slam a block of clay onto the table, Wetting and working it into palm, And wrist, And digit. You experiment with forms that skew masculine, Or feminine, Or fall somewhere in between, Or even outside such a continuum. You bend fingers back, Curl them forward, Cultivating tenderness, Evoking tension. Your brow sweats, And your hands grow fatigued as you scrape, Soften, And scrap, Attempt after attempt. You feel possessed, Almost, By the challenge, The desire. You feel ready to weep. And then at last, You are too exhausted to continue. The clay is cracked. If the muses ever did wish to bestow their favor upon you, It wouldn't be tonight. Tonight, You are the uninspired, An empty vessel. A night breeze rustles the papers on a cluttered table, Somewhere in the trees beyond, Just near enough to hear. A nightingale sings. Moonlight falls gently through the open window, Casting a faint glow on the distant corner of the studio. A cloud must have just passed the face of the moon, Leaving it momentarily unobscured. The change in the light draws your gaze. It's coated with a thick layer of dust now, Since it's gone so long unused. But there still sits, In the corner, An old potter's wheel. You used to turn to it now and then when you needed something to do, To relax, To engage your hands, But escape the work and expectations of commission. Worn thin as you are by the effort expended tonight, You don't think you could sleep if you tried. So, What if you turned your mind off for a little bit and let the clay spin? Spin. You thought it yourself just a moment ago. You're an empty vessel. A vessel. You rise to your feet with a sudden surge of excitement and go to the corner to dust off the pottery wheel. The other missing piece of your Pandora is, Of course, The pithos, The jar, The vessel. And how are you to imagine her hands without knowing what it is she'll be holding? Your skin prickles with the alertness and angst of an artist eager to catch the tailwind of inspiration before it sweeps off to find another. Ideas can so easily slip through the fingertips of those who are not ready to manifest them. You must act quickly to prepare the space to pour the water to throw the clay. When mere moments later you are seated at the wheel manipulating the pedal, There is a smoothness to the feeling of wet clay beneath your fingers that seems to massage away the cramps induced by hours of molding. Your eyes have lost some of the focus swimming with the rhythm of the spinning wheel. But this is nothing that concerns you. More than anything, You long for the unconscious mind to take over your craft. Your conscious one has only been in the way. You let your hands guide the session, Not your eyes. An intuitive dance of lengthening and softening. Digging your thumbs into the cylinder to deepen the basin, Creating warps and ridges with the contours of your palms. This is a making felt most profoundly in the hands but processed by the whole body. You step rhythmically on the pedal curve your neck and spine over the wheel. You pour your strength into the vessel that you throw. It is nice, You think, As much as you love them to take a break from sculpting hands. As you spin letting your fingers lightly graze the whirling clay you think of Pandora and her jar. You think of how she must have been moulded from clay like the rest of her race before being fired in the forge of the gods. How she was made specifically to be the bearer of punishment for humankind equipped with the pithos in the full knowledge that she would open it. The story casts her as a being without will a puppet in the game of Olympus yet the tellers also decry her deceitful ways lay the blame for all evil at her feet. Which is it? Was she made for this? Or did she choose it? You dig a decorative groove into the vessel which rings round the outside as it spins your hands are coated in grey slippery clay. Pandora was the one bestowed with all the gifts according to her name but she was also generous a giver of gifts like Prometheus He brought fire that ultimate tool of action creation and destruction to mortals and he is loved for it by humankind if not by Zeus. He gave a gift as fearful as it is vital. How is Pandora his mirror image so different? What of the gifts of her hands? On and on the wheel spins and your mind turns the stories over and over stirring the two figures together and apart Prometheus and Pandora the difference between them is clear when you think about it hands are the instruments of men that's what language tells us manos manos ma manifest manicure manipulate the words for hand labor art and man are curiously intertwined across cultures the hand is the body the hand is the maker the hand is the progenitor and the stories reinforce this binary the hand of God the hand of Prometheus the hand of the sculptor these are the forces of creation and rarely do the stories allow women to possess them they have Pandora the original mother the giver of gifts fired like a vessel in a kiln built by men to punish men stripped of choice yet blamed nonetheless yet hers are hands that weave like Athena's textiles and tapestries that clothe armies and dress vessels with sails are her children she is a maker her daughter Pyrrha survived a great flood then she and her husband plucked stones from the ravaged earth and threw them down and where they struck the ground grew a new generation of men and women Pandora is the ancestor of all of us she is a maker who created the Pythos a jar capable of holding so much evil who created Pandora really a blacksmith or did she spin herself upon the wheel what of Pandora's hands your mind is making new connections opening portals to new myths at a mile a minute your foot pumps at the pedal gathering speed without conscious effort your hands slip across the wet clay you hardly notice the paper-thin walls of the vessel beginning to wobble your thoughts are coming too fast faster than the wheel the wheel can spin and then with a folding and a crumbling the clay on the wheel collapses the pot flops you lift your foot from the pedal and watch as the wheel slows the clay tumbling into a misshapen pile at its center you let go a defeated sigh it seems tonight that you are incapable of even this what of the artist once visited in a dream by the ghost of Michelangelo what of the knowledge the talent the genius he tried to transfer to you you can't help but laugh now at the sorry mass of matter that now spins slowly before you resigned you scoop up the deflated clay in your hands and carry it across the studio where you intend to dispose of it the failed vessel still drips with moisture and water seeps through the cracks in your fingers you pass the figure of Pandora and stop before her admiring the work you've done so far and lamenting what has not yet been made you could not even construct her pithos instead you hold before her a pitiful knot of clay like a fallen tower the sculpture's gaze is lifted water drips on the floor onto your feet human hands are porous you think imperfect they are ridged like landscapes and rich with oils they absorb and they secrete and they degrade leaving behind whorls and spirals like little frictive galaxies on everything they touch they're capable of great tenderness and great tension they cannot hold everything hard as they may try but clay is porous too so is rock even marble though the seeping is slow what else could explain the ring stains of a thousand cups of cold coffee that mark the tables of your studio maybe that's what you've been missing the story was never about seeing what you weren't meant to see knowing what you weren't meant to know releasing what ought to have remained inside the story was always about the vessel a valiant effort to contain harm but ultimately a futile effort because even marble is porous even rock seeps you look down at the dripping ball of clay in your hands these are strong hands practiced hands they know how to work clay and use tools and hold on to loved ones and be gentle they know how to excavate the angel from the marble how to compose action through stillness how to make the unyielding soften and yet the water still seeps through the cracks these hands still ache at the end of a long day of work these hands still struggle to hold it all the curl of your fingers around the clay the twitching of your right thumb the tightness of the knuckles of your ring finger the weight of the failed pathos on your palms no matter how hard you try you cannot tell the multitudes of this story of pandoras nor prometheus in one artwork in one sequence through those most expressive yet limited wonders the hands the hands cannot hold it all an otherworldly lightness comes over you now your shoulders relax the sun is rising he gazes in upon the studio grazing the feet of pandora with his light just now the clay figure she with no jar and no hands could be flesh the way the sunlight plays upon her her eyes could be gazing down upon you her lips curled into a knowing smile prometheus her counterpart also bathes in the swelling sunlight his flesh alight with the creative fire he so benevolently stewards and at last you know how to complete your masterpiece you know how to restore these mythic figures to the magnanimity and dignity they deserve a pair of cupped hands is a vessel it is a pathos the contents may slip and escape through the cracks but this is the point you were never meant to hold it all pandora nor you artist maker sculptor there is no shame in the confession that you could never in your wildest dreams of Bernini or Michelangelo not even on the breath of the muses make something of such power and complexity as her there is only liberation there because the knowledge isn't forbidden at all it never was it's only aching to be released catch what of it you can and ride its tailwinds into the ecstasy of art making let the rest go it will be caught by others and it may yet come back around it is after all a gift relax and soften finding a comfortable stillness here and go ahead and bring your awareness to your breath slowing down and taking a deep inhale make this the biggest breath you've taken all day exhale slowly completely emptying out and feeling yourself relax deeply into place continue to breathe in a rhythm that feels easy and natural for you now that with every exhale you drop down a level deeper closer to the earth closer to sleep we'll now scan the body rotating our awareness throughout while continuing to use the breath to send you deeper and deeper into relaxation as I name a body part simply send your awareness there or imagine you're shining a warm light upon it allowing that part to soften and relax before moving on to the next if you find your mind beginning to wander just come back to the sound of my voice and your breath you don't have to concentrate just listen and follow along we'll start on the right side of the body with the right hand thumb index finger index finger middle finger ring finger pinky finger feel the space between the fingers the palm of the hand back of the hand wrist forearm elbow upper arm shoulder shoulder armpit right side of the chest right side of the waist right hip right side of the pelvis back of the knee right ankle right heel the sole of the foot the top of the foot right big toe second toe third toe fourth toe fifth toe feel the right side of the body sending the breath like a current of relaxation throughout now move your awareness to the left hand thumb index finger middle finger ring finger pinky finger feel the space between the fingers the palm of the hand back of the hand wrist forearm upper arm shoulder armpit left side of the chest left side of the waist left hip left side of the pelvis left thigh knee back of the left knee lower leg left ankle left heel sole of the foot top of the foot left big toe second toe third toe fourth toe fifth toe feel the left side of the body sending the breath like a wave of relaxation throughout feel both sides of the body connected in relaxation now let your awareness travel up through the back of the body right heel the left heel right calf left calf right knee pit left knee pit right back of the thigh left back of the thigh right glute left glute right glute the lower back the spine the mid and upper back the shoulder blades the back of the neck the muscles of the throat the chin the jaw the cheeks right ear left ear the nose right temple left temple right eye left eye right eyebrow left eyebrow the middle of the eyebrows the forehead the top of the head the whole scalp feel the whole right leg the whole left leg both legs together the whole right arm the whole left arm both arms together the back of the body the front of the body front and back together the lower body the upper body the head the whole body together and breathe letting the breath carry you downward further still toward sleep good night

Reviews

I hope you enjoy writing your stories as much as I like listening to them. Thank you!

Sleep & Sorcery is truly magical with each tale they weave. The talented writing and beautiful voice combine to create an enchanting experience. This story is no exception. Pure brilliance for bedtime.