The Potter’s Glaze
Another audio-visual experiment, this time built around clay, fire, glaze, and transformation.
This piece began with the image: a surreal ceramic figure emerging from a dreamlike world of kiln-fired colour, metallic textures, flowing organic forms, and cosmic glaze. From there, the music took shape as a kind of minimalist cinematic hymn — slow, luminous, and ceremonial.
At the heart of the piece is the idea that beauty is not always applied to the surface. Sometimes it is revealed through heat, pressure, fracture, silence, and time.
The slideshow animation was created to accompany the track as a slow visual journey through colour, clay, cosmos, and becoming.
Rather than using fast cuts or literal storytelling, I wanted the visuals to feel immersive and almost ritualistic — like watching glaze shift in the kiln, or a figure slowly being revealed through flame.
For the animation itself, I worked with multiple still images and scripted FFmpeg routines to create variable breathing pulse effects. Rather than relying on a fixed, mechanical slideshow transition, the timing, fades, and image movement were adjusted to create a more organic rhythm.
The images slowly expand, contract, dissolve, and shift in response to the mood of the music, giving the piece the feeling of a kiln-fired dream slowly inhaling and exhaling between stillness and transformation.
Musically, the track uses a deep melodic male baritone, controlled vibrato, haunting sustained notes, Gregorian-inspired male choirs, quiet piano, low cello, soft choir-like pads, and spacious cathedral reverb. The result is somewhere between hymn, dream, and kiln-fired myth.
The Potter’s Glaze is about transformation.
About surviving the fire.
About becoming more visible after the heat has passed.
Lyrics and composition by Mark van Jaarsveld
[Verse 1]
Born of kiln and cosmos
She wears the fire’s memory
A vessel made of breath and glaze
Where dreams cool into form
Colours whisper through the flame
Ash and oxide turn to skin
Green becomes gold
Gold becomes crimson
As heat draws light from within
[Pre-Chorus]
She does not burn
She becomes
Shaped by hands unseen, yet known
Every crack
Every curve
A stardust path
Each hue says
You are home
[Chorus]
She becomes, she becomes
Born of kiln and cosmos
She becomes, she becomes
Truth in clay and glow
Not painted
But revealed
By fire, by fire
Alive in the quiet
Still glowing, glowing
[Verse 2]
Within her, colours sleep and stir
A dance of glaze, alive with lore
The rim remembers every touch
The base holds something more
Not painted, but revealed by fire
Truth from clay’s forgotten core
She keeps the heat inside her name
Then lets it shine once more
[Pre-Chorus]
She does not burn
She becomes
She does not burn
She becomes
[Verse 3]
At first the colours sleep as dust
Soft and grey beneath the glaze
Then copper wakes in emerald breath
And cobalt blooms in haze
Iron blushes
Amber runs
Tin turns moonlight in the flame
The fire calls the hidden ones
And gives each silence back its name
[Pre-Chorus]
She does not burn
She becomes
Shaped by hands unseen, yet known
Every crack
Every curve
A stardust path
Each hue says
You are home
[Chorus]
She becomes, she becomes
Born of kiln and cosmos
She becomes, she becomes
Truth in clay and glow
Not painted
But revealed
By fire, by fire
Alive in the quiet
Still glowing, glowing
[Bridge]
And when the flames retreat at last
She cools in silence, whole and still
An echo of the fire’s voice
Still glowing in her soul
Hold me in the afterglow
Where ash turns pale and slow
If I break
Let beauty show
What the kiln has come to know
[Final Chorus]
She becomes, she becomes
Born of kiln and cosmos
She becomes, she becomes
Truth in clay and glow
Not painted
But revealed
By fire, by fire
Alive in the quiet
Still glowing, glowing
She becomes, she becomes
Born of kiln and cosmos
Still glowing, glowing
Still glowing, glowing
Music and vocal performance generated using AI-assisted production tools
Cover art: Inspired by The Potter’s Glaze by Mark van Jaarsveld
© 2026 Mark van Jaarsveld
