One for the hands.
For those of you who didn’t see it in the Throwback Thursday post on Facebook this week, Halloween 2005 found first real Birdsong Guitars workshop help Tommy coming to work as… ME. Truly one of the greatest moments of the early first chapter! There have been some surreal moments in my life, but the realization that you have become someone else’s Halloween costume… that’s still difficult to even describe. Hilarious.
I might be the face, the mad scientist, the quarterback… but none of this happens without the helping hands. I wish some of them would have stuck around, some could have been Captain by now – and more surely been Captaining ships of their own – but not everybody is cut out for this kind of weirdness. It’s unpredictable. You wear so many hats. The all-in factor to maintain sail – let alone build the ship and get it off the shore to being with - is just beyond belief. It’s one of those things you can definitely be in love with the idea of but find, no matter how good you may be at the craft, the rest of it too much to handle. Being in business is a challenge – being in business as an artist / craftsperson is a challenge mixed with just enough of the creative madness so that if that’s you it’s the only thing that has ever felt so right… and if it’s not, you end up in the water. Jumped, pushed, or washed overboard by the hand of the universe. It is what it is.
Similar things can be said about anyone who comes aboard to help, to some extent. It’s like you have to be just the right mix of stable and nutty. Too regimented or nutty as squirrel poop and… over the rail you go. And let’s face it, life is to go build your dreams – not to stay building someone else’s. Unless it’s your dream to be that Captain. Even as a Captain though, you know well no ship sails by Captain alone. It’s one role for the one with the charts and the vision and the balls. When it comes to actually making things happen, the whole reason for all of any of it anyway, helping hands help it all happen… and we’ve had some great times with all of them over the years.
These are just some of the faces, but this one goes out to ALL of you who flew, swam away, fell off, or crawled under the fence at night. I hope you all are chasing your dreams and gaining ground. Birdsong Guitars salutes you and I, Captain by default, raise a frosty glass of mead in your honor. It is not autumnal.
Listening to: Yabby You, Dub It To The Top; Static X, because you just have to shuffle the deck occasionally; and my favorite radio station https://krtu.trinity.edu/
Special gratitudes to Jamie, Birdsong co-pilot, still sanding on the side!