Well, here we are again! Do you come here often? It’s nice to see you. Welcome to another Friday update, and I hope you have a great weekend. Where the past few weeks went I really don’t know, but they’re gone. They’re gone A F. Like, last week? That was two weeks ago. BUT - you’re here, I’m here, this is what matters. We have now., and each other, and the sun’s up for another day. I feel the hands of my mentors in mine as I work their tools, now mine for a time. What can be made of this?
I try not to obsess over the passing of time because it’s something I can’t control. I could slow it down by having less to do, and that is the plan – but it’s sort of more of a garden-in-reverse than a switch to just hit. I’m only 53 but I’m starting to aim for it now. I can’t see myself doing this much of what I do at 60. That’s just reality. Some? Of course! Probably 7 years still better at it. “Oh you’re so young!” the old timers say. Yes. Compared to you. But just yesterday I was 30, compared to me. I’m not going to wake up one day long past where I can do the other things I measure life’s fulfillment by, not just the numbers and fun of this bass guitar odyssey I’ve been on for decades, and go “Oh… well, shit.” I was trying to pace myself a little better in the early spring, but abandoned my hold on the reins of time this year and just let it fly. I’ve worked all summer, and it really is a lot of fun. I still love to sweat in the shop, and boy oh boy have I this summer so far! This is a year of digging out, setting up, and figuring out the path I’m on going forward. Forward from who I am now, not just “…year 20 of 33-year-old Scott, and counting.”
That requires being in the moment and of the day, not necessarily being concerned with how fast numerical time is flying. It friggin’ flies. It goes faster as you get older, just like they told me it would. I remember my friend Joy, 94 years young, talking about the years seeming like months. She was probably twice my age at that time, but months were feeling like weeks. Me? Too much else going on to add any anxiety over that into the mix. Honestly, I don’t have much anxiety over it - just concern over getting done what I’d like to do, filling this bit of the world in the way I feel here to fill it, while everything picks up speed. I’ll carve out some hammock and old car magazine time for myself here before too long, time to play music, time to play in the shop with no list. Time to “be” more than “do.” Months simply don’t take as long with 642 of them behind as they did with only half or a quarter of them. Each was a proportional bit bigger percentage of life to that point. At 5, a month represents 1/60th of your life. At 50, that same month is 1/600th. That’s why waiting for summer vacation seemed like forever, and now I’m just trying to remember which year to put on the checks and wondering where the fuck my pen went. I put it down 5 minutes ago, but it was really a week and a half.
Instruments are moving across the benches and heading out to waiting hands. Parts supply is better than it has been, except for my main soft case supplier who won’t have anything for me until October. So some will leave with substitute gig bags, and I’ll be sure to adjust any balances down for the difference. Part of me knows I completely overpay for what I use as a company and get absolutely reamed on the shipping to get them to me, and then – nothing ‘til October. Hey, pick any two of those, OK? Not all three. But I absolutely love these cases, they NORMALLY get here very quickly, always in perfect condition, and they’re amazing folks to work with – all so different than companies of the past. So, I pay dearly for that. And I get how things work, it’s just frustrating. This IS the new normal now, and there’s no point in getting bent over what is beyond your control. Impact it where you’re able from wherever in the chain you are, minimize its inconvenience spreading outward, and do what can be done. That’s all we can do. Substitute parts can be found. Not ideal, but the case is not the most important part of what’s coming to you anyway.
Jamie and I were talking about how “Normal” is much more of a loose concept now. “That word should just be tossed out at this point,” she said. I think “What used to be expected in predictable times” conveys it. Maybe it’ll be a new cool acronym, like the extreme preppers have “TEOTWAWKI” – The End Of The World As We Know It – maybe this, where the increase in the shifting of the sands we used to walk and navigate through with a bit fewer side-steps involved could be “WUTBEIPT” “Well Don, in a what-byept scenario…” “PREPARE NOW FOR THE LOSS OF WUTBEIPT!!!” Meh, what do I know? Not as much as I thought I did at 30, but a good bit more by now than some of the folks I used to think at 30 knew it all. There’s no more leaning one way or the other, this way or that – you gotta completely fall over and tumble on out to the edge now, where everything two degrees different is automatically the opposite extreme. You gotta have buzzwords to sling, names to call. Slogans to bellow. We used to be able to recognize when something went so far it became a parody of itself. The youth have their excuse, but the elders now sound like the kids on the kickball field in fifth grade. Note to all, just some words from a friend: The world will not fit on your bumper sticker, even if your life does. Whoever you are and wherever you stand, you’re better than that. You’re a beautiful little miracle blob in a huge universe… We all have our flavors and opinions; but if all this great fleeting miracle is to you is blame, shame, and game, go bitch it to the ocean. That shore you’re standing on used to be mountains of rock. See what it has to say about your perspective on things.
Speaking of miracles, around here spring sprang/sprung/sproinged and summer bloomed. There are kittens on the porch, soon to connect with new homes and their life’s journey, and I wish them well; they are not mine to carry and not mine to keep. There are instruments in the workshop coming together, soon to connect with new homes and their life’s journey, and I wish them the same. Still dry as a popcorn fart, but the heat has diminished into the 90s and we have seen one quick shower and enough humidity to have morning dew. I smelled rain yesterday but it did not come. Perhaps tomorrow. I know it will, it always does. Like the sunrise, like the end of the road, like seedlings in the spring.
It’s not quite Friday as I write this, and it’s time to walk back into the hot workshop. Check out that line of photos - I’m unclamping, trimming, drilling & edge dressing some fancy headstocks that got thin overlays made from the body wood of the instruments. I do this differently than some… I know, imagine that, right? I like the headstock to be to where it’s basically cut and shaped, with the tuning machine holes drilled. Then they either go get the logo burned in and head into sanding in all their maple or mahogany glory, or I pull them aside for this optional step and face the headstock with a thin slice of body-matching walnut, or some rosewood to go with the fretboard and knobs, something like that.
I cut a strip of ebony that’ll be the nut and use that as a spacer to place the face veneer when gluing, and clamp the heck out of it, preferring the control and adjustment of individual clamps all the way around as opposed to a press or a block and a couple. Then I trim and touch them up and send them for the logo and into sanding. So I’m going to trim the ones I did yesterday and make some thin slices & clamp up a few more today. I’ll trim those tomorrow morning and there’ll be a batch of fall build necks ready. I’m actually ahead of myself on some things and gaining ground on everything else. I’ve never felt this in my entire life. It’s spectacular. You are too, stay cool my friends! Thanks for your time.
Listening to: Aerosmith Greatest Hits (the red & white old one) and Rocks (my favorite); Billy Squier Don’t Say No; Trojan Records Mod Reggae Vol. 2 box set disc 3; Grateful Dead Dick’s Picks Vol. 15; Sonic Youth Daydream Nation; Soundgarden Superunknown; live recordings of a band named Holy Fuck; Mose Allison Back Country Suite; Tabla Beat Science Tala Matrix; Bloom Big Block; Jim White No Such Place; Scott H. Biram Preachin & Hollarin’. and my favorite jazz guitar player Ed Bickert.