Look at this! For the first time in quite a while, six bodies in finishing at the same time.
If you are running a business or in a band or on your own path doing something you felt called to, BELIEVE. Have faith and come up with a new idea when it’s needed; work on it. I know other factors play in, but believe in the buoyancy that brought you this far. Birdsong has been my big lesson in that over the decades, and it still thrills me to feel it. Through so much, this brand flies and finds its new springtime again and again like the rhythm of the seasons. I am so grateful to all involved – now, then, here, and beyond. The wild walnut Sport bass with the turquoise fill is AVAILABLE (as is the light colored poplar “Special” – check out the inventory page) – these all have necks ready and going into finishing over the weekend. More pics to come! And the next round begins – more Sports (Spii?) and some fancier carved scroll builds, including some lasts of the older models, and a layer of work on the D’AQUILA guitar. These will be wild to watch form and come together, and become, and fly out into waiting hands to do what they were created to do.
Speaking of callings and inspirations, craft and destiny/dharma, a friend asked about the concept of “The Muse.” To me that’s very similar to asking someone to define the Great Mystery. You’ll get everything from “There is absolutely nothing” to “Everything is God” and five different versions of any major plateau along that vast spectrum between. So here’s what I wrote. I don’t present it to get you to think like me, just to ponder. The ways and forms and passtimes of what is beyond our senses-based perception, they don’t have to be wars or conflict over what we, from here, can only grasp a pinky toe of anyway. They can simply be meditations. Things to think about. Most I know who living lives of creating ponder such things…
Something greater - spirit, entity, or energy - that feeds you creative juice you then form into your art. That's how I'd word it. But it's bigger, divine, unseen. Insanely creative people - words selected carefully because it's a fine line - often pass a point where they think it's all them coming up with all the stuff they come up with. Then we start talking muse. Source inspiration conveying something very deeply into your soul or heart. Seeding the garden or sprouting it in an instant; giving that spark. I could say the highway is my muse, the road. Everybody knows it's my mistress, but if I go out and answer the call, songs pour out of me. Words form in my head as what bubbles up bubbles over and out. But really, we are ingredients, and that mixture invokes some magic from somewhere bigger than the road and bigger than me. Like the sculptor who feels a wave of love, or the painter that feels the Divine in a sunset and paints their masterpiece. Inspiration but higher and deeper within. Generally applied to creative endeavors, creative inspirations. That's just how I understand it - there are many paths and ways it presents… and ways WE present it.
Source of big inspiration beyond what I can tickle out of myself, and of deeper things than I could muster on my own. But that is its form for me, and there is something behind that form. And that I don't know, not from here, with the body, and the senses, and the limited consciousness it and they can house and make sense of. Because those senses only understand this world, and what's beyond them is beyond that. Trying to define THE muse is like trying to define “God.” It's a moving target of many forms appearing only in its prints and the hands of those it inspired. If you see it, you see some of it in everything. Creation. Maybe the muses are in charge of the music & arts division.
I can find and offer deepest reverence from many circles, but stop short of saying I KNOW or defining That Greater as I may see its form. And That Greater – The Divine - that is where the source is, and the creative source... is the muse. The BIG M Muse. That forms in many ways for many tribes. That is their way. Ours is to find a river and take it toward the ocean. So as with any talks of things that transcend OUR place and time and way, there are many layers to it. But it too is a river, and it too flows from somewhere. One may say, "Oh - it begins over there." Where they see it begin. But really it begins in the mountains, and in the rain. And the maker of the rain. We see its manifestation as its form. But it forms there like that for its own part of nature and creation; and perhaps to inspire those who will look deeper.
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The anniversary of Woodstock, that little gathering in 1969 in New York, was this week. Like the lyric in the song of the same name, written by Joni Mitchell, it truly WAS a garden. Aside from that many people truly together, it’s amazing to think of the seeds from it who found their way on the stage that weekend, and went on to bloom millions of others as part of all the music that came after, and the moments in our lives they became part of the soundtrack to. We all rise by what we share with the other, how we treat each other. Wrap that in whatever ism you feel you need to so you can discredit the very notion, not have to bother with it, no matter how transparently thin you have to stretch that label to do it. It’s true, and it works when it is allowed to. It’s in your good book, whichever is your way. It’s in there if you read it; and then you either believe it, or you don’t believe it. It’s not easy, but it is that simple.
“How’s this relate to buildin’ guitars?” Man, if I have to explain it…
So, next week I’m going to do things NOT in the heat of the shop, so I won’t have an update for you next Friday. The week after that though, pics and more focus on the actual wood and wire of what’s going on in here right now! Yesterday it was 107. Deep in layers of shade on a back wall that never sees sun, we still crest over into “HF” territory every day. The green shop sees sun. I see sun. I need to give this summer a week to break, it’s cumulatively slowing me down. Hope you’re staying cool, my friends! Thanks for reading!
Listening to: Peter Gabriel, So; Bill Evans, Moon Beams.