Prayers

       I finished the wash coats on the guitar on Monday.  Now it will hang for two weeks and I'll polish it.  It should be ready by Valentines Day.  I've been thinking a lot about prayer lately and I thought I would print some of my favorite prayers by some of my favorite saints and sinners.  I'll try to do one a day until I run out.  Some of these are from well known saints, some are from obscure singer-song writers, and others are from mystics of other cultures.  I would welcome your own favorite prayers if you would like to add them to the comment section, or send them to me in an email and I'll add them myself.   This first one is from a character, played by Jimmy Stewart, in a movie called Shenandoah.

Lord, we cleared this land.  We plowed it, sowed it, and harvested it.  We cooked the harvest.  It wouldn't be here; we wouldn't be eating it if we hadn't done it all ourselves.  We worked dog bone hard for every crumb and morsel, but we thank you just the same anyway for the food we're about to eat.  Amen.

Clear coats are done

    I finished the build coats on the guitar yesterday.  It was still a little cold, but I heated the lacquer up, in a pot of water on the stove.  It's looking very nice.  I'll wait until maybe Wednesday and then sand it flat.  It's supposed to be nice again on Thursday, or Friday, in which case, I can give it one or two more thin coats to melt in the sandpaper scratches.  Then I'll let it hang for a few weeks and polish it.  After that, it's wiring the pickup and fixing it to the finger rest, drilling the hole for the jack, and putting it together.  Here are some pictures.  I'm sorry about the quality.  I took them in the sun with the wind blowing the guitar around.  The color looks a little more yellow than it really is.  Here is another Rumi poem, which I love.

Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?

Who finds us here circling, bewildered like atoms?

Who comes to a spring thirsty

and sees the moon reflected in it?

Who like Jacob, blind with grief and age,

smells the shirt of his lost son and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down and brings up a flowing prophet?
Or, like Moses, goes for fire and finds what burns inside the sunrise?

Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies
and opens a door to the other world.
Solomon cuts open a fish, and there is a gold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the Prophet and leaves with blessings.
Chase a deer and end up everywhere.
An oyster opens his mouth to swallow one drop.
Now there is a pearl.
A vagrant wanders empty ruins.
Suddenly he is wealthy.

But do not be satisfied with stories,
how things have gone with others.
Unfold your own myth,
without complicated explanations,
so everyone will understand the passage,
We have opened you.

Start walking toward Shams, the teacher, the sun.
Your legs will get heavy and tired.
Then comes a moment of feeling the wings you have grown,
lifting.

     A word about the character Shams in the poem.  He was Rumi's spiritual mentor and good friend.

                                                                                                                                  

Waiting

    I've spent most of this week waiting for good weather.  Last Friday I sprayed the color on.  The top is a bright sunburst of mostly fall colors.  Amber base and red/mahogany highlights.  Then I sprayed the back and sides with just a touch of amber to bring out the wood grain.  The contrast between the top, and the back and sides is very striking.  Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday I got about seven clear coats on.  Tomorrow I have to go to Asheville in the morning and pick up the case and the pickup.  When I get back I'm hoping it will be warm enough to spray several more.  When the clear coats are finished I'll have to let the guitar hang for several days and then I'll sand it flat with 320 sand paper.  Then I'll have to wait for good weather again, so I can give it a few light coats to melt in the scratches from the sanding.  After that it will have to hang for several weeks before I wet sand and polish it.  I also finished the fixtures (tail piece, bridge, and finger rest) with epoxy.  Now I just have to polish them and they'll be ready.  I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow.
     For anyone who is interested and lives in the area, I'll be playing some instrumental jazz standards with Dave Molin at City Lights Cafe on Friday February 15th for a Valentines dinner.  We'll start around 7:00.  We also play every Sunday from 12:00 to 2:00 for their Sunday brunch and the first Wednesday of the month at Guadalupe Cafe at 6:30.  You can see and hear a couple of the guitars I've made.
     I found an amazing book at the used book store last week.  It's called, "The Zen of Seeing"  by Frederick Franck.  He was truly a kindred spirit.  He taught a way of seeing deeply by drawing.  It is a discipline and not a hobby and has nothing to do with whether you are a good artist, or the outcome of the drawing.  Here is a quote from the book, " I have learned that what I have not drawn I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle: the branching of a tree, the structure of a dandelion's seed puff.  "A mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels," says Walt Whitman.  I discover that among The Ten Thousand Things there is no ordinary thing.  All that is, is worthy of being seen, of being drawn."  I started the drawing process, which you do with out looking at the paper.  The drawing wasn't good, but the experience was greatly uplifting.  You never realize the details in something until you try to draw it.
      I'll leave you with another quote from the book.  I have had so many of these experiences he talks about.  Especially when I was young and had time to see and listen.
       "The first intimations of Zen, of the opening up of the eye, of the revelation of The Ten Thousand Things, come early in life.  Everyone must be able to recall revelations similar to mine.  I have no monopoly.
          On a dark afternoon - I was ten or eleven - I was walking on a country road, on my left a patch of curly kale, on my right some yellow brussels sprouts.  I felt a snowflake on my cheek, and from far away in the charcoal-gray sky I saw the slow approach of a snowstorm.  I stood still.  Some flakes were now falling around my feet.  A few melted as they hit the ground.  Others stayed intact.  Then I heard the falling of the snow, with the softest hissing sound.  I stood transfixed, listening... and knew what can never be expressed: that the natural is supernatural, and that I am the eye that hears and the ear that sees, that what is outside happens in me, that outside and inside are unseparated.
          It is the inexpressible, and the inexpressible is the only thing that is worthwhile expressing."

Hakuin  a great artist and sage of the seventeenth century wrote this poem.  "How I would like people to hear... the sound of the snow falling through the deepening night..."

       

Spraying

  What a beautiful day!  It was almost 65 today on the 10th of January.  I think God is looking out for me.  I had the day off and good weather, so I sprayed a wash coat and two build coats of lacquer on the guitar.  The wet shine makes the grain pop out and look beautiful.  Tomorrow, if the weather holds, I'll spray the color on the top.  Chris has given me the go ahead to do a sunburst on the top with natural back and sides.  I'll have to scuff sand the whole guitar first and then mask off the binding with some pin stripe tape.   Then I'll be ready to spray.  If the weather cooperates, I should be able to get all the spraying done by Monday.  Then it will have to sit for a few weeks before I sand and polish it.
    Here is an interesting quote from Coleman Barks, a poet and teacher from Athens Ga., "For this open-air sanctuary that a lot of us live in, without buildings, or doctrine, or clergy, without silsila (lineage), or hierarchy, in an experiment to live not so much without religion as in friendship with all three hundred of them, and all literatures as well.  It is a brave try for openness and fresh inspiration."

Barbara Brown Taylor

   I was telling a friend about this wonderful book I read several years ago called "Leaving Church," by Barbara Brown Taylor.  I picked it up again today to try and find a quote that I love.  It describes the community of people that I have come to love and be a part of.
    "We are a motley crew, distinguished not only by are inability to explain ourselves to those who are more certain of their beliefs than we are but in many cases by our distance from the centers of our faith communities as well.  Like campers who have bonded over cook fires far from home, we remain grateful for the provisions we have brought with us from those cupboards, but we also find them more delicious when we share them with one another under the stars.
        This wilderness experience sets up a real dilemma for some of us, since we know how much we owe to the traditions that shaped us.  We would not be who we are without them, and we continue to draw real sustenance from them,but insofar as those same traditions discourage us from being with one another, we cannot go home again.  In one way or another, every one of us has gotten the message that God made us different that we might know one another, and that how we treat one another is the best expression of our beliefs."

Fasting

     You know, I never really understood the reason for fasting.  I've had it explained to me and I've tried it several times.   As I recall, it made me hungry and cold.
     When you carve a stringed instrument,  you take away more and more material.  You tap on it and listen to it.  As you use the violin plane you can hear the tone change and the voice begin to take shape.  I remember when I made my first guitar I was carving the inside of the top plate, which no one will ever see.  I was close to being finished when Brad got out the clamp light and turned the lights off.  The shadows from the light show all your imperfections,  but the light also shows how thin you have carved the instrument.  I could see my hand through it!  It kind of scared me.  What if it was too thin and cracked, or I carved all the way through?  But when I put it together, this empty space, these thin walls, this material that couldn't hold light, held sound so beautifully.
       I hope you're not tired of Rumi.  How could you be?

There is a hidden sweetness in the stomachs emptiness.

We are lutes, no more, no less.

If the sound box is stuffed full of anything, no music.

If the brain and belly are burning clean with fasting,

every moment a new song comes out of the fire.

The fog clears, and new energy

makes you run up the steps in front of you.

Be emptier and cry like the reed instruments cry.

Emptier, write secret with the reed pen.

When you are full of food and drink

Satan sits where your spirit should,

an ugly metal statue in place of the Kaaba.

When you fast, good habits gather like friends

who want to help.  Fasting is Solomon's ring.

Do not give it to some illusion and lose your power,

but even if you have, if you have lost all will and control,

they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing

out of the ground, pennants flying above them.

A table descends to your tents, Jesus' table.

Expect to see it when you fast, this table

spread with other food, better than the broth of cabbages. 

Now I Can Rest

      Before Christmas I struggled with this guitar.  I had put the frets on and dressed them only to find out that the neck had such bad back bow in it that I couldn't pull it forward.  I found out that a common problem is, gluing the fretboard on the neck dead flat.  Sometimes when the glue dries (because you are dealing with two different woods, ebony and maple) it can cause back bow.  This is such a common problem that Paul Reed Smith began glueing his fretboards on with epoxy, which doesn't have the water in it that tight bond does.  This would be fine assuming you never have to take it off again.  I like to keep all my options open.  Anyway, I had to heat up the neck until the glue softened and then use a caul and some clamps to pull it forward.  Now the neck has just a little relief in it, which is just right.  Consequently, I had to take all the frets back off and refret the whole guitar.  I finally got the strings on Christmas eve.  I came close to breaking it into little pieces, setting it on fire, and scattering the ashes  as I ran naked through the neihborhood laughing, "I've killed it!"   But I took a few days off for the holidays and came to my senses.
      I had a few buzzes I had to track down and fix.  Then I made the finger rest and decided to try to make a knob for the volume control.  I actually made two of them.  One out of koa and one out of some streaked ebony.  The koa knob is the one in the picture.  Bare in mind that the koa, and or the ebony, will be much darker after I put an epoxy finish on them.
       Today I finished dressing the frets and made the heel cap for the neck, and the truss rod cover.  The strings are on and I love it.  It plays like a dream and has the most acoustic presence of any guitar I've made so far.  I can't wait to hear it amplified.  Now, all that is left to do is to sand it down and spray it.
        Chris wanted a dark color, but I'm afraid that would hide the beautiful binding, so I think I have a compromise, which I haven't talked to him about yet.  He doesn't want a sunburst, so I thought I would do a walnut, or mahogany shaded finish on the front, that goes from darker on the outside edges to lighter in the middle.  Like a sunburst, only not as drastic and all the same color.  And then do the back and sides natural, with just a hint of honey blonde.  I almost wrote horny blonde, which would take on a totally different meaning.   I got this idea from looking at the Ribbecke Hafling.  I like the way you can have color on the guitar, but still see the dark binding.  It will be much harder and time consuming to spray, but everything else has been an effort, so why should this be any easier?
         Here are some pictures and my new meditation poem.  It comes from a book of Rumi poems translated by Coleman Barks, which Donna got me for Christmas.  If you are not familiar with Rumi, just go out and buy anything Coleman Barks has translated.  It is food for the spirit.
       

           Do not go anywhere without me.

Let nothing happen in the sky without me,

or on the ground, in this world or in that world,

without my being in its happening.

Vision, see nothing I don't see.

Language, say nothing.  The way the night

knows itself with the moon, be that with me.

Be the rose nearest to the thorn that I am.

I want to feel myself in you when you taste food,

in the arc of your mallet when you work.

When you visit friends,

when you go up on the roof by yourself at night.

There is nothing worse

than to walk out along the street without you.

I don't know where I'm going.

You are the road and the knower of roads,

more than maps, more than love.