(Same number, but I have a new phone. Yes it’s another flip phone, probably the last in the known universe. What can I say - It’s how I roll. If you left a voice message in the last day or two and didn’t get a call back, you were lost in the process of technical transition. My apologies, please call again! ALSO – is there anyone who ordered a signed copy of my book A Craftsman’s Path directly from me and has not received it? My brain is telling me I missed somebody, but I don’t think I did. 512-395-5126, calls only, I don’t text. Thanks! ~Scott)
There is art in the workshop.
There is art in the workshop. Not solely in the craft from past sketches of a model, or the instrument’s potential to inspire and help create - there inside it as if some sort of seed. Sure, there’s art in the craft of what happens here on many layers and in the many layers of the dreaming and the doing. These are songs in their own way, just manifesting into the world a little differently. But within that manifesting, other than in the craft of the creation, other art happens.
And though crafting pieces of wood into instruments-to-be, out deep in the quiet woods on the first day of spring with the sun shining and windows open and Stephen Stills playing is a moment, it’s not the art of living – the art of moments - I’m referring to either. Though that definitely resonates within as well…
I live in a day to day life of colors and grains, textures and patterns already there in the tree; I get to help those as deliberate act join and become something else, brought together to vibrate in harmony. But there are, all around me, inadvertently forming like order from chaos (albeit somewhat controlled, joyous chaos), lines and curves of process that merely – much like the grain inside the tree – need to be noticed. If they are never seen it does not diminish them in any way; they just “are”… it’s not up to whether we see it or not for them to “be” anything. They are and this happens; we either awaken to it and participate or don’t.
Parts are stacked in sunlight, the curves of their contours intersecting with not only the straight joined cuts a part of them, but with the rough cedar post of the shop, the flat surface they rest on temporarily, the other parts’ curves, the space between and the window frame and the opaque beyond. What comes in with the view outward. This is the art of which we talk today – the patterns and shapes that happen in the doing as tools and chips and shadows become and change. It is constantly around me in this space – in all spaces really but in this one more so than all the others – at times to the point of distraction, where I have to continue my eyes on to the waiting task to keep going – when I ask myself if perhaps these moments are the true results, however fleeting, and all of this just a dance for them to happen, a ceremony for their conjuring - that what you or I get out of it are merely ancillary.
I don’t know your life but I hope it’s there and I hope you see it and I hope it fills you with a wonder you weren’t aware you were lacking – that’s what it does for me in here as we do this dance. And every now and then, part of the ritual is to… capture the instant. Sometimes in picture, sometimes in words, sometimes in music, sometimes in wood and wire. To slice the happening to show its artful essence. All songs, as are we. As part of greater symphony. I am most grateful for this moment where you and me - by this chance and circumstance again come together to sing our songs in harmony.
Thank you for your time and attention… have a wonder-full weekend.
Listening to: John Scofield Trio EnRoute; Stephen Stills Stephen Stills.