Notes on Making a Guitar

[Air guitar playing]
I walked 47 miles of bobwire
I got a cobra snake for a necktie
A brand new house on the roadside
and its made out of rattlesnake hide
Gat a brand new chimney made to fit on top
and it's made outta human skulls
Com'on take a little walk with me baby
And tell me who do you love ...
Now around the town I
Use a rattlesnake whip ...

Around noon today I set out across the soccer field after eating a bowl of miso soup, butteryaki somethingfish, and about a pound of rice, when I realized that the internal furnace was kickin in. I was hot. It was still bitter wind winter San Francisco California freezing, but I was feeling normal.

This has happened to me before, like the time I decided to put cream in my coffee. I was a grad student in Eastern Washington, and I got up one morning and it was 15 degrees out (the day before it was like 47) ... and there was snow on the ground. I walked across town and froze. And decided to start putting cream in my coffee to add some fat in my diet. I had already started putting the cream in my coffee, when a couple of days later -- I suddenly got warm. I stayed warm until March when it started to rain.

Yes, I was overdressed. Yes, I wasn't all tucked in in the right places. Yes, I left my Goretex™ windbreaker and jacket™ at home. Yes, I was getting sweaty. And I wasn't even playing soccer. Just burning rice and evolving. Just surviving.

Darwin was right... Here's to evolution.

As a sculptor, I occasional get these bright ideas to build things. I was looking at a piece of sculpture I made a few years ago (It's made from the arm of a chair and invokes the image of a violin) and thinking about my son and a guy named Tim Doebler and what was so special about Stratovarious anyway. I never really cared for Tim's ironwork, but he often made these sardine can mandolins, and other weird and unique string instruments, which I thought were brilliant. I hear a Stratovarios™ is actually brilliant.

So there I was, remembering the book I read about building a violin, and thinking how I never managed to get that boat I built all those years ago to float -- how I never built that wood canoe ... and I was thinking that I would never manage to build a guitar. Then I remembered that I know how to do that. I have an advanced degree in building stuff. SO I went to the bookstore and the big library in sky.

Tomorrow I am going to look for some wood.

Then, I'll start to make notes about building a guitar.