A Freefall writing experiment

Just a note before we start.  Most of you know that I attend a writing workshop once a year for a week. In fact, that's how some of us met. We're in the middle of Freefall 2018 and Barbara, the leader, suggested that since I had a captive audience (my words - not hers) I might try posting some of what I write during the workshop on my blog. For those of you familiar with the Freefall procedures, don't worry: this one isn't going to be read to the group. It probably not terribly interesting to someone who doesn't follow me. It may not be that interesting here and I won't mind at all if you click away. What I seem to be doing lately is autobiography thinly disguised as fiction. You will recognize a bunch of it from the post about ukuleles but here goes anyway. This is also a chance for me to see how a different format imported from my word processor translates to Blogger. Cheers.

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     They sat in Timmy's not far from her house. The meeting was at his invitation. He wanted to know why she was the only woman who had stuck with the club for more than a few meetings. When he phoned earlier in the week she thought the question was kind of dumb. Shouldn't he be asking some of the women who had joined and then not shown up more than once? They sipped their tea and he asked, “Is it because the club is basically a bunch of old white guys in plaid shirts?”

     She laughed, “Personally, I don't care if it's a bunch of purple aliens with green noses. I want to talk wood and that's what we do. I'll talk wood with anyone who will listen.” He nodded. Conversation rambled for a while. The membership was aging. Young men would join occasionally and then fall away. The club was withering. What to do. She thought but didn't say that he was talking to the wrong person. She liked the format of the meetings and looked forward to seeing the guys she had come to know well. She didn't have the answers he wanted. She was glad when he moved away from the club and they started to talk about recent projects.

     He was building a set of 8 dining room chairs. “What are you working on?” he asked.

     “I'm building a dulcimer for the 2X4 contest.”

     “A dulcimer. I never would have thought of that. Are you using a standard, off-the-shelf 2X4 or are you using equivalent volume?”

     “Just an ordinary cedar 2X4 I got from Lowe's. It's actually going to sound pretty good and I've got enough wood that I can make a few mistakes, which is good.”

     “Have you built an instrument before?”

     “No, but I've had in the back of my mind for a few years now that I'd like to build a ukulele.”

     “My friends Charlene and Bill built ukuleles with Brian Wilson. They turned out pretty well.”

     She laughed. “I don't think I've got the skills for that yet. I'm working up to it. For Christmas this year I made some, well, I call them flippers – spatulas I guess for flipping eggs as you cook them. I wanted to learn to bend wood and I figured that was a good way to start.”

     “Have you got a bending iron?”

     “No, I went and got a muffler tip from Canadian Tire for about 20 bucks and mounted it in a block of wood that I clamp to my bench. I know the standard way to make one is to take a piece of pipe and heat it up with a propane torch but I don't want an open flame in my shop. You can probably do it safely but I'm not fond of fire at the best of times and my shop's pretty dusty most of the time. I bought a pretty good heat gun. I put that in a couple of clamps so it will stand by itself and then clamp the muffler tip so it slides over the end of the gun. It works pretty well.”

     “You know, Charlene doesn't have woodworking experience. She works in stone and mosaic tile and Dave's done a bit of woodwork but not much.”

     “Sounds cool, but I really don't think I'm good enough yet.”

     “If you'll pardon me for saying so, that's bullshit. If they can do it you certainly can do it and what are you waiting for.”

     She was silent for a moment. “It's certainly is tempting.”

     “Were you at the meeting where Brian came and talked about his instruments and then played a set after the break?”

     “No I'd promised to be somewhere else and I really kicked myself afterwards,”

     “He's an amazing musician and he phoned me the next day all chuffed because he sold more cd's to our guys than his did at his last concert. You should give him a call.”

     “I might just do that, although the thought of actually building an instrument is pretty intimidating. Do you have his number?”

     “I do and I'll send it to you.” He pulled out his phone and she did too. In a couple of seconds her phone buzzed.

     “Thanks,” she said before they went on to talk of other things.

     At the door on their way out he stopped, “Seriously, give him a call. What are you waiting for?”

     She nodded and they went their separate ways, he to his car and she down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. The winter wind stung her face as she walked but the possibilities bubbled warm inside her. Could she really do this? What would it be like to actually play an instrument you'd made with your own hands. It was scary, a decision significant enough to change your life almost like saying yes to a marriage proposal. She smiled at the silliness of that analogy, still.... She touched the phone in her pocket.

     During the day it snowed, again, and she shovelled the walk three or four times. The cat needed to be fed. The cat needed to be petted. Dinner needed to be cooked and the dishes done. With only herself to worry about she didn't bother with the dishwasher.

     Over the next month she worked on the dulcimer, made parts, broke parts, made replacement parts, changed the design as the result of broken parts. It was pretty crude but she loved to run her fingers over the wood and hear the swish of her skin against the wood amplified. Several times she looked up the number but never found the courage to dial. She watched all the YouTube videos she could find on dulcimer building, ukulele building, guitar building. One morning she sat down and wrote and email to Brian. Emails were less scary than talking to strangers on the phone. She could take her time, select her words carefully, make sure she got the tone right. The email took a long time but finally she held her breath and pressed 'send.'

     She didn't think too much about it then. Brian was probably really busy; he might not be taking on students right now. In a way she felt relieved. About a week later she saw an email from Brian in her inbox. The last question in her email was, “Would I be able to build a concert ukulele with you? I know you probably have a waiting list of students and I'm not in a hurry.” She opened the email. It was short: “Yes!!! Phone me,” and there was a different number than the one she had.

     Before she could stop herself she dialled the number. When he answered she introduced herself and gave the context of the email. He said he was in Hawaii, that he would be home in about a week and she should call him then. He might have a spot opening in mid February. She thanked him and, with a trembling hand, put down the phone.

She gave it 10 days. He would be busy unpacking. He would be jet-lagged. She phoned. He explained that usually he ran the instrument building course as and 8 week residential but he had had students lately who drove up to his small town once or twice a week to work on the build. They settled on a start date. She rearranged her schedule.

     The night before their first meeting she packed the car, sleeping bag, candles, matches. She had lived in the mountains and driven her share of icy roads. Old habits die hard.

The first morning was clear and bright; the roads were dry. She arrived early and, not wanting to seem to eager, she explored the small town. Subway, pizza joint, gas station, drug store, hardware store. She pulled up to his house at exactly 10:00. The snow was deep in the front yard and there was a drift against the front door. Footprints led around the side of the house. She followed them around the the back, climbed the steps and knocked at the back door.

     Brian opened the door, “Aloha, welcome here.” He gestured to the stairway leading into the basement. She didn't know what she expected but his appearance was striking. He was stalky, on the short side. He wore a t-shirt and over that a long-sleeved plaid shirt. On his head was a dew rag and as he turned to go downstairs, she noticed the long skinny braid that reached half way down his back. She wasn't quite sure what she expected a luthier to look like but this was definitely a surprise.

     At the bottom of the stairs they turned right into what looked like it had once been the living room of a suite. In the centre was a round, white table strewn with tools, bits of shell, bits of sand paper, masking tape and three or four different kinds of glue. On the far side of the table was a vise with a flat plywood form clamped into it. On the form, upside down, lay the top of a ukulele.

     “This is where I do most of the work that doesn't involve machines. I have a shop in the garage where I have the band saws, the jointer and the thickness sander. I'll show you that in a minute. Got any idea what wood you want to use?”

     “Not really, other than I want a spruce top. My favourite classical guitar has a spruce top and I love the brightness of it.”

     “Then I have something I think you may like.” He showed her a good portion of his wood collection, exotics he had picked up along the way, a huge stock of koa which is now endangered and isn't being allowed out of the Hawaiian Islands anymore, and an ebony carving of a cat that he had picked up at a second hand store. The cat was missing one side of it's body because Brian was cutting strips from it to make finger boards. “Do you know how much this would cost,” he gestured to the cat, “to buy this much ebony, if you could even get it?”

     She laughed, “Probably four arms and two legs.”

     He smiled. “That's pretty right,” he said as they continued the tour. There was wood under the bed in the spare bedroom, wood in the room where he did his hand work, wood in the kitchen of the old suite and once they got out to the garage shop, there was a back room with hardly enough room to squeeze into. There was a solid door. It was koa. Raw material for instruments.

     Then there were the instruments themselves. In the garage were several guitars in various states of disrepair. One had a hole in the top, another a crooked neck and a third had water damage along one side. In one corner stood an oud with its top in splinters.

Back in the house Brian took her into the living room and showed her the guitar he had made when he was studying to become a luthier. It was a beautiful classical with a cedar top and mahogany back and sides. He took it from its case, sat down on the couch and ripped off the first part of Recuerdos de la Alhambra, a difficult classical guitar piece she had just started to learn before she gave up the instrument.

     “Wow!” was all she could say when he put the guitar back into its case.

     “Ya,” he smiled, “I did my grade 10 classical guitar when I was about 18. People think I'm a pretty hot player now but I'm nothing to what I was then.”

     He went on to explain his process for building a guitar. He was trained in the Spanish style. Most guitar makers, even the ones who hand build, attach the neck to the body of the instrument with a heel block and a dovetail so that the body can be worked on separately and the neck connected late in the process. The Spanish style involves a one piece neck that is carved by hand and has precise recesses on either side at the base. It's into these slots that the sides are fitted. “It enables me to build a stronger lighter guitar,” he explained. “I use the same method to build my ukuleles.”

     “We start with the top. The top is the heart of the instrument. It's the most important part in terms of sound. If the top isn't good there's no way the instrument will sound good. It's very precise. You have to make sure that the pieces that should touch each other, touch each other all the way along and that when pieces shouldn't touch, they don't otherwise you'll get a buzz or a dull sound. I build with both an arched top and an arched back. While it's not uncommon on guitars, I don't know of anyone else who does it on ukuleles and I've come up with some ways to do it that make the process easier.”

     They paused for lunch and walked to the Subway a few blocks away. He had soup without any bread. He was gluten intolerant She had chilli and bought lunch for them both.

By 5:00 when she left for home her head was spinning and she wondered what on earth she had let herself in for. On the drive home she put on a whodunit audio book and tried not to think of the homework she had for the next week.