To Bee or Not To Bee? - A Story About Guitar Making and Forgiveness

That was the question as I stood there in the shop strategizing how I was going to smash him while he was still mezmerized by the florescent lights hanging above my workshop bench. Sometimes stuff happens when you are working on guitars. Bad things happen to good guitars, and good guitars in progress. Most of it can be prevented, but this...not this - and something had to pay.

My temperment had been pretty short during that week. There wasn't any specific reason. Just the ebb and flow of emotions in life just like the weather in Tennessee - one day it's 30 degrees the next day it's 70. I have been working on a batch of guitars for an upcoming GFA conference this June and building guitars on a deadline is still something very new to me. It would be nice to fantasize the day away tapping tops and dreaming about what its future instrument would sound like, but there has been a lot of work to get done, and on this particular day, I wanted as few distractions as possible. 

It was probably the warmest day so far this spring and the doors to the shop were open, allowing in some fresh air, and with it, the occaissional rodent and insect. I stood there with a guitar side in one hand and a sharp chisel in the other, carefully scrapping the almost dried glue squeeze-out off the newly joined side liner. It was a pretty routine operation. One that allows some room for the luthier's mind to wander a bit - around and around. Where ever it might want to go. It was getting closer to lunch time, I was hungry, so my mental state was likely as close as one could come to functioning on a job while in pure dream state.

It came as a complete surprise and I hesitated to realize that I was under attack. The bumble bee must have found its way into the shop couldn't resist an all-out assault on my T-shirt. Though delayed, when I did react to the situation, my fight or flight instinct took charge and...well...I fled. In the heat of my highly evolved survival instincts and in transit, I flung the guitar side across the shop and jolted in some random direction - any direction I guess that would take me out of the line of fire. Of course, I don't just throw guitar parts around the shop every once in a while. I guess it was a testament to how I would react when taken by a surprise attack and it made me glad that I decided to be a guitar maker and not a soldier. 

When I calmed down and collected myself on the other side of the shop the first thing I saw was that guitar side laying on the floor. The short temper ensued and I rushed to pick up the side to see what damage that surprise had caused. It was a frantic and loathsome search for cracks and gouges with various, colorful curse words uttered under the breath. There was some minor damage, but nothing that couldn't easily be sanded out and mended. I did what had to be done and started to cool down a bit, thankful that this event wasn't a costly one.

So I stood there in the aftermath staring down the bee buzzing around the florescent light, searching for something that could quickly end its life and give me the relief that comes with knowing that justice had be done. And then, there appeared the angel on my right shoulder. "Would killing that bee actually solve anything Mr. Zeb?" said the angel on my shoulder. "Well...I don't guess so" I replied. All the while, that bee just continued buzzing around the light, and there I was just staring at it, slowly cooling down and realizing that I was about kill something out of shear rage, that actually, had done no lasting harm whatsoever.

I went over to my shopmate working at his metal lathe, oblivious to what had just taken place (he is in perpetual distraction from the DeadMau playing though his headphones ), and asked him for his cup of water. Actually, I think that I took it whilst asking him and didn't wait for his answer. Nonetheless, I found that bees are very easy to trap when they are busy buzzing around bright lights and after having been taken by a surprise attack, they too fly away rather mindlessly. I hope that he doesn't come back for a second chance, because next time, my conscience might be on a vacation.

It was just a little reminder of how important it is to forgive - that it is one of the greatest gifts that we can give to ourselves and our temperment.