The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Oh sure, Albert was smart, real smart, I’ll give him that. Knew a lot about relativity, black holes, time warps, all that voodoo stuff nobody here on terra firma cares much about, especially now that science is pretty much on the way out for half the population. So he says, yeah, like he’s a psychiatrist too, that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Big whoop. Maybe he never heard that when you conduct an experiment, say looking for subatomic particles, the results change depending on the guy running the experiment. Same thing, do it again and again, but different result.

So okay, I tore down my last acoustic guitar I built over a year ago, pre-Covid, don’t ask me why, I just did, all right? I’d built 5, figuring the next one would be an improvement, and the one after that might be, well, maybe not perfect or anything, but surprisingly good, possibly more than good, even amazing. Halfway through the teardown I felt Albert breathing down my neck, whispering his little litany about insanity and repetition and expecting better results, kind of like having some punk walking behind you with a stick after dark dragging it across a picket fence, ominous beyond reason.

I had hoped the lessons I learned from those 5 guitars might serve me well, but the first 2 didn’t, the first 3 weren’t much improved, and the 4th, well, it seemed worse. And here I was deconstructing the last one, making a mess of it, growing impatient, wondering why I was going to the trouble and listening to the ghost voice of Mr. Unified Theory of the Damn Universe, give me a break. At one point I almost smashed the thing on the shop table I was so pissed off at how it was going, maybe give Albert a quick review of the Big Bang or Galactic Entropy, but, being the mellow man I am, I just smashed some other stuff and plowed gamely on.

I will make no more guitars. How’s that for a learning curve? How do you like that for a definition of Sanity? The trouble is, though, you put your nose to something like this, give it your best shot, try to improve, try to learn from your mistakes, try to justify the hours and the days and the weeks you spent, only to come up short … and that little worm of failure starts to eat at you, starts to make you question all the other misadventures you tried, the other follies that seemed worth trying at the time but, in retrospect, seem, oh, silly or stupid or just incredibly wrong-headed. And then the worm digs a little deeper and you start to think maybe this is the story of your life, these wrong turns, these pratfalls of projects, this whole way of looking at things, until you stand at the edge of your own personal black hole, and yeah, okay Mr. Super Smart, you’re looking at what might be your own insanity, too late to change all the mistakes now, just line up those 5 guitars and listen to them not so gently weeping in your nightmares.

At least they’re not banjos. That would be a madness unendurable. Although I’m certain my next banjo will be a masterpiece….

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