French Polishing and Other Random Stuff

Been plugging away at French polishing these two new guitars. Got a nice amber tint to them and I'm slowly building up body and finishing up the pore fill with pumice today.

In other news, I've got myself on a big Louis MacNeice kick recently. Not really normal for me, but I'm really enjoying it. I try to keep the non-guitar related stuff to a minimum on the blog, but sometimes it nice to share other things. This book Autumn Journal has a ton of great stuff in it and it's really fitting with my mood lately.

This isn't incredibly interesting, but, regarding his time in Spain, he references the tobacco that Romanillos also mentions in his book about Torres; another testimony that it wasn't entirely Tarrega's carelessness, but the quality of the tobacco that is to blame for all of the cigarette burns on his two guitars.


"...And we sat in trains all night

With the windows shut among civil guards and peasants

And tried to play piquet by a tiny light

And cursed the Spanish rain

And cursed their cigarettes which came to pieces..."


This is just pretty... and somewhat encouraging:


"...I wonder now whether anything is worth

The eyelid opening and the mind recalling.

And I think of Persephone gone down to dark,

No more a virgin, gone the garish meadow,

But why must she come back, why must the snowdrop

mark

That life goes on fore ever?

...Only the spider spinning out his reams

Of colourless thread says Only there are always

Interlopers, dreams,

Who let no dead dog lie nor death be final;

Suggesting, while he spins, that to-morrow will outweigh

To-night, that Becoming is a match for Being,

That to-morrow is also a day,

That I must leave my bed and face the music..."