New ideas/New year

Pete Howlett · Jan 1, 2016

I have lots of them all the time.... but just wanted to put some ukulele content into wishing you all a happy New Year! I have been most entertained this year in the luthiers' lounge. More than that though, I have been inspired by all those tentative first builds, the success stories and the remarkable, confident early builds of all the budding amateur builders who post here.

Thought for the year - if you want to call yourself a 'luthier', earn it. I quote Hokusai the great Japanese print maker if you missed it the first time:

“ From around the age of six, I had the habit of sketching from life. I became an artist, and from fifty on began producing works that won some reputation, but nothing I did before the age of seventy was worthy of attention. At seventy-three, I began to grasp the structures of birds and beasts, insects and fish, and of the way plants grow. If I go on trying, I will surely understand them still better by the time I am eighty-six, so that by ninety I will have penetrated to their essential nature. At one hundred, I may well have a positively divine understanding of them, while at one hundred and thirty, forty, or more I will have reached the stage where every dot and every stroke I paint will be alive. May Heaven, that grants long life, give me the chance to prove that this is no lie. ”

On his deathbed he was reported to have exclaimed:

"If only Heaven will give me just another ten years... Just another five more years, then I could become a real painter."

May we ever keep this in mind when applying titles to our name

New ideas/New year

Pete Howlett

Well-known member

Similar threads