The brief story of how Johnny became an ant (part I)

"He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have"

Socrates

Johnny Green was a lucky man. He had a wife named Amy who loved him, three wonderful children - smart Oliver, petulant Emma and sweet Lily - a dog named Toby, good friends, a nice home in the vibrant town of Bramont and his own business: the elder Gibb&Green guitar shop.

Guitars were his passion. Johnny Green was admired by many for his talent for making these instruments, which held all his fascination and attention. For each guitar, he was deeply discerning in the choice of the wood. No two woods were alike, and he knew them like the skin on the palm of his hand: the softness of pine, the shimmer of cedar, the lightness of spruce, the suppleness of linden, the strength of alder, the resonance of mahogany, the versatility of maple, the beauty of ebony, the robustness of the black acacia... he had the attributes of each one engraved in his memory as if he could touch them only by invoking them in his mind. Once the wood was chosen, he would carefully select one of his molds to start shaping the body of the instrument, where, once the top was molded, he would dig a resonance hole with a previously calculated size, perfect for his work, which he would then decorate with a rosette that he himself had designed, painting it with the meticulousness, detail and technique of a true artist. It was always Johnny who created his rosettes, each one for a single guitar, and these were his most beautiful signature.

Afterwards, he molded the sides, joined them, molded the bottom and assembled the basic structure that beared the instrument, controlling its vibration and matching its multiple sound frequencies. In the end, he united all these bones into a single skeleton. From then on, Johnny polished the shape of the guitar's body with the sensitivity of someone who draws a woman's body: with its own curves and wavy lines, some soft and delicate, others prominent and sinuous, always sublimely imperfect. For him, each guitar's body was his own replica of the Venus de Milo, and when sculpting it, he would put both the fire of an ephemeral passion and the affection of a longtime love in it. Afterwards, he worked on the guitar's fretboard: he placed each metal fret in its relevant position on the fretboard, glued the nut and installed the pegs on the head, where, later, he would finally tie the instrument's strings, which connected the fuse and bridge of the guitar, firmly attached to its body.

And there he spent hours and hours of his day: in his atelier, alone, making guitars, among the dust of the sawn wood, the noise of the modeling tools and a series of masterpieces, some of them unfinished, others already finished.

The process of building a guitar was, for Johnny, a meditation in itself. It was the only moment of his day when he felt fully present, fully involved in what he was doing, fully attentive to the sound, touch, sight and even the scent of his guitars, transcending himself to the fullest extent of his ingenuity. For a musician, his instrument was an extension of himself, and that's why Johnny created his guitars so that they worked in close synergy with those who used them to make music. Each guitar, its musician. And so, he went on making one and another and another guitar, combining practice and improvisation, technique and creative expression in the manufacture of instruments that, more than that, were the materialization of his talent.

Johnny had already made custom guitars for several musicians, he had already sold countless in his shop, but out of all his guitars, there was only one that he refused to sell: the Rosemary. Delicately carved mahogany body, a slender maple neck, ebony fretboard, bronze string set, steel pegs with shell finishes and the most beautiful rosette he had ever painted, in shades of black, emerald green and turquoise. To that guitar and that guitar only, Johnny had devoted twice as much time as to any other creation of his. It was not only his most time-consuming process, but also the most expensive, as, for his Rosemary, the experienced guitar maker did not refrain from acquiring the most finest materials on the market. Amongst its peers, that guitar reigned: it was his true masterpiece, and Johnny revered it as such.