Divine chaos

I gym-read a really great book about guitar making, playing, and generally the pleasures of guitar love, Clapton's Guitar by Allen St. John. It's about the long, slow handmaking of an acoustic guitar for Eric Clapton by Wayne Henderson, a great guitarist and greater luthier who lives in his happy little shack in rural Virginia, besieged by requests, eating lemon pie and slowly crafting some of the best guitars in the world in his cluttered, dirty shack of a workshop with his homemade tools. It's a story about inspired craftsmanship, camaraderie (mostly male bonding), fandom, flatpicking, fried turkey, and, of course, Clapton. Clapton doesn't exactly appear; he hovers, godlike, in the background of the book much like he stood in the glassed-in viewing room over his Crossroads guitar auction, which is referenced multiple times. As a matter of fact, Henderson, it seems, almost never talked to Clapton, and the guitar itself was delivered by St. John, who mediated the whole process, to Clapton's gear guy.

That's a little sad in a way, sadder for Clapton than for Henderson, who's not exactly a Clapton fan even if he does seem to like making a guitar for someone so famous. He really missed out by not talking to Henderson himself and seeing his guitar so beautifully shaped. Henderson is a real country character, and St. John a sympathetic, admiring yet hilariously fish-out-of-water narrator. Fantastic read.