One afternoon I was standing at the window watching the leaves swirl to the ground in the fall wind. There is something hypnotic about it and I stood still, just watching, for a long time. The bird songs have fallen silent, the only sound the rustling of the leaves skittering across the dirt road and the periodic groan from a tree as if it were tired and sad about the loss. So begins stick season.
Out of the corner of my eye I notice Paul step out of the cello shop to shake wood shavings from a dark green towel. I watch him, task finished, pause and breathe in the surroundings. He is wearing the leather apron that I gave him last holiday season. I know, without looking, that the pockets are stuffed with bits of paper towels, an isolated mute or two, and a rubber stop, always a rubber stop; the small black piece of rubber that fits tightly onto the very sharp tip of the end pin of a cello. Paul’s apron pocket is the perfect place to save a customer’s rubber stop while working on their instrument. Paul’s apron seems to be the perfect place to collect rubber stops, steal being too strong a word.
He looks like a luthier: leather apron, ratty old towel from the top of a work bench in hand and hair rumpled from concentration (and lack of caring). More than one person has likened him to Geppetto.
If I am lucky, and stealthy enough to quietly go into the cello shop while he is focused on a complex repair of an instrument, I note how similar to a surgical suite the room feels. Lying on a special bed designed to protect it, the instrument being repaired is laid open, it’s top off revealing unvarnished wood making it appear naked and vulnerable. If an instrument has a heart - it is here. Paul works quietly with unbroken focus. No sound in the shop, this musician does not listen to music while working. There is reverence in this space.
The owner of the instrument is not present for these repairs. Like a caring parent, they leave the patient in the hands of the string doctor. It is jarring, frightening even, to hear Paul remove the top of a larger instrument. Although deliberately held in place only with hide glue, a good fitting top does not want to come off and does so only after a loud, distressed bang announces its displeasure. No parent wants to hear that sound.
A good luthier respects the owner of an instrument. Paul stands quietly behind his bench, arms gently folded, listening to an owner tell him what they “feel” when they are playing. He doesn’t correct their language or feel the need to expose expertise, he just listens until they are finished. He understands that the connection between player and instrument is real and important. When a long-standing customer arrives with their cello, Paul greets player and instrument like old and treasured friends, which they both are.
To a luthier, the battle scars on an instrument are as identifiable as a mole on a human being. Often Paul will speak of the instrument in terms of it’s uniqueness; “that is the cello with the broken rib” or “remember that violin that had the poorly repaired sound post patch?”
Either waiting for a repair or looking for a new home, the forty-odd instruments in our shop matter to their luthier. He leans a cello carefully into its stand for the night, takes a small cloth and gently rubs it’s upper-bout then turns to take a final look round the room before shutting off the lights.
Cold winter nights find me schlepping buckets of water to my flock. Paul’s footsteps crunch along behind me, bringing water to the humidifiers that protect his.
To a musician, our luthier is as important to us as our doctor. Paul is the only luthier I would allow to work on my cello and if this sounds like an open love letter to my luthier - it is.
Melissa Perley