Very often what you imagine and the reality are very different.

So after spending a month making William the Mariner I arrived with him at the location where I was supposed to do a “walk around” and decided not to, it was in my mind not somewere that I wanted to spend more than 10 minutes, very noisy, crowded and as I had had no communication from the organiser I felt detatched and not appreciated for my efforts, so after some lunch and stroll about popped back on the train and headed for home.

A lesson I am very slowely learning, when you do something for free, people very often have little respect or appreciation beyond a word of encouragement, so don’t expect it, instead do it because you enjoy the process/it builds towards something bigger.

Skill building and creating something beautiful is the ultimate goal, of course we want to help others by what we do in some way, but they are not reliable sources of validation, instead the making process itself needs to be the be all and end all in my opinion.

Ultimately the well will fill and others will in often unpreditable ways drink from it and maintain it’s continued supply.

I am still happy with William and many lesson were learned in his making, he is ready to go out into the world.

Just a little tweaking of the strings/controller, but I’m practically done, and with a week before my deadline, so have a few days to get to know and see what he can do, and perhaps even give him a more personal name, if you have a suggestion for a Victorian era sea farer then drop me a message. I’ll be playing sea shanties and seeing what transpires, see below for a video of some initial movement tests.

If you local to Cardiff, UK come down and give me some moral support next weekend at Barry Promenade, for the Festival of the Sea, a celebration of the RNLI’s 200 year anniversary, with lots of sea shanty bands.