I know, it sounds dreadfully complicated and in the end, what have you got? You work and sweat and strain to make a buck to keep food on the table and a roof over the head, and while you’re digging to get out of the hole, all these violent assholes who want to destroy everything around you are filling them back in.
If you understand that it IS a war, and that you ARE the victim, you’ll be able to deal with it enough that you can at least carry on working at your job every day or night or both, while at the same time, skillfully ignoring the growing threat of civil disorder and political unrest.
Like I told them back in 1861, “If you don’t cool down, there’s going to be trouble.”, and sure enough, there was that four-year Unpleasantness that ended up worse than it began, and the same thing happened again back in 1941.
Frankly, I’m tired of warning them, and so I don’t. I make copper chains. That’s what I do, but it isn’t ALL that I do.
Sometimes I play a Team Fortress game.
Once in a while I turn on the news, just to see if they’re still out there, and they are. They always are. Then I turn off the news and return to the Looney Tunes cartoons I watch all day.
So what I propose in the meanwhile, is that you keep some sort of awareness and, while you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, you can learn from me how to make handmade copper chains, and either sell them or give them away or store them somewhere bottomless until you can think of something to do with them, or do what I do with them — build a large pile of them on the left side of your work-bench.
It’s not that nobody wants them. Quite the contrary. The problem is that you won’t be able to get out there well enough, even if you understand social media and marketing, to make enough of a living from selling anything, let alone objects of personal adornment.
Why adorn? You’re home all the time anyway, nobody sees you and if they did, they wouldn’t care, because they’re all wrapped up in their own troubles these days.
Everyone has trouble right now. Absolutely everyone, on every level, whether they know it or not, has trouble or trouble is on the way.
Is there anything that can be done about it?
Yes, and I’ve told you this before — screaming at the top of your lungs seems to do some good, but after a few minutes, people stop responding, especially if you’re on an airplane, and you go hoarse for nothing.
Is there anything we can do to avert the carnage?
Well, telling jokes and giving with sarcastic comments about the perpetrators as you’re on the way down to the pavement is one surefire method of dealing with a school bully.
Of course it ends badly, but you get your licks in, in the form of witty and clever remarks about the bully or bullies. With a howling mob, it hardly pays to say much.
Put-downs are good if you’re unwilling to do violence, but they don’t actually save you or anything — as a matter of fact, you’ll probably antagonize the bully even more.
Tae Kwon Do seems to help a little, but you can’t let them come back at you again, not ever, and that’s always a difficult spot to be in, so don’t go there.
Best advice I can give you is to ignore the whole thing. That’s right, just ignore it, even as it’s tearing through your world and smashing everything in its path. Ignore it.
Will it then go away? Probably not. Just keep ignoring it. Keep on ignoring it.
Ignoring what? Now you’re getting the idea. You can’t even remember what it is you’re ignoring. Now, THAT’S what I call perfection.
So what has all this foo-fooraw going on in the world got to do with making handmade chains out of ordinary copper wire you can buy at your local hardware store?
Nothing. That’s why you need to learn to ignore it, and the best way to ignore it is to get so involved in something that you can’t remember what you’re ignoring, and that’s definitely the Practice of Linking.
I have a few modest projects in mind, which I call “Hot Links from Gorby’s Chain Gang”.
The chain gang is a notorious work detail using prisoners to repair roads, where the prisoners of color were falsely accused, tried, convicted and then sent to work on the infrastructure.
There are hundreds of chain-gang songs that survived far longer than their singers. The thing here is that I’m referring to the fact that making chains will free you, which is very ironic, in my book, so I mention it here.
Apart from the obvious gag, there’s another more important meaning to the use of the words “chain” and “chain-gang” and “link” and “linking”, all of which are quantum effects of the first order.
Okay, so that having been said, let’s get into the world of linking metal wire to make beautiful handcrafted chains, made by YOU.
I’ve already described in detail how to make hundreds of projects in my new book, “Stone-Age Jewelry Techniques”, which actually shows you how jewelry was made some 20,000 years ago and more.
Why learn that stuff?
First of all, why not? Secondly, because it’s fun. Thirdly because you can make chains without solder and without casting, that’s mostly why.
Believe me, you don’t want to cast or solder. 3,000 degrees of heat will never really make your life any better, and could make it a lot worse.
In the end, you’ll enjoy making things the ancient way. There’s a lot to be learned from ancient jewelry-smithing, and lots of extra goodies, like:
- BETTER RESTING — When you do take a break from linking chain, you’ll rest more deeply and more soundly.
- DEEPER MEDITATION — There’s no doubt about it — your meditation will be a whole lot better after doing just a few minutes of linking, to calm down your nervous system to the level of deep meditation.
- BREATHING BETTER — Your breath will match your work pace, and you’ll find yourself just breathing better.
- DEEP FOCUS — One-pointed meditation is what you’re experiencing, and it will provide you with an unbreakable focus on your work.
- RELAXATION — When you’re doing something like chain-making, you haven’t got time or energy to devote to tension, so you’re forced to drop it, and you automatically feel more relaxed. That’s how it works.
There are more benefits, too many to enumerate here in this little treatise, but if you want more, get into our chain-gang ZOOM classes and get help making your chains beautiful and attractive and worth selling.
I was of course joking about not being able to sell them — you’ll sell plenty, as long as you keep putting them up on social media platforms, because that’s how you reach buyers these days, on social media, not advertising, not promotion, not the old ways.
You can set up an entire jewelry store with tons of great jewelry — necklaces, earrings, pendants, bracelets, circlets, rings and brooches, all with just wire and a few ordinary jeweler’s tools, and what’s more, you can set up your jewelry shop for under $100 and have at least $10,000 retail value ready to sell in just a few hours!
That’s right. Just a few hours from now, you could have an entire jewelry shop online and ready to take orders!
You can make custom designs for much more money, and don’t forget sterling silver and 18k gold — it’s the same technique for them as it is for copper — if you have clients who can spend that kind of money.
I don’t.
I only know people who are having trouble keeping themselves together for just another day, but perhaps you know someone who still has the wherewithal to make a $20 purchase without going belly-up.
You’re going to be making earrings at a whalloping cost of up to $1 a pair, and it’s up to you to get more than a dollar for them when you sell them.
You have to make enough to make it pay. Think of a shop that sells donuts. So how many donuts do you have to sell every day including Saturday and Sunday, to pay for everything and still leave over enough to make all your home and personal and family expenses?
Do the math, and you’ll instantly see that the situation is hopeless. You can’t possibly make and sell and deliver enough donuts to make a living, not unless you’re a major chain.
See? Chains are everywhere. I shop them all the time.
If you want a serious education in handmade jewelry techniques of the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age, you came to the right place.
I even made surgical tools, medical tools and weapons back in the day, and can still do that now.
Oh, it’s no good right NOW, but wait a while and see what happens after the nuclear war. There’s plenty of work for an iron-smith then, and you can make a fortune in clam shells from working a forge.
Naturally, it’s the people who make the bellows and the furnaces that make the real dough.
Chains are easy to make, fun to make and they take up that awful slack from one minute to the next.
Join me on ZOOM and let’s do chains.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby