STRING THEORY
IF YOU WANTED a tangible object that captures Ash Grunwald’s attitude to life, you could do worse than look at one of his guitars. Not just any of the 15 or so I can see hanging on the black wall of his home studio near Brunswick Heads in Northern NSW. This particular one, an acoustic, has a print of a wave etched around the body, a nod to Grunwald’s dream of being a travelling musician who seamlessly combines songs and surf. He turns the instrument around to show me the other end. What looks like a random pattern is actually the word “Now” repeated around the sound hole.
“Now,” says Grunwald, who’s wearing a blue T-shirt and has his curly brown locks tied up with a colourful hair tie. “Now,” I repeat back to him. “I have a clock on one of my albums that just says ‘Now’, too,” Grunwald adds, underlining his belief in the importance of being present in the moment.
Grunwald knows inhabiting the present isn’t something most of us are able to pull off without work, hence the visual reinforcements. Something else the 45-year-old father of two knows requires application and intent? The future, specifically things you want to achieve. Writing down today what you want to accomplish tomorrow or next year is what Grunwald calls “programming your subconscious”. It’s part of making idle, often preposterous mental projections material. It’s how dreams are made.
“I don’t want to use the M word, but I started experimenting with trying to manifest certain things in my life that
