Stuff has been going on here, we have a communal workshop going on, three guys into guitar making and one into cajones peruanos and just playing around. Feels cool.
Beatnik woodworkers if you fancy.
So here a small review of what's been going on the last weeks here, it's just pictures since my mind is busy trying to conceptualise what's going on here on valparaiso. As america sinks into a nightmare worse than neoliberalism, we dance to live music in small bars, talk till early in the morning and drink life like if it were sangria, and we vote for a leftwing mayor of 31 years old while making guitars by hand with tools made by hand and eat food made by hand:
That was yesterday night. Before rice and saturday's short night.
The woods I want for my first acoustic guitar.
Japanese style clamping. Spanish cedar for the neck, I have a mahogany too on the making, perhaps for a steel string guitar.
That's the black locust bridge pitu ate the other night. Will try to get rosewood for the next one.
Japanese tools, english tools, chilean tools and tea. The body was made and routed by Juan Manuel, I'm refinishing the sides to smooth things out and give a better flow to the curves
that's Antoine, french like the beginning of the world that finally found it's place in the centre of the workshop. Some people like mao in their workshops, I rather grab 'em by the pussy.
That's the neck taking shape. Ca. 2 hours job to shape it with a paring chisel, a gouge and a knife. Really really loved the experience.
And the last one for today. That lamp was brought by Diego, our in house musician and luthier apprentice. As you can see, the workshop has changed a bit. More people require more space and I had to re-organise for ease of work. It's flowing quite well and the workshop is usually cleaner now that I have to share it.
We are building a roubo bench for Juan Manuel soonish that will go there on the left, perhaps we move the bandsaw and lathes to the next room to have more working space for people.
I was reading some time ago pedagogy of the oppressed, I like to think we implement that here as we are teaching each other to build something. I also like to think of power as the experience of being able to do something, as its etymology implies. Being able to make your own guitars, to play them in your own parties, dance to your own music in bars with people you don't really know but see more often than your own family. And that experience of sovereignty, which is overall a sovereignty of the experience, which starts by the mere technique but touches us as humans in contact with each other is what creates the conditions of possibility for a leftwing kid to take power at the local level in this crazy but beautiful city. And perhaps that is what's lacking in the north to fight against populism, hatred and stupidity.
The shit is starting to look real.
