Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Final de año

That means year's ending, or something like that, dear readers.

Are you still alive? I was, all this time, but busy and bored, too involved in life to write about stuff.

The title comes from a Borges' poem, and ends saying that something in us endures, something that didn't find what it was looking for.

It's always fitting, at least to me, not only when the year is leaving.

I spent plenty of days thinking how to come back here, after such a long silence. I never found the answer. So I just started writing, as well I could start now.

To make a long story short, I broke up with Julia, met Natalia (in that order) and my life was reorganized as it correspond to a proper love according to badiou, something about capsizing isn't it?

I moved out, creates a workshop in house full of musicians and dancers, a french luthier arrived one day, and we finally started to make guitars a few months ago. I left mine last week looking something like this:


Yeah I know, that a solid workbench Roubo style. Working with the guitars on the ground is not as good when you walk over them.

You see that? a workbench, a toolwall, joints and order. What else can you ask of life. The wine glasses are at the right of the guitar whereas the wine is at the left, all properly out of the frame.

It's four of us. We use kanna everyday, and stanley block planes. Naniwa stones and an american made bandsaw. German plans and chilean woods. We work by hand and drink and play music in the workshop. The spirit of Valparaiso has taken over: a drunk globalisation, with it's own beauty and humbleness, taking whatever it wants from wherever is found. At the end of the world a unique way of living, grounded, related to the hills and the sea, local.

There is a poem by Höldering I found not long ago. It goes like this:

Wenn aber ist entzündet
Der geschäfftige Tag
Und an der Kette, die
Den Bliz ableitet
Von der Stunde des Aufgangs
Himmlischer Thau glänzt,
Muß unter Sterblichen auch
Das Hohe sich fühlen.
Drum bauen sie Häußer
Und die Werkstatt gehet
Und über Strömen das Schiff.
Und es bieten tauschend die Menschen
Die Händ’ einander, sinnig ist es
Auf Erden und es sind nicht umsonst
Die Augen an den Boden geheftet.

A horrible translation goes like this:
That's why they build houses
And the workshop is so busy
And ships sail against the currents
And men exchange greetings
Holding out their hands; it's sensible
On earth, and not for nothing
Do we fix our eyes on the ground.

The poem has the same melodic metaphysics as Ister, you remember, the stone needs engravings, and furrows the earth...

That's it. Nothing makes any sense yet, something that didn't find what it was looking for. I leave you with some pictures of our workshop, wish you a happy new year, and close this blog for ever: next time I write it will be a book.




















5 comments:

  1. For me last year was also a year of vertigo. It started more than a year ago, in the Summer. Memory is not clear, but let's just say I zigged when I should have zagged. Then I believe I zagged when I should have reversed.

    Silly me. Then there were a few things I didn't get done when it was warm, now I doing them while it's cold.

    I did build most of the hull of a rowboat, lines came from a book by H I Chapelle, which came from Chapman - an American Colonial period (1750) "punt". I walked by it today in the polebarn, such a beauty to look forward to. (18'9" x 52" x 14", flatbottom with alot of rocker, transom in front as well as in back. Two planks on each side, boards on bottom going crosswise; Eastren White Pine, except Doug Fir transoms)

    When you refereed to "...... the Spirit of Valparaiso,... " I felt a vibration in my back, which ascended to my neck, a tingle if you will.

    I love books, and when you have finished your first, I would love to know about it, and with no expectations, will always "Lift a cup of kindness yet" upon receiving news from your world.

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  3. bis zum nächsten Mal. Viel Glück mit dem Buch. I look forward to it, and in the meantime I'll miss the blog.

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  4. Yours being one of the very few blogs I follow, this ending is a bitter sweet one. I would like to say thanks yet again, for your sharing and generous nature, and wish you the very best of luck for the future. Your voice will be missed.

    Sign me up for your book as well!

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