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.

Guitars

Stupid mac stopped loading pictures for some weird reason, so it's been a while without updates.

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.