orwell on jura

 'atmosphere constitutes the soul of things...' 

- fernando pessoa, the book of disquiet, 246 (477), 6th april 1930

it is currently saturday (when horsemouth types this). today a walk on the common.  

it will be sunday when it is read (if it is read at all). 

the weather for the next week or so looks absolutely gorgeous. not until wednesday 16th does it look like there's bad weather. 

diaries

no kilvert til the 10th (1871). no thoreau til the 7th (1856). 

this saturday afternoon  perhaps zoom beers with howard (nope doesn't look like so). 

thursday a zoom meeting with the people engaged with the hush-you-know-what. it looks like it is all still going on and that horsemouth's paranoia about it crashing and burning was all just paranoia. 

following on from the zoom meeting horsemouth will probably write something explaining the situation as is and the presence in the annual meeting of the communal endeavour of the people from the thing that can't be named (if indeed they are coming down to visit). horsemouth will try and use the presence of the people from the thing to entice out members of the communal endeavour who are also interested in the thing to physically attend the meeting of the communal endeavour on the last day of april. 

saturday 12th record store day and gwenifer raymond will be playing a gig at 8am in brighton (horsemouth won't be there).  

the week after possibly a gig and then his brother's youngest's birthday meal - thereafter (as he has remarked) horsemouth might be able to escape to the wen (if only for a few days). he's now considering if he could escape on the saturday and come back on the thursday/ friday.

the week after that the wednesday horsemouth needs to be back in the wen for the meeting of the communal endeavour. 

thereafter we run out of month and are onto the joys of may. (may 24th soft white underbelly gig). 

last night horsemouth watched alan plater's crystal spirit: george orwell on jura - death is closing in on him, all that remains to do is write (and then laboriously type up) his manuscript for 1984. while he is still well there is a foolhardy attempt to shoot a tidal current in a small boat with a poorly lashed on outboard  motor.  

memoirs of a sleepreader (sneaking off into town)

diaries 

nothing from kilvert from 1871. thoreau similarly. 

'don’t worry about fame. me, I’m trying to be less famous...'  - michael hurley

outlaw bookseller is in caerleon  and he's talking about an unknown horror writer. but it's not arthur machen - it's  charles bockden brown. horsemouth has one of his somewhere, he thinks it's edgar huntly, (aka. memoirs of a sleepwalker), but you know - he can't remember if he's read it.

oh bollocks. amadou bagayoko has died. amadou of amadou and mariam. to be honest horsemouth hadn't realised he was the amadou in les ambassadeurs (despite knowing the tune amadou) until he saw them play a gig (RFH? QEH? with john and richard).

there was a good extended piece on michael hurley including a photo of the inside of his car (which was good and messy). the car looked like a clunker. it gave horsemouth a warm feeling. 

-----------------------------

and now a written-in-the-morning component to this blogpost. 

yesterday a visit to TESCOs. by the time they'd paid for the local dial-a-ride scheme they made no saving (remarked his mum). difficult to say (thought horsemouth to himself).  the trick would be to buy more in bulk. to try to buy a month's food at one sitting. 

ah good the heating has just come on. it is cold in the mornings.

horsemouth's brother's eldest is thinking of spending a few days at his grandma's after horsemouth's brother's youngest's birthday do. he's a little concerned about about transportation out at the end so horsemouth is trying to reassure him that it is (in fact) possible on 6 buses a day (on a good day). 

should it happen this will give horsemouth the opportunity to be sneaking off into town. 

of course the timing isn't that good. (the week after would really suit horsemouth better).  but hey it will give him a chance to shift a few more books and guitars/ consider various disposals etc. 

'instantly associate all literary labour with pecuniary reward'

'a letter from my mother brings the astonishing news that mr. ashe wishes to have a stove in langley burrell church and will offer no opposition to the gallery being taken down to admit of the stove...'  - kilvert, diaries, 4th april 1871. 

'men's minds run so much on work and money that the mass instantly associate all literary labour with pecuniary reward' - thoreau, diaries, 3rd april 1859. 

if this was true in thoreau's day it is so much more true now. or at least with the dream of it (look at substack). 

there is (of course) a similar dream for music.

the action that attracts the attention with thoreau is physically writing in a notebook. it was similar with claude levi-strauss, the locals could see something was going on but they couldn't tell what. with levi-strauss the locals assumed it was magic and power, with mid-19th C. americans money. 

similarly, as an experiment, try showing up anywhere with a clipboard. 

nowadays everything is typed on a computer or a phone (of sorts) or filmed with a  phone. 

horsemouth would settle for being read (or listened to). and then with being read (or listened to) a little more. 

horsemouth has partially destroyed his own reading by diarising 

he is not reading the thoreau like he should because he scan reads the book looking for material from the correct day of the month so he can quote it here.  nothing from the fernando pessoa today (for example). and similarly with that.

there is a temptation to involve things with time, to repeat them at a meaningful date. 

today he read recollections of the lakes and the lake poets: coleridge, wordsworth and southey by thomas de quincey.

(funnily enough in 1871 kilvert has just been to visit someone who was the niece of wordsworth's wife).

de quincey is an egregiously sentimental writer (even by victorian standards) and about as accurate with his dates as carlos castaneda. 

horsemouth also has de quincey's the ceasars in a similar edition. by then de quincey was 'denied the use of books'  in composing it. 'I was obliged to depend upon my memory for materials..' 

horsemouth has them in a green hardback edition (mdccclxii) from blacks of edinburgh - he thinks he bought them in a library sale at goldsmith's university.  the spines are off but (at least in the ceasars) some of the pages are still uncut. he thinks they were probably rebound by the library. 

horsemouth has been thinking of re-launching

that dream of music-making again.

what he would need to do is get one of those digital recorders (probably a multitrack because he loves multitracking things).  really he should get a CD burner again (because he liked that means of distribution). he should get into streaming (and recording) gigs. become a digital cottage industry. 

hmmm. that's a pretty good post. horsemouth thought he had nothing to say. 

michael hurley has died

michael hurley has died. he was the king (the originating don) of freak folk. just listen to the genius of that. 'I'm with you til the morning baby, til the break of day,,'. horsemouth thought it could never happen. horsemouth thought he was invincible. 'I remember that old scumbag coffee shop we used to hang out at..' it's heartbreak, it's the velvet underground. 

against reality (defend yourself)

'there are times when you have to defend yourself against reality' - andrei sinyavsky 

'to lee's cliff via railroad, andromeda ponds and well meadow. I go early while the crust is hard... cross fair haven pond to lee's cliff. the crowfoot and saxifrage seem remarkably backward...'  - thoreau, diary, 2nd april 1856.

thereafter, like rousseau, he is botanising. he does not want sympathy but beauty. once again horsemouth notes that thoreau is making a railway excursion (and that this ease of movement around the country requires railways). lee's cliff is a place he visits fairly often. 

he read a little of to the success of our hopeless struggle: the many lives of the soviet dissident movement  online. he struggled to get his mum's phone back up and working (having at some point turned it off). he watered various pots and plots and attempted to clear cut foliage of the banking. he read the forty things about living in poland  by ben sixsmith. 

outside the sun is up (it has rolled up over the hill on the the other side of the valley (it is precessing north) and a cat has visited (horsemouth thinks the black cat). horsemouth thinks 3 of runner bean plants are sprouting (yay). 

his mum is off to town. tomorrow they are doing a run on TESCO. 

'the end is nigh' 'it's worse than that' (objectionable sentences)

 'the end is nigh' 

'it's worse than that'  

- morecambe and wise

(not really)

'to the success of our hopeless cause' - old soviet dissident toast (horsemouth can't tell you how much this speaks to him)

the clocks have gone forward (and now so have the calendars)

horsemouth is going to look in the various diaries for apposite quotes. 

'when I have sent of my manuscripts to the printer, certain objectionable sentences or expressions are sure to obtrude themselves on my attention with force, though I had not consciously suspected them before...' - thoreau, diaries, 31st march 1854.

the next two weeks - sunny in the day (cold at night). 

of course as soon as he had published this blogpost horsemouth realised the thoreau quote needed trimming and that in discussing this he could reveal the process of excising objectionable sentences by doing, by showing, (er. and by telling). 

horsemouth is sad to see his blogposts go off into the day. if it is a written-the-day-before blogpost he will almost certainly start writing the next days immediately. 

above. one of howard's mixclouds from 2020 (starting with some of that there indian stuff and then going all clannad and breathy chiffer). horsemouth should really have put it up tomorrow. horsemouth likes the cover (like a lot). 

now it has gone all big guitars and slow tempos (wtaf!). 

ok it looks like one of horsemouth's peas has come up already (one of the one's he planted in the garden unsoaked). but it also looks like the mice have been at the ones he was soaking in the greenhouse. so horsemouth is at 13 nasturtiums and 3 pea shoots. nothing else has come up yet. 

yesterday he missed the bus into abergavenny (the 442 tuesday only- there and back again). he has, at least, researched it now. abergavenny seems a much more likely prospect for charity shops and second hand book-shops (the kind of thing he likes) than hereford. at the very least he's hardly ever there so it will be new for him.  plus there are the villages on the bus route. 

horsemouth seems to have retired at the optimum age. well actually he went a bit earlier and it was more like he was pushed rather than he jumped but he didn't require much persuading.  their business case for closing down the unit was a bit pawky but as soon as they told him the redundancy amount (about a year's rent) and told him he could get his (works) pension early - even when he realised it was tiny - he was convinced. 

and so here he is. living the life of leisure. (hopefully the peas will survive the cold nights). 

he had a go at planting some potatoes earlier with his mum - hopefully he'll get some response from them. 

'utopia...

for all its charms, the island is uninhabited...' 

-  wisława szymborska

(to be honest horsemouth prefers her the end and the beginning.)

middle name antoinette. hmmm

'jane scott, the shadow housing minister, recently hosted a roundtable meeting with several of the country’s largest landlords and estate agents, at which they discussed a number of ways to delay or stop the (renter's rights) bill... scott... told the meeting she would do everything she could to force debate on multiple amendments as a way of delaying the bill, telling those who attended she thought she could hold it up until the autumn at least.'

well fucking bravo. at last a politician who knows which side their bread is buttered. step forward the evil party. take a bow baroness scott of bybrook OBE(vil).  thank you. 

middle name antoinette. hmmm.

andy edwards is offering advice on making money as a musician 

horsemouth just posted on substack an advert for musicians of bremen (in their finery) but shouldn't he really be doing patreon? 

it's all gone a bit scarfolk he thinks. 

the point, says andy, is to be an entertainer so people subscribe and pay regularly. to allow people with no money access but to allow people with money to support you (and your art) more. 

horsemouth is thinking about a relaunch. 

but before that he is thinkiing that it is the first of april and he should change over the calendars. 

books, films, gigs, events march 2025

books 

- diaries (edmond de goncourt, kilvert, thoreau, fernando pessoa)

- we're into endgame by benedict seymour, metamute 

-  tales of unease by sir arthur conan doyle

- stuff on substack 

- archive anxiety (art review)

-  john stewart collis, down to earth

-  'bifo' befardi, quit everything (excerpt)

- FT on global warming and climate change

- rent cap proposal

-  colonel chabert by balzac 

- graveyard and ballroom (howard slater)

- GDN mipim, housing and heating stuff in general

- ted gioia music business healthy again. really? (substack)

- review of paul preciado's dysphoria mundi (art review) and follow up

- LRB, nlr, nlr sidecar

films

- ian christie documentary on 'the new babylon' (1929 russian silent film about the 1871 paris commune directed by grigori kozintsev and leonid trauberg. 

- outlaw bookseller, bookpilled

- john f. szwed, cosmic scholar: the life of harry smith (presentation)

- andy edwards, rick beato, 

- stick in the wheel interviewed by max reinhardt 

- uncanny landscape (justin hopper) interview with stick in the wheel 

- poem in a straight line (fernando pessoa)

- R4  a radio show from september 2023 on heatwaves in the south of europe

- a review of one of PKDs non-science fiction novels

- a bbc hereford and worcester show about mike oldfield's old house where he recorded hergest ridge

- martin scorsese's music documentary about bob dylan

- the robbie basho listening party (bandcamp)

- two vids by jeremy gilbert (LRB and self-promotion) 

gigs none

events