horsemouth has finished 'black mass' - what next?

'if by any chance you see a cheap old yellow paged  novel if you go a searching for books. buy it as a student of mine needs one for her work...' 

- howard grange, email, 28th october 2025. 

horsemouth has done this once before for howard but at that time he lived in london. he does this no longer. 

the student lives in a city full of book-boxes and second hand bookshops and library sales...  and horsemouth lives in a muddy field. 

and horsemouth will get it to howard (and thus the student) how exactly? post? there's efficient! 

leave it with him 

in further book business horsemouth has noticed that the copy of f.a.hayek's the road to serfdom he promised to his brother has not been picked up, it had hidden itself in the racks. 

so horsemouth has finished black mass. what next? 

'to speak of interests in the absence of alternatives – imaginable and viable futures which are themselves historically constructed through struggles – is to speak of something unreal and abstract as if it were real and concrete.' - dylan riley, material interests, nlr sidecar.

dylan riley sets out the problem with material interests, in particular class interests, and how they are envisaged in the absence of an open class struggle.

it is morning. horsemouth has been out to feed and unleash the chickens. he's hearing the music from profondo rosso in his head. 

potholes on the road to net zero 

well horsemouth would like to get there. horsemouth would like to see global carbon emissions lowered and global warming at the least slowed if not reversed. to do this requires a vast change in the global economy (but that's not beyond the powers of global capitalism and the nation states of the world). 

he wonders how the communal endeavour is doing in its battle to insulate. 

he has begun reading stendhal's memoirs of an egotist (which goes well). 

'begin, and cease, and then again begin...' (dover beach)

'... where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

listen! you hear the grating roar

of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

at their return, up the high strand,

begin, and cease, and then again begin...' 

- dover beach, matthew arnold.

on a more cheerful note a visit to a pub led to a near fracas for reform councilors in cornwall. one has resigned from the party. elsewhere a zoom call of a reform group council meeting has been leaked and party members have been thrown out for bringing the party into disrepute.

no one said it would be easy. 

the old parties are dead - nobody wants to vote for them anymore - but the insurgents (of all colours) have never been in office before, they don't know how to get things done. the things they have said they will do are fantasies. 

the result of the caerphilly by-election to the sennedd is interesting. faced with a poll predicting a reform victory the people of caerphilly mobilised round the candidate most likely to defeat them (plaid cymru). 

once again we are saved from  the democratic representation of views we disagree with by first passed the post. but next time the sennedd elections will be conducted under a variety of proportional representation. 

at some point (may probably) the reform wave will hit but at some point it will break also (as the difficulties of getting stuff done when in office become obvious). 

whether that break occurs before the next parliamentary election or not is a matter of luck. 

the next general election will almost certainly be conducted under first passed the post - there simply isn't the  time (or the political capital) to get proportional representation in (even if the major parties had calculated it was in their best interests). 

from here it would look like the fix it would be. 

of course frustration with the political machine that denies you representation can be the start of something positive or something negative. it all depends on your appetite for chaos or your appetite for being patronised unjustly by our rulers and betters. 

the retrofitting of proportional representation to the political machine has long been a goal/ a bete-noir of the smaller political parties. with it they can begin to attain political representation, without it they are sunk. but with it the parties they disapprove of will attain political representation as well. 

farage owes the start of his political career to cameron's making the european parliament elections proportional representation.  the whole of brexit would not have happened without the referendum. 

horsemouth has finished reading john gray's black mass (well that about wraps it up for neo-liberalism). gray is (tediously) right about everything that has happened already and has little positive to predict about what is to come (he predicts more failure). 

and the waves roll the rocks up the beach. 

dover beach makes it into black mass near the end (in a discussion on the death of religion and the need for myths). 

here a grey morning and a rainy day on the back of it. 

p.s. entirely written in the morning blogpost. 

on the consideration of two photos

here we are. horsemouth on a sunny day (a saturday probably) just post pandemic (they are still drinking outside). the place also did pizza (so they had pizza as well). 

not all the beers are horsemouth's (howard was there also. he took the photo). 

yesterday evening 

outside it is dark (sunrise 7am sunset a bit before 5pm and worse to come)

from tuesday night rain (lots of rain)

in two week's time sunrise 7.20 am and sunset 4.30pm.

ok the evening movie méphisto - a fantomas style thriller serial.  it's jean gabin's first major role. it's a bit slow (it's not as good as feuillade's les vampires). 

horsemouth also watched blue lights a belfast set crime show with his mum which is nearly at the end of its run. it's well made and engaging (but it's not the wire). 

a friend has posted a picture from an underground station

horsemouth likes the photo. a victorian clock, clearly fucked up but still hanging on in there, a remnant of the old victorian underground (ok ok it's probably not that old).  hanging on in there next to the modern lighting, service ducts, and the cheap meccano paneling and signage. 

here's the message he takes from it. 

look at the ductwork installers - they've clearly not got instructions to remove the clock but it's in the way, so they have carefully routed the cabling through it running the ductwork up to the clock and then starting again on the other side. 

the old is fitted within the new or the new is fitted around the old. 

on the plethora of things

having just moved all his books and records and CDs and guitars (and chucked away a ton of furniture, bedding and clothes) horsemouth is aware of how much he overconsumes and hoards (but what does he want to do? he wants to get on the bus into town and buy more books. for the joy of the hunt really.) there is pleasure to be had, there is pleasure to be given, there is an old world to be fitted inside the new.

ok maybe he will - the big splurge at christmas - horsemouth doesn't do it (he's notoriously mean and tight)  but it's a sign and a signal that people care.

it is the time of the year for a few jollies to hold off the encroaching darkness.

happy samhain (horsemouth won't be mentioning ch****mas just yet  if you don't mind).

no dominion

for the birth of dylan thomas. a richard burton under milk wood sample. 

'today, in the night of the demon timeline, holden visits the hobart farm, checks the runes on nearby stonehenge, attends a seance where they sing cherryripe to get the spirits to descend, and then attempts to burglarise lufford hall. 

he will include advice on watching it tomorrow to set the denouement for 10pm..' 

yesterday it's six o'clock and it is really dark (because it is 7 o'clock really already). 

and on november the 1st (after samhain) winter really begins. we are halfway down the long dark tunnel towards the winter solstice (the darkest point) and then it is a long slow grind back up towards the light. 

having watched profondo rosso  horsemouth is now watching nomadland. she works for a while in an amazon enrichment centre (these jobs are now being automated). 

'the titanic is sinking' but it is sinking slowly and unevenly. work will not pay enough to keep a roof over your head. surely this is a problem not an opportunity. 

today it is a bright (if blowy) morning. horsemouth has just been down to the abbey to unlock it (and he will go back in the evening to lock it up again). this is in addition to his normal morning and evening task of unlocking (and locking up) the chickens. he has his coffee. 

tomorrow (1871) kilvert will be returning from bockleton vicarage. 

it is the morning on which the clocks have gone back

1871 kilvert goes to the 9 am service at st. michael's, tenbury wells. 

a full choral service with a te deum, venite and psalms. 

meanwhile in 1872 edmond de goncourt is back from attending theophile gautier's funeral...

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

it is the morning on which the clocks have gone back. 

horsemouth has attended to the ones he can get at - some are those set  by a distant signal ones and will have to shift for themselves. 

pardon him the sun is up and it is shining in the window - being out of its red-ish 'dawn's early light' phase. 

last night he watched profondo rosso (deep red) one on the most successful dario argento giallos. the copy he was watching kept swapping between italian and english and the voices of the characters altered (most strange). horsemouth thinks it was the longest version he has ever seen with several additional shots (mostly unnecessary).  

he listened to annie briggs interviewed (first at the serpentine then on the west coast of scotland).  he imagined them meeting in the old serpentine restaurant (recently featured in deadly affair). 

today horsemouth may be bell-ringing (or seeing as he missed the last practice he may bottle out). 

he went (bit of a disaster but he will learn). 

the bird with the crystal plumage and butter wouldn't melt

ok nothing is leaping out of the stacks at him suggesting that october 25th has any magical particularity about it.

next week horsemouth and his mum are on abbey duty. remind him to go down and unlock it in the morning (and to lock it back up at night). in the week the weather gradually goes from bad to worse and worse still in the next week (but anyway by that point we are into november). 

horsemouth has already prepared some of his read,  listened to, watched list for october 2025. 

horsemouth is about 2/3rds of the way through black mass by john gray (currently we are with the disinformation that led up to the gulf war).  leo strauss has made an appearance (horsemouth has gone and got his book on machiavelli (thoughts on machiavelli) out of the garage, maybe he should go and get his books by machiavelli (the prince, the discourses on livy) out of the garage also).  

he has been watching the bird with the crystal plumage (dario argento's first movie as director) and bloody great it is. it has one of those super creepy butter wouldn't melt morricone theme tunes and slightly more atonal cue music than usual (at argento's request). 

untitled with rain

'horsemouth on the decks...  playing tracks by john surman, skip james, washington phillips, obray ramsey and more.... expect oddness and rarities...'

9 years ago now to this day horsemouthfolk curated this mix (though the mix itself was assembled by howard). 

there were (of course) no record  decks, that was just a manner of speaking even in those already digital days.

horsemouth was just dropped into it where he finished listening to it last time - judee sill's enchanted sky machines, john fahey's red cross disciple of  christ today.  

fahey's album red cross... ends with the sound of rain falling outside the studio (untitled with rain  24 minutes of it). it is the 33rd and final studio album by him, recorded a few months before his death in 2001. the posthumous releases and re-issue compilations will continue until 2023's proofs and refutations (and may indeed continue further on). 

he had forgotten skip spence's the land of the sun and was surprised when it came on. 

plaid take caerphilly in the by-election. as someone pointed out when labour were down to 50 seats one of them was caerphilly - it is really bad news for them for labour to have lost it, it does not bode well for the may sennedd elections. given the polls the tactical vote to keep out reform would have been plaid (horsemouth suspects this is what happened). 

last night horsemouth watched sidney lumet's the deadly affair - an early crack at john le carre's smiley series (but under another name with james mason). it doesn't work (but it's well enough made). the james mason / simone signoret couple just does not work, he's too old (it would have worked when he was younger). she does her best with the part. 

here a glorious autumnal morning. horsemouth failed to go out bell-ringing last night (he feels bad about this).