greetings to saud

yesterday horsemouth was unblocking the drains (well one of the kitchen sinks and the drain that comes from that). this is normally a fairly stinky job and puts him in a foul temper.

what he can't do (whilst he is doing this) is hold a civil conversation. he just wants to be allowed to get on with it and get the job done as quickly as possible.

this is his major character flaw an unwillingness to ask for help, an unwillingness to engage with work as a social process. it is a measure of his insecurity.

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horsemouth does not own a smart phone (he has owned a series of stupid phones instead). he used to argue he only had one for work, now he would probably say he only has it for reassurance.

nonetheless he is typing this on a laptop and onto a social media platform.

he has entertained himself (and you hopefully) on one social media platform, later he will entertain himself (and you hopefully) on another one. he may even copy the text across and entertain you with the same text.

in the evening he will entertain himself with another social media platform. 

work was very good at distracting horsemouth from social media. whole chunks of the day he was offline (broadly while he was out of the house and out of a library). now that he has retired it has properly got its teeth into him. 

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on this day in 1973 the pharoah sanders' band recorded ore-se-rere (by ebenezer obey) and a track called the gathering at a concert at noted LA venue ash grove.  these were used on the elevation album. 

two more tracks were recorded at the venue on the 9th and a track greetings to saud  recorded in the studio on the 13th. 

this was an entirely written the day before blogpost (except for this bit here). outside a grey day. 

an entirely written in the morning blogpost ('in this sort-of-a-book...')

an entirely written in the morning blogpost

(except for any quotations)

'september the sixth however, I left for the shrine' 

- matsuo basho, the narrow road to the deep north. 

horsemouth is a little surprised but he just didn't get round to writing or preparing any text yesterday.

yesterday at 4pm (or so) zoom beers with howard (who was quite chipper considering the various disasters attending the commencement of the school year). 

'in this sort-of-a-book which isn't really a book at all...'

marguerite duras. practicalities. horsemouth had turned over the top corner of the page to remind himself to quote it in the morning. 

'the only alternative is to say nothing. but that can't be written down'. 

it is for you to decide whether horsemouth has succeeded in escaping both the tyranny of the subject matter and the need of a text to make an argument. 

today a sunny warm day.

before breakfast horsemouth unblocked the sink. (he will give it another crack with some enzymic cleaner later on in the day). the drain out the back needs doing as well (it seems designed to get clogged). 

masked men in black blocking traffic in dover

this is not good. it's a public relations stunt (in the edward bernays fashion) in that it crystallises public opinion. it is an appearance of something people may want but it cannot be the actual thing because that would take way more resources. think of boris driving a union jack covered tractor through a polystyrene wall with brexit written on it. 

it symbolised the thing people might want. it creates an illusion, a proposal. 

reform's conference will be over before they have to respond to it (and anyway they have their own problems). there's us (the decent sensible law abiding racists), or there's the nutters, or there's this lot. it creates the illusion of an organised disciplined force of significant size which can be taken as legitimising the positions of reform as a party. 

not good. 

sketchbooks (at a given moment)

'I think all my problems with painting, my failures, arise from my not knowing or being in touch with myself at a given moment.'  - richard diebenkorn, quoted in sketchbooks, the paris review 215. 

well horsemouth made it to friday once again.

he solved the week (now there just remains the weekend to solve). 

the weekend is marked as leisure time and so is less freighted with concepts of labour and production. 

horsemouth (as you know) will almost certainly have written this blogpost on a friday and then will write again on the morning of the saturday. it is difficult to be in touch with his temporally distant self. 

there is a doubling there (at least). 

he goes back and he adjusts the tenses of the verbs trying to find a formulation that will ring true when it is read back at some future date. 

ok so he's just (it is friday) walked into the village to pick up his mum's prescription  and wandered back (two miles all told). 

he saw a black labrador bounding towards him but then when he looked again it had vanished. 

in the evening he read more of practicalities (and, sad to say, farted about on youtube loads). in practicalities a discussion of the text's own composition.

'... the spoken texts were transcribed, we read them over and appraised them, I made corrections and jerome beaujour read the result. it was difficult at first. we soon abandoned questions and answers. we tried a subject-by-subject approach but gave that up too. the last phase of the work consisted of shortening and lightening the texts and toning them down. it was all done by common consent.' 

it is the morning (once again). 

his mother is complaining of feeling cold. there is an autumnal nip in the air particularly in the mornings. no egg delivery this weekend (so no walk up the hill).

deep adaptation (three sailors dance)

so horsemouth did go down and get the bin from the bottom of the drive. he didn't make it into hereford to do more book-shopping (probably there were no more books to be shopped he tells himself). 

it is a bandcamp friday so horsemouth is encouraging more of you to purchase copies of the various far future village band albums. (but if you don't it's ok). 

he's had a go at recording le chaland qui passe for the far future village band IV  album. he's tried it in the whistling and the whistling plus guitar versions. he's also taken a crack at tri martalod (three sailors) in a similar fashion. 

horsemouth is contemplating deep adaptation. and deep adaptation means accepting that things are going to collapse  and move on to a different state. the old world is over (and yet people still insist on talking reasonably). 

this morning a rainy grey morning. horsemouth doesn't know what he will get up to today. 

an entirely written in the morning blogpost

 an entirely written in the morning blogpost

remind horsemouth to go and get the bin from the bottom of the drive. greyish morning. later an opportunity to go into hereford and do some more book-shopping. (will he take it?)

some messages from iona who has been listening to the far future village band III album (well the first half anyway).  soon himself and rob will recommence their campaign. horsemouth has already written and performed more of the fictions so it's just a matter of getting on with the songs. he plans to do more whistling and wordless vocalising.

the problem with le chaland qui passe for the far future village band is that it's a bit complicated and urban (similar to je te veux really). anyway they'll see. difficult to tell until it's done. 

horsemouth wonders how the other pamphlets he sent out are getting on. 

coming up soon (tomorrow!) a bandcamp friday - horsemouth will be hawking the far future village band project. 

the chickens are out on the hill foraging for food (that is good to see). 

from 12 years ago horsemouth was saying the following;

horsemouth sighs. always (already) it is difficult. (and no-one has gone anywhere yet)

he now has no idea what he was complaining about but the sentiment strikes him as familiar. his life now is much easier (and perhaps a little dull). 

'from the beginning of autumn to the end of winter'

'this book helped us pass the time. from the beginning of autumn to the end of winter.' 

- marguerite duras (and jerome beaujour) in  la vie matérielle, translated into english (somewhat strangely) as practicalities.

if you have the -uaries and the embers you have 6 months, or half the year. 

similarly with the equinox to equinox (autumn and winter). 

by way of compensation the weather in september is normally pretty good. outside it has clouded over but earlier it was bright and sunny. here overcast until the saturday (allegedly). (and as usual the weather is much better in hackney). and (to be fair) the sun has come out again here. 

and (also to be fair) now it is drizzling. 

later on much internet kerfuffle but it seems to have settled down and now horsemouth is perusing his old blogposts. 

indeed in the morning the internet seemed to be out and horsemouth was contemplating a day without it making do with just what he had saved on his laptop, the world of books and the world of nature. 

our coltrane album of the day (first meditations) was recorded 2nd september 1965 but not released until 1977. coltrane decided to substantially re-record it with a new band and so this version lay in the vaults. 

the embers (badenoch rearranges the deck chairs on the torytanic)

the embers

september

october

november

december

so you see how it goes. fully a third of the year. (and we start here)

on september 23rd at about 1am in the morning we have the autumn equinox and we enter the dark half of the year which runs through until march 20th. 

but we have a few weeks before it is that. before that horsemouth is due up to town for a flying visit. 

calendar day

we go around and turn the page on the calendars. the calendar to rule them all is the triple negative calendar which commands release the bat-moths!

badenoch rearranges the deck chairs on the torytanic

cleverley is gone from housing to attempt to become mayor of london. priti patel is gone as shadow foreign secretary.  

horsemouth firmly expects the tories to do better than expected at the next general election at the expense of reform but that will still leave them with only the hope of a reform/ tory coalition as a chance to get into power as compared to a labour/ liberal coalition that horsemouth expects to get more seats. 

(of course it could got he other way)

horsemouth thinks there is a limit to farage's popularity and he doesn't think there's anything else to reform (yet). he thinks that the tories will be progressively forgiven by their electorate for their last time in office and rehabilitated. he thinks that labour will dig themselves out of the pit they are in enough to escape humiliation at the next election. he thinks the lib dems will basically stay where they are. he thinks the greens/ independents/ your party will get some seats but not enough for it to be a true breakthrough. 

horsemouth is up. he has his coffee. it's another beautiful morning. he's already been across to the chickens and taken the milk over to the garage.