strawberry moon (but no strawberries)

 tonight strawberry moon

the strawberries are gone (the birds and the squirrels had them). the cherries likewise (heat, birds, squirrels horsemouth thinks). 

the runner beans and the tomatoes are flowering away but not much in the way of crop yet. the broad beans look quite possible (as do the peas) but really there are not enough plants. (horsemouth has got more peas on the way together with lots of basil and some pepper plants). there will be lots of onions and beetroot in any event. the spinach has well and truly bolted producing trees.

he planted carrot seed. he thinks one has come up.  some of the brussels sprouts have come up (but no sprouts as yet). 

he's just run off a blackbird that was eating the runner bean flowers. 

the two cabbage plants have reached a decent size.  he's seeing cabbage white butterflies flying up into the skies (bastards).

where the potatoes are in all this horsemouth will not know until he digs some up. 

he has no problems growing nasturtiums but the fuschias aren't looking happy. the petunias etc. in the hanging baskets are looking fairly cheerful. the asters haven't flowered yet. the lavender looks good. 

the weather

this week reasonably cool then warming back up (and plenty of sun) over the weekend and the week after. 

ok horsemouth is making progress on le chaland qui passe. he has come to disbelieve most of the chords proposed by the online chordfinder but it has suggested the chords he actually needs to harmonise the melody (as he hears it). at the moment he is playing it on the resonator (so it is sounding very clanky). 

what he needs to do is learn the second verse. 

the morning

horsemouth is up he has fed the chickens, he has his coffee. 

a new diary

'a new diary, really only because I have been reading the old ones...' 

- franz kafka, diaries, 27th june 1920.

today an egg delivery mission.

yesterday

myk made it to the leigh folk festival (and saw lou and leo and belinda and fran). horsemouth did not. horsemouth is envious. 

and he won't be there today either (so he will not be seeing the owl service at 12 in the fisherman's chapel). 

yesterday  a mostly lounging about sort of day. horsemouth was relieved that the last few days heat has come to an end and it will become possible to think again. he may find something reasonably smart to say about repeated takes by michael chanan which he has been reading (honest). 

only at 10.20 did it begin to go properly dark. (horsemouth was hanging out for the news).

up above silvah bullet possibly even better than his first incarnation. 

horsemouth has posted off a new version of la colombe  (jacques brel's anti-war song, or at least a fragment of the lyrics from it) to see if that passes muster (as it were). 

gardens underground (and repeated takes)

gardens underground

to avoid the heat. a good idea horsemouth thought earlier in the day (but now it is cooling off and horsemouth is actually wearing a shirt). 

... and it's about 9.20 and it's no longer full daylight. 

today (as will be) 25/26C. cloud as well. sunday cooler still and clouding over. and then over the next two weeks a gradual building back up. 

repeated takes

horsemouth was just reading michael chanan's book on recording repeated takes as part of his attali research project. on chanan's website is a podcast of chanan interviewed by esther leslie. 

of course once music can be recorded it changes utterly (and there's no going back). 

at various points in the day horsemouth sat reading in the shade of the house near the wall his father built round the back of the house to hold off the banking above (that's what made him think of underground gardens). 

ok horsemouth needs to get some food for the chickens. which means getting a lift to the forge. it may be cooler than it was but it is still hot. ok he can delay it a day or two if needs be - he's just remembered his mum's secret stash of corn. 

today more hiding from the heat

so today it is due to be hot. but not as hot as it has been. returning to seasonal 22Cs for the week after. 

however it also rained overnight (there was a thunderstorm). that will  make it humid and possibly feel hotter. 

horsemouth has been out to the chickens already. one beast is not looking particularly healthy or cheerful and is getting bullied.  horsemouth has isolated it from the others and left it with some water and food in the far shed to see if it will cheer up. 

last night a bottle of beer as a reward to himself for having survived the heat. (hobgoblin IPA 3.4%).

music

if horsemouth could get his act together he could possibly squeeze another french track onto the far future village band III but he only really has nous n'irons plus au bois  to offer (le chaland qui passe will take far too long to learn - though it will be good once he has got it). 

he made a couple of attempts at it. perhaps he will send them off to rob and see what rob can make out of them. 

at one point he had a couple of fauré tunes learnt (automne and le secret) but he has pretty much forgotten them and they are of the chanson type anyway. 

he has some songs in spanish (but his spanish really is quite poor). 

today more hiding from the heat. 

extraordinary evidence (seven years, twenty four years, fifty years)

'... stay calm. this is simply the beginning' 

- hans gruber, die hard 

well 32C yesterday. 34C today.

and then gradually back down to the weekend and then a week at seasonal average temperatures (22C). 

of course greta thunberg is right. this is simply the beginning. 

and, of course, if the AMOC fails it will actually get colder here (colder and drier). 

here we see horsemouth live from the riverside on this day ( yesterday or maybe the day before) in 2021 (methinks). a beer and pizza mission with howard in stratford. 

meanwhile in attali land 

horsemouth has been continuing his investigations into jacques attali's stage of composition -  the one that comes as we move out of the era of repetition - the mass production and stockpiling of musical commodities - and into the era of composition, which is what exactly?

seven years after the initial publication of attali's first (french) edition came the english translation by brian massumi. this was introduced by frederic jameson (who was mainly interested in attali's relation to adorno) and afterwarded by noted musicologist susan mcclary.

in her essay mcclary finds extraordinary evidence of the inauguration of composition. how convincing we find this mish-mash of new wave and philip glass (and laurie anderson) is a distinct matter of taste. 

twenty four years after its first publication attali published an updated and substantially re-arranged version. horsemouth published a review in MUTE. 

and next year it will be fifty years since its initial publication. 

you'll pardon horsemouth if he is a little slow out of the gate - he hasn't thought about this stuff in a long time. 

horsemouth is up slightly early and has fed the chickens. it is due to be a hot day. 

at the weekend horsemouth will miss the leigh folk festival (he simply cannot get away). however should you be around in the south east he recommends it to you. 

after that it is soon the end of the month. 

the round dance and the jaws of cerebrus

the round dance

'five people in a circle. are they singing? is there an instrument accompanying them? is bruegel announcing the autonomous and tolerant world, at once turned in on itself and in unity?

for my own part. I would like to hear the round dance in the background of carnival's quarrel with lent as the culmination, not the inauguration , of a struggle begun twenty-five centuries ago. I would like to hear it as the forerunner of postpenitence, postsilence, at the back end of the church, not the rearguard of pagan carnival, supplanted by capitalist lent in the foreground.'

- jacques attali, noise: the political economy of music, english translation 1985.

the jaws of cerebrus

hot day yesterday. (hot day today).

'... nous marchions sur un tapis de fleurs qui nous cachait un abîme...'

- comte de ségur, mémoires, souvenirs et anecdotes (1824). 

such was the quote that made it into in the jaws of cerebrus, a radio 4 documentary about global warming (but particularly in the south of europe - spain, greece, italy).

it’s been about 32C out here in the wilds (35C on thursday) and horsemouth is cowering indoors. he knows that his friends in london and the south east have it worse - one is working on a roof, another will be in the kitchens.

he’s just been to the village. he passed two of the bell-ringers mowing and strimming the graveyard - he didn’t stop to lend a hand.

how hot things get changes what work can be done and when it can be done

the heat warps railway lines and overhead power cables and knocks out signalling systems. 

heat and rainfall alter where crops can be grown and where is good for animals. hotter weather causes more evaporation from the sea and then later more (and more sudden) rainfall on land - and thus more flooding.

in france they’ve had to shut down a nuclear reactor because the cooling water was too hot.

ok stay cool and stay safe peoples (and better yet stay in).

an entirely written in the morning blogpost

 a-ha! an entirely written in the morning blogpost 

(unless of course horsemouth carries on writing it in the afternoon)

horsemouth can't decide whether he should blog quick, go do the watering (before it warms up) and then come back to it later, or...

actually yes that's probably the right strategy. 

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

ok back after a spot of watering and the milk taken over  to the garage. (32C today maybe 35C thursday). 

... and what's the thing with jacques attali's noise?

noise is a book about the political economy of music. it argues that music is annunciatory - that the political economy of music is ahead of the broader political economy. this (at least) is the rationalisation proposed by frederic jameson in his forward to the english edition - one concerning the interactions between base and superstructure proposed by engels - the relations of production can determine culture but also (reciprocally) the political economy of cultural activities can indicate how the base is going to develop. 

that would be the (broad) thesis of noise translated into marx-speak. 

whether this is an accurate reflection of marx's thought or not horsemouth is not qualified to say. he suspects not. he suspects we are dealing with a simplification by engels that leads us into temporal and causal paradoxes. 

horsemouth was privileged to live through a period when music and  musical production and consumption was changing rapidly as a result of digitalisation - first at the level of production, then at the level of consumption.

to him it seemed that attali's theses around repetition (the huge overproduction and stockpiling of musical commodities) was coming true and that a counter attack was being staged round DJ culture and rave and hip-hop and any situation where the record was becoming a means rather than an end. 

the era being ushered in is one of composition - this is an unhelpful piece of naming by attali. in attali's first attempt at theorisation in bruits (1977) attali sees improvisation as fundamentally hopeful. 25 years later much of rave, MP3 etc. has happened and so attali attempts to incorporate this, but he's not your best source on all of these things. 

it seems to horsemouth a good time to come back to these ideas as AI make inroads into music production and consumption as a precursor to its wider effects in the economy. 

of course (helter skelter - coming down fast), given the speed at which AI is restructuring things, we may not have long to enjoy our new theoretical clarity.

coming next year (of course) 50 years of attali's bruits.