books, films, gigs, events march 2026

 books

- diaries: kilvert mostly and fernando pessoa, the book of disquiet 

- the portable hannah arendt. edited by peter baehr

- $hutdown. adam tooze

- a book on joseph beuys reviewed in art in america

- this is a classic: translators on making writers global. essay on marguerite duras.

- anna dezeuze,  blurring the boundaries between art and life (in the museum?), tate papers, 31/1/2012

-  lewis carroll  eight or nine wise words about letter-writing 

- preview of colby chamberlain's  fluxus administration: george maciunas and the art  of paperwork

-  karl marx, the civil war in france, the third address, may1871

- LA review of books article on alice constance austin's llano del rio cooperative colony

- the dedalus book of dutch fantasy

- clive furness on open newham

- newspaper articles on  the possible re-opening of the hereford-ross-gloucester railway and similarly on reopening bromyard station 

- doris lessing, the golden notebook (fragment)

- the WIRE review of 2024 

- crack magazine review of cosmic music: the life, art and transcendence of alice coltrane by journalist andy beta, the quietus and WIRE (april 2002) articles on her

- nlr sidecar RIP antónio lobo antunes, 

- GDN  tansy gardam piece on old technology

- death of habermas (LRB and nlr)

films

- a celebration of marguerite duras (interview with one of her translators)

-  ghost in the shell (original)

- satan's sword  (an earlier incarnation of the (anti)hero samurai in full-moon swordsman)

- boris johnson's  'you must stay home' speech march 23rd 2020

-  LRB's james butler, peter geoghegan and ethan shone on peter mandelson, also political disagreement 

why haven't 'the best ideas' won?, 

- the 1967 french version of  'the invention of morel'  

- a life without writing (bbc sounds)

- bookpilled/ outlaw bookseller/ 

- the black cat (lucio fulci) part

gigs the wave debb show (online)

events

well we shall have to see. 

his achilles' heel (boots on the ground)

 'at four o'clock the people were already moving about in the churchyard with baskets of flowers, and the children were especially busy in flowering the graves...' 

- kilvert's diary, easter eve, march 30th 1872.

in theory (by the time you read this) horsemouth will (probably) be on his way to the wen. he's trying to get his plans together for while he is there, so if you want to see him get in touch. 

remind him not to drink too much (his achilles' heel). 

at the moment he is sitting around waiting to travel with itchy feet (he's been for several walks already). 

will trump put boots on the ground in iran?

and if he does how many will die? 

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

the dream some kind of sales fair - towards the end horsemouth went for a korean icecream. in anotehr dream a domestic living situation, horsemouth had recently moved and not tidied up. horsemouth found several recording devices that howard had given him earlier and that he had forgotten about. 

more or less autobiographical ( the sweet bells of clyro)

'all my books are more or less autobiographical - a rather abstract form of autobiography, I admit.'  - e.m. cioran 

horsemouth has started on the temptation to exist (from whence this quote). he has read susan sontag's introduction and is most of the way through thinking against oneself.  he either bought it in skoob for £3 (this is his recollection) or it was denise's (according to the signature inside the front cover) and horsemouth has 'acquired it' somehow. 

in kilvert-land (on this day in 1872) he is concerned about the bells. 

'for the first time I heard today the sweet bells of clyro chiming down the valley just before I reached the chapel, I could even hear the three bells chime change for the single bell. the west wind brought the sound of the bells up the hill so clearly that it arrested me even while I was walking.'

'clyro church has a splendid bells' reads a local guide. 

'two date back to the medieval church and three were cast in 1887 and first rung to celebrate queen victoria’s golden jubilee. to complete the set, a sixth one was commissioned in 2024...' 

the guide has kilvert buying his first notebook (in which to keep his diaries)  in hay but this seems to horsemouth not so. 

horsemouth has the three volume plommer selection and a single volume selection  (jonathan cape paperback edition) somewhere (or perhaps he has redistributed it away via the powerscroft road book box). kilvert's niece destroyed most of his other writing - 3 journal notebooks survive because they were given away, horsemouth does not know if they contain additional material. 

it's a good job horsemouth didn't spend any time on watering yesterday (it started raining). 

this morning. he has made the transition across the british summer time line. in the morning a dream about hanging out with dj hype (horsemouth was doing his best to be cool). 

horsemouth diagnoses a lack of get up and go

on this day in 1872 kilvert is importuned by a man begging. 

tomorrow he will be waxing lyrical about the bells.

'for the first time I heard today the sweet bells of clyro

chiming down the valley...' 

you find horsemouth recovering from a lack of inspiration (it is the usual post drinking slump). yesterday he was in a fluey/ hangovery kind of state and lacked any get up and go.

this morning a bright spring morning (horsemouth has just been out to feed the chickens). in the greenhouse the runner bean plants are coming up nicely. not much sign of anything else yet. in the garden no sign of the broad beans yet (maybe it is not warm enough for them yet). 

a fake and misleading online review

so it's the morning and here he is typing away. 

yesterday on the radio a short comedy show about what it would mean if humans could no longer write and read (it would become much more difficult to collaborate on and achieve anything). 

having just watched a project die (or at least emerge diminished) from the swamps of spreadsheets and email horsemouth feels some doubt about this. he can't help feel that if people could have been gathered on site and have met and talked face-to-face then it would have survived, or perhaps even thrived and prospered. 

this is the kind of thought horsemouth often entertains. 

later some scripted fluff on emil cioran (said choran horsemouth is now informed). cioran is surely the least likely philosopher/ writer to get the scripted fluff treatment (even if you can get over his fascist period). 

ok in his later years he fed the stray cats in the park (heart warming detail) before succumbing to dementia (personal tragedy). himself and his wife, who worked as a teacher to support him, lived in a tiny top floor flat in  paris (heart warming detail). he knew samuel beckett. 

after writing his first few books in romanian he changed to writing in french - the video argued this was to slow himself down and to see the details and articulations of his thoughts better, to avoid easy metaphors and constructions. 

or maybe like the czech milan kundera he just wanted to be read (and not just in poor quality translations, often translations of translations kundera jokes). 

this inspired horsemouth to get out his cioran - he has three, no four; anathemas and admirations, a short history of decay, the temptation to exist, history and utopia (though he's not sure where his copy of this last one is - no he tells a lie, he's just found it). 

some, in the comments, were alleging the video was entirely AI slop 

written by, and read by, AI, which probably chose the graphics as well. doubt contaminates everything. 

as AI gets better. how can you be sure it's not AI? 

if it's not very good and amateurish. if it is poorly scripted (if at all) and delivered. 

here we have a mechanism by which writing can be ended. if it is no longer a communication between humans but merely a set of requirements from a machine. 

ok today a walk to simulate activity. he's just done it. two rabbits bounded up to greet him (and then bounded away). he hurried back because it looked like rain but then the sun cut through the clouds. 

perhaps zoom beers with howard later. 

devices at a standstill. materials good for thinking with.

no kilvert today! (what is horsemouth to do?).

'sheets of copper resting on stacks of felt. copper conducts energy, and felt produces warmth through insulation, but it also blocks currents...'

devices at a standstill. materials good for thinking with. 

a book on joseph beuys reviewed in art in america (you may have to register to see it). 

yesterday horsemouth tidied out the greenhouse a little. then a visit to the village to pick up the newspaper. later he wandered over to south view to deliver a letter for his mum.  bells in the evening.  discussion of AI in the pub after. 

horsemouth should probably refuel at some point. he should also diversify. his savings will probably take a battering. that's of course assuming (crows over tel-aviv) that this isn't armageddon (has no one seen the omen?)

horsemouth has just wrangled a journey (he hopes). it will either be acceptable or it won't. 

ok it's not. but he's done what was asked of him so he's covered. he's just looking at wrangling his own journey -  the cheapest route is via birmingham and rugby (go figure) £23.70. there may be some grief coming back (something about milton keynes). he thinks he can outflank this (if needs be) by getting a single direct to birmingham new street on the fast train. 

next week is holy week (so there would be no bell ringing anyway). phew. so horsemouth doesn't need to feel guilty about taking a week out. 

'years have done their work ...'

kilvert is writing to the bishop of st. david's to give notice of his intention to resign the curacy at clyro on the 1st of july 'when I shall have been a licensed curate in the same parish in your lordship's diocese for seven years and a half'. 

kilvert writes a lot that day in his journal. the best part of two and a half pages. he remembers his first day in clyro,

 'years have done their work and a change has come o'er the spirit of my dream'. 

this brings his journal entry to an end.

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

'... the oldest memories of the human race stand side-by-side with the latest developments. the greatest distances of time and space are bridged.' 

rahel vernhagen on her deathbed. she sees it all. assembles it all into her life. 

(she dies 7th march 1833). 

hannah arendt (who will watch it all fall apart a hundred years later) is less than impressed. 

have the years done their work with horsemouth? have they brought him to this exalted state? 

we shall see. 

outside it was raining heavily. earlier still is was hailing. 

horsemouth was out delivering eggs when the hail hit. it drove him back. he turned back. but then the sun came back out (sort of). and he completed his task. he did this without a hat. he thinks this was unwise. he doesn't want to catch yet another cold (to go on top of his existing one). 

in the evening his mum lit a fire. it required some coaxing to get it going properly. 

'since the first world war, capitalism has been a decadent social system. it has twice plunged humanity into a barbaric cycle of crisis, world war, reconstruction and new crisis...'  horsemouth had one of his earlier bands paraphrase part of this as 'boom, slump, war, reconstruction...'.

horsemouth agrees with the international communist current here (in general if not in the particulars). 

and we are off again. horsemouth doesn't think we are off into world war 3 but he does think we are entering a period of heightened danger. he believes the only rationale that makes sense of the US attacking both venezuela and iran is to deny china oil. but it doesn't necessarily need to make sense, it does not have to rise to the level of a strategy. 

here a beautiful morning. (greying out later but good all day)

along the tremorithic road (in the wood two deer)

'sunset on prince george's county' 

and 

'the world is waiting for the sunrise' 

based on leroy carr (and scrapper blackwell)'s 'how long blues' (allegedly)

'snow storms again, and hay fair' - kilvert, diaries, 25th march 1872.

as a result of his visit to the village the day before yesterday horsemouth is up a copy of the i-newspaper. 'fuel price rises inescapable'  it says 'ere. 

well that's bad news. 

ok yesterday horsemouth delivered the contract back to ewyas harold commons water society. this involved a walk over the common and along the tremorithic road.  there's a cheque that has to go somewhere else on the common, horsemouth thinks he has worked out where that has to go and he may do it later. 

in the wood two deer. 

today his mum is off to the garden centre. 

thursday bells.

friday. 

saturday.

sunday a visit.