'best wishes and congratulations...' (a mutation of pride on the road to utopia)

the weather looks good all the way out till thursday (and then it rains again)

remind horsemouth to get out in it. 

no zoom beers with howard today (he was busy with his students). 

'cousie bevan's birthday. I called in at hay castle in the afternoon to pay my respects and offer my best wishes and congratulations...' 

kilvert this day in 1872. he gives her a book called brave old ballads (possibly as illustrated by john gilbert). 

a mutation of pride

'the shift from wanting to be first in the city to wanting to be last, is, by a mutation of pride, to trade a dynamic madness for a static one...' 

- e.m. cioran, history and utopia. 

and this is the mutation horsemouth is trying to undertake, to move away from his concern with the communal endeavour (many of whom, to be honest, never wanted horsemouth's concern anyway). if all goes well the communal endeavour's attempts to raise the properties to an EPC C will move into the doing phase - at this point we move from things that help the co-op as a whole to doing things that benefit individual members in the houses. 

this (horsemouth is saddened to admit) he finds much less compelling. 

for cioran politics is an egotistical, envious business and best recognised as such. horsemouth is inclined to sugar coat his egotism and enviousness with rhetoric about the greater good of the greatest number but, he is sad to say, it's egotism and enviousness all the way down.  

horsemouth likes to get on and do. if toes get trodden on along the way to the greater good he's quite bad at reflecting on that. 

horsemouth has been listening to some early orbital concerts (they were an interesting bunch). here a gig by various followers of alice coltrane, brandee younger, the ashram choir etc. 

of course a book called history and utopia is liable to contain some jottings about utopia. now given the depths of cioran's negativity you wouldn't expect him to be able to find much positive to say about the various utopias but he has definitely done his reading, hesiod, cabet, saint-simon, pelagius, robert owen etc. 

he sees them all as attempting to return us to hesiod's golden age. 

of course he finds voices against such foolishness also - dostoevsky for example. he instructs us to make that mutation of pride and abandon our attempts to re-obtain the golden age. 

'televised music is a pointless rigmarole' (1968)

yesterday 

horsemouth went for a wander on the common. he met a flock of sheep - all hand reared and named. 'that's red circle. that's cloud (because she looks like a cloud). that's surprise (because she always looks surprised) ...' 

they were placid beasts. unbothered by humans or dogs (perhaps too much so). 

he also read an essay on theodor adrono's early music criticism. sample sentence;

'... the putrescent geniality of that bourgeois realm haunts our dreams in the form of dread...'

the title of this blogpost? an adorno title. (televising music? he's against it.)

oh teddy horsemouth has missed you (you grumpy old so-and-so). 

el niño over summer. so hotter and drier. so possibly droughts. so possibly water shortages. 

today. no kilvert today. 

tomorrow the last kilvert for april (1872).

looks like a good morning. horsemouth is up early. let him get a coffee. 

'the country is filled with the ringing strokes of the chopping axes...' (incidents of mirror travel)

'I went up the cwm this afternoon. the road was cut to pieces by the ponderous timber carriages dragging timber down from the cwm dingle, and old james jones the stonebreaker was in despair... 

the country is filled with the ringing strokes of the chopping axes...'

- kilvert, diaries, 24th april 1872.

horsemouth is back from the bell-ringing

to his shame the bell rope slipped through his fingers last night and he had to be rescued. other than that it went ok. (er,) he could have done without that happening. but sods law was in effect. 

afterwards beer (which cheered him up). plus he managed to sell some eggs (so that has cheered him up also). 

incidents of mirror travel

‘in the side of a heap of crushed limestone the twelve mirrors were cantilevered in the midst of large clusters of butterflies that had landed on the limestone. for brief moments flying butterflies were reflected; they seemed to fly through a sky of gravel.’

-  robert smithson, incidents of mirror travel in the yucatan (1969). 

it's a beautiful morning outside. horsemouth will be off for a wander at some point. 

a better future (utopia parkway)

it's yesterday evening 

it's yesterday evening when horsemouth types this (as compared to the today when you will probably be reading this). all is good. it is still daylight out and he has locked up the chickens for the night (and fed and watered them before you ask). 

he has spent the day (off and on) reading edouard louis' the end of eddy - his life is still terrible (but then again it's not actually as terrible as just about every other member of his family).

'she thought that she had made mistakes, that without meaning to she had closed the door on a better future... she didn't understand that her trajectory, what she would call her mistakes, fitted in perfectly with a whole set of logical mechanisms that were practically laid down in advance and non-negotiable.' 

he wandered about on the common for a bit. 

today

as will be. he will start working on learning plain hunt again. remind him about the eggs (he was going to take eggs). try to make an effort. 

utopia parkway was a street in queens (where the artist joseph cornell lived).

it's a greyish morning. the bbc weather says it's going to clear and then be good all next week but then be rubbish the week after. hopefully the runner bean plants will be established by then.

he's been out to unleash the chickens. he has his coffee. he has had a letter (his savings seem to be holding up ok). 

love affairs (plans and prospects)

'held a consultation with mrs. venables about my love affairs, plans and prospects. I see how it will all end. alas, who could have believed that I could be such a villain?' 

 - kilvert, diaries, 22nd april 1872. 

it's all coming to an end for kilvert. soon he will leave clyro. later in his middle age he will marry and end up as curate of nearby bredwardine. (but before that he will return to clyro briefly). 

tomorrow no kilvert. (what will horsemouth do? what will horsemouth do?).

ok he's off outside to listen to the radio. (one o'clock news and such). 

his afternoon got sucked into waiting for a TESCO delivery and then into arguments over whether he'd ordered what he had been told to order. 

last night he re-posted  some photos from his POPLARISM voice over for suke driver. there he is in the iron shirt (the red pinstripe suit) with his beard shaved out but some sideboards left on attempting to resemble george lansbury. all this to help him get into character for his reading. 

as usual any photo he posts does much better than anything he writes (there's a lesson in this horsemouth). 

he started reading edouard louis' the end of eddy (he is reading more but he is unable to settle on one particular book). edouard grows up skinny and gay and bullied in some roughneck northern french town. now we know from the reading his biography of his mother that things will eventually come good for him (but not right now). 

horsemouth (being horsemouth) is unlikely to tell you anything about his love affairs (plans and prospects). 

today a greyish morning and cold. horsemouth worries about the runner bean plants he put out. 

water flowing underground

 'a day of wild driving snow, with a fierce bitter wind from the east. mr. venables had a terrible journey to the chapel, on of the worst he has ever had.

preached on the story of balaam extempore this afternoon from numbers xxii, 22 and made a miserable exhibition, very nearly breaking down...' 

- kilvert, diaries, 21st april 1872. 

the leigh folk festival 2026

horsemouth has been contemplating the leigh folk festival (june 25th to june 28th)

this year featuring the mighty lou and leo (who, as you know, he knows) plus roshi nasehi, belinda kempster and fran foote, diana collier (with a band), and the owl service. 

you see that makes a pretty good line up (horsemouth is assuming a sunday in the fishermen's chapel rather than saturday main stage, though to be frank it could be the friday in the fishermen's chapel - time will tell).

kick off times seem to be pretty much about 11am. 

the rest of the line up he pretty much does not know. 

last year himself and howard were put off by hearing a radio show of musicians playing at the festival (all of the modern singer-songwriter type, young people with 4 chord cycle songs). 

one year they were put off by rail strike hell. 

now unless he is covered by a relative this will mean something like going down the saturday night, visiting the festival on the sunday and returning on the monday. he just cannot make the 'travelling up on a sunday morning' work, even if he could get a lift into hereford/ abergavenny/ newport - well ok maybe newport it would work). 

some friends are doing a bookfair may 22nd to 25th, horsemouth would like to go to this also but again struggles to see a way he can do it. 

last night the AGM of the commons water committee 

a spring on the common is fed with water from the malvern hills, it is distributed by old military infrastructure (and more modern alkathene pipe) round a series of water tanks before being sent down seven or eight  'lines' to various of the houses and farms mostly on the edges of the common. the longest line is about 1.2km. 

a schematic of the various pipes and flows is a complicated beast (horsemouth is reminded of the water supply system to the castle in ismail kadare's the siege, the one deliberately designed to baffle human understanding). 

but, driven on by the goad of a regulation 18 order, progress is being made. 

horsemouth thanks the board for their hard work. horsemouth notes (in his humble opinion) that they are a good strong board with a wide range of skills. 

tantalisingly incomplete

it's the 20th of april 1872 and kilvert is returning to clyro.

'left dear hospitable ilston rectory at 8.15 and drove to killay station with mr. and mrs. westhorp and henry. there I bade them all goodbye and they drove on to swansea. as I was taking my ticket hughes, rector of bryngwyn, clapped me on the back. he was going to hay...'

kilvert is obliged to accompany him in third class. 

the next day in clyro 'a day of wild driving snow'. 

meanwhile in the wilds of herefordshire...

horsemouth mostly spent the day reading isaiah berlin's three critics of the enlightenment: vico, hamann, herder and in particular the essay on herder - herder and the enlightenment. which, at about 92 pages, is a decent readable length.

now herder originated the term nationalism but there's less comfort there for a modern day right winger than you might suppose because he's not a fan of the state. his model of nationalism is a more cultural and linguistic one.

'we live in a world we ourselves create'

herder was big into the people and their culture. in his wikipedia entry he is praised for his tantalisingly incomplete ideas. 

a friend proposed benedict anderson's imagined communities as a way out of horsemouth's perplexity - he'll look at that soon. he read it a long time ago and has mostly forgotten it. 

in the evening he carried on reading italo svevo's my life. 

today another beautiful morning. he has planted out most of the runner beans and they seem to have survived the cold night. 

tonight a meeting of the commons water committee.