'if you're here with me in the end times...'

'if you're here with me in the end times... end of video times... catch you soon.'

- thrift-a-life/ bookpilled on his clothing side-hustle (now with new technology)

ok horsemouth spent another morning fucking around with the drains (hopefully he hasn't done more harm than good). at the end he dumped some drain cleaner down the main offender and then washed it down with some more water. he's since taken off all his clothing he was wearing in the debacle, had a shower and chucked the clothes in the washing machine.

there is a limited amount he can do. rather than try and fix it his probable goal should be to nurse the system along. 

failing that. hire some professionals. 

he had a headache all day (he'd been hoping that would clear). finally in the evening it seemed to have shifted. 

it is the morning. time to get back on the far future village band thing. rob aims at one track a day. 

'if you're here with me in the end times...' says the one. 

darn it! look at how stressed horsemouth is! he just forgot the coffee and has overboiled it. but, by way of compensation, now he has his coffee. 

enough entertainment (the dance of the golden rays)

'interesting situation. no internet. back off downstairs to try it again in a bit

horsemouth has his coffee. and as much digital entertainment saved on his various laptops as he has.'

horsemouth has typed this before. and once again it is true. 

it makes him anxious but in theory he has enough entertainment stored already (in books and CDs) to last him a lifetime and, if worst comes to worst, there's the tv and the radio (and hey! he could go an buy a newspaper). 

the day began (yesterday) - eggs to the crossroads and bins down the drive (recycling according to horsemouth's calculation). 

so far so good. horsemouth also did some mucking out of the hen shed also. 

ok so he's just sorted one possible source of anxieties. (he dares say he'll find some others soon). 

ok it's the morning. horsemouth wakes up with a headache. he downs two paracetamol.  remind him to go and pick up the bin from the bottom of the drive. later his mum goes into town. 

more work on the far future village band IV is going on far off in riogordo. three sailors  has turned into some kind of a march. there's a track called the dance of the golden rays. 

elevation and spiritual blessing

ok horsemouth has been picking some runner beans, some tomatoes, some damsons and some plums. this has cheered him up a bit. he was feeling slightly headachey and anxious. with the damsons and the plums horsemouth is not exactly sure which is which - more of one and (in the end) less of the other (sod's law) - anyway less than last year or previous recent years.  

perhaps he could put more effort into picking some apples. 

he should really get some broad beans in so they can overwinter and become earlies. he's put in some peas in the hope that he'll get some before winter arrives. he might hedge his bets and have some in the greenhouse too. 

today the anniversary of the recording of two more tracks from the ash grove gig in 1972 - elevation and spiritual blessings. 

horsemouth wakes up anxious as to where he will sleep when he comes up to visit the wen. he has time to sort it out (but in classic horsemouth worry about it when you can't fix it he's worrying about it first thing in the morning). 

well it's a beautiful morning (blue skies and sunlight) and the coffee tastes good. let him reorientate a little about what is good. ok it's clouding over now but the weather forecast doesn't look too bad. 

he has tried re-recording a version of tri martalod but he's still not feeling it. maybe he should steal some lyrics from renaud's trois matelots. 

anyway he's very pleased with night walk as the whistling tune is now called. 

a night walk beset by ghosts and random fears

yesterday

already a busy day. sudden unauthorised morning phonecall to book a medical appointment. much wailing and gnashing of teeth. eventually it seems to have all come together painlessly (excepting the wailing and teeth gnashing) but we won't know for sure until the appointment is done. 

phew. this means of doing business is exhausting (and there is another thing horsemouth could do with getting out of the way). 

in the afternoon  

the first arrival of a track for the far future village band IV - and great it sounds too! (ok let him listen to it again... ah!!!). 

here's horsemouth whistling bravely as he goes for a night walk beset by ghosts and random fears. as soon as horsemouth can he will play it to you. 

a second arrival - horsemouth is less keen, he will try redoing his bits. they've got time. 

earlier a walk on the common (in daylight). bump into a neighbour walking her two dogs. 

later a battle with something google. (horsemouth does hope he can post this tomorrow). seems like it won't let him post up photos without signing in (again). bizarre. (ok he's got it sorted - he thinks). 

the morning dawns rainy and grey. horsemouth feeds the chickens and takes the milk over to the garage. 

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).