horsemouth on the beach (eternal sunshine of a spotless mind)

Subject : horsemouth's ancestors - orpheus
 Posted Date: : 13 Apr 2007, 09:50

In the original stage production of orphee by jean cocteau the cryptic messages delivered by the radio were delivered by a talking horse. unfortunately horsemouth cannot watch the movie all the way through because the dvd has had jam spread on it - but he remembers it as being very good. horsemouth has just read plato's account of the death of socrates (as set to music by satie) -martin cooper's 'french music' says - 'satie's mainly negative qualities - ' no humbug, no repetition, no furtive caresses, no feverishness or miasma' in cocteau's words - are combined with a genuine, if tenuously expressed feeling... there are moments, as when Socrates drinks the hemlock, where the philosopher seems to be joining hands with debussy's damoiselle elue ... ' also on the record is debussy's chanson de bilitis - which horsemouth prefers... horsemouth is working hard learning la fille au cheveux de lin and is nearly ready to record it.

Subject : horsemouth on the beach (eternal sunshine of a spotless mind)
Posted Date: : 09 Apr 2007, 11:34

today (indeed yeasterday because this blog has been rewritten) horsemouth returned to one of his usual haunts - the swamp in haggerston park - a typical horsemouth summer would involve lots of sitting/lying on the park benches nearby R-E-A-D-I-N-G, something the youth (and certainly the deaf) never do... (last year was exceptional because he managed to swap it for the town beach in valencia) but the key benches have been removed and the lush verdant flower meadow has been converted into a lumpy desert by the british trust for conservation volunteers (bastards) despite the fact that horsemouth is on holiday he failed to go to a party saturday night - this he blames on an outbreak of the anti-socials - but horsemouth is nothing if not a sun worshipper and has been out toasting himself in the unseasonably warm and sunny weather -on his privatised sky-terrace! (see it and weep! as did his music therapy practicing friend dave) though there's still the ocassional nip in the air necessitating a horseblanket. john lanchester's recent piece on the digitisation of library stocks http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2051729,00.html caught horsemouth's eye in papers over the week as did reviews of barbara ehrenreich's book on music and dancing etc., apparently (at the ICA) she said she hates canetti's crowds - this seems unfair to horsemouth. but it is a measure of how difficult people find the idea of the crowd that canetti's enthusiasm for it can so often be misread as its opposite , it reflects a particular reading that is also made of gombrowicz -that they were against crowds (when everyone was against them) and for them (now that everyone is for them). 
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horsemouth has also been thinking about ranciere, his popularity with the art world (as witnessed in his cover star status in a recent art forum), his hatred of stages in theories and his tendency to wheel on the suffering and oppressed whenever his theory is criticised (both in art forum and in real life apparently). Ok - so horsemouth hasn't read enough yet but.... (also; horsemouth can't help feeling that he's seen the structure of ranciere's partage du sensible somewhere before...but he can't remember where...) Ranciere (and I apologise for the lack of an accent but I can't be bothered typing this in word or setting a keyboard shortcut) provides, as horsemouth friend martin argues, a means by which art criticism can not only have post-structuralist theory but also kantian aesthetics as well. As even the king of a relational art so anodyne that it has been described as 'corporate feng shui' Liam Gillick notes 'the danger here is that we are merely happy to read a theorist who has even bothered to address contemporary art. We might be ascribing an excess of potential to his reassuring assertion(s)...' what are the potentials of ranciere's work? his defence of art and revolution as a practice of disensus - as a rare (or maybe less rare in art galleries) irruption of something new into the social leads him to refuse existing theories (and in particular examination of economics) as being a blocking move. horsemouth should approve of the way in which this leaves the art object alive and mutinous (exactly what adorno is accused of not doing but in fact takes great pains to do) but again (as with the conflict free kindergarten that is relational aesathetics) this seems to horsemouth to be a bit panglossian as well.... wow! art does this! it does politics! wow! (I need never attend another crap demonstration again!) horsemouth likes some of what the theory does - it brings aesthetics back onto the table and makes it important, it provides a corrective to definitions of arts autonomy that seal it off from politics, it attributes to art something like sovereignty (an ability to be an experientially enacted critique of reason - at least as currently constituted - and to go beyond it to a new partage) - but horsemouth worries that this partage is semi-permeable And stageless because it need never be blocked – it's always a partage again and again and again – this is a magic cake that can endlessly have slices taken out it and be shared out and yet will magically regenerate in time for the next partage. this all seems too successful as a theory to horsemouth - like baby bear's porridge it is always 'just right' - 'oh look! they're exhibiting disensus!' the key question for horsemouth is how this can be taken forward ('and so? where to now?') yet any questioning that seeks to undermine this autistic freedom is immediately confronted by the great starving masses (don't you know art does politics! - just look at their little starving faces!). has ranciere really broken with althussairian authoritarianism or is this just a distibuted version? ranciere seeks to put everything back into play again - but to do this means that nothing has been used up or blocked - is this true there is also ranciere's as resistance to the ethical turn - an idea that horsemouth will take up later and ranciere as critic of relational aesthetics, both provide an alibi for arts turn to aesthetics Ladies and gentleman - you are now free to exhibit disensus! -------------------------------------------------------------

 last night horsemouth watched 'eternal sunshine of a spotless mind' which he liked (a lot) but it made him very sad - he remembers asking his NLP practitioner friend to have some of his life blanked but he couldn't at that time face destroying the evidence. horsemouth is aware of being deeply misanthropic, of being badly adjusted and of letting his social skills fester - but on the other hand at least he's making music again.

 Subject : horsemouth has remembered a dream (a rare event)
Posted Date: : 05 Apr 2007, 10:24

last night horsemouth dreamt he was blindfolded (and in a car?) for some reason he was feeling up the calves of a woman he new (and ... gentle reader... they felt GOOD!!!) somewhere around knee height (a chaste dream this - which is probably why horsemouth is sharing it ) he (and she, horsemouth thinks) took off their respective blindfolds... horsemouth was shocked to see who it was!!! --------------------------------------------------- last night horsemouth also went out for beers with the mute editors (diary; 8.30pm meet mute) and so feels slightly queasy this morning (horsemouth is a shandy drinking lightweight and can no longer hold his drink) -----------------------------------------------------

buffy sainte-marie; something shel-na-gig like about this cover horsemouth is hunting down her early experiments with a buchla synthesizer, not that she needs it her voice has so much vibrato it often sounds like a theremin and her use of mouth-bow (particularly on old english folk tunes reynardine -here subtitled 'a vampire romance' though horsemouth thinks it's about were-foxes reynard - and on lyke walk dirge - an anglo-saxon poem about the trials faced by the soul in the afterlife) is awesome. French chanson seems to be an influence as well

Subject : horsemouth stricken with remorse
Posted Date: : 05 Apr 2007, 09:56

horsemouth is stricken with remorse a friend has complained about racist and sexist language in the monkey-on-a-stick housing co-ops newsletter 'shut up and do as you're told' - and she has a point - the article in question is sexist. Putting it in the same issue as her article treating the same subject in a serious manner could be seen as a betrayal. horsemouth has apologised for his editorial failings in not bringing this juxtaposition to her attention ahead of publication - this seems to horsemouth to be his real failing in this matter - however horsemouth cannot apologise for the article itself because, in the first place, he didn't write it and secondly to do so would be to violate his understanding of how fiction and in particular satire work..

She wishes to establish 'an editorial committee' to prevent such outrages in future, but seeing as the co-op can't even keep its development committee quorate and active this strikes horsemouth as a bit hopeful. To horsemouth, this conflict seems a no-win situation, likely only to provoke calls for censorship (and accusations of witchcraft against horsemouth - who as a mule who stands on his hind legs is already in a precarious position). This puts horsemouth in a painful dilemma Like many organisations these days, the co-op often seems more interested in policing its members behaviours than fullfilling its actual alotted task of providing low rent housing to low wage povs so they can continue making their art/music/run their rag and bone businesses in high rent london - and horsemouth himself has frequently used satire as an (imperfect) means to criticise this. This has led him to use a poorly thought out no censorship 'it gets given in- it goes in' alibi when he is asked to present the newsletter for scrutinisation by the management committee. horsemouth is now hoist on this.

If life has taught horsemouth one thing it is that the useful and the good can only be accomplished by stealth.

horsemouth will now attempt to defend the text itself;

This is low satire in which a serious topic is treated as if it were not serious (as opposed to hudibrastics where a low topic is treated as if it were the fall of lucifer), this drives a sit-com like comedy of embarasment, ultimately aiming to assert a common humanity. To anyone familiar with the region, its politics, and what is at stake, this cannot be a satisfactory treatment, hence the charge of racism. But to criticise the article for this (and its sexism) is to refuse to recognise that fiction is not a blueprint for reality but its critique by over-extension (horsemouth subscribes to the bakhtin like notion that it is the last refuge of the carnivalesque as a critique of those in power) - to require that it be inoffensive or representative or undertake any other work is to hobble it. in juxtaposition to the complainants serious article on the same issue this satire clearly fails - the collapsing of difference in the name of common humanity fails as a strategy (as it does in most modern fiction) but equally horsemouth has no faith in the other alternatives proposed.