even more rural rides and urban explorations

the cobbett (rural rides) goes well - having been jailed to newgate as a radical cobbett is pursued everywhere not just by rain in the form of st. swithin the classic predictor of an inclement english summer but also 'judge's'wig shaped clouds' (this may be code or accurate meteorological information). it is the years after the napoleonic wars - the coasts are littered with huge martello forts, the pensions list stuffed with ex-army officers, the state has taken an interest in agricultural production and mutters on about 'overproduction', speculation has taken hold. agricultural workers are being starved off the land.

'it is the destructive, the murderous paper-system, that has transferred the fruit of the labour, and the people along with it, from the different parts of the country to the neighbourhood of the all-devouring Wen...'

'this vile paper-money and funding system; this system of dutch descent, begotten by bishop burnet and born in hell; this system has turned everything into a gamble. there are many hundreds of men who live by being the agents to carry on the gambling. they reside here in the Wen; monay of the gamblers live in the country; they write up to their gambling agent, whom they call their stockbroker...'in such a state of things how are you to expect young men to enter on a course of patient industry? how are you to expect tat they will seek to acquire fortune and fame by study or by application of any kind?'

cobbett is old church - he has it in for the jews, the quakers and the methodists (despising their preaching most of all - though he is partial to methodist hymns sung by pretty girls). 

thursday horsemouth bumped into his old friend andy james (now there was a surprise), friday he went for a womble round the hood with his old friend paul clark. there was something cruel and didactic about the itinerary (broadly the concrete footing of every new build for miles). this is response to paul's comment on a previous walk that at least there was no sign of riverside development here at the bohemian edge of the seaside towns. sadly this is not the case, as horsemouth endeavoured to prove, indeed concrete was being poured so hastily that it dribbled out of the cracks in the fencing.  whole new islands rising out of the estuary mud - actually no (but never mind, nearly).

and then over to canning town and the 80ies style dereliction on the estates behing the current wall of concrete. trinity street and the tinned up flats are still there - the stairwells have been blocked off (but then the fencing cut through)  and, sadly, to quote the joker in the killing joke,  'derelicts seem to have been using it as a toilet'. nonetheless dozens of empty flats all within 100 yards of each other while homeless families are cleansed out of the borough - doesn't look good horsemouth must say. paul noticed a sign up by the door of one of the flats'discourage unwanted callers' .

footsore they returned to horsemouth's lair and had a beer.

'sheep devour men.... and trees devour sheep'

now would probably be a good time to be reading the cobbett (a nation hamstrung by debt, pensions, and tithes (ecclesiastical taxes)) forcing the poor farm labourer down into debt and local poor law welfare provision and make-work schemes but horsemouth has put it to one side to concentrate on poe's gordon arthur pym -  essentially a treasure island knock-off. horsemouth has survived his first week back at work - there should be celebrations.

yesterday he was out at the v&a (surely one of the most beautiful museums) in the indian summer having wandered there through a misty hyde park - he hung around little france for a while pretending to read but in fact doing a lot of people watching/ letching the young. horsemouth is never out west. neither of the exhibitions he saw particularly did it for him but sitting by the central pond in the sun was definitely fun. there was an old copy of class war in the disobedient objects exhibition on protest and art, and the wapping news  from about the same time, video footage of greenham women rocking the fence. 

today it is rainy and grey - horsemouth hopes there's still some more sun to come from the year.

horsemouth is still thinking about the outcome of the scottish indepedence vote - he is still astonished that the ruling class allowed something so potentially destabilising (it kind of snuck up on him before he realised the full horror of it).

it is as if they have believed their own democratic and managerialist propoganda and think empire and union can be restructured as if it were some management buy-out, as if the only political strata of the state were the modern democratic/ administrative one, as if international finance markets didn't have something to say about the kind of stability they expect the 'democratic' regimes where value is warehoused and operations conducted.  of course even devo-max is now well and truly kicked into touch, the only chance of keeping it alive lying with idiot backbench tories (jumped up pack of rural solicitors that they are) demanding a proper settlement of the issue when cameron would prefer a quick pacifying bodge. salmond retires from the field of combat - it will be intersting to see if he writes anything (but it will also be utterly irrelevant).

in marx's parable of non-reproduction 'The Duchess of Sutherland and Slavery' the scottish lairds (integrated into the economy) go from larids to landowners and turf their subjects off the land to make way for sheep (in the medieval fashion - ' 'sheep devour men'  later still the sheep are replaced by trees 'and trees devour sheep' ) -  the whole region is depopulated (as  remains so as john hillaby notes in his walking diary journey through britain) and is returned to an anomalous state of 'nature'. instread of being developed it is literally devolved and that this 'looting' continues to lie at the heart of development is rosa luxemburgh's line (horsemouth gathers) . it may be that the existing set up with economic conditions set in the interest of london rather than scotland provides optimum stable long-term looting  of value, or it may be that a democratically run scotland could develop and produce more value (to be looted locally or to permit a marginally more equitable setup). but the motor for scottish independence was a political one, economic only at second remove, it is the irrelevance of how scottish people vote to how their economic future is decided in westminster. here we see the true 'triumph' of democracy and its continuation - we see the spread of the powerless local assemblies with tax raising powers that dare not raise taxes - a return of hollowed out historical forms and costumes or their invention. 

yet had salmond succeeded he would have royally fucked the westminster political elite - that they let it get even this close is tribute to their political ineptitude - that they have survived is largely down to luck.

either toss the piano or fcuk off!

horsemouth is not against hoiking a piano out of a window of the norflab tower - he thinks it would sound great - what he is against is the reduction in the amount of housing available at social rent that the privatisation of norflab tower (and indeed the housing of wob star trust members there) means. of course if doing this led to the creation of more housing (at social rent) in the seaside towns (or even further out) horsemouth would have to modify his objection and admit that at least the best possible thing was being done given the difficult circumstances. 

horsemouth doesn't really care about local connection or consultation - he believes these are myths (but fairplay if you can make them work for you) - what he cares about is having a roof over his head at a price he (and other working or be-benefitted stiffs) can afford - ideally somewhere funky, if not somewhere boring will be fine. he cares about keeping the poor (like himself) in the seaside towns. not because he thinks it is important to have a 'vibrant mix' of rich and poor (fcuk the rich) - but because the poor need to be close to their means of earning a living, they need to be close to the opportunity that the money sloshing around this city provides. it is merely that he will end up even poorer and more knackered if he has to commute in.

it is no surprise that the established tenants of the estates bordering on norflab are unenthusiastic about piano throwing games - it just looks like a waste of money to them - and that they are unenthusiastic about the wonderful community generating claims for modern art (because frankly these  claims are rubbish). the money spent by harca on revamping the neighbourhood (so the rich in norflab don't feel they are moving into a slum) benefits them far more than the presence of 'creatives' and their poodle murals. but the current tenants aren't the people disadvantaged by gentrification (or redevelopment as it is known) - the people disadvantaged are their sons and daughters who cannot get anywhere to live and the people displaced so that the gentrifiers and the bow artists can move in - they are people who (almost entirely) are not local  and have never been local . the people who lose out are not here and will now never come.

but the artists have forgotten something as well - they, in a rush to embrace communitarian rhetoric, have forgotten the contempt the da-daists and futurists felt for the established world and the denizens of it rich and poor - it is not enough to ironize both the world of your parents and the world of the estate trash you must show that you know better than both.

now either toss the piano or fcuk off!

urban wanderings with economical and political observations relative to matters applicable to, and illustrated by, the estates

horsemouth has started on william cobbett's rural rides - cobbett points to the corporations, to crown lands usurped by various lords, he points to taxfarming and rentiers, 'base and fraudulent paper money, that loan-jobbers, stock-jobbers and jews' etc. etc. cobbet rides out west (kensington to uphusband) past the country houses of the gentry who sit in parliament and have let this happen. likewise, though thankfully without the anti-semitism,  horsemouth finds marshall berman's all that is solid melts into air is useful here. here to horsemouth, in the east, on his urban wanderings, robert moses and his corporations and expressways, here at the edge of docklands, in an interstitial district of swamp and car yards and (at best) distribution centres triangulated by giant sweeping roads, cycle paths, trainlines, tubelines. muddy tidal rivers reveal the swamp underneath.

at goodluck hope a footbridge spans the river and a new luxury district rises where there were once factories and warehouses. everywhere the cranes rise up at their command depositing investment silos of debt serving rental income like alien eggs. deep in the earth tunneling machines enact 25 year plans. the city's population will swell by the million until the floodwaters come, or the future runs out.

and on the estates a sure but steady rinse begins where even the social housing that remains on them is sold or the tenants within displaced by bedroom taxes (the requirement of overcrowding by law), by housing benefit caps, in the long march of possession orders for rent arrears through the courts. above this and as ideology a willingness to seek market value to fund affordable housing, a romance of development in difficult times, where the old stock is either demolished or supplemented by properties at affordable rent. affordable rent itself already falsified by vast increases in housing benefit for those in work, by working tax credits.

oh the crocodile tears up at the unaffordability of it all, dressed in the costume of cobbett, in the sack cloth and ashes of prudence. soon an adjustment will have to be made, perhaps lean years for the investors, creative destruction - the dumb money harvested, their assets picked over, and then returning market confidence, returning investor confidence. the water flows down to the sea, the sea floods in, tides turn, estuary mud stinks but it is soon covered again, the money is loaned out, assets created, rents charged, the debts are repaid with interest or the assets seized, it all balances, it's all cycles, and the money.... the money seems to pervade everything and yet fly upwards into the skies, whether those skies are troubled or clear and blue.

it is a landscape that is making a killing.

and down below (as if on google earth) our camera zooms in on a solitary figure walking, circling round him, with him, close by, watching and silently judging. it is horsemouth. he walks out to bow ecology park to do a little reading, watching the construction round what was goodluck hope, waiting to see if they will open up the riverside walkway at the other end of the park - one that stretches clear down to the tip of canning town. but look at his face, you can see he is troubled, old wrongs trouble him, he watches the water flow down to the sea from this his garden. horsemouth has no horse, he only has his feet, he will take you where he can, and show you what he sees, he will tell you what can be told and leave a silence to indicate what cannot. and then he will hand you over to someone who will tell you something altogether different. he hopes that in the end you will see it his way.

confessions of the r(ev)eal

so horsemouth is back reading beneath the visiting moon by david grubb - he had it lent out until just recently in a fit of prosyletising. horsemouth doesn't do poetry much - he should do, he admires its concision, but he doesn't - he needs the stealth and seeming directness of prose. it is subtitled an english childhood but for horsemouth his time as a psychiatric nurse or indeed meeting the actor who is supposed to play him in the film of his life (horsemouth can't find any other reference to this film anywhere) or his proposal for 'memory photographs' in prose (and the blank pages he leaves for you to do this) are just as interesting.

one hundredth post

horsemouth's morning routine involves getting up, opening the curtains, turning on the computer, putting the coffee on, brushing his teeth (and perhaps getting dressed - depending on the weather)... and then he checks facebook (he may check his email or he may listen to the 5.30 news on iplayer either before or after doing this depending on his level of inspiration). it is there (or rather here) that he diarises whatever he did or thought about in the previous day or dreamed the previous night. he finds this form of digital confession very useful - similarly the ability to show people what he's been listening to, to invite them to listen to it too. but there is a sense in which it grants the control that prose gives to his actions - he can chose when and where to tell people these things, and they are not obliged to respond by social convention, they can elect to respond.

there's a problem with doing this in the morning in that this is often the sunniest part of the day (and horsemouth likes the sun).

of course in the old days one would have just gone round someone elses house for a cup of tea and chat - he does that a bit these days (friends on the block and that) - but it's a bit more like last of the summer wine than the likely lads. another outbreak of the bookgroup would be good.

horsemouth should get on with writing his gert ledig tribute - live from the social housing trenches of east london, he should do some more work on his singing and playing, and then of course (sigh) there are more books to be read. soon horsemouth is back at work - he's already taking boookings.

musicians of bremen reviewed and horsemouth out and about being sociable

thanks to iona tanguay (of gertrude) for writing a review of  musicians of bremen's album.

'he loves the public, but not as people'

so horsemouth went out to hear adam sherry (of dead forest index) sing a solo gig at an exhibition of max's photographs in the crypt of the little dorrit church (st. george the martyr - borough).  he has a good voice and layers himself up nicely with a loopstation pedal, his guitar accompaniment is  effective and unshowy with an unfashionably relaxed attitude to guitar tuning. as usual horsemouth would advise (as he would for himself) more structural variation in how the tunes are put together. 

with the loopstation horsemouth would make a comparison with david thomas broughton (who uses the loopstation to undermine/ supplant / call into question the moment of performance) and its use to provide a seamless redoubling of the performance (to allow one to harmonise with ones-self etc.).

horsemouth has been considering the following quote about robert moses, the famous carver out of the cross bronx expressway and faust as developer in chief in marshall berman's all that is solid melts into air.  the quote is from frances perkins (america's first secretary for labor under FDR),

'he loves the public but not as people. the public is ... a great amorphous mass to him; it needs to be bathed, it needs to be aired, it needs recreation, but not for personal reasons - just to make it a better public.' 

new improved sociability horsemouth has been out two nights in a row - surely this is a bit excessive. 

'association with human beings lures one into self-observation'

one of many statements in Kafka's notebooks later published posthumously in Parables and Paradoxes (1946), and The Blue Octavo Notebooks (1954) as translated by Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins - ths is now a shop billboard on redchurch street in shoreditch (but is it a clothes shop or a restaurant or a perfumiers? - horsemouth could not tell). 

sunday, though horsemouth doesn't think much of him as a painter, horsemouth went out to a william burroughs exhibit - he liked the things that had been shot at, he liked three little morrocan themed minitures by brion gysin - he liked the dreammachine (but he had seen it before at the perfume launch). strangely horsemouth bumped into jen (who he has not seen in a long time - she asked to be remembered to ross and elsie). they then went round myk's awesome flat nearby for a coffee (horsemouth repo'd his copy of david grubb's beneath the visiting moon) and then for vegan cake in the horror that is brick lane - but the cake stall wasn't there so horsemouth had a tagine instead.

they then (for they were mob handed) went off to a cafe in hackney in search of improvised music (there horsemouth met merv who horsemouth also hasn't seen in a long time). they then went to a pub near liverpool street to round out the evening (and discussed life, love and movies). for the whole time of horsemouth's existence in shoreditch (about 10 years) the pub (the crown and shuttle?) had been derelict - inside it has stripped walls and a beer garden and a selection of real ales at 4 pounds plus a pint. 

horsemouth had thought of visiting the exhibition with sean the previous evening - but sean demurred saying that the last time he'd seen the shot at things william burroughs himself had been there.

here we see burroughs and kafka reappraised in terms of their positive benificent aspect -'association with human beings' and 'self-observation' are understood postively and immediately re-incorporated into the business of hustling us to seek satisfaction for our wants in material items. the couples walked around hand in hand - the gaggles of friends stopped for frequent consultations (in spanish or italian) - it all loooked very pretty in the slightly autumnal  sunlight. monday people are back to work but for now they want to run and play (and later cake). 

horsemouth doesn't feel himself a part of it - but he sees the lure  of it - new improved horsemouth is trying to get as much socialising in as he can before the world of work begins again and he's down the rabbit hole for another year.

on our nevsky prospect everything is also, once again, made elsewhere. they will take us off to crystal palace, once again.

horsemouth invites you all to the musicians of bremen bandcamp page which even includes a free download of musicians of bremen's  cover versions.

now read on...

'I am afraid my sentences are becoming grammatically incorrect.'  - andre gide (last words).

horsemouth is proposing a little fiction (collectively authored). will people bite? he needs to go get a copy of a gert ledig book - here we have an omniscient god's eye view of everything but one that stays with one character (and even goes inside his or her head) but then when they meet another character the worldview hops into that characters head and away they go - chain letter/ pass the parcel/ video game. this works well for warzones and characters at the end of their tether or beyond it. it makes the world feel like a vast senseless and malevolent  machine, like being inside a dardennes brothers movie, and it makes it easy for people to co-operate on writing a piece (hopefully). fiction will allow us to telescope events together.

horsemouth proposes that they thinly fictionalise their own struggles, conflicts etc. - stay with what you know. 

horsemouth's brother's kid plays a lot of shoot'em up video games - once you have seen an enemy (or an ally) they become highlighted and can be seen through walls. this probably helps reproduce the effect of being able to hear them moving about or perhaps it just makes the actual experience less random, makes it seem more like it makes sense and is logically satisfying. the character even continues to see for a limited time after their own death and the death is replayed (horsemouth suspects for these reasons). and then the character is off - reborn into this world of endless conflict once again. (strangely horsemouth's brother's kid seems in no hurry to become a buddhist). 

today horsemouth will probably finish off all that is solid... he's also dipping into the oxford book of death (dj enright) which has a part of the ressurection at cookham as its cover. currently horsemouth is a little squeamish about the topic (death not resurrection)  - he hasn't played the reverend gary davis's death don't have no mercy recently because truly it doesn't (and neither does life), he liked (and will probably steal) the following stanza,

'life's too short for worrying.'

'yes, that's what worries me.'

origin unknown.