the illumination at canning town (roses and snow)

horsemouth is slightly headachey - no surprises really (a beer with john smith, a can of fosters with andy and paddy, a white mulled wine and a red mulled wine out in a cold canning town). horsemouth was out to witness the illumination at canning town - there was a samba band under the flyover (most excellent) and a cold looking stick in the wheel played clustered round a single microphone and with a minimum of banter. horsemouth chatted with georgina brett who does a voice into multiple guitar delays solo choir thing (or will do up at the others in stoke newington on sunday 7th december together with idiot st. crazy, hems, darkroom, darren sangita and himanish goswamy for a fiver) but not tonight - too cold. once, she said, she'd spent 6 months rehearsing for 3 hours a day to sing a piece by stockhausen as part of a large choral ensemble, annotating the score to work out what stockhausen was doing (but then she'd also played in a samba band).


check it out - robbie basho and tablas too...

horsemouth bumped into vic as well (who, busy as ever, is doing a tea dance at which ivan will be appearing at finsbury town hall). he bumped into jamie lucie also.

it was the library that finished them off and sent them all their various ways - there was a bar - but it was in a library - the books were hidden and the carpet covered with clingfilm but still it was in a library and thus sacred space.

three weeks to the solstice and thus to horsemouth's next gig - ('what are you? a druid?' remarked john smith). next week horsemouth labours in his standard pattern. today he will stock up on museli ahead of the apocalypse. yesterday he and john smith went for pizza and did some more work on noah, he played his version of satan your kingdom must come down to andy and paddy.

apart from last night it's unseasonably warm, the warming seas are producing a plague of giant lobsters soon they will begin swimming towards land and the (brief) age of the crustacean will dawn. horsemouth is with the somewhat grumpy richard hoggart (beset around with relativism and commercialism) - hoggart looks for good bad books, the kind of generic trash that stimulates thought and motivates feeling. horsemouth would cite philip k. dick's work as an example of this. hoggart quotes c.s. lewis 'the ideally bad book is one of which a good reading is impossible' - a book so braindead and of its type that nothing other can be made of anything in it.

"the moon and sun are travelers through eternity. even the years wander on...'

horsemouth has worked and walked back home and has had a little nip of pastis to celebrate (he will now have a coffee to sober back up and probably fry some potatoes). horsemouth has been listening to robbie basho's two concerts from Coe College's Sinclair Auditorium and to an unreleased rarity death song, basho uses his wordless singing the way most rock bands would use a lead guitar solo - to take him up and beyond.

beautiful golden autumn sunlight is shining into his room - horsemouth would like more beautiful autumn sunlight to shine in his room but without rearranging the building it is impossible.

horsemouth has a plan to tour around the sun - if a leeway of a week is allowed - horsemouth has already played the summer solstice 21/06 (on 28/06 as part of musicians of bremen at ayesha's secret house party), lammas (9/08) on 6/08 for tim goldie's abject bloc, the autumn equinox... musicians of bremen lamentably failed to play on but they did manage samhain (well halloween) on 31/10 at cafe bohemia. horsemouth has a cunning plan to play the winter solstice (21/12) on the 20/12 as a solo gig (more details soon). of such bodging and haggling is his life made. but it feels good to get his musical endeavours in sync (sort of) with the heavens. thereafter his next gig should be early february (imbolc/ groundhog day) midway between this and the vernal equinox is fahey week (incorporating basho day) - horsemouth will try to get blue crystal fire (by robbie basho) an airing.

today is the anniversary of the death of the poet matsuo bashō (from whom robbie basho took his name);

 "The moon and sun are travelers through eternity. Even the years wander on. Whether drifting through life on a boat or climbing toward old age leading a horse, each day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.”

'satan your kingdom must come down'

horsemouth is up early - his body now wakes him up at about a quarter to seven - later he goes to work (he will walk in to save money and to get fitter). the national guard occupies ferguson. the capitalist system countinues to bump along the bottom with low interest rates and low returns. serco have been reawarded the contract to run women's deportation centres despite currently being investigated for sexual assaults upon inmates.



 horsemouth has been working on satan your kingdom must come down (daddad 'nashville')

- he's bodging it a bit but it's sounding pretty good, he needs to get the repeat pattern smooth (and effortless) so he can sing strongly over it (it's a straightforward set of blues cadences). horsemouth is mainly thinking of the willie nelson version above - he should give a listen to the earlier gospel versions.

condensate flower (the wheel of the year)

horsemouth spent some time listening to waylon jennings last night particularly the early stuff. he's a good guitarist and the band are tight. horsemouth likes the generic nature of the music. after listening to merle travis's original of dark as a dungeon, he also checked out his picking I'll see you in my dreams was particularly amazing. outside it is sunny and bright but cold and damp. horsemouth has cropped about 10 cherry tomatoes from the tomato plant he brought indoors - there are about 8 left that are still green horsemouth hopes they will get the 'opportunity' to go red.

it looks like having played a gig for samhain (well halloween - with john smith as musicians of bremen) horsemouth will also be playing a gig for the winter solstice (well on the 20th anyroad - this time on his own as musician of bremen) - he should probably make a cycle of it samhain -winter solstice- imbolc - spring equinox - beltane - summer solstice - lughnasadh - autumn equinox - (and it all goes round again and again). horsemouth has no idea what the result of this operation will be (but he's prepared to try). he'll have to work out a set list and get practicing - it's only a month away.

'art has two constant and unending preoccupations: it is always meditating upon death and it is thereby creating life'

'brilliant though apocryphal' guiseppe di lampedusa describes the novels of daniel defoe as 'near diaries'. of stendahl's work he praises henri brulard (stendahl's account of his own early life and his real name). lampedusa was in mourning for the house where he was born (bombed by the allies when they took palermo in 1943), his wife (a psychoanalyst) suggested he write about it, from this and from his unvarying daily routine came his novel the leopard and a small collection of short stories that horsemouth now owns. (two stories and a memory - penguin 3/6 edition - 2 quid 50 along with the death of ivan illych leo tolstoy, signet classics edition - horsemouth probably has it already).

horsemouth was out west (having worked in the morning and gone for coffee) to transport his mother across the seaside towns and safely to his brothers residence in the heights of highams park - he'll be doing some of the return journey sunday (12.10 liverpool street - don't let him forget). he visited his favourite second hand bookshop (the one in the engagingly rundown bell street) - he's never taken the time to check out their music collection (he should do). it was a long week - horsemouth is looking forward to a lazy weekend.

anais is in therapy again. her subconscious has risen up in revolt against her life once again. atlantis has fallen (leaving only cape verde). but the crisis passes her life is good. she goes dancing with the haitians, at the end of the night the older ones get up and dance a minuet straight from the court of the sun king. it will be a long time before she leaves new york yet (not til the end of volume 4). maya derren will film anais and her friends, she will see herself.

her cover portrait is pure remedios varo, ethereal and detached she meets our gaze like some higher aspect of ourselves. she meets leonora carrington. 'for days I lived without my drug, my secret vice, my diary. and then I found this: I could not bear the loneliness.'

the way we live now (machinery of the heavens)

horsemouth is listening to the sound of the rain in the leaves - outside it is rainy and wet - inside it is toasty and warm (or will be when his antique boiler gets its act together). horsemouth has his marching orders for next week. it is (or will be soon) five weeks to the winter solstice (the darkest day of the year) from thence summer iz y-cumen in and we begin our long slow climb back up to the light through january and february (and march and april). it would be (of course) good to mark this in some fashion. the sun now sets at the far end of the block opposite (having travelled quickly through the long barrow of social housing).

Robert Charles Mann - Photo Artist Pinhole Solargraph at Chaumont-sur-Loire.
Exposed for six months between winter solstice
December 21, 2013 to summer solstice June 21, 2014.

hrsemouth needs to check if it will be at its most southerly point on the horizon at the solstice or if this will be at some other date. he wants to understand the machinery of the heavens better.

horsemouth works this afternoon (he has agreed to this) - he also notes the hours he did not work (due to results being handed back,non-attendance, tutorials being cancelled etc. the faff of education). some of these he managed to put to good use. he's reading richard hoggart's the way we live now - a useful thumbnail sketch of the shifts in education and broadcasting since his the uses of literacy (horsemouth has it round the flat somewhere). hoggart grumps against the false egalitarianism of 'relativism' and calls for judgement in a way that would have warmed the heart of the old school rcp. this is not entirely to horsemouth's taste (he finds it an uneasy meeting ground between reactionaries and so-called revolutionaries) but then the egalitarian, playful, creative is also a meeting ground between so-called revolutionaries and the management consultants of the new spirit of capitalism. his copy of the book is lightly annotated - horsemouth suspects a teacher - but it is also (endearingly) a bit battered, suggesting that it was stuffed at the bottom of a bag and allowed to get wet.

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

"Perhaps the way one tells how alive a particular art form is, is by the latitude it gives for making mistakes in it, and still being good."

  - Susan Sontag, from Against Interpretation.

one thing horsemouth finds about modern folk music is that it's very safe - despite the wire inspired incorporation of avant garde gestures - which seems to have domesticated them, to make them wipe their feet before they come in. it all sounds very nice and very well played but it doesn't seem to be doing very much socially. it's all very much in the shadow of its folk-revival  models - here's a john fahey (but not as cantankerous as the original), here's a robbie basho cover (but not as excessive as the original), bulls precisely have not been loosed in antique shops (as rob young claims), no antiques were harmed in the making of this music. it's all very respectful. a curating of texture. people seem to need distortion and volume to create any of the megalomania necessary for some sort of catharsis or progress.

'the kingdom of heaven is within you' / 'I'd like to thank everybody for comin'... rilly'

anais is in new york with the vareses (that is when she's not going up to the savoy ballroom in harlem and dancing til 6am). francis kilvert is visiting one of dr.fox's new improved lunatic asylums near bristol when someone calls out his name and is bundled away. malcolm lowry (who has just been served with an eviction notice) is thinking about the economics of being a writer,

'naturally, one didn't expect to live on one's income, though between books, that can become necessary, because if you live on the advance from your next book you're eating yourself as the french say, literally, and if you get another job you won't write the book.'

sir thomas browne is writing on urn burial and the earth 'in the deep discovery of the subterranean world, a shallow part would satisfie some enquirers...' he explains in a footnote  that according to tradition adam was made out of dust from the four quarters of the earth (hence the four letters of his name - but the explanation is in greek so horsemouth cannot follow him further). 

you see what horsemouth is doing here? it's a season ending montage. 

in about an hour  horsemouth goes to work (he will walk in (virtuous boy) but for now he's just drinking the morning coffee. last night he finished off true detective (again - the eternal recurrence of the dvd, life a flattened silver circle). in the day he went out onto the island to do his shopping but he couldn't face the queues at the checkout so he went off mudlarking instead - the tide was low - it was a good haul. he then cooked pasta and kidney beans (and tomatoes and peppers and red onions, pesto and a little chilli). the first season ends out with what horsemouth has discovered is the 13th floor elevators song 'the kingdom of heaven is within you'  - in the great king james bible tradition of mistranslation and excessive concretisation - jesus's 'fuck you'  to the pharisees becomes the alibi of every DIY bargain basement satanist - as the 13th floor elevators do here on a muddy country 6/8.

he's been taken up with judee sill (the kiss) as well, who's also fond of biblical imagery - as is horsemouth despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that he was raised agnostic.  

'I'd like to thank everybody for comin'... rilly'

thankyouthankyouthankyou (best gig yet)/ the solitary of llanbedr

horsemouth would like to thank all those who came out and could stay to the end to witness musicians of bremen's performance halloween night - it was (in his humble opinion, and of course he's biased) the best yet - but this is probably just because he had a lot  of fun playing it. in particular horsemouth would like to thank the random scouse dude who asked the key question 'is there a second microphone stand?' and the girl from the venue who got it out of the storage cupboard - and the landlady for sorting himself and john smith out with a beer when their performance was over. 

sadly that still left the problem of there only being two microphones where musicians of bremen usually have four unamplified sound sources on the go at any one time. musicians of bremen got themselves into this state by electing not to soundcheck - if they'd known they had microphones and microphone stands at home (ah well live and learn).

horsemouth remained indomitable in the face of these setbacks (and in the face of persistent minor feedback and poor sound quality due to his having no real understanding of how operate PAs - he thanks ayesha and  iona and nick for their help). as far as horsemouth remembers they opened with the werewolf  which horsemouth padded out with as much call and response as he could reasonably get away with - they ended up with sorrows of tomorrow because they'd forgotten to play it earlier - in between they debuted all my dreams (with horsemouth singing). being fairly drunk and having overcome all obstacles in his way horsemouth was in good voice.

later (by way celebration) horsemouth went out to watch the spacehijackers funeral - he thanks one set of friends for inviting him out and another set of friends for managing to get him in - he danced, he yelled a bit, he went home. the space hijackers are shutting up shop (presumably because there's no more space left to hijack). in the course of things he acquired a red pinstripe suit (and it's not too bad a fit) which (being a disobedient object) has resisted the state's attempt to prosecute the wearer (including horsemouth himself he's told) three times (plus it has been dipped in the waters of the lethe having been worn to the owners father's funeral) - thencely it must be  in possession of some serious heavy juju - horsemouth will probably be wearing it for future gigs.

the solitary of llanbedr

'sunday, allhallowmass day 1874.

all has gone of well. fanny played the harmonium nicely and the singing was capital. the congregation were delighted and some of them could hardly believe their ears and the squire said nothing for or against, but he came to church twice.' - kilvert's diary, william plomer selection.

horsemouth is slouching around (perhaps he'll go out later) though typically the weather has taken a turn for the worse (after the end of british summertime comes an indian summer but this morning is rainy and grey). kilvert was a curate up at clyro in radnorshire (near hay-on-wye and thus near his parents), horsemouth has been to his grave in bredwardine. he writes of the depression of john couzens (john and the devil) and of his fortelling a revolution (john couzens' prophecy). he writes of the solitary of llanbedr  his shack stuffed with pamphlets where he perfects a new system of shorthand. typically the locals called the little valley where he lived cwm cello - probably cwm ceilio - the valley of the cattle pen. kilvert collects folk songs (from the postmaster in abergavenny). he came by the kilvert on friday morning and also volume 3 of anais nin's diaries (most excellent the little he has read), he will go back to the cobbett at some stage.

horsemouth is returning from the mountains of mania where he has been very pleasurably installed since the gig - this is the place where his genius is capable of everything and anything simultaneously - he has been returning via true detective which now that he watches it in the correct order works very well.

iona commented friday night that there's something very gothic in what musicians of bremen do (dead children, dead this, dead that, dead the other, the devil, the pulpit, the steeple, werewolves, sorrows, drownings etc.) and horsemouth has to admit it's true (just look at his choice of folksongs in his solo tracks - dead lovers, drownings, murders, etc. etc.).  that they deal with murders  is one of the things that attracts him to folksongs (the material of people's lives is just so much better) that and the fact that it is collectively authored and only gradually arrived at produces strange juxtaposiitions. there's a song of domestic happiness painted toes but horsemouth didn't write it and it's not something he would write, horsemouth would have liked to get his version of bright phoebus up and running (which he hears as a song about the moment when love hits) and there was john smith's song of an argument in a car - both of these need drums really - or maybe they're not where musicians are going anymore.