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.

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"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.