so merry christmas one and all. god bless us each and every one. bah humbug. at this point horsemouth would usually be going 'having survived yet another year...'
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having survived yet another year horsemouth is pleased to have played and recorded an album of songs with john smith as musicians of bremen, he's pleased to have released it (both online on bandcamp and as a physical cd), he's pleased to have played three gigs in this line up and a fourth as musician of bremen - combining the best of musicians of bremen with the best of his horsemouthfolk days and all in 30 minutes - and all these gigs in some kind of alignment with the heavens. he is pleased with the progress of various songs he's involved with writing and arranging (worldes blisse dirge and noah), though he really should hurry up a bit with all this. he plans to continue with it all in the new year.
horsemouth thanks the people who put them on (gertrude, tim goldie, albino).
horsemouth has blogged daily (or nearly) and continued with the promulgation of yam zombies but he has not, so far, managed to get his theoretical endeavours going again.
horsemouth has been pleased to go out and see more music this year (thanks to john clarkson mostly) in no particular order idiot saint crazy, georgina brett, the owl service, stick in the wheel, a reformed les ambassadeurs internationaux, richard skelton, the bohemianauts, pelt, richard youngs, rick tomlinson, united bible studies, aine o'dwyer, gertrude, daniel rosen, david thomas broughton, adam sherry, com(in)us, arthur brown, jonny halifax & the howling truth, tim goldie, jah wobble, various improv'ers and jazz improv'ers. (kevin davy, dreamtime etc.).
on youtube/ spotify/ i-player he made some good discoveries - judee sill, more karen dalton and robbie basho, gene clark etc. mc5, sonic'.s rendezvous band and some working musicians robert curgenven, sproatly smith.
tv wise. (not that he has a tv you understand) treme, true detective.
books? akenfield, michael jeffries - wild england, cobbett rural rides, kilvert and anais nin, diaries, john hillaby, anna kavan - ice, albert camus the plague, imogen holst gustav holst, lillian hellman the unfinished woman, and a threefold cord - alex la guma, memories, dreams, recollections - marianne faithfull, the prisoner - thomas m. disch, magic hour - jack cardiff, hadrian VII - fr. rolfe. denis johnson train dreams, anton chekov letters, dubravka ugresic the ministry of pain, george lois damn good advice (for people with talent). re-reading pkd -do androids dream of electric sheep?, rousseau - reveries of the solitary walker, the lover - marguerite duras, blues people - leroi jones, beneath the visiting moon - david grubb, ...
healthwise. horsemouth (a vegetarian already let us remember) has reduced the amount of cheese and pastry he consumes and walked more - moving towards a term time 20 miles a week.(if only he could face the tedium of jogging). his frozen shoulders have unfrozen and he has not been coughing his lungs up, the only downsides are that he is balding rapidly and his teeth continue to be a bit rubbish. ( but hey never look a gift horse in the mouth).
at work. he has been revisiting material that gave him trouble in his youth and (at last) being able to see the wood for the trees. he is generally pleased with the work-life balance, while his unemployed friends are being mercilessly fucked with by job club etc. at least horsemouth doesn't have this. sadly the ideology of capitalist austerity finally arrived in beachside donkeymule land (friends have lost their jobs already, pay and conditions have been cut and there may be further trouble ahead).
gentrification. housing wise the seaside towns continue to gentrify at an astounding rate ('how much?') but at least there have been some signs of effective resistance (e15 mums, new era, ASS), horsemouth's housing co-op has continued to lose housing and to lose people - the longer this particular can can be kicked down the road the better. he doesn't want the street food but (secretly) he quite likes the craft beer (motherfuckers - 'how much?' ).
horsemouth made 50 this year (he outranks you all) some people have left the party, some have arrived, some have got ill, people's kids continue to grow. he's off for a walk with his parents soon. merry christmas.
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'in my journal I have tried to collect all the interesting things that are lost in conversation.' - say the two goncourts (edmond and jules) united as one writer (as one I) in the process of 'dual dictation' . they would go out to the parties and make notes on the comments and on the bad behaviour - frankly their friends (the daudets mostly, theophile gautier, balzac, sand, zola, flaubert...) were glad when they stopped doing it (not that they ever did stop it really).
early on they give us the typical end of an evening - 6am, a friend drunk and in tears over a showgirl who doesn't love him, another showgirl semi-naked, drunk and vomiting, cursing loudly, the goncourts (drunk) taking notes (well jules taking notes on the cuff of his shirt).
they begin their journal with the coup d'etat of louis napoleon. in 1856 the read poe and recognise his genius. in 1857 theophile gautier tells them how he writes (he's under considerably less economic pressure than balzac clearly). their novel germinie lacerteux (a thinly fictionalised account of their housekeepers bad behaviour) paves the way for zola (but they themselves do not follow it up).
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