alternative communities in 19th/20th/ 21st century england and america

horsemouth's connection to the world wide communion is down from home at least (he types this in the library). keep up the good work cyber munchkins.

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later/ earlier - horsemouth is in exile from the world wide communion and is typing this in a word processor programme (remember those). It may be that this is eventually posted on the web (soon horsemouth hopes) in which case he will have to go through and remove the auto-corrected capitalisation or risk looking like he is yelling at you (never his intention). communes (curiously) sin deeply in grauniad land because they violate the sanctity of the family and private property. they remind the reader of their mortgaged ideals rather than mature complaisance. (think Tőnies use the gemeinschaft versus gesellschaft distinction in Communities and Association (1974)).

horsemouth was sad to read of the collapse of an apocalyptic commune in scotland and the time spent by the founder in a lunatic asylum (or whatever the current term is) … later he read that the founder was an apostate lacanian and university lecturer who had been disciplined by his college after showing one of his students an article about fellatio in fruit bats. But is this not (in its modern incarnation) merely a rerun of the end Henry Allos's potato growing commune Allopia that ended messily and with a spell of mental illness for the founder. To review the lecturer's mea culpa (how dare he imply that capitalism is not sustainable and it will all end badly?) the Grauniad hired (do they still pay book reviewers?) another commune dweller whose own mea culpa is out in June. (dylan evans/ tobias smith)

horsemouth has been spending time in the library ('where we bury the lies') with dennis hardy's Alternative Communities in !9th Century England.

on his journey to the library horsemouth has been reading gabriel josipovici's goldberg: variations – which reads like a survival from borges time - writer hired to write and read for an insomniac philosopher (a tale each night) – familiar locations and topics, skara brae, ring of bro(d)gar, maes howe, venice, the wild boy of aveyron (L'enfant sauvage), odysseus.

this morning horsemouth wandered off in search of museli - 3kgs. he then tried halcyonandon returning with selected writings from the american transcendentalists (in a signet classic edition) - this includes a section on brook farm their not-so-long lived utopian commune and a piece by bronson alcott founder (with charles lane) of fruitlands another utopian commune.

 as hardy says in his introduction

'their ideals proved to be illusory, but their own existence was real enough.'