and am I born to die?

'write.' - 'for whom?' - 'write for the dead whom thou didst love in the past.' - 'will they read me?' - 'nay' 

this was the motto with which soren kierkegaard planned to start his fear and trembling. another cheerful alternative was 'I had perished had I not perished.'

the preface begins in a recognisable tone too,

 'not merely in the realm of commerce but in the world of ideas as well our age is organising a regular clearance sale...' (see - it's uncanny!) 

kierkegaard even discusses an editor who will,

'slice the author into paragraphs, and will do it with the same inflexibility as the man who in the interest of the science of punctuation divided his discourse by counting the words, so that there were fifty words for a period and thirty five for a semicolon.' 

but before the main part of the book four tellings of the tale of abraham and isaac, each ending with a strategy for weaning babies and a homily.

horsemouth is back from a gig in a decommissioned asylum chapel in south london. he has a ton of CDs that he'll review sometime soon courtesy of stone tape recordings - the gig was in honour of alan lomax, his centenary event titled and am I born to die? the title of a charles wesley hymn popular in the appalachias-


meanwhile...

the owl service opened (good as ever - their version of fine horseman is indeed fine). gentlefolk proceeded (a little gentle for horsemouth's tastes but well played and sung), long pike hollow (piers haslam) a good young guitarist soundchecked with what sounded like fahey's poor boy and then went into a more robbie basho-like set (hey was that a bit of the black crows?), nancy wallace (who is moving to canada?) had already sung with the owl service and was to sing harmony with sharron kraus later) great, really good, lost harbours (like an improv-ey take on durruti column or, horsemouth doesn't know) with the poet justin hopper on the first song, and one of the other singers from the owl service on the second, 'we are you are wolf,' you are wolf announced themselves- possibly the only thing that was funky all day but not quite hitting that kate bush amazingness, sharron kraus great voice, great harmonies and squeeze box from nancy wallace. by now everything was overrunning by about 25 minutes so a short set from plinth (michael tanner)- violin, some bowed thing, accordeon, shruti, delayed fried vocal sample and live sampling and looping - drone.