in that instant (the higher-rent clearances)

there is a moment between the ending of the senseless babble of sleep but before the listing of the tasks of the day when memory returns. in that instant life returns.

horsemouth didn't get much reading done yesterday - left to himself he is a bit disorganised and aimless. he played his simplified version of la fille au cheveux de lin through a few times (because that's how the guitar nearest to hand is tuned).

horsemouth continues reading merquior's western marxism (then he snoozes a bit and farts about on facebook). it is as thorough and well executed a hatchet job as the one merquior did on foucault - he compares sources, he finds counter arguments, he tracks changes but above all he takes to a nearby hill and shows us the disposition of forces. we are with lukacs in budapest, he has a reading circle with kodaly, bartok, arnold hauser, michael polanyi, he will soon be writing history and class consciousness (the book horsemouth hasn't read yet).

in the cities that thrive the workers are being driven off the land so that a higher rent can be sought (horsemouth is tempted to call them the higher-rent clearances) to be replaced by workers who can pay more for the priviledge of still working. outside of the city (where 50,000 famillies have been driven in the past 3 years) there is rent plus season ticket - the reproduction of the labour force is effectively taxed and milked for profit.

companies seek to buy-back their shares so they will not have to distribute dividends and the dividends they didn't distribute appear as profit. these companies then won't be subjected to the judgement of either the shareholders or the market. they don't need the capital to expand, why would they expand? this is the productive part of capitalism roaring with risk-aversion, a capitalism drawing in its resources and trying to go back to sleep.

in the cities that are dying the rioters smash a few windows on the new boulevards down by the harbour and then are driven back up the hills past the 16,000 vacant row houses and their sub-prime rent gathering (a rent gathering so subprime it is only worth doing by means of a bubble) - more higher-rent clearances with the poor eventually forced out of the city too - to the neighbouring counties.

capitalism has never totally energised the whole of the economy, the whole of the city, its coverage (like horsemouth's phone network) has always been patchy. it has until now always needed a convenient outside - a reserve army of labour in the squatter camps.

horsemouth supposes that all over the world the homeless are walking out of history into the freedom of poverty and the cyclical daily tasks necessary for survival. horsemouth supposes that all over the world the young are preparing to make the march into the cities in search of work. the will stay many years and then they will be gone.

come on, get up, it's time to go to work.

noah (descend in peace from us)

horsemouth was up at howard's recording 'noah' this friday (he will will have to sort out the sore throat vocal some other time). while there he repo'd some books;

typee - herman melville,
christ stopped at eboli - carlo levi,
to the finland station - edmund wilson,
the marvellous adventure of cabeza da vaca - haniel long,
friedrich engels (his life and thought) - terrell carver,
goodbye london (an illustrated guide to threatened buildings from 1973) - christopher booker and candida lycett green.

christ stopped at eboli both film and book are great - horsemouth thinks the film wins - Gian Maria Volonte is amazing in it. he must bring out the 'goodbye london' next time they go wandering - if only to see what survived and what didn't.

so horsemouth now has a thumbnail sketch of the song noah courtesy of a recording session with howard. horsemouth played a demo version on or about the winter solstice at his solo gig. horsemouth's guide vocal on it is a bit froggy - he's singing at the top of his range using a 'head' voice after a cold (honey and lemon would help probably). he's not averse to having backing vocals to hide his nakedness (hint). the ukulele part gives it the necessary lift and variation that horsemouth's guitar and vocal version did not have.

noah is a song partially written with bibliomancy (book diviniation). the flood abates, the ark settles on mount ararat, the trees and grass begin to grow again, a less than omniscient god (or the song's narrator at least) looks to see if someone has survived, he looks for them among the trees, he looks for them among the grass. but they have not survived, they are among the drowned. (it is strange that horsemouth, who was raised by atheists, should indulge in such god bothering).

the great advantage of being able to hear something outside of your own head is to be able to think about varying it - horsemouth thinks a little extension on the final verse, he thinks a ukulele introduction, he thinks a possible repeat of the intial theme as a middle 8, broadly the verse and chorus are two sets of two chords that are related to each other (G and F, Dsus4 and Aminor) and will sit over each other comfortably - a little more should be made of this. sometimes while recording horsemouth would fail to ground the chorus with a firm d bass note at the start - this may be worth repeating (it's an interesting effect).

broadly he wants a version for himself. the way he wants it - and with himself as lead vocal (even though his vice is not realy suited to itl) because he wants to do, if not a solo album, then a 'horsemouth to the fore' record. probably he will be using max's excellent photo from the gig as a cover. to do this he envisages recording over the summer (by some means or other), recording new versions of the better songs from his horsemouthfolk incarnation - the devil song, la fille au cheveux de lin, etc. he could dig up the versions of these currently malingering on myspace or on the harddrive of his mothballed computer, but really he needs fresh modern versions.

the musician of bremen stuff horsemouth would gladly keep doing as a joint project with howard and yet its key ingredients as it stands are howard's voice and howard's songs. horsemouth wants something of his own.

the tale of the hound! a bestiary of our times

outside it is rainy and grey and unhopeful looking (ok it's picking up).

the hound of hounslow (as with the london whale - what is the bestiary?) has been using his parents personal computer to wipe billions off the 'value' of 'markets' (allegedly). as even the evening standard notes once upon a time a decent bond villain would have needed a converted supertanker or volcano with rogue nuclear submarines or spaceships and minions, thousands of minions. but the hound, merely by pretending to make stock market trades and then cancelling them, the stock market equivalent of innuendo, can so totally befuddle the gatekeepers of value (and their electronic trading algorithm assistants/ masters) that they completely lose faith in the underlying commodity/ industry... and stock market carnage results - but carnage with real results for peoples jobs and wellbeing.

however many persian cats/ sharks/ henchmen with metal teeth the hound owns or has on a retainer, he's a pretty poor villain (him, his PC, his parent's semi in the suburbs, his mere millions in swag) but the wider question needs to be asked - if the hound can do this what's to stop any other muppet following suit. it's a pretty poor way to run a planet that is so unstable that mutley here can push it over.

the london whale (un)worked at JP Morgan Chase (and Co.) - he lost $6.2 billion in 2012 but then co-operated and ratted up his supervisors who 3 years later are still fighting extradition from their home countries. just as with my comments with mayor bimmer yesterday it is the fact that the hound of hounslow is an independent that means he's probably toast.

but is not the tale of the hound (pause - no, oh well) merely the tale of our age writ exceeding small? a growth in the area of speculation in the economy that (accidentally?) crashes (because it is essentially unstable) wiping billions off the 'value' of capitalism all over the world that is then followed by a campaign of austerity to beat that lost value out of the workers. the money of the rich (hungry for return) floods into commodities driving up the price of rice and taking it out of the mouths of the poor man's children.

 'deliver the poor and needy from the hands of the wicked' sang misty in roots. 

over on mute some postulate a zombie apocalypse - it is no good hoping they say, no good hoping that things will get so bad that people will rise up (for example), no good hoping that things can only get better. we should embrace despair, keep moving anyway and become zombies). horsemouth is pleased to see these ambiguous beasts shuffling round the mall again (so much better mannered than the rage zombies).

horsemouth has been multiply distracted in his reading - currently he's with j.q.merquior and his western marxism. surveying the 20th century merquior seems to have liked every variety of marxism excepting western marxism (oh and stalinism). horsemouth has the founding document of the movement - lukac's history and class consciousness - he should give that a read next (he's ashamed to say he's never read it).

this evening horsemouth goes to babysit his brother's kids (well only the youngest one realy - the eldest can entertain himself with grand theft auto or slaughterhouse 5 or whatever it's called). at least they're not playing the stock markets yet.

'the creative person should have no other biography than his works'

- b.traven (allegedly)

horsemouth missed the quote when he first read the article a month or so ago (seems like the quote is genuine).

horsemouth has been reading yellow back radio broke-down by ishmael reed, a pataphysical pynchonesque blaxploitation cowboy story. he writes this in bed (on his new matress with his freshly laundered duvet covers and sheet) in his sprung-cleaned flat (ok ok there are still dusty corners where the spiders roam).

of course the quote presents horsemouth with a problem - his whole generation is serving up their lives as entertainment and validation on faceborg leaving no mystique or wriggle-room or cooking-time for themselves and their own cultural product. (as horsemouth is doing now). only a few have held out against the world-wide confession -hopefully they will produce extended works of such genius that the rest of us will be shamed into composition. and, as friends joked yesterday, the least gchq can do, if it is monitoring us, is to offer a free back up system;

'gchq? oh sorry NSA... I appear to have lost my blog post... thank you. if you would. most kind. etc.' 

b. traven shows us how it is done - autobiographical failure and amnesias all round - just the works.

 

horsemouth has been working on killing floor - taking howling wolf's original as his guide rather than jimi hendrix's combined lead and rhythm guitar fuck you eric clapton  version. it's a lot like carla thomas's tramp (later robbed by salt n' pepa, aphrodite and mickey finn etc.) the problem for horsemouth is not the horn chant parts (as it were) but the rhythmic chug - if he can get that right he can make a reasonable fist of the vocal. he's starting to have fun with the resonator - it's starting to speak.

a bright sunny morning with clouds and a dream (and boats and cormorants)

it is a bright sunny morning with clouds. last night horsemouth dreamt he was in montreal again (but he wasn't having much fun). he was drifting around libraries (admittedly funky looking libraries that seemed to double as student halls of residence). he was trying to remember where people lived. finding this dull horsemouth's brain teleported him onto a bus (horsemouth had no recollection of getting on nor of buying a ticket nor of knowing where it was going) - horsemouth resolved to stay on until the first stop and get off there - whenever that was. after a whle they arrived - they didn't seem to be checking tickets on the way out and horsemouth found himself in a sunny pleasant town just outside montreal (possibly a suburb - it's a big island or possibly a satellite town) - a while later he was in a very chinese mall - a little while later at a dance performance. horsemouth was invited to join in - at some point a girl kissed him.
this dream may indicate travel.

last night horsemouth was due to go out and be sociable but after friday's drinking session and a saturday spring cleaning his flat horsemouth was doubtful. social events and invites usually cause horsemouth some anxiety. though normally once he is there he has a fine old time. he worries about who will be there, who will go, etc. etc. this means he accepts far fewer social invitations than he receives (sorry - this by way of an apology should he ever blow you out) and certainly far fewer than he should attend. he also missed record store day - but this bothers him less.

sunday (today) he was pleased to note a friend was going for a birthday walk - up the canal path from limehouse to victoria park - to attend a boat-livers towpath party against the plan to run those on continuous cruising licenses out of town - a girl from tyrone was playing bodhran and reciting poetry. they then went on to the second tuesday club to look at a series of leonora carrington drawings in the backroom (this they duly did) - one of them featured cormorants (allegedly).

on the way back horsemouth bumped into marike in tower hamlets cemetery park - she was escaping from writing an essay on leadership and directed him to some wild garlic for the good of his health. 

monday he works (just a little bit) and there is a gig he should go to. tuesday he works all day (and thursday), wednesday, friday he works half days. it looks like he will be done by about may 8th - seeing as they are already giving away 'his' hours to other beachside donkeymules who are short of hours (allegedly).

he really needs a vacuum cleaner - that's possibly the only way to deal with the dust caused by so many books and records and CDs and potted plants (he was spring cleaning yesterday so this is fresh on his mind). the beans on the balcony continue to do well, some nasturtiums are even coming up - horsemouth has rearranged it to use the space more efficiently and to place the bean plants nearer the railings (up which they can climb). the smell of wild garlic now permeates the flat.

he has been reading ishmael reed's yellowback radio broke-down.

'of late i have come to sense within myself an accumulation of all kinds of things that cannot find adequate expression...'

hmmn. cloudy outside (and cooler) - no suntan lotion for horsemouth today he feels (50/50). things are growing on the balcony (beans mostly) - he'll have to get some beanpoles and 'train' them onto the railings.

horsemouth has been wandering around in his summer clothes (shorts, a t-shirt sometimes worn over the head in the manner of a seaside postcard hanky). yesterday horsemouth had his usual pasta and pesto thing, as is his wont except that he ate it with a salad (well a grated carrot and some spring onions). mnnnnn.

last night he dreamt about being on holiday in the countryside near his parents (at the bottom of the hill) but in a rented cottage for some reason he'd given away the cooker (and had to get it back before the family who owned it came back).

'of late i have come to sense within myself an accumulation of all kinds of things that cannot find adequate expression via an objective artistic form such as the novel.'              - yukio mishima, sun and steel. 

yukio looks up into the boundless blue skies as he carries the shrine round the village. later he is at an airforce base.

howard has recorded another solo track lost without words in the 'post'(?) musicians of bremen era - it's good.


as he lay in the sun horsemouth read hammond innes's the mary deare - a thriller set on the plateau of the minquies off the channel islands where the sea rises and falls 40 feet exposing dangerous reefs and wrecked ships. innes's hero is curiously void - like a camera just there to record the action.

'the hero rides a mule and not a horse'

(on spaghetti westerns - from 'not so quiet on the western front' by pietro bianchi)

work has cancelled. horsemouth has washed his duvet cover and hung it out to dry. now he's going for a walk. he will put some sunscreen on his face (not being one for public nudity he tends to develop a farmer's tan in warm weather - face, forearms, chest).


bill laswell is full of regrets - he'd do it all differently if he had his time again. grandmaster d.st (crazy cuts) makes the usual reconciliation of experience and learning. they sit as if they don't (really) want to be in the same room together. they're being interviewed for the story of cellulOid records a french label that started out putting ut free jazz, then put out tons of african music and inbetween put out lots of NY music from downtown to early electro and hip-hop. but half of the story (at least) isn't there - the free jazz is skimped, as is the african music (represented only by fela kuti and ginger baker. where's the toure kunda? where's the foday musa suso?).

mules are unheroic, low rent. lower even than workhorses. horsemouth has a day in the sun. tonight he goes to a meeting. tomorrow he goes to a gig. friday he works. next week he's back to the grind. but it's not long now and he'll have made his money for the year. what next year will bring who knows.

visiting times at the horsemouth guitar museum

so as you know horsemouth is something of a collector of (and sadly also a distributor of) cheap guitars (being too mean to spring for expensive ones). none of them are particularly valuable - at the moment the collection consists of;

• 

•  an oscar schmidt (by washburn) OR6CE resonator guitar - a biscuit resonator guitar with a pickup, volume and tone controls for live performance. (now all horsemouth has to do is get an amplifier and work out how to transport it to gigs). it's a strange beast. horsemouth wasn't planning to buy one - he thinks they're a pain to tune - but then one was offered and he thought 'oh what the hell.' it certainly looks good. 

• a laramie (by rosetti) a cheap copy of a gibson hummingbird. (aka. the 'bad taste country and western' guitar - the pick guard features a drawing of a hummingbird drinking nectar from a hibiscus flower (!)). this is the one where horsemouth's mum found it battered at a jumble sale. horsemouth's dad helped him reglue the bridge. horsemouth then restrung it. this horsemouth usually tunes daddad (so the open chords are neither major nor minor). it's a pleasant bright acoustic guitar (though a little bass heavy for horsemouth's tastes). it also looks good. this is the main guitar on sorrows of tommorow, fanfare for the common mule, the worldes blisse etc. 

• similarly the almeria BM (made in spain) - also found by horsemouth's mum at a jumble sale - this is the nylon-strung guitar on which horsemouth recorded most of the musicians of bremen's songs - the werewolf, the devil song, you're not god etc..it's these last two guitars you'll see in photos of the musicians of bremen. 

• an artisan lap steel - essentially a small plank of wood with cheap tuning pegs and a cheap pickup, bought for the second round of recording this is the guitar horsemouth uses for the solo on silver raven and as backup on sorrows of tomorrow (there are some photos of this). horsemouth hasn't even replaced the strings on it yet. he should (of course) get an amplifier for it, and probably a foot volume control so he can do those 'country' swells. 

• a woodstock rb6 'jumbo' steel-strung guitar (charity shop islington) - last heard when horsemouth was recording partie de camapgne round mr. nick's flat - it's been sitting neglected in the cupboard tuned dgdggd waiting his decision to get on and record a version of debussy's pagodes. the action is terrible (which makes it good for slide guitar) and it needs restringing. ok he just pulled it out of the cupboard, tuned it dgdgbd and tried the start of la fille au cheveux de lin on it (sounded good). 

 of course realistically horsemouth can only take two of these out at any one time. he's a little unethusiastic about getting into onstage retuning.

one day horsemouth will construct a list of guitars that went walkies on him - his yamaha sg300 for example (the electric guitar on which he recorded most of the boom clan and bush house music, the one rust used in the snatch foster band), the clanky 3/4 size acoustic (made in czechoslovakia) which horsemouth strung with superslinkies and on which he recorded most of the horsemouthfolk music and with which he played the wild hare club, the one he had to abandon at stansted airport (ryan air bastards). the bass the kid from bournemouth ran off with etc.

reconstructing the year's reading (so far)

ok - the year begins with the french, the goncourt brother's journal and renee mauperin (this goes with germine lacerteux by them that horsemouth read last year), words - jean paul sartre (horsemouth had a sartre / de beauvoir reading binge a few years ago - only really adieu where sartre dies affected him particularly).

journals are of course big with him, wartime notebooks - marguerite duras, anais nin - journals vol.2, two stories and a memory - guiseppe di lampedusa, a death in the family - karl ove knausgaard, homicide: a year on the killing streets - david simon, miami - joan didion, the air-conditioned nightmare - henry miller.

then there are his theoretical dabblings, shoenberg's 'moses and aaron' - worner, fear and trembling - kierkegaard, althusser: a critical reader - gregory elliot (just the introduction), chronicles of consensual times - jacques ranciere, the melancholy science - gillian rose (love's work by her remains amazing), modenist radicalism - stephen crook, often read in a hurry in university libraries.

then there is his ongoing interest in utopian commune and political movements (a hangover from his work on ranciere perhaps - and in particular his on the shores of politics), the democracy project - david graeber,the literature of labour - h. gustav klaus, documentary and educational films of the 1930ies - rachael low, selected writings of the transcendentalists, alternative communities in 19th century england - dennis hardy.

then there's the russians (horsemouth will have to do some catching up here - he's got a short story collection and herzen's ends and beginnings to be getting on with), the elaghin affair and other stories - ivan bunin, moscow circles - benedict erofeev. the erofeev in particular was amazing.

... and then a few 'modern' novels written in english for when horsemouth was bored, hangover square - patrick hamilton, goldberg: variations - gabriel josipovici, julius winsome - gerard donovan (largely borrowed from andy).

as usual when he reconstructed the list he found he'd missed out a few books, ones he'd read electronicaly also tended not to make the list. he needs a further list as well - one of accessions (books bought or received).

book list til april

• miami - joan didion
• documentary and educational films of the 1930ies - rachael low
• words - jean paul sartre
• wartime notebooks - marguerite duras
• shoenberg's 'moses and aaron' - worner (some)
•  hangover square -  patrick hamilton
• fear and trembling - kierkegaard - introduction and first few pages
• the literature of labour - h. gustav klaus (most)
• anais nin - journals vol.2 (all)
• goldberg: variations - gabriel josipovici (all)
• althusser: a critical reader -  gregory elliot (introduction)
•  the record as artwork (1977 fort worth art museum) - germano celant
•  the democracy project - david graeber
• chronicles of consensual times -  jacques ranciere (several articles)
• modenist radicalism - stephen crook - (dips)
• a death in the family - karl ove knausgaard
• julius winsome - gerard donovan (all)
• the air-conditioned nightmare - henry miller - (dips)
• the elaghin affair and other stories - ivan bunin
• moscow circles - benedict erofeev
• two stories and a memory - guiseppe di lampedusa
• a history of the church in the middle ages - f.donald logan - most
• selected writings of the transcendentalists - some
• alternative communities in 19th century england - dennis hardy - dips
• renee mauperin - goncourt brothers
• the melancholy science - gillian rose - some
• homicide: a year on the killing streets - david simon (all)
• the goncourt journals

the inauguration of british summer time

both duras and sartre are stuck with their childhoods. wartime diaries is a little disappointing - the stuff that is recorded for the first time here is better written (and so more convincing) elsewhere, the cookie-cutter kernels of wisdom designed to enable each fragment in the notebook to be self-sufficient do not work, and cannot until they are excised and the fragments made whole. their lives could not be more different - sartre the bookish child of alsatian grandparents, duras the white trash colonial girl gone bad.


with the rolling back of horsemouth's sickness (he's been ill with a filthy cough for about a week now) came the return of his quotidian anxieties. realistically, when horsemouth had a fever, the shivers, a raging cough and a week long headache he could not be expected to consider politics and music - but he has just picked up the guitar for the first time in a week and so his 'duties' cannot be far behind. he tried out the latin riff for tv eye on the resonator (following iggy's vocal emphasis) - this would be a companion piece to don't fear the reaper as cuban son. of course horsemouth should really hurry up and commit more of his music to recordings - he's done some nice things but really he's no further forward than when he was forty - or at least, crucially, he has no evidence to demonstrate that he is.

the sun has moved its way through the block opposite and now sets beyond it's furthest edge (shining into the northernmost recess of horsemouth's flat) this happened sometime around the inauguration of british summer time (horsemouth was adrift in time spending as much of it in bed and asleep as possible). horsemouth once awoke in what he took to be the early hours of the morning only to discover it was 9.30pm at night (only to realise it was really 10.30).

every cough says to horsemouth remember thou art mortal and proclaims unclean unclean to every creature (with a heart and lungs) in earshot.

one of sartre's schoolfriends bernard dies - and almost immediately his double walks into the classroom - the teacher (in shock) asks him his name - paul nizan -

 'nizan was the most obsessed: sometimes in center of the city, he would see himself as a corpse; he would get up, his eyes swarming with worms, grope for his round-brimmed borsalino, and disappear; next day we would find him drunk, among strangers.'