june booklist (the wish feeling of empathy could replace regulation)

• the three arched bridge - ismail kadare, 
• the hawkline monster: a gothic western - richard brautigan, 
• ends and beginnings - alexander herzen, 
• from rousseau to lenin - lucio colletti (introduction and a few essays), 
• a fortunate man - john berger and jean mohr, 
• two years beside the strait - paul bowles, 
• we the cosmopolitans - ed. lisette josephides and alexandra hall, 
• affective relations: transnatinal politicsof empathy - carolyn pedwell (introduction only), 
• literary theory - terry eagleton (introduction only) 

today horsemouth will be wandering around the hinterlands in morning (doing a little reading and scribbling desultory notes in his diary). he will then (probably) retreat to his flat for a few hours before venturing out in the afternoon.

horsemouth has been reading affective relations:the transnational politics of empathy which after an opening chapter (written entirely in academic cover-your-arse language, as if there wasn't much empathy in academia) has settled down to discussing the modern form of empathy - is it a vital lifeskill that anyone and everyone should possess? one that it can and must be developed? or is something relational, produced by circulation (the hint is in the title).

if there's the empathy for social justice crowd (jacqui alexander, breda gray) there is also the better capitalism through empathy school (martensen and patniak). the hope that the wish feeling of empathy could replace regulation. but horsemouth says why regulate capitaism when everybody is just trying to do their best for everyone else right - what could go wrong with that? given the perfection of empathic connection between capitalist and worker (and seller and buyer) why would regulation have ever evolved? it is as if utopia has already arrived unheralded amongst us and all we need to do is flick a switch.

of course the first side of this division - empathy the lifeskill - is really what is discussed in the existentialist we the cosmopolitans - pedwell, in critiquing modern deployments of empathy in affective relations points to the covert self-interest of this and so she has cunningly arranged it so that the less naive take on empathy falls on the transnational flows side of the argument. however even the authors of we the cosmopolitans were capable of spotting the problems with and inconsistencies within the notion of empathy the lifeskill.

and yet still in their ethnographic studies there's the tragic moment where immigration detention center guard and inmate each check that the other is 'ok' after another inmate has committed suicide (if this is where empathy (and cosmopolitanism) gets you then fuck it one might be tempted to say).

horsemouth do(es) like to be beside the seaside

horsemouth was at the leigh-on-sea folk festival saturday and sunday.

on sunday he mainly saw piers haslam, laura cannell, and  lost harbours.

piers (playing in the scout hut with a climbing wall behind him) did a folkier set than the one he does as 'long pike hollow' with plenty of singing (including an acapella). horsemouth bought the cd.

laura cannell (who was playing in the fishermen's chapel) was great - horsemouth will buy the cd. he loved the overbowed/ underbowed violin and the twin recorders (and having pieces inspired by fragments of hildegard of bingen).

lost harbours (who were playing in the yacht club beneath a caryatid) were good - they covered 'black is the colour' - sort of like the durutti column does christy moore (with backing vocals from a david lynch film).

horsemouth and john missed fran morter (or fran foote as she is now) in the morning, and then horsemouth had to go early so missed stick in the wheel, plinth, united bible studies - he will wait for a report back from john. they did however see various morrises and clog dancers processing in the (unseasonal) rain.

horsemouth is listening to taskerlands an album by the guy from plinth and the guy from united bible studies and in particular the track drowned land bridges of britain (for clement reid) - clement reid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Reid) was a geologist and nephew of michael faraday - in 1913 he published his book "submerged forests" in which he postulated a drowned land bridge between eastern england and the european mainland. his conceptual map of what is now called "doggerland" turned out to be remarkably correct.



on saturday horsemouth had tempted howard out and they sat in the sun and listened to the coal porters (nice version of heroes dudes), kadialy kouyate (kora and double bass - most excellent), august list (harmonium and guitar duo - nice people nice), and a little of the thameside mummers. other than that they pretty much failed to see anyone hip and spent the rest of their time in the pub (or wandering about). ok - they heard some dudes in a rock band at the ship moaning about those folkies up the hill with their finger-in-their-ear singing (but horsemouth digresses).

it was nice to be somewhere where hipsterism hadn't made many inroads. and as you know horsemouth do(es) like to be beside the seaside. for howard it was a rare day off and he was easily pleased.

 as a side point he noticed  (when reading the program) that whom by fire seem to be on in two different places at the same time (which is a nice trick if you can manage it lads).

... and so we'll set a man to watch...

horsemouth (feeble memory) consults his diary again.

autumn in the morning - raging summer in the afternoon. horsemouth wandered over to canning town but found nothing to tickle his fancy there. having polished off richard brautigan's the hawkline monster: a gothic western in double quick time the day before, he moved on to reading ismail kadare's the triple arched bridge - this too he polished off in record time (proof that he can get the reading done when he wants to). it's not broken april or the file on h but it's pretty good (horsemouth also recommends the siege).

there is of course something structuralist about a bridge that connects two opposite shores, that is a solid above the water below, that connects the living and the dead - horsemouth is reminded of the story haddon tells of headhunters convinced that government men were coming for them to steal their heads and stick them in the concrete of infrastructure projects, the opies report something similar in their discussion of 'london bridge is falling down' - a bridge that (in the children's rhyme is constantly knocked down and has to be rebuilt - the monk colechurch was buried in the bridge so that he could watch over it in death 'and so we'll set a man to watch'. 

 horsemouth is also (billy goats gruff style) interested by the rise of trolls under bridges - specifically homeless trolls (having a troll for your bridge is getting quite popular in the seaside towns).

horsemouth is tempted to buy a tent (not that he goes camping much) - just because it's a good buy really and is 400g lighter than his existing tent.

today there's a stick in the wheel gig and later a meeting of the monkey. sunday is the anniversary of the first (successful) musicians of bremen gig. howard is nearly there with his solo album - which features only one vocal contribution from horsemouth and (possibly) his guitar on two songs.

horsemouth has started learning green manalishi for his project with andrew minty - it's a twisted kind of blues with a flash gordon-esque 'chug' to it.

the longest day (the shortest dark night of the soul)

'the romanticism if the gendarmes, the dramatic exercises of the detectives, the lavish setting for the display of loyal zeal... the whippers-in, the hounds...' - herzen, ends and beginnings, p.122. 

of course being a noble herzen is eventually reprieved from siberia and found a job in the imperial bureaucracy, on his second offence he is posted to novgorod. there he finds a thoroughly bent admninistration and has himself transfered to the least bent bit of it, the bit that oversees political exiles (like himself). in this capacity he hears the police's reports on himself (they tactfully don't mention any activity that might be embarrasing). in this horsemouth finds a shade of through a scanner darkly.

in novgorod in the 12th century the new church took the statue of the slav sky god perun and threw it in the river - herzen calls them voltaireans.


horsemouth was round house of howard recording some guitar parts for the song currently titled police close off the southbound entrance to the blackwall tunnel - using the resonator he recorded a daddad tuned slide round the chords (it's probably a bit quiet - especially in the bits where he's sliding harmonics) and then a portishead-type minor-feel feed -in (guitar tuned dgcfad to make it 'shake' a bit more - the resonator has high string tension and so does not exhibit much vibrato - at least not with horsemouth dragging the strings about). you probably can't have the the two guitars doing the feed-in at the same time. it needs organ, maybe harmonium.

the song's only opportunity to go big is on the line this city's mine (which horsemouth thinks will bear a repeat) - a very contested sentiment these days.

the murder mile may have reached and passed peak gentrification (horsemouth enjoys the look of horror locals give him when he mentions he goes there) - the bourge families are dying back to be replaced by the youth in multiple occupation - it's all vintage fairs and second rate soul music (bane to humanity) 'bought' good taste. the musicians of bremen may be returning their patronage to at the sign of the owltopus.

'who does not at times dream of the impossible ideal of being totally recorded?'

so asks john berger in his photo essay (with jean mohr) a fortunate man - which is, like everything horsemouth has ever read by john berger, stunning. a piece of ethnography on a doctor, (the fortunate man himself) and on his patients - the poor of the forest of dean. but it has true depth - a diagnosis of the whole culture. it sits comfortably with horsemouth's reading in we the cosmopolitans (we are all together) and with his thinking about empathy (the mental attitude that makes this possible).





one of the things that is interesting about berger and mohr's a fortunate man is the way it diagnoses a cultural deficit that results in an expressive deficit in the doctor's patients. in this it is like many late 60ies books, or the early works of john borman - it resembles a bbc documentary - horsemouth can practically smell the dampness as the voiceover buzzes in his ears. later (as it searches for an ending) it begins to worry about the process of writing and genre itself - we have biographies because 'X is the famous X' , there are few biographies of the humble because people are famous for what they did and what they did prior to that (or what was done to them) is held to explain what they did later. if they never did nothing there's nothing to explain the later absence of action (and nothing to explain).

in lucio colletti's reading of the problems of the left hegelians (from hegel to marcuse) there is something of this. hegel is taken to have a radical method that (due to historical circumstances maybe?) produced conservative conclusions - the left hegelians can now surpass him. but in doing so they supplant hegel's god/ worldspirit object and they change the realm of action of the theories to the political realm. colletti tells us however that marx does not buy it.

horsemouth also read lucio colletti's mandeville, rousseau, smith which tracks mandeville's fable of the bees: or private vices, publick benefits through rousseau's discourse on the origin of inequality, and adam smith's review and juxtaposition of them in the edinburgh review. in rousseau the desire to rise above other men, and the necessity of tricking them to do so, is the motor of development and this is a bad thing - and in mandeville also, but it is a good thing, as this development lifts up man out of abjection and want it is a publick good deriving from a private vice... and of course thence to marx 'the accumulation of capital is therefore the increase of the proletariat' .

of course when horsemouth has done with the cosmopolitans (who he finds agreeable) he has to engage with the transnationalisers of empathy.  kroker (one of them anyway) - talks about not cosmopolitanism but claustropolitanism - the peoples of the world are all together but we are fearful.

horsemouth the babysitter (on having an act)

horsemouth goes to do some babysitting (in the rain). last night he dreamed he was at curt's leaving do - as were hundreds maybe thousands of others - the do was in a big modern building and was catered like the party in la notte - with a break in the festivities for coffee and sandwiches. horsemouth was blanked by the object of his affections going in (though they did meet up later).


horsemouth has a slight headache from the one bottle of beer he consumed round andrew's while playing guitar - sometimes our dreams float like anchors, I still miss someone, dark as a dungeon, mojo working, who do you love, how, great thou art, peace in the valley, power in the blood, silver raven, eagle etc. this, together with a bit of slide guitar and harmonica and another instrument and horsemouth thinks they've got an act.

it is important (unless you are playing singer/songwriter) to do more than just sit or stand there and sing your songs and play your guitar. the songs should of course be strong enough to stand up on their own (the folk principle) but there has to be something memorable about the presentation of it - people go out to be entertained. they deserve your work in this area.

the three deaths of harry smith

harry smith claimed to remember three near death experiences (though later on he only claimed to remember two).

 1.) aged 9- 10, up in the pacific northwest, he swims out too far and begins to drown - his life flashes before his eyes in chronological order.

 2.) later he lives above a jazz club in the fillmore in san francisco. after an afterparty with lots of heroin, gin and weed, they all get in the car for a drive. strangely, on one of san francisco's legendary hills the brakes fail. he is flung through the car windscreen, as he lays on the pavement a priest gives him last rites (and, he says, an opportunistic perv feels his balls). this time his life comes back to him differently. 

'a vast panorama. it was like a giant jigsaw puzzle that I could look at all at once, of my entire life laid out, each part fitted together... ...it was as if life was seen in a way where no mistake is possible. that everything fitted together well, it was absolutely extraordinary, that as it says, I believe in St. Mark 'his eye is on the sparrow' 
 'you see, there was like joy because I realized how foolish I was to have worried about the rent, and what people thought of me, and all those things, because they were so trivial in relation to the grandeur of the construction of the universe.' 

3.) that only leaves his actual death - he died at the chelsea hotel 27th november 1991 - all day his assistant (rani singh) tried to get him to go to hospital - all he would say was 'no.I'm dying. I'll die.' 

then he said 'I'm dying' , coughed up some blood and died.

booklist to end of may

• a hovel in the hills - elizabeth west
• ghost of chance - william s. burroughs
• the eve of fluxus - billie maciunas
• the philosophy of history - voltaire
• think of the self speaking -harry smith