safety last (the gig economy)

since the crisis the growth in productivity has not returned to its previous levels - it is not that they are beating less value out of us, it is that they aren’t successfully beating more and more value out of us each year (woe is them) . this has been a major problem for british capitalism - unlike the germans disinclined to spend their money on machinery - but quite what it means now (in the time of task monkey and the gig economy) horsemouth is unsure.

as a musician horsemouth apologises to you all for ‘the gig economy’ - truth be told most musicians in recent years never made a living out of playing gigs (they just did them to promote their copyright-able, reproducible wears - their recordings). it is like we have landed in bad-attali land, a world where not only can everyone be an artist or make music, they can also hang your door or clean your flat.

to escape the crisis constantly nipping at capitalism’s heels there is always one more floor to climb - at one point they even had you dangling from a clock face (like a character in metropolis). at the end of filming a dummy was thrown off onto the safety platform (a mere two stories below) it bounced off and continued on its inevitable way, they then announced that some of the film stock had been ruined and up you went again. climbing around on the face of a building with the thumb and forefinger of one hand already missing as the result of a previous accident during filming. the state intervened and you were dangling at the end of a rope called working tax credit...

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later horsemouth works - later he finds out what he’s doing next week - still later (in about 6 months time) he loses his flat because of the housing bill (see it doesn’t even have to be passed by parliament - nor even the gubbins by which it will work be examined - for it to deprive a creature so low as horsemouth of his habitation). roughly concurrently how his work is funded changes. the norflab tower is emptying out (once the setting for j.g. ballard’s 70ies novel of social aspiration rise high just released as a movie) and is experiencing a return to form in its final hours, kids in the stairwell trying to sell you weed for example...