the compensations of aesthetic autonomy (b-boys got to document)

this morning bright and sunny (but cold). last night horsemouth watched dogtown and the z-boys a film on skateboarding (and surfing). the discarded youth of a blighted seaside town take up surfing in the most insalubrious and dangerous wrecked ex-amusement park they can find, they hang around the local surf shop, and in the afternoon, when the wind makes surfing impossible, they skate - taking moves they learnt from surfing films and applying them to dry land. it’s the technological breakthrough of polyurethane wheels that permits this. during a drought they begin skating in dried up swimming pools.

the film has a great 70ies rock soundtrack (that’s how horsemouth was persuaded to watch it) - lots of great later hendrix (dolly dagger, freedom, ezy rider, and is that bold as love in a quiet bit?), early sabbath (paranoid), blue oyster cult (godzilla), thin lizzy (bad reputation), ted nugent (cat scratch fever, er... wham bam sweet poon-tang), sorry this list is going to get very unfashionable very quickly.

style - they all remark - was very important to what they did - and a number of photographers and writers recognised this early on. it becomes art - like graffiti, like breakdancing, like rapping, like DJing - horsemouth goes for parallels with the world of early NY hip-hop described by david toop in rap attack (not that horsemouth is a first hand informant for such things you understand). commerce is not far behind (or perhaps it was there already in the surf shop they hung around in, in the surf competitions they entered not even requiring that first photo, that first article in skateboard magazine).

(ok horsemouth can't find it on youtube - here's another sant monica skater)


of course not all the kids do well out of it. nonetheless there are compensations to aesthetic autonomy - in its knowledge, its power, its experience of autonomy as structure rather than a flood of atomised consumer choices. faced with these kind of achievements the games of modern art look paltry to horsemouth.

horsemouth is often stuck for things to do on the weekend and a little bored (oops the weather has gone crap out there) - he has a plan to learn baby please don’t go it has a great john lee hooker relentless beat to it (if we’re still in the land of 70ies rock budgie do a particularly stomping version). there’s his songwriting (and playing) and there’s his writing (this).

horsemouth also watched homeland (series one episodes 4-9 (phew), the first disc of the set wouldn’t play). he likes the paranoia. but it can’t give you pavement to penthouse because it doesn’t come from the streets - the budget on even the most modest movies is simply too big. yesterday some actors were hanging out near the foot of the balfron (tower blocks - urban deprivation - natch) horsemouth doesn’t know why.