‘there was that other fellow who disliked the plebian vulgarity of pseudonyms so much that he called them heteronyms’

so says common sense who (in a metaphysical poets style) appears as a character in jose saramago’s the double - common sense had presumably warned pessoa that writing poems under the names of dozens of other invented poets was not a good idea (and here appears to warn our central character that meeting his double is not a good idea).

horsemouth has simon schwarz's culture of the copy round here somewhere which deals with doubles, twins, conjoined twins, copies, recordings, photographs, mirror images, things so numerous as to be effectively identical (actually it is not round here it is in a box of books waiting to be moved to it’s new home - it is in that particular box of books because they were printed and bound at the same size - it will be next to it will be daniel heller-roazen’s echolalias).

in the same book (the double) there is a discussion of folk sayings (or saws as they are sometimes known because they can be put to work again and again, or because they cut through the appearance to the reality of the situation). the folk saying chosen is to tether one’s donkey - meaning to go and deal with one’s bad mood.


yesterday horsemouth was in a good mood - he wandered down the hill to walthamstow garden party bumping into dave and claudia (and philly) in the queue - their next door neighbour was playing bass with walthamstow acoustic massive (a mixture of bands and choirs that literally filled the stage) - they ended out with a bowie tribute with great version of space oddity and then heroes (with the great and neglected singer david mcalmont). this was probably horsemouth’s favourite thing of the festival.


the other thing that caught his ear was chipsy and EEK Egyptian chaabi music updated with thundering double drumkit (adam and the ants style) and a pleasantly noisy keyboard set halfway between the middle ages and rave. fanfare cariocala he largely missed because he was getting beer and food and other necessities at extortionate prices (you should be able to bring beer in - judging by the queue out of the main beer tent they could have done with a whole other beer tent). emcida (latin hip-hop with percussion) he liked but didn’t entirely do it for him.

horsemouth didn’t hang around to hear adf soundtrack la haine (at one time this would have been horsemouth’s dream pairing) this all seems a bit close to the knuckle in the light of recent events. before la haine the band had soundtracked battle for algiers - but they found few takers - French municipal mayors were unlikely to want to put on a film teaching the ghetto youth how to make a revolution. to horsemouth it is an interesting lesson in doubling and distance arab youth for asian youth etc. then for now - and now it is possible to think of the banlieu revolts as a then. today there is more - horsemouth may go back or maybe Lambeth er... there’s a lot on.