so to follow on from horsemouth’s words of advice for young people we have the tenth anniversary of horsemouth’s beginning to blog.
he began on the then mighty and ruling the roost myspace (now sadly declined into a zombie infested shopping mall). horsemouth likes to think that it was his incessant blogging that finally killed off myspace but at the time it was a place that would stream your music for free (and in a scaleable fashion). visions of world domination beckoned as horsemouth released his recorded in 2002 (round graham’s) horsemouth has no friends, horsemouth plays debussy etc. etc. - in theory they are still there and playable (as is the first ever blog post by the mulish one).
horsemouth saw very much that this was an amazing improvement in the ability of your average schmoe who makes music’s ability to get their music heard by the masses, a way past the gatekeeping of record labels and radio station managers (but it was in fact another false dawn on the road to total instantaneous communication with everyone everywhere).
gradually horsemouth began to write everyday and about his everyday existence (in a thinly fictionalised fashion) despite the fact that the main aim of the technology was to encourage musicians to promote their music themselves.
today is also the anniversary of robbie basho’s bonn ist supreme concert - you can tell he’s pleased with the way it is going - he feels like he is bringing german romanticism back home.
words of advice for young people
in no particular order...
playing music (and learning to sing): the first time I was in a band I was ambitious - when I learned not to be ambitious it all became much better fun.
dancing (and learning to DJ): I had to put effort into learning to dance - it was worth it - gives me something to do at parties when I’m too shy to talk to girls. Once I DJed disco music to a room full of Italian women (not quite a peak experience - but nearly). ditto running - though I haven’t done that for years - that was more something I could feel virtuous about after having done it.
travel: to the sun mainly (and one time snow - thirty degrees below skating on the frozen ice in montreal harbour). I used to go and wander round hot and dusty old towns in the interior of spain and portugal - now I just tend to go to the beach and read and swim.
reading and writing and collecting books: there are lots of smart people in the world (and there are lots of smart people in books too). If you write you get to look at what you think, hopefully you get to understand yourself better and other people better.
falling in love: though fairplay this has made me thoroughly miserable on several occasions as well
friendships: probably the thing that has sustained me the most in my life.
political struggle for what I thought was right: I wasn’t always right but at least I was trying to make the world a better place. This is something that won’t make you popular but if you think you are right you are obliged to say so rather than let evil have its way, I think (not that I’m always that courageous - in fact I think I’m a stone coward because I haven’t done this as much as I should). On the other hand...
becoming more tolerant and kinder as I grow older has worked well for me.
making an effort to get out and meet people and find out about them and see what makes them tick.
saying YES to things (even when I wasn’t totally convinced it was a good idea at the time.)
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Ok this is a list aimed at young adults so it leaves out ‘going up the pub and chatting shit’.
having remarked that a friend resembled a character from a philip k. dick novel horsemouth spent most of sunday reading valis back to back with radio free albemuth - these two novels dating from PKD’s ‘god is communicating with me via pink laser beams (or maybe it’s the soviets)’ period - both novels contain a science fiction author (and in valis he is even named as philip k. dick).
before it develops into cosmic tragedy valis has a prolonged period of black comedy - with great set up lines at the start of every chapter ‘horselover fat’s nervous breakdown began the day...’, ‘although there was nothing I could do to help horselover fat, he did escape death’, ‘it reminds me of a girl I knew who was dying of cancer...’
eventually the superior literary quality of valis dragged horsemouth off along that trajectory (meaning that he still has radio free albemuth to finish). hopefully the recency effect will save the project.
to finish off last night horsemouth watched jan svankmejer’s alice - an then again this morning he watched early silent movie versions of it (alice in wonderland that is). this included one called elsie and the brown bunny - the rabbit was brown because he was from bourneville he explained (and proceeded to take alice on a tour of this quaker designed worker’s paradise).
the last time horsemouth did this book comparison thing (and very instructive it is to - encouraging a closer attention to how and when things happen in the text) was with alice in wonderland and the communist manifesto. again horsemouth ran out of steam before the project was completed.
some photos have emerged of horsemouth drunk (4 pints in) in the company of poets last sunday after the sun at night gig - he is an amiable soul (but also clearly - in the cold light of day - a fool).
tomorrow and the day after (november's 15th and 16th are world galaxy days - the anniversary of the recording of this album (recorded 1971, released 1972).
horsemouth has survived another week at work and in a short hour he goes to make music (andrew minty - et al? maybe). then he is babysitting (this double booking gets him out of two birthday celebrations and a gig - oops sorry people horsemouth has self-sabotaged again). monday he attends a meeting. tuesday is the anniversary of the death of fanny kelly (hostage of the souix) and world galaxy day (the anniversary of the recording of world galaxy by alice coltrane.
the week after the anniversary of ten years of horsemouth’s blogging (and of the recording of robbie basho’s live album in bonn - bonn ist supreme).
‘... revolving forever inside his own skin, on him the spirit has spoken its anathema’
horsemouth has been accused of wishing his life away (there is some truth in this) and documenting it in excruciating detail. the blogs (starting on myspace and transferring not exactly seamlessly to facebook - then migrating (in part) to here), the blogs constitute something like anautobiography that horsemouth the songwriter has been too lazy to write
‘thus, when the universal sun has set, does the moth seek the lamp light of privacy’
horsemouth watched an early kurosawa film ikiru (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikiru) in part lifted from tolstoy’s the death of ivan ilych - a bureaucrat realizes he is dying but (kurosawa takes further) as a dying gift he creates a park for the children - no tear is left unjerked but at the same time its a restrained movie sanguine about the possibilities for change. takashi shimura is (as alex cox says in his introduction) a flexible actor - from the inspector loman like character he plays in kurosawa’s police procedurals, to the bureaucrat so dead his co-workers refer to him as the mummy, he’s got a great craggy expressive face.
did horsemouth mention that howard had resequenced the first album (and in doing so created another compilation of b-sides as well, no? ah well- here it is.
tomorrow (november 8th) is journey in satchidananda day - the anniversary of alice coltrane, pharoah sanders, cecil mcBee, tulsi, rashied ali and majid shabazz recording all of the tracks on the album (excepting isis and osiris) at the coltrane family home in dix hills. in december 1970 alice coltrane travelled to india (with a stopover in bombay) - horsemouth will be researching this more.
so horsemouth went to the sun at night (and very good it was too - he particularly liked the improv - kind of like the japanese band ghost - and the pianist).
then himself and max adjourned to the pub and (with the assistance of good company) horsemouth drank rather more than was probably good for him. this did however have the benefit of shifting the low level gringe from which he had been suffering all day.
the next day (today - a workday lest we forget) horsemouth suffered a little (but not enough to impair his donkey portage) - he ate and drank coffee like a trooper and has attained some kind of functioning equilibrium.
saturday horsemouth attempted retail therapy with a visit to his favourite bookshop - narration of my captivity among the souix indians, cottage economy (cobbett), marx in his own words (ernst fischer), voices in stone, our village (mitford) - five pounds the lot plus he picked up two albums by archie shepp to go with his copy of attica blues (so he’ll let you know how those go).
horsemouth had a dream which encouraged him to get on with making music.
horsemouth has been celebrating john coltrane’s monumental live from the village vanguard - frankly the coltrane album that stays with him - in particular india (the basis of the byrds’ eight miles high), chasing the trane (a relentless power trio beat the theme to death in front of our horrified ears - possibly inspired by john gilmore of sun ra’s band), spiritual (aided by eric dolphy and possibly a version of "nobody knows de trouble I see" collected in the book of american negro spirituals by NAACP activist james weldon johnson).
this one claims it was recorded november 5th and was originally included on the album 'impressions' but the sleevenotes of the revised and expanded 'live at the village vanguard' say the 3rd - bob thiele recorded 22 takes of 9 different songs over 4 nights. did horsemouth mention this was the inspiration for the byrds' 'eight miles high'? onwards to journey in satchidananda day november 8th.
‘that’s all very well, but let’s get back to reality; who is going to marry eugénie grandet?’ - balzac.
horsemouth is back in balzac’s universe (he’s reading césar birotteau - one of the ones less often found in english translation). in it he finds an early comment that could have been found in the dictionary of received ideas, horsemouth reformulates it thus, ‘astronomers live on a diet of spiders’ (maybe like the perch - the fish of wealth an artefact of translation - nope horsemouth has just checked the french).
‘she will walk only when not bid to, arising from her bed of nothing, he hair of time falling to her shoulders of space. if she speak, and will only speak if not spoken to, she will have learned her words yesterday and she will forget them tomorrow. if tomorrow come, for it may not.’
- parker tyler on hedy lamarr in the shadow and its shadow: surrrealist writings on cinema ed. paul hammond
