zatoichi illuminacja

the free spirit must be hurried onward (as the serpent)

saturday night an ill horsemouth (TB, COPD, lung cancer - you know the score) went out to see stick in the wheel play way out in sunny battersea (if not actually on sea). the gig was an evil promoters trick - 3 of the best young folk bands (snufkin, stick in the wheel, the langan band) randomly picked out of the hat and stuck on the corner of a youth pub to compete in volume with the rugby club with an inadequate PA. all this to be followed by a disco til 2am.

horsemouth was stuck behind small asian girl and tall hands everywhere rugby prop forward (next to entire rugby team - they don’t travel far from each other).

nicola regarded the crowd with a baleful (and yet strangely murderous) blue eye. they played well (so did snufkin from bristol - now called little.. something or other, nice tight harmonies dudes). but nothing could make up for the indignity of playing to an audience to mean to pay in after 8pm.

horsemouth relished the contrasts (but he didn’t try the allegedly magical back garden). they mentioned something about a benefit gig on the 17th - horsemouth will keep his ears to the ground.

last night horsemouth watched takeshi kitano’s version of zatoichi. this was decently murderous (lots of arterial spray) and ending with an awesome tap dance finale - kind of like an agricultural version of the bjork one where the sound of the machines turns into music - post ghost dog style soundtrack by RZA. also good in a soundtrack sense (and others) was illuminacja ( krzysztof zanussi 1972) staring stanislaw latallo (later to die during an unsuccessful attempt to climb everest) - physicists (scientists) as freethinkers, the first ever time the events of 1968 made it into a polish film (and then only as a news report on the radio and one still photograph). the DVD came with a film by latallo’s son.

horsemouth has been reading raymond aron and coleridge on shakespeare. he dreamed. more on both these things another time.