...turned into a tree...

yesterday was the anniversary of pentangle recording the live side of this album at the rfh in 1968

today it is a bright bluesky kind of day.


yesterday was not. it was pretty grey with only a few moments of inspiration. horsemouth barely made it out of the front door - well ok no he didn’t he just lay about, read and listened to music (and farted about on facebook).

in the vegetarian the central character decides to give up on being human and become a tree instead (see, at last horsemouth gets the joke in the title, he really is a dull boy) - the revenant is ostensibly a revenger (fur trader and trapper leonardo di caprio seeks revenge for the death of his son) but the real star is transcendent american nature. it is a cold world of snow and freezing rivers and fires and bear skins to keep one warm, of bear attacks and festering wounds. the nature is wide angle and epic, the human interaction close up and squalid - with smoke, water and blood on the lens. the soundtrack (ryuichi sakamoto) is nicely synthetic.


while he waited for the sun horsemouth annotated his copy of the score of fantasia del octavo tono (luys milan 1536) - it begins with 23 bars of bach style descending scales (the main theme) changing key at bar 10, before 9 bars made up of alternating trills, there is 4 bars of chording alternating with the main theme repeated with additional voicings in the bass. there is then a middle section that horsemouth has not fought his way through before an ending with two four bar builds (alternating with chording) then 12 bars of chording ending on a d (where it all began).

ship of fools: how greed and corruption sank the celtic tiger continues on its way - a corrupt and venal political class, slack banking regulation, nobody at home for tax purposes (why do we say tax exiles rather than tax fugitives?), an economy vastly over reliant on construction, vastly over reliant on house prices for its sense of well-being, a crisis of affordability, the satire of unaffordable affordable housing. it all sounds utterly familiar - like a crisis that hasn’t happened yet but will happen somewhere else (and where will that be and when).

ship of fools (the brexit remix) thinks horsemouth. how much is it? 20 euros. I thought it was ten? nah mate. it’s had a remix.

horsemouth has been having a conversation (online) with a friend about this immigration lark - horsemouth (as you know) likes the cosmopolitan world of the internationalised work force (lots of smart new people to talk to), his friend, formerly an electrician, does too, but it has become hidden by the struggle to get somewhere to live. horsemouth has no expectation that the state will sort him out (this was probably his mistake in not attempting it when it was still possible).

his plan was to escape to the south with his pension (when and if it comes) into that blissful state called economic inactivity - if brexit hasn’t fucked that entirely (and it probably has) it has at least made it more difficult.