the bulwark shore: exploring thanet and the cinque ports - caroline hillier
co.aitch - american civil war memoir - samuel r. watkins.
films
series 1 and 2 homeland, possession, bonnie and clyde, dead the ends, rivals of sherlock holmes, tales from the crypt, the vault of terror (amicus), children of the corn (feeble remake)
gigs
horsemouth, david, adam, micalef and others play max's closing party...
events
richard and stass visit, beers round howard's - dancing to old school hip-hop and electro
horsemouthfolk - the first gig at the wild hare club in stretton sugwas herefordshire - photo by john clarkson
always a difficult one - for stephen grosz (in his book the examined life) it is his patients (whose confidentiality must be protected so that they will feel able to tell something like the truth, or at least lie freely, when on the psychiatrist’s couch). it’s not a bad book but the chapters are a little short, they’ve barely finished describing the situation before the lesson is being drawn, the homily is being offered and we are on to the next one, and the analysis that precedes this moment of breakthrough can last years.
horsemouth was in a band (once upon a time). saturday many of of the surviving band members were gathered in the same room (excluding the famous one). it was the 50th birthday of the drummer’s girlfriend of those many years and many people horsemouth hasn’t seen in at least 20 years were there (scoob, debbie, alice, claire, fergus). he drank £5 a bottle beer and gazed up at the new tower blocks - built on the site of the indian takeaway where horsemouth was battered by a bnp’er coming back from the welling march (see white race you are destined to rule the world but you can’t cook your own food can you?).
it was also his friend martin’s birthday (but not a particularly significant one) so, after wishing him happy birthday and drinking a glass of his beer, horsemouth ditched out.
later (back at ross n’ elsie’s) there was a discussion of the economics of music and the changes wrought on it by the digitisation of music (changes that were only just coming in when horsemouth was in his first band).
horsemouth (as usual) told the story of vashti bunyan - bored by her music ‘career’ she heads off to the wilds of scotland but then when she’s got there joe boyd appears and offers to record her, they record an album but it flops, she goes back to scotland and sometimes listens to the album (on cassette) in the car... and forgets about it all. years later she goes into a library and looks herself up on the internet - and there she is, her album is a cult classic and people are looking for her.
similar cases abound (shelagh macdonald for example). there is also shirley collins (dumped by her husband she can no longer sing for many years), or people who simply leave the music industry practically never to be heard of again (jazz bassist henry grimes or folk singer anne briggs). sometimes all that survives of people is the name and the recording - there was never a photograph of robert johnson, then there was one, then two... maybe.
but this comforting story of technology bringing people back is not the whole story. what horsemouth did next... (after leaving h*****y that is)
well he didn’t do anything for a while. he stopped playing and started to think about why he’d been making music in the first place (he read jacques attali’s noise for example). he went and got a job (one that has sustained him for the best part of those two decades).
every change brings its own losses (even the good ones) - he discovered a whole city lurking unexpected beyond the borders.
after a while he started playing music again (largely because he could) but this time he was singing, this time he was playing acoustically, this time he was embracing the possibilities of home recording and self-publishing that the internet had made possible.
yet the problem of making yourself sufficiently famous by your own endeavours so that people have heard of you remains.
horsemouth (working mule) has had a cancellation (in fact he’s had a number of cancellations) - this is good (the less he has to work, within the limits set by the need to put food on the table, the happier he is - or at least this is what he tells himself).
so horsemouth is anxiously watching the red skies over the seaside towns (hurricane season apparently). ‘today, only the person who no longer believes in the happy ending, only he who has consciously renounced it, is able to live.’ - ernst junger, the glass bees (1957).
horsemouth is back from watching ben seymour’s film dead the ends at rich mix on sunday (it premiered at the ICA during the week so he’s one of the first to see it).
dead the ends is a film of the type la jetee/ twelve monkeys/ loopers/ the jacket - a journey into the past/ future, a time-travel made possible by the power of film, a journey repeatedly made in the hope of making things right (eventually understanding dawns that it can/cannot be made right). the itchy glitching loops of gifs replace the static photographic images of la jetee, replace the hollywood story-telling of twelve monkeys/ loopers/ the jacket. the voice over remains (indeed it has become rachel baker).
the name of the central character has migrated from the director of la jetee, chris marker, via angry brigade bomber john barker, to a john marker (later his name will be stolen by an undercover police officer) - he is a man out of time.
the first two missions in time - to bomb biba (like the angry brigade), to inform or assassinate economist michael hudson - fail, the final one - to expose the police spy (and namethief - like recent police spies) fails but it inaugurates a ghost - a ghost who haunts the murder of mark duggan by the police in tottenham in 2011.
this is where the movie finds its hope in thelondon wide 2011 riots following mark duggan’s murder - riots crucially untheorised by the communist left and unpredicted by them.
of course one could remark that despite the riots things have not in fact got any better. that the process of gentrification is hollowing out the inner cities, that the program of austerity has in fact largely been politically successful (even if it is simultaneously an economic disaster) - that money, resources and value have continued to flow from the poor to the rich, that indeed the gentrification of tottenham and hackney is part of that looting by capitalism.
the criticism of capital here is that it is no longer the heroic capital of the early marx and engels but that it has adopted the cultural logic of its romantic critics (if nothing else) and become stuck in an endless repeat and collage of the styles of the past - a critique popularised by mark fisher, owen hatherley and the like (and here focused in a repeat of the angry brigade’s bombing of biba). also that capital has itself become a time machine in its divorcing of itself from its creation in labour (in the rejection of the gold standard at bretton woods, in a march away from production), in its endless cycles of debt (and occasional forgiveness) to fuel demand.
indeed it is pointed out that the arguments of critic of capitalism michael hudson on this point were in fact instrumentalised (his book was on US aid and its terrible consequences for developing countries was in fact read as a how-to manual by the state department).
it is a film in search of a happy ending (and yet which knows enough brecht and adorno to know it should not be in search of one).
what we also have is a critique of the left and its claim to be able to forsee revolution and call for the correct action to bring it on.
in his post film talk ben mentioned the palindromic structure of debord’s in girum imus nocte (et consumimur igni) - that at the end of the film calls for the film to be watched again - indeed as he struggled with this formulation he found other voices echoing his in repeating it (he found himself a voice within a voice - to echo foucault).
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in the glass bees (by ernst junger) there is another man out of time - the author lived to the age of 102 through germany’s arguably most turbulent century - his character, a cavalry officer, is arguably an extinct type condemned to wander around after his social death.
he confronts a world of cellular automata (the glass bees of the title), a world of technological determinism and culture hero engineers (simultaneously disney and bill gates), a world that has replaced horses with tanks and is still moving forward.
the character survives (at least for a while) by accepting the new world in which he finds himself. maybe the reprieve is only temporary but the book gives us that hope in the everyday as an ending.
on the way to the cinema horsemouth bumped into his old friend the reverend brian - they went for a quick pint in the pub where one of brian’s daughters now works and they looked out together over victoria park wonderfully transformed (gentrified). glass bees flew about cleaning surfaces, picking up litter and rousting the poor from doorways, a larger bee surveilled the terrace looking to see who might require another beer soon.
horsemouth’s friday 13th celebration gig for the season is done and dusted (thanks to all who came along and all who played - particularly max, david, micalef, adam, all who howled like wolves, the few who sang along to satan... (under their breath) and samanta for the pasta).
the werewolf went well as an opened, the devil song went over ok, worldes blisse got an honourable mention, satan... was perhaps a tune too far, under the pressure of events horsemouth forgot he had prepared crisis in the credit system (ah well another time).
horsemouth suggested to max that he receive guests lying in state (but it was not to be). there was a discussion with adam of the terrible economics of touring (and the terrible economics of living in london - compared to say leipzig).
horsemouth tempted john cunningman out for a late beer with max, micalef, adam and crew (but they closed the bar before horsemouth could compound the error). at one point a name was mentioned and horsemouth ran around the room barking (he apologises for this).
on the way home he rewarded himself with a falafel wrap (it used to be groupies and cocaine what’s going on horsemouth?).
today - babysitting. sunday - ben’s movie
today horsemouth visited the post office in camberwell (thank you jehovahs witness ladies for directing him to it). the post office was operating clandestino - it was disguised as a building site and hidden down a side street under some scaffolding.
at the counter the operator claimed not to have anything that could function as a label (despite applying a tracking label to it later) so horsemouth had to tool around various south london off-licences in search of sellotape and an envelope - eventually he managed to make a label for it and was allowed to pay for it to go recorded delivery.
as usual, upon completion of the business, horsemouth thanked the operator politely for being so (un)helpful.
and this brings him onto the topic of denmark hill railway station (a small computer stop in the south of the seaside towns). there it is nigh impossible for passengers to get off the trains because the platforms are so crowded with people who cannot get out through the two security barriers typically operating (and so a queuing down the stairs and onto the platform).
at the barriers horsemouth discovered a ticket clerk being irate with an elderly middle-class lady. horsemouth would be pushed to say who he hated more - old lady demanding to be spoken to politely or stupid ticket clerk (who standing in the middle of the third barrier rendering it inoperable). horsmouth predicts a bethnal green style tube disaster one morning (you read it here first). all they need really do is provide another exit (instead of the cost coffee for example).
tonight horsemouth babysits - in the day (having worked) he snoozes. he’s been working on ben seymour and melanie gilligan’s crisis in the credit system (he’s trying to turn it from mannered electro-pop into a power ballad played by husker-du).
so horsemouth will be playing a gig on friday the 13th (awesome - and only the second friday the thirteenth of the year!) - moving off the wheel of the year and onto the random significant dates calender.
friday was the anniversary of john coltrane recording transitions, sunday the anniversary of recording the first three tracks off of birdland (including afro-blue), saturday the geffrye museum shut (for the next 2 years).
friday horsemouth was mostly chatting up someone age inappropriate (now that horsemouth has had the moustache chopped he looks a lot younger ... well ok, a little younger). she was from the north, and very nice she was too - a vegetarian also (which helps). horsemouth name dropped as much old shit as he could into the conversation (so that she didn’t think he was a youngster). they watched the planes fly up into the wild blue yonder from seaside towns STOVL airport.
this morning he dreamt of being on a date with amelia (baz and a girl horsemouth can’t put a name too arrived - mirroring horsemouth and amelia). as usual horsemouth fancied her like crazy (but she wasn’t coming across). horsemouth was out chilling, reminiscing and hanging out in the fantasy h******Y - later at a houseparty in a large communal set of dwellings (you can guess where that is people - in other dreams it doubles as a squat rave venue) horsemouth was looking out over estuarine mud and junk - when a body fell from the sky (or perhaps an upper floor) and went thud. horsemouth walked out bravely accross the mud to check that it was dead - there seemed to be showroom dummies in the mud.
later whilst wandering around investigating horsemouth met D and lou (or was it fiona). D was very strangely dressed. over the weekend he met up with howard but didn't manage to catch up with andrew minty. he's still coughing
ok all very well and good - but now he has a shocking first cough of winter cough to be getting on with.
wish him luck.
he should tell you something about the gig shouldn’t he?
himself and pete played the get carter theme (by roy budd), painbirds (by sparklehorse) - both of which went decently, a lackluster version of silver raven (by gene clark) - horsemouth couldn’t get the pitching right, though the getting the audience whistling the theme went well.
it all ended up with pete singing the moon over bourbon street (by er... sting) - which was probably the standout track of the set.
photos by enza ascione
then suke played - two electronicas (one with charlie on rainstick), then two or three (or maybe more), horsemouth was becoming confused by this point, guitar heavy tunes (think link wray, black sabbath) decent.
later pete played again and later still they all adjourned to a friends for the afterparty. in the cold light of dawn horsemouth shuffled home (and started coughing almost immediately).
