fahey week 2018 day one - john fahey and the dance of death

horsemouth begins it with his thoughts on a ‘radio’ documentary - an interview about fahey’s life and work by nicholas thompson, the editor-in-chief of wired, former editor of newyorker.com, an avid fingerstyle guitarist, with steve lowenthal, the author of dance of death: the life of john fahey, american guitarist.

this is a very useful interview because it shows how wide the church of fahey fans is - these two dudes profoundly do not get it. their main problem is that they find his alcoholism and indifference to success perplexing - everything must be judged against the yardstick of money and success (or fall into that aesthetic catch-all weird). they find themselves drawn to fahey’s work - but he’s not as good, they tell us, as leo kottke, michael hedges, william ackermann etc. - the guitarists they really admire, clean, upstanding technically proficient guitarists. and so they treat his memory with a degree of rubber gloved embarrassment.

fahey's disdain for the folk scene gets some approval, as do his record collecting trips to the south when he was young (hey those things are valuable, what a smart guy), as does his rediscovery of classic blues singers (skip james - live human being - seamlessly brought in with the records), as does his making of a christmas album (see smart commercial move).

but the moves that were not smart they find dark and disturbing - even when (in the era of kurt cobain and daniel johnson as they frame it) being some kind of an outsider artist was a viable strategy in the music industry, fahey would not do it, moving to salem oregon, living in a welfare hotel, ill, alcoholic, eventually dying, listen to the pun in this, of complications from a sextupal bypass.

and yet there is something in fahey’s playing that reaches them (indeed something in playing fingerstyle guitar that reaches them - beyond merely being good at it) but they cannot quite see clearly what it is.

there’s some bandying by steve lowenthal of the term ennui - for which horsemouth reads dread, world-weariness. and yet, even as it discusses fahey’s distance from the blues, the music that black people produced as a result of their experiences in america, it is a show that fails to mention black people. and yet it is in this music that fahey found the expressive material to deal with his own dysfunction (as lowenthal puts it). and it is only in terms of this dysfunction that fahey’s story can be told.

but this is not the only source of fahey’s routine - there is also an avant-garde, modern classical music root that is similarly difficult to re-incorporate into a philistine world of mere success. steve felt inspired to write this autobiography (after writing his doctoral thesis on fahey) because in the liner notes to one of his albums (the transfiguration of blind joe death) fahey had imagined a doctoral thesis writer in 2010 writing about a little known guitarist - one john fahey. just as fahey hid behind the name blind joe death for half his first album (itself simultaneously an engagement with the myth of the bluesman and a parody on it), so he could hide behind parodies of earnest liner notes and ethnomusicologist’s doctoral theses.

it’s a good routine but sometimes horsemouth is not sure that everyone gets it (and on the other hand there’s no point explaining a joke).


the dance of death and other plantation favourites

this was how fahey titled one of his albums - what was safely immured in history (and european history at that) comes back home.

george sand begins her the devil’s pool with an account of seeing an illustration from hans holbein (the younger)’s the dance of death. a ploughman ploughs a field but death capers alongside him as he does - as he does in all the other illustrations, as cup-bearer to the drinkers etc.

these were meant to remind the medieval body politic that all were subject to death equally - and to warn them of the vanity of earthly life and the necessity of attending to their religious duties. george sand (from somewhere nearer our time) points out that this memento mori was all slightly futile - and yet the form of the argument has returned to us as we (or novelists of sand’s time) threaten the rich (in novels) with visions of their future executioners.

 ‘we prefer the sweet and gentle characters which can attempt and effect conversations to the melodramatic villains who inspire terror; for terror never cures selfishness but increases it... I have allowed myself to be drawn into this digression for the sake of a labourer; and it is the story of a labourer which I have been meaning to tell you...’

fahey’s strategy relies on two things - one is a classical treatment of folk and blues themes derived from ralph vaughan williams/ bela bartok, the other is a respect for the playing ability and technical innovations of an earlier generation of blues musicians. fahey is not interested in turning this into propaganda for social justice  immediately (like the folkies) but is interested in it as music as something with the power to reach into the human soul.

yellow earth dog day/ stamping in the studio/ serpent(s) in the garden

last night horsemouth slept badly (as a result he’s feeling a bit rundown and crap at the moment). we are into the year of the yellow earth dog (apparently a friendly helpful year). the sun is shining.

tonight he goes to a party. he will take a guitar. his plan is to be sensible, see a few people, and have an early one. (who knows if that one will work).

sunday he will recover. monday to friday he will work. thursday fahey week begins.

yesterday he recorded round howard's - serpent(s) in the garden - they re-recorded a repetitive african type thing on the ukulele of howard’s and then horsemouth added a south african(ish) type guitar part at the fairly brisk tempo, howard added more uke and some throat singing and some melodica drones (on john clarkson’s melodica), horsemouth then added some whistles and then some half-speed stomping (there may be photos).


with that that the track could be pronounced finished - howard found the title of it using book divination. it doesn’t qualify as an improvisation because horsemouth pretty much knew what he wanted to do as soon as he’s had a chance to play over it and was aiming at a fairly well defined genre. howard wants to do more tracks like this reasoning that since no one listens to their stuff they are free to do what they want.

after lunch (horsemouth thanks howard for feeding him) horsemouth added a ukulele fanfare to la fille au cheveux de lin or her hair like some glittering gold (as horsemouth now calls it). they made a mix of sliabh without howard’s vocals to give denise a decent crack at singing it (if she so wishes).

with that they adjourned to the sign of the owltopus, having sunk something in the region of four pints (an expensive hobby these days), they returned back to howard’s to pick up horsemouth’s guitar and watch la jetee (howard pronounced himself horrified) and listen to various folkies.

hunger drove them out of doors and they went their separate ways. 

 

january in retrospect (a german expressionist poem)

it's a year since horsemouth saw this guy (with john clarkson dahn sarf)

january - a german expressionist poem

12 groundhogs (cloud gate)
ten years after the financial crisis
- where are we now?
‘nonprime has a nice ring to it’

‘I ludwig meidner clod of earth 
 cut into little pieces, 
 outlawed, apocalyptic, 
 my skull blown into oblivion 
 by the winter wind.’ 

fat cats and seaplanes (don't mix).
fat cat day (jan 4th)
to death
(a pamphlet for the metropolis)

‘the status quo cracks, 
 primeval chaos rises to the surface.’ 

causes of death in english folk songs (a pie chart)

'first the landlord came for me, 
then the banks came for me, 
then st. mungos came for me, 
and in the end 
I was no longer left' 

horsemouth has a terrible vision of himself in ten/ twenty years time - on anti-depressants, on crutches, towing round an oxygen tank and adopting some crazed nostalgic piece of self-harm as a political programme (like his parents with brexit).

the black king, the muslim prime minister, black power, big up meghan markle, kind hearts and coronets 'I shot an arrow in the air...' (if the spare becomes the heir)

‘laugh, laugh, troy burns; 
cassandra does go on...' 

the apocalypse in iambic pentameter (in spondees even).
the preppers were right you need a break out bag.

features sitar-smashing and white girls in saris ...

(... and one from february)
12 flatlining groundhogs
death will not be cheated
(and the performance is over)

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‘it has two parts one part is engaged in doing some job, and the other part synchronically narrates what the first part does… for the common sense perspective the machine might be called a ‘commentator machine’, its parts ‘the doing’ and ‘the saying’ parts’

12 flatlining groundhogs (death is not amused)

groundhog day is over. horsemouth has repeated and repeated and repeated until he has learnt his lesson and become a caring sharing human being capable of being sympathetic to andi mcdowell’s vacuous airhead character. it is a story of the type - humanisation of the misanthrope.

as far as horsemouth remembers the morning of groundhog day was cloudy - thus meaning the sacred badger (once a sacred bear now a mere groundhog) does not see its shadow and thus assumes that given the dampness and the clouds winter will soon be over. it retreats back into the burrow to snooze a bit more. it can’t be soon enough for horsemouth’s lungs (which are distinctly fucked).

work jogs on (or it did - it has been a bit tense of late).

so the guy who wrote source code has written the re-make of flatliners - plotline: good looking medical students experiment with near death experiences, death is not amused (and will not be cheated). similarly see also final destination. this one is not for straying despite the diminishing returns (is that a stockpicking term?)

this week ends with the anniversary of the death of sheridan le fanu (author of green tea, monkey paw and carmilla  arguably the first lesbian vampire short story). .

john fahey (horsemouth’s guru) is to be honored with a three-day american primitive festival in his hometown of takoma park, MD in april. this is happening in conjunction with the release of a double LP / CD package of first generation american primitive guitarists and banjo players, (with 6500 words of liner notes) in march.