"the big ship sails through the alley alley O,
alley alley O, alley alley O,
the big ship sails through the alley alley O,
on the last day of september.
the captain said, 'it will never, never do,
it will never, never do,
it will never, never do', etc
the big ship sank to the bottom of the sea,
the bottom of the sea,
the bottom of the sea, etc.
we all dip our heads in the deep blue sea,
the deep blue sea,
the deep blue sea, etc."
collected by folklorist and collector of children's games elizabeth matterson, or at least collected by her, though some claim trad.
popularly supposed (in salford) to be about the manchester ship canal, though some claim it is in fact about the suez canal. apparently hazel blears' (MP’s) brother is one of the boys singing it in 'a taste of honey', she herself features as a salford urchin.
in "the singing game" (iona and peter opie, OUP, 1985) they call it the only survivor of the ancient "thread the needle" game, of which visual record goes back to the lorenzetti frescos in siena in 1350. variations are found in appalachian dance "killiecrankie, winding up the maple leaf”, etc. and in england under "dan, dan, thread the needle”. there's video of the song being sung and the 'thread the needle' game being played by a group of put upon looking teenagers (guaranteed school shooters the lot of them).
anyway what brought it to horsemouth’s mind was the end-stop line; “.... on the last day of september.”
horsemouth has made it to the end of the month (there’s just october, november and half of december to go) before the break that shall not be named. he’s published his books read and gigs gone to list for the month.
the sun now rises south of horsemouth’s house and so illuminates his bedroom in the morning, it barely clears the rooftops though, the back garden is in shade until the afternoon.
starting monday - october and through the week with zbigniew herbert’s report from the besieged city.
somewhere in horsemouth’s facebook feeds a self-described immigrant bemoans the insanity and racism of brexit (in frankly symbionese terms death to the fascist insect that preys on the minds of the people) elsewhere a dutch friend bemoans the if that’s what they want then that’s what they must have attitude of the labour party to brexit (and their concomitant fantasy of lexit).
of course brexit really needed two things - a disgruntled left-behind sector of the population, fearful and battered by austerity (tick) and some tory (or indeed labour) grandees offering to take care of them (tick). both are signs of political infantilism - there is no taking care of anybody where we are going - the tory grandees know this, for them it is an opportunity to finish thatcher’s work by having a brutal and protracted round of economic and social shock therapy.
now horsemouth knows (never mind how he knows) that what appealed to iain duncan smith and the likes about the brexit issue was how much it appealed to the people on the estates - people he had previously regarded as politically unreachable.
the labour grandees think (and horsemouth admires the realpolitik of this) that there is no standing in the way of the great british people’s stupidity best to just let the bus crash and pick up the pieces afterwards (when the remorse and regret has kicked in). at that point labour is the only game in town. er... except horsemouth thinks ts this won’t actually work - for in this the tories are right for when the wheels come off people will not admit they were wrong - when faced by the consequences of their folly they will double down.
so what about the filthy unprincipled middle ground- while no doubt economically comfortable for horsemouth and his ilk (so you’ve got low(ish) wages, low social reproduction, poor pubic transport but you’ve also got the opportunity to earn money in an expensive place and spend it in a cheap place - don’t knock the foreign holiday - and don’t forget the seemingly never ending supply of pretty girls from foreign lands with a good command of english).
the arguments for staying with europe (and fairplay it was heading towards a european super-state with reduced national sovereignty) are strictly on the don’t rock the boat level - after the 2008 collapse you’d think people would know that it’s a bad idea to rock the boat (o baby please, don’t you rock, my boat, cause I don’t, want my boat,to be rocked) but no - they’ve instituted a round of boat rocking.
here horsemouth (and remember he’s supposed to be some sort of filthy communist) is lining up with the euro wing of capital as opposed to a buccaneer existence on the high seas of principle with a bunch of jaded tory coffin-cheaters in fascist uniforms (blithering on about free trade, free speech, the evils of identity politics and fuck me its going to be awful).
once more into the breach of reaction.
yesterday was the anniversary of the death of blind willie johnson.
horsemouth has started oscar wilde’s the soul of man under socialism - now this is usually portrayed as oscar wilde’s rejection of communism but in fact horsemouth finds it an able warning against the authoritarian socialist path.
now (of course) you would probably not buy your socialism from oscar the glib (so much to answer for) but from some heavy germans.
and yet there are moments when oscar’s prose does it,
‘there are a great many people who... are compelled to do the work of beasts of burden ... to which they are forced be the peremptory, unreasonable, degrading tyranny of want. these are the poor... from their collective force humanity gains much material prosperity... but it is only the material results that it gains.’
the problem for horsemouth, and he’s a shoulder to the wheel kind of guy, is how do you get there from here. for horsemouth if you’re going to start a revolution (or a fight for that matter) you’d better be able to win it because you don’t want to see yourself and all your friends murdered or thrown in jail. your best bet is getting organised (a party/ a gang) and before you know it your old authoritarian thoughts and habits have returned. all ways round it that horsemouth has seen involve some fantasy of ‘being’ the commune (the workers, the ‘people’).
horsemouth has (in any event) retired from the active end of this sort of nonsense. he would like to see a better world but he doesn’t expect it to come.
it is a grey morning but the weather forecast says it will pick up (and the sun may even shine through).
the day before yesterday horsemouth walked up through the valley of the agapemonites to walthamstralia where he raided the bookshops (emerging with wilde’s de profundis - one squid scope) and had an ice cream. later he sunbathed in the garden, watched the news (depressing as sin), and then watched grim prairie tales. online he found a book by the grand daughter of one of the agapemonite founders.
horsemouth is back among you (his head is full of uk kack). this morning it is rainy and grey and he needs to do some preparations for work tomorrow (having a shave and checking his costume so as to look presentable).
yesterday horsemouth did little but fart about on facebook - an evening researching the internal police investigation into failings during the rotherham child sex abuse cases (the largest case they have ever investigated excepting the hillsborough stadium disaster - and look how long that came to trial - south yorkshire police so much to answer for), a late night investigation into the possibilities of a triggering of article 7 with respect to hungary. he ended it off with a trip back through his posts for last september.
during the day he put up a link to one of howard's golden glow mixes from a few years ago featuring same old man by karen dalton. he practiced guitar playing through it and another song by karen dalton - somethings on your mind (C&W/ southern soul basically). he thinks he’s got them - he’ll write down the lyrics and chords today have a think about arrangements. he was mostly playing the almeria bm, he might dig the resonator out, really they all need restringing (especially the hummingbird that’s now a 5 string).
same old man he’s playing with a C7 (a four finger chord) - he can feel some arthritis coming in the first joint of his little finger on his left hand (he already has it quite badly in the first joint of his little finger on his right hand). horsemouth is on a clock for this to spread throughout his hands - thereafter he will have to rethink how he makes music.
in far off austria zali krishna has been experimenting with the goldberg variations - the results are here.
horsemouth is saddened by his return from porto. he’s back - thursday, friday there’s work even. the year starts (back down the rabbit hole for you horsemouth).
and yet (four of pentacles) he is relieved - because at least now he knows where his money will be coming from.
pessoa is on a tram. he looks at the dress the girl in front of him is wearing - at the cloth (it’s type, how it was made, where the flax, cotton etc. were grown), the stitching, the different types of yarns (and he thinks about how they were made), the overall construction of the garment (imagine scissors cutting) and all of a sudden he sees all the labour of the all people that went into the dress, he sees them all crowding round. it is like marx’s discussion of the labour and in particular the labour time in a coat in capital volume 1 chapter 1 (and it is unlike it).
curiously this is like the (half digested) notions of labour time (socially necessary labour time) and its extension (that negri lifts from it in time for revolution) that horsemouth was blithering on about while drunk at john’s birthday party to a lawyer and an artist . both nodded.
horseemouth took pessoa’s the book of disquiet with him - it had fitted his mood very well before he went (slightly anxious/ slightly bored). as the turkish surfer girl horsemouth chatted to said on the park bench observed, pessoa is a little sad.
‘to write is to forget’ says pessoa the contrarian, omar khayam, almost derridean discussions of what it would mean to be remembered as a writer (but to be dead, to no longer be there). he lives inside his own head (and deliberately so). he has made himself a creature of habit. horsemouth has dipped into it, not read it consistently beginning to end to tick it off his list, he cannot find the dress section now, but the pleasure if this is that the book is not yet finished, there is still more of it to read.
because ‘to write is to forget. literature is the pleasantest way of avoiding life’ horsemouth did not blog while he was away (so as not to miss anything or distort the weight of it). he did however keep a diary of excursions to help his (feeble) memory in later years.
this year horsemouth worked right up until the summer solstice and starts back a little ahead of the autumn equinox.
while horsemouth flew back there was the abbots bromley horn dance - it is also (simultaneously linked only by time that most tenuous of things) the two day sunset to sunset transition of rosh hosannah the jewish new year - when it completes at sunset tonight it will be the year 5779.
as others see us: cork through european eyes (read)
time for revolution - antonio negri (started)
beckett - a.alvarez (read)
the gray monk - william blake (poem - read)
sirènes m'étaient contées: exposition 20 novembre 1992 - 14 février 1993, Galerie CGER catalogue (illustrations looked at)
tuning and temperament - j.murray barbour (started)
the body and society - peter brown (good chunk)
filmsghosts of mars, the hole, terror creatures from the grave, picnic at hanging rock (series), gotham (series), the new york ripper (lucio fulci), bert lloyd documentary, rambo: first blood
