memoirs of a madman and bibliomania (gustave flaubert)
like people you see in a dream (edward l. schieffelin and robert crittenden
anthropology and anthropologists: the modern british school (3rd edition - adam kuper)
investigations of a dog (franz kafka)
on reading crowds and power (a poem by geoffrey hill)
gigs
mulatu astatke, sudan archves
britten sinfonia, stick in the wheel
films
the l-shaped room, werner herzog's nosferatu, two films featuring global warming as a plot device, the woman in black, montauk documentary, the scream of fear, night of the demon, casting of the runes, frightnight, frightnight 2, catch 22 (series), dad's army (film), ashram, rivals of sherlock holmes, our man flint and invasion.
events
visit parents (visit cwmbran), cat-sitting in walthamstralia commences
aashish khan and his brother pranesh khan play in the 1971 alice coltrane concert (they have also played with john mclaughlan in shakti)
aashish khan played on wonderwall music for george harrison, and as one of the musicians for satyajit ray's jalsaghar. both are sons of ali akbar khan and grandsons of alauddin khan.
wonderwall music opens with microbes, which consists of call-and-response shehnai parts and was partly based on the raga darbari kanada that opens this album ..
while he slept horsemouth saw the flashes of lightning through his eyelids. he didn’t get up to look. this morning there seems to be evidence of rain (but not much of it).
yesterday the house sat with the curtains drawn - horsemouth and his family skulked in the shade. here it was only 28 (sorry peeps in the seaside towns) - horsemouth is back among you to swelter soon to do some cat sitting (and possibly some recording time will tell).
howard has heard the 71 live alice coltrane session (and pronounced it the best music he has heard in a while) - at the start it alternates, alice is beating fuck out out of the wurlitzer organ, trying to make it do a john coltrane, to take off for interstellar space, the rhythm section are pouring on the petrol, then, a break, and a slightly unsettled indian music...
horsemouth has also watched some film of the sai antam ashram - gospel with hindu hymns.
horsemouth has been reading his bluffers guide to the british school of anthropology/ amthropologists (adam kuper) - malinowski, haddon, radcliffe-brown... its uneasy relationship with the british colonial project. side by side with this he has been reading like people you see in a dream the account of first contact for six papuan tribes (it usually ends badly).
don't remember putting this one up - is that max ochs at the start? the days of a year with an appreciation by henry james is a small book by m.d.ashley-dodd listing the days of the year and a short (paragraph length) description of the weather (and its emotional effects) - an emotional meteorology.
yesterday - a walk by the river (in the rain), read the torygraph, watched dad’s army.
dad’s army (toby jones, bill nighly, etc.) horsemouth strangely enjoyed (but now he’s in on the joke - the dreams of old men). as a child he never thought of it that way (wheras last of the summer wine a little later he clearly did).
and (in a related topic) then there’s brexit
- and alexander boris de pfeffel johnson's new brexit advisor - arch backstop bludger daniel moylan (‘we are really doomed’ sagely remarked a tory remainer).
meanwhile david davis as chancellor or foreign secretary?
you've got be fucking kidding me...
what do they say about him?
'lazy as a toad and thick as mince' what is interesting about the torygraph finance section (and why horsemouth reads it assiduously) is its persistent doubt about the stability of the international financial regimes from the right (which accords nicely with horsemouth’s doubts about it from the left). to the high tories of the torygraph finance is still vaguely disreputable.
recent discoveries in the world of alice coltrane ('... and bathed in the ganges river...')
Alice Coltrane Live At The Berkeley Community Theatre 1972
featuring alice coltrane (mostly on wurlitzer), ben riley on drums, charlie haden on bass, aashish khan on sarod, pranesh khan on tabla and bobby w. on tamboura.
'I don’t know any more than you what you are about to read’ - gustave flaubert, memoirs of a madman (part of his juvenalia, which he referred to as opuscules historiques ), chapter 1.
and so it is with horsemouth, he gets up, gets a cup of coffee and starts typing.
he consults his diary so that he doesn’t forget to include any useful material from the day before.
sometimes he will move things around, but he doesn’t make a plan first.
memoirs of a madman comes with a short story bibliomania - in the one we have a madman writing a book, in the other, a man mad about books (a bookseller). bibliomania is set in a thinly imagined barcelona.
yesterday horsemouth went back through his blogposts trying to find the ‘poems’ he had compiled together commonplace book style - he wrote them into his notebook for the upcoming musicians of bremen album (perhaps he will make use of them there).
‘here my memoirs really begin’ - gustave flaubert, memoirs of a madman, chapter 9.
for horsemouth there's two tunes by Johnny Clegg that really reach him.
'third world child' appears in 'saturday night at the palace' a 1987 film by robert davies featuring bill flynn, john kani, and paul slabolepszy. it's apartheid south Africa, two white trash dudes show up at roadside dinner late at night as it is closing and demand to be fed, the black dude working there just wants to go home, confrontation ensues.
you know it's not going to end well.
in an earlier scene bill's character has been thrown out of his house for not paying the rent, this tune plays as he walks off up the road because it's the dilemma of afrikaans youngsters also 'learn to speak a little english'.
(thanks to luzette and richard for taking horsemouth to the movie)
the other is from the apartheid days when johnny clegg and sipho mchunu couldn't play payed gigs together only private invite parties in people's homes - and even doing this risked attacks from the state and random racists. horsemouth always found the acoustic guitar that opens a lot of zulu jive tunes amazing (insane and a little bit frightening), this one in particular blows his mind.
horsemouth has acquired a copy of flaubert’s juvenalia memoirs of a madman from outside a charity shop in a remarkably efficient kidnapping operation. (‘may I?’ ‘thank you.’ gone)
he was on his way to see stick in the wheel at the union chapel (together on two tracks with the britten sinfonia)
the britten sinfonia first - young people playing classical music respect, in this case classical music inspired by folk themes- first off milhaud (pronounced me-O not mill-hoed as horsemouth would have imagined) and an excerpt from le bœuf sur le toit, a brazillian flavoured thing (nice and lively - horsemouth’s favourite) originally intended for a jean genet cabaret , next two movements from pelléas et mélisande (fauré) which perfectly made the argument of why romantic impressionistic french music had to die.
there were other things but horsemouth forgets them - a piece based on a sea shanty which people sang when they weren’t playing. a piece by percy grainger (mock morris? no relation) and later a newly comissioned piece from josephine stephenson (horsemouth and howard, philistines that they are, bailed before this).
and the two tracks of stick in the wheel with orchestral arrangements - counted off (perhaps a little approximately) by ian from stick in the wheel - (for it was just an ian and nicola gig) these (roving blade and over again -or is horsemouth’s memory failing him) were nice enough but didn’t add that much to what was there.
horsemuth has listened to roving blade through - someone has put up a clip on facebook - and it improves on subsequent listenings.
the problem with folk songs as sources for classical pieces (opines horsemouth) is that they are strophic (if horsemouth has got the term correctly), they have a tune which is repeated with only small variations to accommodate the words, they tend to be modal rather than fitted with all the gears and gubbins of keys and key changes and the like. consequently they do not develop well, it is a real challenge to find an arrangement that does not drown the tune in soup nor simply repeat what is there indiscriminately. this, unless they are ballads with tons of lyrics, makes folk songs short - so a couple of these all in a row can become much of a muchness very quickly.
between these two tracks a stick in the wheel set (with just nicola and ian) - it ended with a piece with an electronic backing track (to no great avail sad to say), witch bottle was great (the best thing in H+H’s opinion, being that strange thing, a folk song about a material item), weaving song, the cruel ship’s captain, me n becky, the blind beggar of bethnal green. ian was making some use of violin bow on guitar (jimmy page style) which was good. horsemouth regrets not liking the electronic piece more but in truth he likes the band set up (though he does admire their attempts to find new things, new ways of doing it).
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thereafter horsemouth and howard adjourned to a nearby pub for two pints of expensive modern beer and then home. horsemouth walked there and back (so the exercise was good), later sean came round to visit, sean thinks theresa may should not be counted out yet - that she’s the narasimha rao of british politics (this is just a wonderfully contrarian opinion).
please pardon horsemouth (he’s a little slow today). he was out drinking last night and so today he’s feeling a little fragile (and typing very badly).
he’s had his coffee. he’s had his shower. he really has no excuse.
on the positive side horsemouth was up early and has spent the morning learning what he thinks of as the sequencer part on debussy’s pagodes (hopefully transposed correctly to a different key). it arcs up and down (in a 12/8 sort of way). he thinks he has a way of recording it to click by using the habanera like vamp of the first two bars and the offbeat/ onbeat? f-g cluster as a constant.
he’s got a non-standard tuning bflatfdggd than enables him to do this. he's playing it n the resonator at the moment.
he’s worked out a way of playing the sequencer part in two parts (but not yet a way of playing it all at once) and he’s worked out some pseudo-sudanese runs to go with it. that just leaves - well er... quite a bit really.
perhaps he can get it done and recorded for the next musicians of bremen album
after much effort (well none at all actually) horsemouth and howard made it through the looking glass and into the new london (down at the tides festival in north greenwich).
horsemouth arrived first (by tube) - there was a woman djing an african music selection at the first stage and some house music at the second stage. there were friendly helpful security people everywhere and pale ale vans with 50 uses and then recycleable plastic cups (one pound deposit - 5.50 a pint). there were crafts and food stalls (horsemouth assumed he was too poor for these and so had had breakfast and lunch before he came out).
the sun shone and people milled about wondering where the entertainment was.
the festival was in honour of a new elevated walkway - horsemouth walked it - it was elevated.
by the time howard had arrived (by bus through a tunnel) it had all gone quiet again - they had a beer and wandered back and forth a bit. they sat in some deckchairs and watched some art videos and then a guy djing.
humanity you were beautiful but, judging by the noise you made with the mass of djembes left out, you have no sense of rhythm.
eventually they decided to go for a walk down the river towards the thames barrier and kill time until the main acts - they wandered through the last remaining bit of industry and then found the anchor and hope pub and had a pint of bitter and a packet of crisps there.
then they wandered back and saw a little of sudan archives (violin and backing tracks decent) and then a pause and then mulatu astatke - a venerable old ethiopian jazz musician (with lots of young dudes).
horsemouth dug it (and the crowd dug it), those horn chants are really memorable and there were some great 3 rhythms. the sound was quite spiky - horsemouth had to retreat from the speakers.
in the end howard needed food - so they went and got some humous and bread at the tescos and then off to their various homes.
horsemouth’s friend jenna’s band (bad wives) were playing that night (but horsemouth was too knackered to go).
will horsemouth go back next week for oumou sangare? howard was saying no - horsemouth he’s not sure (the alternative is walthamstow garden party but the queues there are always horrendous).
saturday morning stick in the wheel are playing (that’l be good).
howard had mentioned a film called the l-shaped room when horsemouth was in it was on telly so he watched it.
today is cold and grey and rainy - there’s supposed to be a picnic (but horsemouth can’t see it really).
illuminations - walter benjamin, (introduction (hannah arendt), task of the translator, the storyteller, franz kafka, brod on kafka)
bringing it all back home - ian clayton
a voice in the chorus - abram tertz
londinium - cameron bain/ max 'crow' reeves
road to wigan pier - george orwell (not finished)
kierkegaard (introductions and dips)
masquerade (dips) and institute banjamenta (started)- robert walser
my imprisonments -silvio pellico (started)
filmscatch22 (series), the rivals of sherlock holmes, fahrenheit 451 (recent remake as equilibrium), inland empire (david lynch), blood from the mummy's tomb, fear in the night (hammer horrors), two documentaries on orford ness (one radio, one tv), snatch, day of the dead (terrible remake), a fistful of dynamite (aka. duck you sucker)
gigs
5th anniversary of the death of cameron bain poetry recital
leigh folk festival saturday: leigh orpheus mae voice choir, the jones boys, mains'l haul, daisy bowlers, umbrella factory, masal, belinda kempster and fran foote, broomdasher, hoy shanty crew, sharron kraus and band.
events
record, visit parents, work training, jam with minty, much walking (leyton, stratford, walthamstow etc.)
