horsemouth is up and about. his booking for the day has cancelled already (possibly something to do with university lecturers). he still gets paid. there’s a chance he will be posted off to foreign climes but if not he will take the opportunity to do his (unpaid) paperwork and possibly ferry it in to work too (also unpaid).
he now has 13 days left to work (and for certain one of those is only an hour long).
yesterday was the last rehearsal with peter, paul, and enza. it went well, then they had dinner (thanks for feeding him) and had a last run through (it went even better, possibly the best yet). of course in musician mythology this means the gig will be terrible.
after horsemouth retreated to his home and listened to led zeppelin 3 (the folky one).
everything moves in the direction of 12/12 (the election). much hangs upon it. we will see the results on friday 13th (horsemouth’s last day at work (for this year) probably).
thereafter howard works and goes for christmas with friends - horsemouth will probably depart sharpish to his folks and then return early to get in some work on musicians of bremen volume 4 with howard over the week of the new year. howard is then back to work and horsemouth may have a few smidgens throughout january (but not anything full on).
so what dis horsemouth get up to on saturday?
well he wandered over the fields to aldi (asda- fka. ‘supermarket in the fields’ you are dead to me). he bought 2 cheap pizzas, 1.5kgs of pasta, 3 tins of cannellinni beans (there being no chickpeas, red kidney or butter beans to be had). the day before he’d picked up 3 boxes of linda mccartney sauasages for three squid at a sainsbury’s local in funky kingston so he had the fakemeat covered. he’d also picked up a 5kg bag of onions from his local greengrocer. he got some tomatoes and carrots to go with that and his remaining potatoes.
he finished off a 3 bean stew that ian had left (thanks dude - delicious it was).
then he got a phonecall from howard and high-tailed it over to the murder mile for two-and-a-half pints, they had to curtail their drinking so that horsemouth could go babysitting. howard reminded him he had once recorded a song called india song (but not the same one as jeanne moreau sings above). he babysat. they watched pinnocchio - which horsemouth can freely admit he has never seen all the way through. (spoiler - the naughty children are turned into donkeys.)
friday and horsemouth was up disgustingly early (but it’s ok he had his coffee and the day was not that long. next friday though (dew) that’s a long’un).
horsemouth can’t help but remark on the enthusiasm people he knows are showing for electoral politics (of the stick a cross in a box and then go back to work making money for ‘the man’ for the next five years of your life variety). is there a whiff of the 70ies about proceedings or the 40ies?
it is nice to see a labour party with a socialist program - horsemouth looks forward to the destruction of universal credit (aka. kill the poor) and its replacement by something humane, more funding for the NHS, and possibly a more sensible tax system. the list of areas where it is possible to do better than the existing situation is practically endless. and this is part of the problem, there is an almost endless amount of legislative work. but here we go - can labour win?
can labour win big enough to be able to do even some of what they want? could happen. failing that can they get into power with an alliance? could happen. er. would they still be able to do anything useful then? er maybe. if corbyn gets into 10 downing street won’t his every policy be held hostage by blairite labour MPs, probably.
we the people (who should know better) - of course horsemouth remembers the things can only get better election (this is a considerably better offer than that). but, of course, horsemouth (and his friends) should know better than to believe in the possibilities of electoral politics. it is not enough to have a manifesto of hope, but even this looks good by recent standards.
'... it's the voice that acts, that produces desire and emotion. the voice is stronger than physical presence. it's as important as the face, the eyes, the smile. a real letter is moving because it's spoken, written with the spoken voice...'
- margueritte duras, practicalities.
on the weekend horsemouth finished watching spirals and watched odd man out - carol read’s proto the third man. like any british film about ireland it’s carefully framed and hedged round - a banner at the start framing it as a story, denying an interest in the politics, a nice speech (made by the protagonist) about the ballot box.
"this story is told against a background of political unrest in a city of northern ireland. it is not concerned with the struggle between the law and an illegal organisation, but only with the conflict in the hearts of the people when they become unexpectedly involved."
william hartnoll crops up as a barman - but other than that the character actors are predominantly irish (from the dublin theatre).
like the third man it is a post war city in ruins. james mason gives it his best but it s a joycean city of characters that takes the credit, but it’s beckett as well (why here’s shel, here’s some low comedy, here are his no-good friends squatting in a disused mansion).
boris johnson has been filmed wandering round distressed in an underground bunker wearing only a soiled dressing gown. he mutters to himself about ‘a really great deal’ and ‘they said we couldn’t get it’, there is a filmcrew down there with him, but there is no phone signal, they have gone rogue and lost all perspective.
increasingly he comes to resemble the elephant man. (yes his posture really is that bad).
in fact this is not true (it only nearly happened). instead boris has been sent off on a tour of the extremities of the country to play with boats, and tractors and trains (and sad to say even mops). ‘nursie!’ bawls the big baby ‘my feet are wet’. ‘did you wet yourself again boris?’ replies nursie in solid northside.
how will boris deal with failure and rejection? will he just, in a twinkling of an eye, change their names to mufflewaffle and lambshoulder.
boris is in fact twins. he is his own tweedledum and tweedledee.
remain boris has been tied up, gagged and hidden in a cellar by a bunch of coves, but he has escaped and is currently criss-crossing north london underclothed and underfed solliciting donations from commuters on the overground “I went to eaton.’ he blubs).
leave boris, he’s the one we know and recognise.
they flipped a coin dominic gave them back in 2016.
by the time horsemouth got the phonecall he was already asleep. he bundled himself out of the door to do some babysitting.
when he got there plans had changed but after a few beers and a glass of cava everything assumed a rosy beneficent disposition.
horsemouth discussed slavic literature - ivo andric, ismael kadare and another dude horsemouth has forgotten. his informant had learned serbian. he mentioned dubrava ugresic's novel of refuge life the ministry of pain.
there was some discussion of malta too and sicily (leonardo sciascia, lampedusa), the global south where people stay out all night talking. the final songs - russian pop (and home to bed).
horsemouth feels surprisingly good on all this.
in the day horsemouth worked. he could find nothing in record and tape to tempt him.
recorded 49 years ago yesterday (excepting 'isis and osiris') by Alice Coltrane journey in satchdananda is one of horsemouth's favourite albums. the line up alice coltrane – piano, harp, pharoah sanders – soprano saxophone, percussion, cecil mcbee – double bass, rashied ali – drums, tulsi – tanpura, majid shabazz – bells, tambourine.
horsemouth is listening to joni mitchell’s the hissing of the summer lawns which is great, almost pet sounds in its genius,
‘a helicopter lands on the pan am roof, like a dragon fly on a tomb, and businessmen in button-downs, press in the conference room...’
curiously joni thinks it is a line that has dated badly - true she sings much better than it reads (imagine it read by bob dylan).
in france they kiss on main street it sounds like paradise. (a strange jazz-rock paradise reflecting on rock n’ roll (or is it france) granted). horsemouth knows all these tunes from various live albums (shadows and light for example). horsemouth would tell you who plays on it (but he’d need a magnifying glass).
the sun is low in the sky its rays reaching the back of horsemouth’s room due to its low angle, just emerging from behind the houses opposite (until they do their loft extensions - so a couple of years maybe). then horsemouth will only get the sun in summer and it will never reach the back wall again.
the winter sun is gone in the back garden. the tomato plants have expired (thank you plants for your bounty). the decking has become slippery.
hissing has interrupted horsemouth’s usual listening (musicians of bremen volume four: the demos) - of course as these tracks get mixed they are changing, things get added, things get taken away, the goalposts move, songs that had sounded sorted already when opened up again reveal themselves as inchoate messes (by some strange digital kipplisation process).
utopia - thomas more (norton critical edition and penguin edition)
the state of exception as paradigm for government (essay) - giorgio agamben
the spirit of utopia - ernst bloch
utopias of the british enlightenment -ed. gregory claeys (introduction)
short stories (maupassant)
neoliberalism (introduction) - david harvey
art forum october
ranciere now - oliver davis
good morning brothers! - jack dash
the space of literature - maurice blanchot (introduction trans. ann smock)
practicalities - marguerite duras
pulp - charles bukowski
films
space 1999, close encounters of the third kind, spirals, van helsing
events
round minty's for the first time in ages, rehearsing with enza and pete, various back-to-work tiredness induced disasters. howard's half-term, check in on the mixing.
