gigs, books, films, events December 2019

even earlier than usual

gigs -

• kartel winter solstice at rough trade east. (stick in the wheel, fran & flora, lisa knapp that horsemouth saw) 

films, tv, radio - 

• the guns of the magnificent 7
•  italo-horrors (the psychic (sete note nero), aenigma (part), the city of the living dead, the bird with crystal plumage)
• dolly parton documentary
• losing dorie
• laura kuenssberg's remake of 'triumph of the will' staring boris johnson, 
• bronco bullfrog, 
• dirty harry, magnum force, 
• robbie basho on resonance fm, 
• the essay on radio 3 about the weimar republic (series). 

books 

• arabia deserta (c.m. doughty) (part)
• the trumpet major (thomas hardy) (part) 
• from the diary of a snail (gunter grass) (most)
•  surely you're joking mr.feynman! (richard p. feynman as told to ralph leighton) (all)
•  a report for an academy (franz kafka in 'a country doctor')
•  the instant of my death (maurice blanchot) (v.short story) 
• spinoza and politics (start) (etienne balibar) 

events the fucking election, the deaths of anna karina and ram dass

on the thirteenth day of brexmas...

ram dass has died. he was one of the early acid experimenters (along with timothy leary), later he became a guru (corresponding with meher baba etc.) kubler-ross was one of his students (doing work on near death experiences). he had a stroke a few years ago (which he regarded as practice for leaving this earth). there’s some connection with the incredible string band song this moment (but horsemouth doesn’t know what it is).

ram dass makes an appearance in feynman’s surely you’re joking mr feynman - feynman (living in California) has run into dolphin and floatation tank researchers the lilly’s (the center of the storm etc.). he has a few goes in the floatation tank, eventually ram dass (‘a fella from harvard who had gone to india and written a popular book called ‘Be Here Now’’) suggests to him that he can get similar results by controlling his breathing (and off he goes)


horsemouth can think about beginning to do his review of the year. 

this year he played two gigs - one a duo musicians of bremen gig with howard (at waterintobeer), the other as part of peter, paul and enza at bethnal green working man’s club. he went to the leigh-on-sea folk festival, he went to a number of gigs - he saw his friends lou crisfield and martin howard play, triple negative, and zoe and nick doyne-ditmas, and a gig by a girl himself and minty met in a bar one time (bad wives), kevin g.davy twice, once as part of the phil miller tribute, once solo. he went to a memorial recital of cameron bain’s poetry.

he saw lankum once and stick in the wheel twice, charlie parr and j.d. travers. his first gig of the year was the mari lwyd llundian his last the kartel winter solstice gig.

‘on the third day of brexmas my truelove gave to me, three dancers dancing, two bouts of drinking, a diary of a snail and a bag of chips for one pound fifty’

'empires crumble my friend, republics founder and fools survive.’
‘bravo, m. ségalot, ça c'est du meuble !’

anna karina (wearing a fedora) gets up to dance. there’s been a brief discussion as to the moves (which the third dancer wasn’t a part of). m. ségalot interrupts but it all goes off well. every once in a while the music will stop but they will keep on dancing, you can hear their handclaps and foot stomps while the narrator tells us what will happen. godard asserts his authority over the scene at the same time as he breaks the laws of realism in film to show us how the apparatus works.

she’s dead. she’s gone.



over on john fahey and american primitive guitar horsemouth has landed a resonance fm show about robbie basho, his 12 string guitar has been found as have boxes of master recordings some of which have never been released before (exciting times). about 20 people have liked it, it seems to have peaked there.

yesterday (actually the second day of brexmas) horsemouth went round pete’s flat and they dd some work on pete’s tunes (and played a few of the old ones just to keep their hands in). pete fed him (thank you pete) they had a few glasses of red wine and discussed events. today (actually the third day of brexmas) horsemouth will either do some administrations or shuffle them off until tomorrow.

the last day of campaigning

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'a new voice hailed me of an old friend...' (‘this is us in our fine-ness’)

horsemouth is up and has his coffee. he has a very slight headache from the glass of red he had round pete’s flat yesterday (and him with no paractamol about the place - there’s a mission for him later).

‘this is us in our fine-ness’ comes from sweet earth flying. paul bley and muhal richard abrams duel on electric and acoustic piano, a voice intones words from many languages, ‘and it’s all about expression.’

'a new voice hailed me of an old friend...' begins c.m. doughty’s arabia deserta. he’s on the hadj, the pilgrimage to mecca, but he really shouldn’t be there, if he gets caught he’s probably dead. the undertaking is perilous enough as it is (bandits, disease), in the cholera years the dying would be buried in shallow graves along the roadside, but would later revive and dig themselves out. eventually they would make their way back to damascus, to their homes, to discover all their property had been distributed. (p.22 already)

the trumpet major goes well also (for a minor hardy), p.98. liberalism, a counter history is stalled on p.179. today. a day off. some farting about and admin, a little light food shopping maybe (rice, oil, more beans).

 

‘exit: annunziata’ (rees-mogg announces her departure)

oh dear poor nigel farage. he’s such a ghastly little oik. all he wanted was to hang out with the posh set and here they are they’ve gone and snubbed him. four of his MEPs, people he’d personally hand picked for the best sinecure he knows have chosen the final week of the campaign (if you can call it that) to bail on him and call on people to vote tory (of course they’ll probably keep the MEPeepships).

in retrospect the plot was perhaps just a tad obvious, here's the brexit party with their hard won wisdom with hindsight;

‘ we also note that one of the MEPs is the sister of a cabinet minister, another has a partner who works in the office of the same cabinet minister and yet another is a personal friend of both boris johnson and michael gove.’

well, when you put it like that...

‘in the case of john longworth, who was for years the firmest advocate of WTO withdrawl that we have ever met, he underwent a metamorphosis into being a supporter of the new EU treaty following two days of meetings in london.’ says the brexit party.

gosh. someone who understands WTO rules (what a catch). it is at this point that an unwanted spirit of rancour enters their belated and clearsighted analysis,

‘we hope mr.longworth is well rewarded for his actions.’

horsemouth hopes so too.if only in the spirit of comedy. he owes this information to the copy of the FT he found on the train (it’s just such a pleasure to read a newspaper).

of course this s not the sum total of nigel’s problems there being roasted by andrew neil while a series of racist and islamophobic quotes are read out from his candidates (well it’s too late to fire them all). one of the founders of the brexit party calls on him to give up and, yes you guessed it, calls on their supporters to vote tory.

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last night horsemouth watched bronco bullfrog. endless cups of tea in the new high rises, in the cafes, in the old terraces. the old east end. greenpoint. stratford. down in docklands (when it was docks before it was docklands). escape by the river.

boris was sent by god! (why, had he run out of locusts?)

donald trump has departed in a snit with all the other boys laughing at him in the lower sixth common room (but they’ll be laughing on the other side of their faces if trump gets a second term - which he probably will).

of course that little sneak boris should have stuck by him (seeing as he’s leaving the gang) but there he is snickering away with the french boys (trudeau and macron). you didn’t know boris spoke french? (from his grandmother).

the ‘birthers’ continue to point out that boris was born in new york.

but our boris (to quote wikipedia) is even more exotic than that, he's the grandson of ‘Osman Kemal (later Wilfred Johnson) and Irene Williams (daughter of Stanley Fred Williams of Bromley, Kent, and Marie Louise de Pfeffel). ... Osman's Anglo-Swiss mother Winifred Brun died shortly after giving birth. Ali Kemal returned to Turkey in 1912, whereafter Osman Wilfred and his sister Selma were brought up by their English grandmother, Margaret Brun, and took her maiden name, Johnson...

stanley johnson (boris’s father - conservstive MP and sometime world bank population wonk, you know, the annoying one who thinks that being able to spell pinocchio is a matter of importance), his maternal grandmother's parents were hubert freiherr von pfeffel (born in munich on 8 december 1843) and... hélène arnous-rivière (born on 14 january 1862).’ in other words boris is as perfect a european as you could wish for.

yes that’s right boris ‘millions of turks’ de pfeffel johnson is as perfect a european as you could hope for.

boris has been passing as an englishman from a very young age (like his father before him). but really he’s like something out of a powell-pressburger movie. who knew that such creatures still existed? 

doubtless the box-set of his life will be made and we will all have the pleasure of watching it in our old ages. boris will be played by an up-and-coming comic actor, he will be played like a tussle-haired and on the go I claudius (crossed with up pompeii), crossed with yes minister crossed with house of cards.

 there is one more scene for certain to be played with boris. when his successors come for him with the knives (going ‘here piggy piggy’). will boris flee squealing through the sewers? or will he try to face them down with dignity? what will be his flash back to in his final seconds? will it be him on a box, as a child, giving a churchill speech?

 CUT

(you know they never liked you)