‘here till here is there (again)’

horsemouth dreamed about being in a pub called the latin troll. he also dreamed about doing chemistry. still eventually he awoke. it’s a grey day outside and the heating is on.




the late-era incredible string band compilation is going well (it’s calmer than the earlier stuff).

in a week’s time the UK will leave the EU. except that all the difficult trade and tariff stuff is still to be negotiated. we are already collectively poorer (horsemouth doubts anyone he knows is feeling it yet - maybe john in porto where the pound doesn’t go as far), but the real harm is yet to be done.

london (services - mostly exempt) will be damaged the least, the north and the midlands will get a right royal fucking and probably need state aid to avoid reverting to the stone age. the north of ireland and the fisherman are out in the cold briny sea. it’s all academic now. the government has (and will have for a long time) a straightforward majority to negotiate/ fail to negotiate all this shit. and if they fail, if there is suffering, the EU/ migrants/ EU citizens here can take the blame. 

there was a discussion of paul kingsnorth’s 2008 book real england recently - paul had put his finger on the dissatisfaction with modern globalised britain, the one that surfaced as brexit, rather than say class war, as the actual expression of anti-globalisation. of course it is this sentiment that has put the tories in power with a large majority but put them in power with the task of making the fantasy a reality. but of course it doesn’t have to actually work, it just has to provide the continued opportunities for getting into power.

this sentiment built up because it could not find expression in the political system (look at ukip, more votes than the snp but only one MP and him a tory). brexit argued the problem was with brussels but really it was with westminster,, and really it wasn’t with westminster it was with the whole never to be elected apparatus of capitalism, a globalised capitalism.

crisis is of course opportunity (if you have the capital to exploit it). the pound falls and overnight the opportunities to buy up and gain rent from british infrastructure, housing, capital become cheaper. people will still have needs that they will have to meet even as they have less actual money to do it. people think things are bad? there is a lot further it can fall.

we enter the year of the stainless steel rat when only the slippery will survive. the sources of death will be many, you will have to be smart and quick. (here horsemouth reproduces god’s speech to the rabbits from watership down.)



while he typed this the incredible string band album played. now he will put on live at the village vanguard again (john and alice coltrane, pharoah sanders, rashied ali, jimmy garrison, and some dude called emanuel rahim on percussion - who turns out (as john points out) to have played on lots of things and on his own latin jazz albums). he doesn’t expect much from it, late era john coltrane is too dense and fire-y for his tastes mostly, he likes things striped down a bit. he prefers the simpler cosmic love of alice coltrane and pharoah sanders.

actually the 'again' is pretty nice. there's a dirty great jimmy garrison double bass solo, pharoah sanders and john coltrane don't go the full seattle.