books/gigs/films/events april 2020

books

• salammbo (flaubert) 
•  flaubert letters 1830-57 (ed. francis steegmuller) 
•  pages from the goncourt journals and germinie lacerteux (edmond and jules de goncourt) 
•  the big blind (louise wener) 
•  false dawn (john gray) 
•  lots of articles from the london review of books (dated around july 2016) 
•  introduction and afterward to 'we the cosmopolitans' (ed. lisette josephides and alexandra hall) 

 films
kenny rogers and david cassidy documentaries, elementary (most week nights), star trek (the remake with the youngsters), ritual, messiah of evil, pyewackett, age of stupid, midnight run (some), edipo rei and documentary (pasolini), blood on satan's claw, carnival of souls.

gigs nothing nothing nothing

events continued movement towards musicians of bremen volume four

a sphinx guards the door marked ‘exit’

‘ethiopia produces plenty of sphinxes... great avenues of guardian sphinxes lining the approaches to tombs’ and there is the sphinx on the road to thebes (horsemouth was desultorily watching pasolini’s edipo rei and then a documentary on pasolini with subtitles autotranslated from the italian).

horsemouth hasn’t got much done. he’s kind of ashamed of his reading (louise wener’s the big blind, she was the singer in sleeper way back, horsemouth met her, very briefly, once, it’s a decent enough exploitation novel). salammbo sits around here somewhere. he’s almost out of lrb’s. he’s getting antsy. he might have to go out of the house for a walk.

later thebes suffers from the plague. eventually oedipus discovers the truth.

boris hasn’t been seen much (woop woop he's back - or maybe he’ll just leaving matt handcock out front to take the bullets). dominic cummings and one of his computer bods from the leave campaign) has been sitting in on the sage (scientific advisory) meetings for the government. now this is unusual (and probably politically dangerous). horsemouth had assumed cummings was just sitting in his house in a sulk (he bests the westminster establishment and just as he was about to do great things... the coronavirus blindsides him).

they have been knocked sideways by events. they have been forced to get the chequebook out. but they look slow out of the starting blocks and woefully under-prepared (on testing, on tracking, on PPE). they look to have miscalled the progress of the epidemic so that the UK will eventually end up with one of the highest deathtolls per head of population in the developed world (just behind america probably).

but they have also been lucky, the infected have not over-topped capacity in the hospitals, the old have died quietly out of sight and out of mind in the nursing homes, the medics, the cleaners have not downed tools, marched and protested, the daily briefings mean they look like they’ve tried. on PPE plucky little matt has rolled up his sleeves and carried boxes.

’we’re all human, cathy’ protests matt, jeremy hunt (the man who for years presided over the running down of the NHS gets to be interviewed as the governments main critic (parachuted in as chair of the parliamentary health committee - smart move), kier starmer protests forensically, loyally, ineffectually.

what is the route out of this if any immunity is temporary? what is the future for cities? how can the city function if rapid mass transit can’t be used? how will horsemouth survive?

a sphinx guards the door marked ‘exit’. it’s a grey morning. but it should clear later. horsemouth will carry on with his reading.


 

another day at the horsemouth auto-icon memorial gardens visitor's centre

well hello! and how is your visit today? we do so hope you are enjoying your visit to horsemouth auto-icon memorial gardens. should you get lost there is a full colour map available from the dispenser just by the door (best to take one now just in case). there’s a lot to see and horsemouth himself just knows you’d want to start with his ocelot collection.

but first of all a word about security. for the security and safety of all horsemouth auto-icon memorial gardens visitors suspiciously burly ‘park keepers’ patrol the park at all times. anyone caught failing to act with appropriate tact and decorum will be escorted from the premises.

properly used this bequest to a grateful nation should be available for centuries. (we wouldn’t want it to go the way of the j.g.ballard theme park over at shepperton). 

and secondly (this won’t last much longer honest) a word about decorum. there must be (to misquote up pompeii) ‘decorum in the forum’ - should you leave a comment in one of the many visitor’s books around the park they should be of the format ‘how wonderfully clever/ witty/ creative/ ecological you are mr. horsemouth, you and your auto-icon memorial gardens’.

we know that horsemouth wouldn’t want anyone attending the theme park to be confronted by an dark and disturbing material that had gone unexpectedly off script.

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yesterday (well a few days ago now) horsemouth attended an online children’s birthday party (best party ever!). there was cake (the other side of the screen). there were presents (ditto). there were birthday cards. the goody bags presented a bit of a logistical problem (but uncle matt handcock has said that there is no problem with the supply of goody bags it is just their distribution that presents a massive logistical challenge). there was singing of happy birthday (somewhat foiled by bandwidth and latency issues). the candle was blown out on the cake.

one child (bless) said that boris johnson was sick with corona virus and had been seen crying. there was the main stage - the birthday room and little thumbnail windows of children and their parents watching at home. the easter bunny was in attendance (and so, a little while later, was a black cat). horsemouth took as his style guide the goldie looking chain corona virus lockdown video.

eventually it dawned on horsemouth that he had been attending a cabinet meeting.

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the next day - bright sunny morning a little cold, the window is open at the top (just a little) to let some fresh air in. later some work. a check to see if the setback has resolved itself. horsemouth sits here with a coffee. he’s already freshened it up with some hot water and may need to do so again.

the problem with the lockdown is that it works too well with his agoraphobia. left to himself this is pretty much how horsemouth spends his summer holidays anyway (well he might visit supermarkets in search of bargains more often or go on longer walks). he would almost certainly by now gone round to howard’s, or minty’s, or pete’s to work on some music. or perhaps he would have gone for rather too many beers somewhere with howard. there would have been co-op meetings (followed by the pub for not enough beers), there would have been some work, horsemouth would probably have got in a visit to his folks in the green over easter.

several of horsemouth’s friends are using the lockdown to work on their art (minty and myk). horsemouth is a little envious. he should use the time to work up his solo set and a few more crowd pleasers for sing-alongs.

the first problem is that horsemouth is using up his summer holidays now (so what will he do for his summer holidays?). the second problem is that having survived wave one of the corona virus (touch wood) horsemouth returns (perhaps too early) to the mundane world of doing enough work to pay the rent (the amount of work he is doing is certainly too small to pay his rent and furthermore it is taking too long for him to earn enough to pay the rent by doing it).

there is a change in how the work is organised (this alone is enough to make horsemouth nervous) and there is a change in how the work needs to be done (it will take horsemouth a while to get comfortable with this).

shadows lock around your head (II)

horsemouth is reviewing the demo CD howard dropped off. let us know what you think of the demo tracks on soundcloud.

(by one of those magical network delays he got the text message that howard is coming to drop the CD off the next day). it’s a solid line of ticks. horsemouth is very pleased with it.

of course some songs he likes better than others. of course some songs have come out better than others. some songs have fallen by the wayside. strange new song have added themselves.

in particular there's a track currently called  persia - horsemouth has changed his mind about the voice speaking on it, it's fucking great, maybe it should be called different seasons. . as a friend said, 
'I've had these on a loop....loving persia. I was on a call to a work mate and they thought it sound good too'

 last night he watched a horror called messiah of evil (kind of like carnival of souls crossed with a zombie movie)

‘do you expect to arrive by publishing? that is not easy.’

‘the matter of publication is very complex, despite its apparent simplicity. do you merely want to publish?’ that is easy. or do you expect to ‘arrive’ by publishing? that is not easy’ 
- for once maxime du camp gives flaubert some good advice.

it was not so easy for flaubert to arrive. he arrives with his first published book true but it takes him until he is 30. it takes the entire of francis steegmuller’s the letters of gustave flaubert 1830-1857.

 at least, unlike the goncourts, after all his efforts he gets to arrive.

but having arrived however hard he works he cannot hit the magic spot again. he is not a realist like his contemporaries, of the school of zola, the one zola learnt from the goncourts, but for flaubert art is ‘to do what nature does... to set us dreaming’.

‘you are lucky, you poets: you have an outlet in your verse. when something troubles you, you spit out a sonnet.’ - flaubert to his lover louise colet.

howard is down in sunny pop(u)lar. horsemouth is up in the salt marshes. they are sundered by lockdown and social distancing legislation right at the point in the year where they would have the time and inclination to get together and do some work.

howard (however) has been busy and has been sending over new tracks by email (and very good they sound too). very soon he will be cycling up with a final demo CD. worryingly one of the new songs is an excellent fingerpicking guitar piece (that’s horsemouth out of job).

the mixing down of everything proceeds apace too. soon it will be time to send the tracks for the album off for mastering and then the terrible cull must happen where they chose which tracks will actually go on the physical CD (and which will be relegated to soundcloud).

when the emails arrive horsemouth proposes but ultimately howard disposes. fortunately howard's judgement is good. it is by far the best working partnership horsemouth has ever been involved in.

horsemouth guesses they will produce a physical CD once again (to go with the various downloads) at least then they can be sure they have given it to people or sold it. it enables them to get some art or photography on the cover. 

horsemouth does not expect to arrive as a result of having made it. (that would be a dreadful accident were that to happen to him at this stage of his life). he does expect to get a clearer view of what it is he is involved in making. some people expect a victory parade (but these are always anti-climaxes), horsemouth just likes the work.



howard mentioned listening to this while cycling round brockwell park when he lived down there. horsemouth lived in brixton for about a year (er. like about 25 years ago) he used to walk round brockwell park a lot in the summer. he would go there to read.

confiding in the evening star (easter)

jacken elswyth has done some tracks for easter.

howard had posted up on soundcloud a mix of confiding in the evening star (since taken down) - a song written by howard, though horsemouth did suggest the title. this is probably the hardest track on the album to mix because there’s a lot going on (vocals, ukuleles, whistling, melodicas, various keyboards, lap steel guitars, acoustic guitars).

the track ends in an instrumental (and this works very well) but finding the best way through the verses, choruses and drops is a bit complicated.

horsemouth plays two tracks of lap steel guitar on it - one tuned daddad, one tuned dadf#ad, he doesn’t recall playing anything else on it (maybe there’s a track of acoustic in there to sweeten it up? yes there is, horsemouth remembers it now).

he texted howard to suggest taking out the lap steel in the second verse but now he thinks the thing to do would be to take out (or turn down) most of the early lap steel except in the second verse. he also thinks the initial keyboard is too loud (he just doesn’t like the sound of it really).

if he had his time over he would probably try moving the bits where confiding in the evening star is sung on to the section that comes after them (and he would probably do a better job of recording the lap steels, he did them in a hurry when he was grumpy and didn’t take enough time and care to make sure they fitted together well).

but that said the mix is actually pleasantly punchy. like horsemouth says it is a difficult one to get right and it has come together surprisingly well.

stop press: seems like they may have a violinist interested in playing on their stuff. more songs to go up on soundcloud later.

‘the list of winners in st. guillotine’s lottery’

john prine has died. horsemouth knows hardly any of his stuff. the clip horsemouth has of him singing the paradise he first starts off by talking about his hometown, about the radio, about the kind of music they’d listen to ‘country and rockabilly’. about the trips back to where his family is from, kentucky.

having read excerpts from their journals, horsemouth is reading the goncourts brothers’ novel germinie lacerteux, matter of fact he’s nearly finished (p.131 out of 170 penguin classics edition). it’s a servants gone bad novel, both the lady and her maid have hard lives but we are initially told about the lady’s in more detail. her family hides out after the revolution, living on the edge of starvation, herself reduced to a servant. every day there is an announcement of ‘the list of winners in st. guillotine’s lottery’.

this works to balance things up and not to show too much sympathy with the servant. (whose life is frankly harsh and terrible and made so by human needs).

jules (the younger goncourt brother) dies at 40 but edmond lives on to 74. there he is being sprightly and malicious and unreconciled when suddenly; 

‘here ends the journal of edmond de goncourt who died twelve days later...’ 

they lived and worked together for 20 years, hardly ever spending more than a few hours away from each other. they would finish each others sentences, that sort of thing. together they wrote as an ‘I’, their journals ‘for the most part written late at night, with none of the laborious care which is so obvious in the authors’ novels.’ (says their translator robert baldick in his introduction).

down in pop(u)lar with howard things are moving forward.

‘kkkhhhrk. the parrot is dead. the parrot is dead. he’s sitting up in bed...’ sing the parrots in the trees. swedish greens (beautiful plumage). the world is troubled by an apocalypse. meanwhile horsemouth is more concerned with the pulled muscle in this right hand side. later he may be working. in the modern way of working.

horsemouth calls a team meeting of his correspondents

horsemouth supposes that the current moments of inactivity (he is sleeping a lot and farting about on facebook a lot) will presage an explosion of sociability and hugging when this is all over (or maybe not, maybe we will have all grown emotionally distant and a neue sachlichkeit will reign over all).

to discuss these matters horsemouth called a team meeting of his many selves from across time.

there were a number of technical limitations meaning that all participants had to be reachable by digital devices and there were bandwidth issues that limited the participation of those on dial-up modems (ask your grandad). the result was that we were presented with 21st century horsemouth’s only and in particular those after 2010 (and many of those during from periods of rest and relaxation - working horsemouth’s declined to participate).

from left to right and clockwise we have; in Ze’s garden in porto horsemouth (2016), summer holiday at the flat in pop(u)lar horsemouth (undated), 2016 exploring porto horsemouth (a few days later), drunk dancing horsemouth from 2019 - recent (but not very helpful), a mildly drunk horsemouth from a christmas in the early 2010s with johnny and denise, and horsemouth out on a wander with john clarkson from 2020 in the olympic park.

there were some distortions in the feed, ghostly voices muttered in the background, strange music was heard (it kind of sounded like amon duul). there were other distortions, some horsemouth’s seemed not to be unitary horsemouth’s but temporal collages - at the flat horsemouth complained he was being filmed by another horsemouth on a laptop (but that only his shadow was visible), drunken dancing horsemouth said there was another drunken dancing horsemouth in the room who sometimes butted into the conversation and answered in his stead. all our respondents were summer or winter horsemouths, we had no spring or autumn respondents, one third (but it frequently seemed like more) were intoxicated, one third were out with friends and so had to be circumspect about answering (horsemouth says sorry to his friends if you thought he was acting strangely or seemed distracted).

overall the meeting was not productive.

olympic park horsemouth was mainly interested in transforming into a giant version of himself and destroying the olympic park.

drunken dancing horsemouth would frequently interject YES! CUMMON! LET”S HAVE IT! into the conversation,

on holiday in porto horsemouth’s were more interested in discussing porto rather than the business of the meeting. the porto horsemouth’s were particularly keen on the globalised world and air travel and grew surly when it was pointed out to them (by christmas horsemouth) that they weren’t representative of horsemouth’s experience.

christmas and poplar flat horsemouth expressed incredulity when brexit was mentioned and threatened to terminate the call on the basis that this must be some kind of joke/ exceptionally unlikely alternative earth.

none could shed any light on the origins of the virus which has decimated humanity and forced us to live in holes underground. none expressed any interest in taking up medical training or campaigning on issues of increasing pandemic resilience, most opined that it was just a power grab by the state, an instance of racism, an attempt to limit the freedom and mobility of the working class.

none had heard of a radical organisation called the army of the twelve fruit bats (poplar horsemouth said it did reminded him of a black and white movie, but olympic park horsemouth said it was a cable TV series).

all attempts to contact future horsemouth’s (to see how this will all turn out) have failed.

horsemouth will attempt to return to an earlier points in his life when he was in love but also crucially there were digital devices. this is made difficult by the absence of any digital resources from these times (the dial up modem barrier) or even photographs.