new left review: marco d'eramo - the philosopher's epidemic
london review of books blog: 25 june 2020 'singing together, apart' rachael beale
reveries of a solitary walker - jean-jacques rousseau
microcosms - claudio magris (and a trieste set renzo rosso short story in italian writing today)
the last world - christoph ransmayr
a secret history - procopius
black mass - john gray
from exodus to species being - howard slater
films, tv etc.virus, sons of anarchy, catweazle, quatermass(79), the square (art world satire), medea (pasolini), I am not your negro (james baldwin), 3 documentaries on black people in the film industry in a row, judex (george franju), the storyville black panthers documentary, quakers documentary
gigs (online) xname, lisa o'neill
events: launch of musicians of bremen 'the humming', the solstice, st.joao
two dudes horsemouth doesn't know (like complete strangers!) have liked musicians of bremen's page - a young guitarist from holland, and an older experimental music fan from alabama. it was liked over on american primitive guitar (where horsemouth posted it) by another guitar playing american youngster.
horsemouth did an online event (just to enable me to email lots of people about it at one go - 172 people were invited, 22 responded, 9 with going, 13 with interested).
the people who clicked like were - well you know who you are.
horsemouth put up a link to amarach as a taster for the album (and that got some likes).
With more warning and a performance he thinks the musicians could get a better response as they work through their release schedule.
still. very pleased overall.
it is important to remember musicians of bremen make music because they like making music, if other people like it this is good. as a kid horsemouth went to the circus, some carneys dressed as clowns were wandering round with a baby tiger that a child could hold for a fiver or a tenner (this was a looong time ago - like back in the early 70ies, before animal welfare). the little girl next to horsemouth got to hold it. horsemouth really wanted to hold it s he pretended he’d lost his ticket. they said they’d come back if horsemouth found his ticket. the child horsemouth never got to hold the baby tiger.
horsemouth supposes the message of this is you can’t always get what you want but you can get what you need.
36 minutes in the problem of choral singing as a vector for spreading covid - more of the science (such as exists)
last night a friend played (online in a safe and socially distanced way) but first there was a panel discussion over zoom (which horsemouth attended in the role of ’audience’). he was left slightly non- plused when everyone departed for youtube and arrived slightly late to the performance by marta zapparoli who works with sounds from the electromagnetic spectrum. it was great and grindy and layering up - the kind of noises from horsemouth’s childhood where you would go scanning round all the bands on the radio.
next up dorit chrysler thereminist (from graz but living in new york in beautifully colourful tiled room with flowers and a grand piano). her theremin lines were played over tasteful and beautiful chill out type sounds.
finally eleonora orregia (xname) who is in a very elite club as the inventor of a new musical instrument - the rebus - which is not a theremin (it works with microwaves being used like radar) but shares some of the gestural features of its use.
in the lrb a singer bemoans the fact that singing (and singing in choirs) may in fact be a particularly good way of spreading the coronavirus (it generates a particularly good aerosol of spit and virus and the singers lungs pump it out round the room). normally she would be singing the somewhat apocalyptic works of william byrd in churches altogether in a big choir but for now she must be content with the modern safe and socially distanced variety of performance.
'we sang together, apart, of the holy cities that had become a wilderness'
from the world of recorded sound horsemouth is continuing to enjoy the music of lena platonos, eighties greek electronic music pioneer, as the technology improves it gets less interesting, but until then there are voices and interpretive dancings. she used some footage from george franju’s judex for one of her videos - a b&w magician with a sinister chicken-head mask releases doves.
today the birth of jean-jacques rousseau in geneva. yesterday the gig and a quick chat to darsavini.
today it was a lovely cool morning. normally horsemouth would complain and say a grey morning but after a few days above 30 he’s already enjoying the coolness (wimp).
yesterday he walked down to howard’s (via the canal) and the back up again later (up the roads not managing to cut through the park - it was shut early). he passed literally hoards of maskless youngsters out buying coffees (maybe beers even), sunning themselves, cycling, jogging, passing closer than 2m, passing closer than 1m. ah humanity you are beautiful.
on the other hand horsemouth thinks you should be staying socially distanced and wearing facemasks not hanging out in big consortia. horsemouth just thinks the juggernaut of death will keep rolling if we don’t make efforts to prevent the spread of the virus. he knows that, for the young and healthy, the virus is most often merely fucking unpleasant, but having had it before does not necessarily grant immunity. for older (and less healthy) people the virus is considerably more dangerous with a much greater risk of death, long painful hospitalisations and permanent life changing damage.
horsemouth would rather not add it to the list of close personal friends (the flu, the cold) humanity will be taking to the stars as passengers and horsemouth will be dying from.
please try and stay safe says horsemouth the avuncular mule. people like to be in crowds, they like to stroll along the prom prom prom and have an ice cream and a bag of chips. but sex and death there’s the equation.
at howard’s (a brief) an overview of the evolving artwork and discussions of how the various tracks will be parceled out between various release formats. volume one they shoehorned on all the tracks they had recorded and it suffers from this, volume two and three are better in that they are more tightly focused, the question is how to divide up volume four.
they also had a brief look at play live over the internet technologies (though by this time they had cracked open some beers, had a pizza and were losing focus rapidly). howard was giving it the let’s put the show on right here, right now horsemouth was giving it the hmmm maybe let’s have a few rehearsals first.
they played through a few songs to check they could actually be played. the results were a bit mixed - amarach/ amharic came out surprisingly well, others less so.
horsemouth opined they should make videos.
horsemouth shared his most recent discoveries in music lena platonos (great witchy greek electronica) from his friend jeno void in san fransisco, and some old favourites, baaba maal mariama, early pointer sisters, a cover of the doc watson tune ready for the times to get better.
at some point, and still with beer in the fridge and the nearby supermarket still open, it was horsemouth (for once) who called a halt.
in porto it used to be that people were hit with onion flowers but after loads of portuguese workers moved to france and the car factories in search of work it became squaeky plastic hammers. the sao joao festivities are closed down for the year (due to covid)- horsemouth is saddened but recognises the necessity of it. big crowds equals big transmission of the virus means more dead old people (and more dead people with pre-existing health conditions).
there’s a parade in montreal and quebec too. (horsemouth has witnessed this too)
in the north east of brazil it is celebrated with quadrilha (square dances) features couple formations in a mock wedding focused on a ‘mock’ bride and groom.
for some reason there is a bone horse ritual connected with this on st. john’s eve also. it was also the anniversary of june carter cash co-writing ring of fire (one of the all time great cheatin’ songs).
it’s a bright sunshine-y morning and horsemouth has stopped work for the year. he continues to be very cautious.with regard to the virus though that said yesterday he went to the supermarket (museli, beer, cheese - such like). he does not think such things can be truly safe. but needs must when the devil drives (in this case the desire to purchase food cheaply).
he has put batteries in his ganesh alarm clock for the first time in years but so far it has not sung (it is however keeping decent time).
a song by baaba maal from the baayo album . a friend reminded horsemouth of it by posting a picture of a turtle dove (they migrate from senegal). the lyric translation claims it is about a 'little brown dove' (possibly the non-migratory laughing dove that occurs right across the region all the way over to afghanistan). but horsemouth seems to remember the lyric booklet for the album claiming it was about a turtle dove.
maybe that it's been translated to the nearest equivalent bird.
baayo follows on from djaam leeli 'the adventurers' as an acoustic album with blind singer and guitarist mansour seck (which horsemouth also recommends highly). at the start of their careers they set off as itinerant musicians to wander round senegal playing where they could to hone their craft (seeing as they weren't griots - from the musician caste - this was a pretty risky and unorthodox thing to do).
horsemouth went with amelia to see mansour seck play (in the late 80ies, early 90ies maybe) - 'oh he's blind' 'yes' 'I just thought he was a bit stoned' .
a lot of baaba maal's work of the time has a problematic of 'making it', of crossing-over, of finding the magic formula that would open western ears (and wallets) to senegalese music (it was the same with youssou n'dour at the time). the gigs were often insanely great, the albums less so (re-recorded and remixed for the western market). sometimes you could find cassettes of the original african version of the album.
horsemouth's copy of it has gone west, he may have to track one down.
solstice - the sun stands still in the sky (well ok no it’s just at the most northerly point in its rising and setting and begins to reverse back the other way). the days begin to get shorter. but the warmth has been building up and up and we enter summer proper.
horsemouth saw a brief clip of it being interviewed on a moscow satirical tv show. what does the virus say? while horsemouth's russian is poor to nonexistent, this is what he thinks it is saying.
the virus is pleased to be on tour and said it had been in moscow for a while (this was back in february). previously it had been in china where it found the people very friendly (italy too). it is obviously delighted to have made it out of bats or pangolins into humanity (a sub-species of monkey who infest the planet to such an extent they are busy destroying it). but thank you humanity, you have enabled him to see the world).
still he’s delighted to have killed half a million of you and to have infected millions more. (sorry).
his future plans?
the virus (in his new expanded habitat) may mutate to become less lethal and less infectious and travel with humanity to the stars as brothers, or he may mutate to become more lethal and more infectious, and accidentally kill us all (sorry). life is a journey and one should be open to new experiences, and, if worst comes to worst, he can always go back to the bat cave.
it gets up to sing a song, 'it ain’t over (til it’s over)'.
a frog in a well sees only part of the sky and from there it is tempting to assume that every cloud has a silver lining
yvette cooper sits on a committee and they worry (as politicians have done for the entire of horsemouth’s life) about the displacement of the low skilled from work by automation and how social cohesion will be maintained.
and yet the jobs for the low skilled keep coming - in fact there are more and more of them and they pay less and less (hell they’re not even jobs any more, more bob-a-jobs and hookups).
and then the virus reveals them as being key workers all along.
the struggle of capitalism is to make the workers invisible. to tell you a story of magical economic laws and genus entrepreneurs. to make the work that goes into the product arriving on your doorstep invisible (even as you thank the person delivering it - they must be heroes, music brings us all so much closer (but not really you understand)).
after the virus came the rise of the robots (or at least automation says cooper).
the virus halts a face to face capitalism. we become digital homesteaders and all of a sudden we really are alienated consumers. (but are we really?)
lots of people are still working in the physical deed/ meet economy - not least the people still manufacturing the goods we consume, growing the food we eat or shipping it to us. the people who would sell it to us face-to-face would work too - and soon that will be allowed again. but that whole sector will bounce lower. the giant rapid mass transit systems run empty (no we tell a lie -they are full at rush hour still). the day comes where whatever the actual safety of it they will be pronounced safe. will we ( virus or no virus) really go back to the daily commute?
at some point the virus hits the factories and the farms of the third world - where people live hand-to-mouth and cannot socially distance or lockdown without actually starving. chronic flare ups of the virus hit production (this meets a demand for reduction in production coming the other way from a lazy non-reproductive capital).
the change that technology could bring does not arrive when the technology is invented but when the conditions become right for it (usually it takes the arrival of that horseman of the apocalypse war). in this case pestilence takes the lead. but it is not just technology that changes. agamben is not wrong to warn us over the rise of the biopolitical but at the same time the ruling class - hollowed out to the point of imbecility by neo-liberalism and the idea that the market can fix everything - botch introducing monitoring apps and full track and trace.
just as technology is much more about the fantasy of overcoming dependence on the workers than actually able to overcome capitalism’s dependence on workers.
‘ it is reason which ensnares and destroys the grim and ingenious magic.’
like ulysses chained to the mast and hearing the sirens we leave the world of myth and enter the world of reason, but medea of colchis is the victim of this process. the birth of tragedy is the birth of reason from myth ‘the indistinct totality of life’.
monday was the anniversary of the death of cameron bain (horsemouth raised a glass at some point in the evening).
horsemouth is reading caudio magris’ microcosms - the floor of the cathedral is tiled to resemble the patterns left by waves in sand (sorry horsemouth is getting nostalgic for the seaside). the possibilities of going for a cooling dip in the sea or in a river. he will carry on researching the writers as they are mentioned - if only to reassure himself that they are real.
'everything is sacred!' 'everything is sacred!'
pasolini films medea in the lagoon (or does he merely write it in his house there). the centaur chiron ‘the wisest and justest of all the centaurs’, and guardian to the child jason, salutes the day. his position in the lush greenery beside the lagoon hides his horse legs. claudio magris mentions pasolini filming in the lagoon in microcosms. later we see that there are two chirons - one with horse legs, one without. then both have merely human legs. this, he assures jason, is because we are now in the world of rationality rather than in the world of myth.
(or at least this is what horsemouth gets from the spanish subtitles, the dialogue is in italian of which horsemouth understands even less)
horsemouth watched pasolini’s medea - a solid diet of beauty. ovid wrote about jason and medea (but this tragedy is now lost) and so they appear in christoph ransmayr’s the last world (another book horsemouth read recenty). jason is now the captain of a rusty old freighter (in pasolini the argo is a raft). medea is now a costume at carnival juggling a child’s skull.
when horsemouth was a horse he did not have a horse’s body and a man’s torso - he was entirely a horse (or a mule) - like appuleius’ the golden ass (or the bad children in pinocchio) he was entirely a horse or mule (or donkey). a horses skull closed about his head and stoically he plodded on.
medea by pasolini is about the dangers attending of the birth of tragedy out of myth - to tell this story jason’s semi-divine origins (great-grandson of hermes) have to be suppressed. it is not just that it will not do for jason also to be descended from the gods (medea is descended from helios the charioteer of the sun) - it is that greece must become the land of the rise of reason.
yesterday horsemouth wandered across the fields to the supermarket in the fields.
later the sky clouded over and horsemouth either snoozed or watched movies - medea, and then a series of films featuring supernatural detectives, spectre (US supernatural detectives come to syon house, a stone circle in the grounds, in the basement the worship of asmodeus), then two films from the night stalker series - the newspaper reporter is in las vegas, he is confronted by a series of murders of young women where all the evidence points to a vampire. (a few years later, similarly, seattle).
there was plenty of gratuitous 70ies sexism in all 3 of these horsemouth was delighted to see. our ruling deities are satyrs not centaurs.
when in the years when horsemouth was a horse/ mule/ donkey he laboured hard - today is the anniversary of one such project.
it’s a glorious morning ‘everything is sacred! everything is sacred!’ horsemouth will roll towards the solstice.
next month the inquiry is due to resume - it resumes at the point where everyone involved is revealed as having taken the money and turned a blind eye to the fitting of dangerous cladding to the block - kensington and chelsea, the almo, the architects, the consultants, the contractors. people knew. they just took the money. they didn’t do their jobs. they didn’t give a fuck.
will there be criminal charges? that depends on the police investigation (which it is now said is likely to last until 2022), the CPS, possible political interference. the complications caused by those who gave evidence to the inquiry being granted immunity for the evidence they gave. we deal with the general numbing effect of time. it’s three years since the fire already - how much longer before the inquiry delivers its report? four? five? the charges cannot be laid until the inquiry is over.
beyond that the inquiry has been deliberately framed so that it cannot go wide and ask the broader questions about race, poverty and social housing. (in this is is the prototype for the public inquiry that will come over the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic).
and of course the government has learned to take housing seriously as a result of grenfell. but no - there’s little robert jenrick obliging a tory donor with a planning decision on a development in docklands that saves him 40 million in money that would have gone to improve conditions in tower hamlets. and does he come to parliament to face the music? no he skulks and sends his deputy.
what does grenfell prove? what will the inquiry prove? that black lives don’t matter.
as one of the survivors remarked on the news last night it should have been the george floyd moment for britain (but it wasn’t).
yay the master of the album musicians of bremen volume four is here. in the old days this would have been a literal metal plate for stamping out the record in vinyl (well two of them actually). these days it’s a series of 1s and 0s an a server somewhere.
the guy doing the mastering has done an amazing job. on several tracks instruments seem to have been turned up in the mix when it has been mixed already - how do they do that? and all without sacrificing any quality. guitar parts have emerged from out of the murk. the whole thing sounds well meaty (and other un-PC, rockist metaphors).
the idea (after the howardfest of volume two and the horsemouthfest of volume three) to do something that was the both of them.
horsemouth has no idea how they will perform this (nor if they’ll perform it, nor when, nor indeed what spaces actually exist for performance anymore). what is ‘live’ anymore? will deep purple and the blue oyster cult really play the O2 in october? all they can do is release it (and see what happens).
now all that remains is for horsemouth to learn back from the record what he played once a year ago for five minutes. and work out how himself and howard are going to fake those arrangements live.
---------------------------
a friend has achieved french citizenship (woo-hoo). another has achieved portuguese residency (woo-hoo). others have moved to the republic of ireland. another teaches in bucharest.
sadly horsemouth (one welsh granny, one scottish granny who was in fact from yorkshire really) has no way out (really it’s that he did not jump soon enough). for all his talk horsemouth is basically indecisive.
fortunately even in the midst of universal tuberculosis humanity still does wonderful things to cheer horsemouth up - like deposing the statue of the slave-trader colston, rolling it through the streets of bristol and dropping it in the harbour.
horsemouth admires the sheer art happening genius of this - respect due. he worries about them in the midst of the infection (but hey they’re young and they’re masked up - which is now a social virtue strange to relate).
a friend has returned to music (welcome back homegirl). others are getting on with their art. another advocates for more food growing in hackney. some take long bicycle rides. some rise like lions from slumber to struggle once again for social justice. others stay home and care for relatives. some care for children. some make music.
you can see what horsemouth is doing here. he’s giving you a heart warming season ending montage. he’s showing you the social machine and humanity (clever little monkeys) busy beavering away (if that isn’t a mechanical and animal metaphor too far).
horsemouth’s reading of rousseau’s reveries of a solitary walker has ground to a standstill. rousseau is in disgrace. he broods upon it (despite claiming that he is entirely freed from the tyranny of pubic opinion). this makes him a less congenial companion. only some of the walks are actually walks. (many are just extended think pieces in the style of montaigne). he tries out a line,
‘my whole life has been little else than a long reverie divided into chapters by my daily walks’
in a phrase jotted down on a playing card (but ultimately not incorporated in the work). ‘all things change around us, we ourselves change, an no one can be sure of loving tomorrow what he loves today. all our plans of happiness in this life are empty dreams.’
he starts writing it when he is 64. he walks. he botanises. he works as a music copyist. he lives modestly. he claims not to read. he will not receive authors at his flat. he is (yet another) fan of crusoe.
he dies in 1780. it is published in 1784. seven of the essays (walks) he left in fair copy, 3 were edited and compiled after his death.
maybe horsemouth will take it out for a walk with him. it’s an engaging enough read.
horsemouth the greedy counts his money (literally, you can’t even spend that shit anymore) - this is the point of maximum savings in the year, his ability to earn has outstripped his rent payments for a few months (imagine the robert mitchum/ radio raheem ‘this is the story of love and hate’ tale retold with rent and wages). but now the rent payments are coming back strong and the wages are drying up. if horsemouth wasn’t lazy (and greedy) he’d go get another job and defend his savings (but meh). they’ve furloughed him (so that’s some of it). if he’s lucky this will leave him in a better financial condition than most recent years as he coasts it out until next (academic) year.
what next year will look like he has no idea (assuming he survives). horsemouth is attached (limpet like) to the university sector. what the university sector will look like next year god only knows. it’s a long way to the pension (and sanctified economic inactivity) but horsemouth is determined to get there.
he lives modestly. he goes for walks. he reads. he doesn’t botanise (particularly). he has little faith in the ability of the economy to feed him. and it’s unwise to plan to far ahead.
he’s unsure what he will do for summer.
yesterday and today's listening geechee recollections by marion brown. recorded june 4th and 5th 1973 at intermedia sound studios boston.
the second of marion brown's georgia trilogy (the first on impulse). a poem 'karintha' from the work of harlem renaissance poet jean toomer performed by bill hassan, bookended by two improvisations (one by marion brown, one by leo 'wadada' smith). all hands on deck for the persussion but a minimum of three percussionists pootling away in an african fashion plus william malone on thumb piano and autoharp (tokalokaloka parts one two and three).
marion brown was born in altlanta. his mum moves to new york late 50ies/ early 60ies taking him with her. he’s university educated but has also spent 3 years in the army in the army band. there he meets leroi jones (aka. amiri baraka), in his building he meets archie shepp, ornette coleman lends him his saxophone so he can play with shepp, shepp mentions him to coltrane and he ends up playing on coltrane's ascension (and on shepp’s fire music). he plays on the radio or has a radio show.
but it’s difficult to make a living as a free jazz musician in the US so he moves to paris and tours europe. he records for ESP (and later ECM) he meets leo smith in connecticut (who’s an art ensemble of chicago/ association for the advancement of creative musicians kind of guy).
‘I was teaching in elementary schools. I was teaching children how to make instruments and create their own music...mostly percussion instruments and I made some flutes from bamboo. (later) I played them with Leo Smith and for ECM on Afternoon of a Georgia Faun.’
Afternoon of a Georgia Faun is the start of the georgia trilogy (it was recorded in august so horsemouth will be reviewing it then).
it’s tempting to read free jazz as frenetic urban music (its what the film-maker does with marion brown in can you see what I am saying?) but with the georgia trilogy marion brown manages to make different musics for the south, for the rural, something downhome and yet avant-garde.
that said geechee recollections doesn’t do it for horsemouth like sweet earth flying does - it’s the fender rhodes electric piano of paul bley on part one (compare it to the amina claudine myers vesion on grand piano), the organ of muhal richard abrams on part three, it's marion brown's writing for piano that does it.
marion brown has a career but then he gets old and sick. for his last three decades he’s practically silent. he dies in 2010 in a florida nursing home. in 2003 there’s an interview with him. there’s a book he wrote (somewhere).
today (and tomorrow) are the anniversaries of the recording of the second of marion brown's georgia trilogy geechee recollections.
geechee is (variously) an english creole spoken by black people in parts of south carolina and georgia, a dialect containing english words and words of african origin spoken chiefly by the descendants of african-american slaves settled on the ogeechee river in georgia.
it may be offensive, used as a disparaging term for a person who speaks a nonstandard local dialect, as in savannah, georgia, or charleston, south carolina.
although the islands along the southeastern U.S. coast harbor the same collective of west africans, the name gullah has come to be the accepted name of the islanders in south carolina, while geechee refers to the islanders of georgia.
geechee (geshie) is often a nickname taken up by musicians - here's geeshie wiley, probably born lillie mae boone an American country blues singer and guitar player who recorded six songs for Paramount Records, issued on three records in April 1930. last kind word blues is the famous one.
so may is over (sunniest month on record, and one of the driest too). you won’t hear horsemouth complaining. he is well ahead on his suntan for the year.
they have sent children back to school (and, when they know it is safe, parliament will be returning too).
‘there will be no recovery. there will be social unrest. there will be violence. there will be socio-economic consequences: dramatic unemployment. citizens will suffer ... some will die...’
- jacob wallenberg, scion of one of global capitalism’s most powerful families envisages an economic contraction of 30 per cent and sky-high unemployment to follow.
as horsemouth remarked at the start of this crisis it is not like 2008 - a crisis in the credit farming mechanism that feeds the rich, this is a crisis in production and consumption, in world trade, in the key activities that generate and circulate value. even if the frustrated consumers come out of lockdown and spend spend spend, even if there aren’t second and third spikes we all still get hit with a tidal wave of redundancies and a tidal wave of state debt down the line.
and we’re not even out from under the virus yet. it’s like we don’t know enough about what the virus does to be able to fight it effectively yet (even if the ruling class weren’t incompetents).
going into the crisis agamben (seeing the state of exception spread out over the entire of society, seeing bare life as mere survival become most people’s only aim) raised the alarm publishing an article ‘the invention of an epidemic’ (quodlibet, 20/02/20).
in some senses he is right - in response to the virus many states have gone straight to its biopolitical grab bag of ideas (even if the implementation in the uk and us has been distinctly shonky), and in other senses he is wrong, we cannot tell yet if the virus is a big enough threat to warrant this (we won’t know for sure until it is over and the dead have been counted).
what the crisis does do is speed up the rate of change (and allow the state to sneak in a few measures they would otherwise hesitate to attempt).
the dead are made up not just by those killed by the virus, not just by those who die because the underfunded health systems do not have capacity to treat them but also those who die as a result of the economic changes the virus brings in.
just as the 2008 crisis caused a spike in food prices causing widespread hunger across the world so will this crisis.
but hey, we are just in the foothills of it.
meanwhile. the cops have killed an unarmed black man and there have been riots and protests in many american cities (horsemouth was pleased to see people marching to the US embassy in london). of course the longer the protests go on the more people the state will kill attempting to halt them.
