last day of the year (in the still of the night)

today horsemouth will not be using a pro forma - he will be typing free. 

horsemouth has been thinking about the government mandated rearranging of constituency boundaries to equalise the size of the constituencies to within (+or - 5% of the registered electorate) excluding 5 predominantly island constituencies where that cannot be made to work. this will (strangely some might say) give the governing party an additional 5 seats or so. 

horsemouth (as you know) is a great fan of the gallagher index - a measure of how unrepresentative an election has been based on the difference between the percentage of people voting for a particular party and the percentage of seats it receives in parliament after people's votes have been through britain's bizarre first past the post system and given 3rd party effects (where the 3rd party splits the vote). 

it should come as no surprise that the unrepresentativeness of UK elections derives in the main from the first past the post system and third party effects rather than the differing size of the constituencies. and yet the differing size of the constituencies is the cause that the government are going after - this is because it enables them to dismantle some advantages to the other parties (causing a small over representation of the labour, scots nats, northern irish and welsh parties). 

we will not discuss the representation afforded by the unelected house of lords. 

of course it could be argued that those over-representations should be there to afford 'the nations' (scotland, wales, northern ireland) a voice in national life - but the conservative and unionist party are not taking this view (perhaps at the peril of their unionist convictions - if they have any left). 

but this is not the only factor leading to unrepresentative election results. 

around 17% of eligible voters in great britain are not correctly registered at their current address, representing as many as 9.4 million people in total. in northern ireland, 1 in 4 eligible voters – as many as 430,000 people – are not correctly registered. or so said sir john holmes, chair of the electoral commission back in sunny 2019. this disproportionately affects young people, minority ethnic people and people in rented accommodation. 

and this is from the people who are allowed to vote (the eligible voters) it excludes EU residents (who can no longer opt to vote in general elections but only in local elections), non-EU residents, citizens in jail or mental institutions. it includes residents from the republic of ireland. in wales foreign born residents are allowed to vote (which is an interesting anomaly). 

now horsemouth (as you know) is less interested in the system working properly than in pointing out that the system does not work. he is not even convinced by parliament as governing body - he tends to think of it as a (notionally) democratic puppet show stuck on the front of an undemocratic deep state. it is less for horsemouth about electing MPs to a talking shop than electing the government. horsemouth is not of the 'don't vote it only encourages them' persuasion - he thinks we have far too few tools for registering our displeasure with this society and we should make use of all of them.

it is the last day of the year - in the still of the night it will become 2021 in the gregorian calendar. horsemouth offers you surveillance footage of john fahey practicing for his album city of refuge. horsemouth believes this to be a track by fred parris and the satins.   

'how was your year for you?' (soon enough on with the year)

news briefing is over and we are onto prayer for the day (and the text they have chosen is 'it won't always be like this'). but for many people today will be a perfectly ordinary day, one in which the restrictions will be meaningless because they are things they wouldn't have been doing anyway. 

horsemouth is reusing this proforma 'how was your year for you' from january 1st 2019 

horsemouth has, since last summer, been putting himself about a bit more (at least that was the plan), but that has been slowed down by the pandemic. 

horsemouth did no gigs last year. he has none planned for this year. hopefully he will  at least do some online or video himself or some such). he hopes to do some recording (but he has none planned currently).

rob lawson plans an album of duets maybe horsemouth can blag onto that. 

2020 was a creative year because in 2019 he was saving up his efforts (in musicians of bremen) and because he worked with new people (catastro/fille and en za) in 2020. horsemouth hopes this will all continue in some form.

he will keep writing (the drawing and the photography seem to have died back still further).

work continues to roll on - the working from home and the furlough have saved his arse. he's probably not working enough (to prevent boredom) and not earning enough (to keep food on the table and a roof over his head). once again he should probably diversify his sources of work (but he won't). 

things are tight  between rising expenses and stagnant wages. but he's not bothered. he's distracted by the apocalypse. and because he's staying home he is in fact  saving money. he ain't been up the pub since he don't know when, he's barely been on public transport since march etc. he has savings. his attachment to the real economy is dwindling. 

his homestead (the gaff) - horsemouth remains cautiously pleased with. it has been - so far - mostly hassle free (though he'll have to see what it is like when he gets back there). he’s nearly covered all the walls of his room with bookshelving. the raised bed permits better hoarding. between the front window and the chimney breast recently he rearranged one of the shelves to provide a nook in which to store guitars.

horsemouth has rather too many cheap acoustic guitars (all of which take up a fair amount of room). he also has a keyboard and a harmonium that he should get out and do some practice on. 

he needs to have another book purge. there are a lot of books horsemouth bought just for the pleasure of a bargain or out of a passing interest. despite having moved them all from pop(u)lar a mere four years ago he's not sure that he loves them enough to want to move them again. 

the communal endeavour all meets online now. horsemouth is hopeful but he recognises the change is coming. horsemouth has genuinely tried to keep his eyes on the prize and to avoid annoying people. 

politically horsemouth expects it all to continue to be shit, just because brexit is done it doesn't mean that the current spate of nationalist bollocks won't drag on forever. he apologises to his EU friends.

the latest tory wheeze is to render parliamentary constituencies more evenly sized (based on favourable census data of course). this could be worth an extra 5-10 seats to them at the 2024 election. (in this way does improving the representativeness of democracy lead to tyranny). the representation of scotland, northern ireland and wales will be reduced in the whole. if scotland could be hived off then the tories would be on to a permanent winner. 

well soon enough on with the year. 

horsemouth edits his january the 1st 2020 post to mark the end of the year.

horsemouth has edited his january the 1st 2020 post to mark the end of the year.

horsemouth has survived 2020 and at some point in the night of the 31st (and with fireworks) it will become 2021. thank fuck for that 2020 was (like 2019) another turkey. 

in 2020 brexit happened but the similarly reactionary MAGA insurrection was temporarily halted with the voting out of donald trump (or at least moved out of office). black lives matter happened and colston was rolled into the harbour (fucking YES!!!). 

politically it continues to roll in the direction of the eco-apocalypse (as horsemouth remarked of 2019). but the total surveillance society has been a bit of a disappointment (when it would have been useful, in a pandemic). 

for horsemouth the pandemic kicks off mid march. it is, he has to admit, the apocalypse he would have chosen, the apocalypse of staying home and reading books and farting about on the internet. horsemouth has survived so far. 

music and film 

horsemouth didn't play any gigs but he actually had a good year in terms of cultural production.

horsemouth has found the calming down of middle age beneficial and has entered a decently productive part of his life (largely supported in this by other people's willingness to engage with digital technology which is - he must admit - a weakness). 

for example this year  musicians of bremen volume four and a series of EPs, singles etc. were released online howard grange. howard did some performances to support it. they made a physical CD of the album (which horsemouth made a poor showing of dishing out and round but he will return to this project in the new year).

howard also sequenced up a golden glow  mix of tracks sourced by horsemouth. so there are now four of these two hour mixes showcasing the kind of music horsemouth is into or has found influential. 

and then there's the film the fall of the house of fitzgerald that horsemouth made with en za and catastro/fille. he had grat fun making it and even likes the finished product. 

howard released some albums of his own (earlier) electronica, rob lawson released albums of his dulcimer playing, zali played gigs online and showed footage of train marshalling yards, triple negative, gwenifer raymond, xname, robert curgenven and kraken mare did online gigs (all of these horsemouth enjoyed).  

these were the high points of horsemouth's musical year. 

he went to two gigs early on - a gig with lou and martin down at waterintobeer  and gwenifer raymond/ dr. turtle at a pub in hackney, he was going to go to a lankum gig with siobhan (but it got cancelled) and after that horsemouth just decided to stay in. horsemouth played and sang a little up at london fields, at a house party round siobhan's and another up at dave and claudia's - thank you everyone for that.  

writing 

he kept on writing this blog (and transferred it over from facebook when facebook gutted its own blogging tool). he read a fair bit (though not with the concentrated effort that he has managed in previous years), he watched a few films.

for yet another year he didn’t manage a foreign holiday (but then there was a pandemic on). he visited his folks less (but he did manage two visits). 

he walked less than in previous years (not much walking for work/ not much walking for books) and bought less second hand books and fewer CDs than he would have in a normal year. 

things at the collective endeavour continued to move at a slow but steady pace. work continues to roll on but in the new format determined by the pandemic. furlough was very useful to him. the house has survived but the change to working from home/ less holidays has led to a change in how satisfied horsemouth feels about it. he did some babysitting (which by and large he enjoyed). 

horsemouth thanks howard, enza, catastro/fille for supporting him in his creative endeavours. 

he thanks the people who bought downloads online and people who have in the  past helped horsemouth with gigs or the loan of equipment - marc cattini, fergus gracey, john clarkson, mikey gee, zoe, nick doyne-ditmus, myk zeitlin,  lou crisfield, martin howard, rob and emma, ayesha taylor, siobhan, andrew minty, dave and claudia and anyone who has watched the fall of the house of fitzgerald (and anyone involved with that project he hasn't met yet) 350 or so viewings so far. 

once again here's hoping 2021 will be a better year and the forces of light will win out over the forces of darkness and an arcadia or utopia will be established. 

horsemouth. 

a light dusting of snow and a heavy frost (films, books, gigs, events december 2020)

this is what horsemouth sees when he looks out of his window. (and very pretty it is too in the sunshine - but cold). 

he was up late and has just had breakfast. 

we are nearly at the end of the year. horsemouth has compiled his end of the year list and here's his end of the month list.

books, films, gigs, events december 2020

books

the origins of totalitarianism - hannah arendt

the country doctor - honore de balzac

franz kafka's diary

letters to a young poet - rainer maria rilke

the eve of fluxus - billie maciunas

disgrace - j.m. coetzee

an article on brexit quoting 'the origins of totalitarianism' - zoe williams in the guardian

films

kolchak - the night stalker (practically the entire series)

thriller, shadows (70irs tv series)

career of evil - j.k.rowling's blue oyster cult themed detective serial

classic album sundays - raj choudhuri and kae tempest talking about roots manuva's uk hip-hop album brand new second hand, barbie ___ from new york talking about alice coltrane's journey in satchidananda, greg crosby talking about charles mingus's black saint and the sinner lady.

the masque of the red death - belgrade animations (1969)

in the presence of a clown - ingmar bergman

valerie and her week of wonders (jaromil jires)

something different - vera chytilova

trauma - dario argento

usual there is a preponderance of cheap schlock horror, the hannah arendt and the balzac are ongoing.  

'nothing could be worse than a return to normality'

it's the six month anniversary of the release of  the humming EP. the title track is horsemouth's attempt to fake up a bert jansch/ john renbourn instrumental in response to the sound of howard (and others) humming in an art gallery. at the end (and very fortuitously) the sound of a trumpet leaks in from an art installation (to this day horsemouth has no idea who it is). the second track on the EP was malkin tower,  this was horsemouth and howard humming in the studio (basically an opportunity to deploy the harmonium left them by john clarkson and the e-bow horsemouth had recently bought). trapped on a dogleg is the EPs least listened track (probably) punchdrunk blues, which is a pity because horsemouth is  very pleased with the way it came out. howard brought the song (the ukulele and the singing), horsemouth added the percussion and the guitars.

'nothing could be worse than a return to normality'

remarks arundhati roy urging us to take the break in practice that covid has offered and let it become a break in theory (and thus a proper break in practice). 'historically pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew'. it's a stirring speech. but (a little regretfully) horsemouth is going to have to be difficult. 

for many of the poor  there was no break with covid - additional death and sickness was added to the existing death, sickness, poverty and work. work just became more dangerous because of the near certainty of infection. for others there was only expulsion from the city of work back to the land of mere survival or the death of the low paid jobs they were working in. to three quarter of the world horsemouth surmises that covid is just another thing. 

globally for the middle classes there is furlough or working from home or redundancy and redeployment to the ranks of the working poor. here is where the changes have been building up (among the chattering classes such as horsemouth). this is where the axe of schumpeterian destruction will fall -'freeing' us from the office and from the commute, 'liberating' those office spaces to become the jenrickvilles (the slums of the future). the future, the new relations of production, will finally arrive.

but the bigger problem will be the state's need (at the insistence of the finance markets) to do something about the debt it has racked up  during this crisis - now debt can either be paid off (at full value plus interest) or inflated away. having sacrificed  the nurses the state will now move on to the sacrifice of worker's pensions, benefits etc. a 'return to normality' is not on offer. 

there is a lesson in the pandemic about not running down health services (and indeed having them) of not impoverishing the population (and so ruining their health) making them more vulnerable to infection, about not creating overcrowded 'pockets' of deprivation (such as the north east or indeed the entire third world). these are the lessons that will not be learned. 

there is a lesson in the pandemic about the utter shit-storm incompetence of our ruling class (this is a lesson that will not be learned).

of course there will be giant infrastructure schemes (an orgy of concrete pouring) - well they will at least be proposed, but it is difficult to see how running broadband cable (down existing victorian sewage tunnels) is a big enough project to reflate anything. 

since 2008 there has been a political crisis in response the credit crunch and subsequent crash, a crisis that has expressed itself as war on globalisation from the right (as MAGA, as brexit), a call for a return to national sovereignty so that 'our' ruling classes can do something for us. now horsemouth's advice is for you not to hold your breath for this, but he expects this to continue and indeed intensify (70 million people voted for trump in the US and they didn't get what they wanted). 

horsemouth does not rule out attempts by the state to get the rich to pay (at least some of it) but the rich are better placed to evade any such measures than are the poor. 

anyway (to recap) horsemouth is cynical about the prospects for a better world. 

 

nantucket sleigh ride and the parrot sketch

'writing the book has changed things, as has listening to the music. I feel I’ve been given all those years back again, the good times and the loveliness of sharing dreams with wonderful people. I guess I’d purposely remembered more of the difficult times in order not to feel the losses...' - rose simpson (the incredible string band)

like most british schoolchildren of a particular age horsemouth was raised on the parrot sketch by monty python. the goons were also present at his birth (and on record) and the hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy was a major influence (taped from the radio), perhaps later the young ones (but already the magic is fading off). 

when horsemouth was a child the main aim was to be a be to reproduce the sketches accurately in the schoolyard the next day (while standing in the rain).

horsemouth was a child of the type little professor but it was a role he wanted out of. he showed no talent for drama (indeed he showed a great talent for forgetting lines). he showed no talent for music (he doesn't begin to show any talent for it until he gets a band together much later and to this day his music is poorly founded). 

at some point he parts company with comedy. but he sees its radicality. he sees the ability of language to reconfigure the world, to play with its elements, to upend hierarchies. this was important to horsemouth because he was low down in the pecking order of schoolboy life - he wasn't good at sport, he wasn't into fighting, so anything that redressed the balance was useful to him.

horsemouth is not the smartest creature he knows. but he's decently smart and he's hardworking (so he can turn his hand to most things).  he has the courage of his convictions and a willingness to try things. however stubbornness and conviction can only get you as far as exhaustion, being able to play and reconfigure situations can be a more useful skill. 

leslie west (the guitarist from mountain) has popped his clogs. (strangely that term for death isn't in the parrot sketch). nantucket sleigh ride was used as the theme music to weekend world (a current affairs programme) when horsemouth was a kid, that and the shawn philips theme music to world in action had a strong sense of drama about them.  they called him up and out from the welsh valleys and childhood into the adult world. 

the world of horsemouth's childhood was a world where resources were not available to change anything, in fact all resources were tied up in vast traditions and institutions and communities. life was lived within these structures. while elsewhere in the world things might be moving forward at the speed of sound like concorde the valleys were already in decline - although they seemed solid and immutable the glory days of coal and steel were treading water and were about to end.

when he's 16 horsemouth's parents move to the wilds of herefordshire (that's their dream). horsemouth serves his time at the sixth form college and then goes off to university, he is homesick and out of his depth and immature. but he gets there eventually. he becomes himself. about 1990 with the help of some friends  he (eventually) gets the music going (and discovers its something he can do). he gets a band together and discovers he has a talent for stringing ideas together. five years later that ends but within 5 years he's back making music again just for the fun of it.

this is where our story ends for now. horsemouth is a tax-paying, rent-paying, voting member of society. he makes music for the fun of it.  he continues to think music has a power.

'the establishment felt the earth crumble beneath its feet (it saw the triumph of lies that weren’t its own)'

 'average pay seems to be up but only because so many low-paid jobs are being lost and thus no longer counted...' (david blanchflower, the guardian, 23rd december 2020)

of course this will have social effects in the production of mobs. look at brexit, look at MAGA (a side of the anti-globalisation coin), expect this kind of disruption to continue, mobilised by the kind of lies/ wishful thinking that argues that in a globalised economy the jobs can be brought back home (yes they can, but only at the loss of overall economic efficiency, there then begins a scramble for what value remains, one in which the working class are likely to be the losers). 

and just because something is proposed (or accepted) by a section of the ruling class does not mean they can actually deliver it. 

of course other low paid jobs will come not to fill the void but in addition to the well paid jobs already lost. capitalism's motor (the pursuit of profit) forces it to replace adequately paid jobs (ones that enable the worker to reproduce his labour value and turn up for work again on a monday morning) with low paid jobs (that do not). it must hack at its own roots and social reproduction in search of more profit. 

profits are in any event so low. the rich pull up the drawbridge and retire to their castles while their investments return paltry returns. it's not capitalist investment but wealth management. 

the virus inaugurates an era of schumpeterian destruction - of commercial property, of sandwich shops and transport infrastructures, the tech that has been there to enable you to work from home for several decades is finally liberated to enable exactly that.  for years horsemouth has argued he needed to be there (and now it seems he doesn't). there may be productivity losses (but there are also direct cost savings). will there really be commuters demanding to be allowed to work from the office again? (horsemouth doubts it). 

to get us out of the post brexit/ covid crisis the government will simultaneously propose austerity and infrastructure investment (state subsidy to big firms) - but where, given the small highly efficient teams model of entrepreneurial capitalism can this state subsidy be deployed, government ideology around capitalism acts as a barrier to any concrete investment (especially if that investment is actually in concrete). 

we are back with buccaneer capitalists of monty python's corporate raiders sketch. we are on the stone raft of jose saramago (but a british remake), we have detached ourselves from europe and are sailing the seas of the world in pursuit of our destiny. horsemouth's friend ray appears in an advert encouraging business people to learn what they need to do for january 1st (he was a stone remainer like horsemouth is, like most of his friends are, but work is work). 

the dice are tumbling. who knows where we will end up. 

pay attention everyone (horsemouth will only do this once)

merry christmas everyone  (bah humbug).

horsemouth dreamt two plain clothes policemen were going through the rubbish outside his window. he was up in the living room when he first saw them. eventually he confronted them (to see if he could talk his way out of whatever the trouble was) but when one passed him a business card he realised they were something like insurance salesmen. they were however cagey and importuning and gave different accounts of themselves and there seemed to be more of them (including their partners and children) every time horsemouth looked. eventually horsemouth realised the downstairs of his house had been converted into a modern(ish) pub and more and more people were arriving. is this covid safe? thought horsemouth as he struggled to make it back upstairs past the barrier gates. 

howard has sequenced up a series of tracks proposed by horsemouth (this would possible constitute horsemouth's fourth (and possibly final) golden glow  mix). horsemouth does hope you enjoy it. 

the tracklist would be something like Μάγισσες - Λένα Πλάτωνος (witches - lena platonos), ennio morricone - l'uccello dalle piume di cristallo, V - mimi and richard farina, chimacum rain - linda perhacs, harvest time - pharoah sanders, deboraarobed - tyrannousaurus rex, bruder des schattens - popul vuh, sandoz in the rain - amon duul 2, night way - robbie basho, my name is carnival - stranded horse (jackson c. frank cover),  I had too much to dream last night - the electric prunes, africanasia - claude delcloo and arthur jones, the wizard - uriah heep, say you love me - roger sherman, waltzinblack - the stranglers, darkness, darkness - the youngbloods.

meanwhile over on american primitive guitar something like 17 people have liked the gwenifer raymond freak zone mix he has shared (and this despite the fact it is quite challenging stuff les rallizes denudes for example). doubtless horsemouth will be excommunicated once the season of goodwill is over.  

later in the day. food and drink and probably gift exchange. he has sent some gifts (ok ok - two musicians of bremen CDs) off to martin and angela in birmingham. 

operation 'radication

horsemouth supposes (and he should emphasise that he doesn't really know - he's not that smart and this is not his area) that the current conditions of lockdowns etc. are the way of living with the virus. reducing its harms until they are bearable as a strategy to permit time for the development of vaccines. this strategy leads to a worldwide campaign of vaccination and eradication requiring the vaccination (twice over it looks like) of 7.8 billion people plus. a vaccination programme that may need to be ongoing depending on how long it protects for. 

of course the longer the virus is in humanity (and the longer it is in various  domesticated (and wild) animal populations) the greater the chance of a mutation that renders vaccination less effective and/or the virus more potent. ideally you would want to reduce this.

operation 'radication  becomes one of industrial scale pharamaceutical manufacture, the logistics of delivery and of health workers at the end of the chain doing the vaccinations. it becomes a great world historic task uniting the entire of humanity (excepting a few uncontacted tribes perhaps). 

and as it is implemented this leads to a situation where we can interact without having to socially distance, where incrementally the death toll drops, where hospital admissions drop, where the medical situation returns to normal with a small background level of covid until eventually it can be pronounced eradicated in a particular country or region, with only low level flare ups due to its re-importation and encounter with non-vaccinated communities.

humanity (clever little monkeys that they are) are globally organised on the basis of capitalism, a worldwide system of value extraction. capitalism is not set up so that it can easily take a break in value extraction - consequently there are pressure to get back to business as usual if not the pre-covid normal that its locked down and furloughed citizens fervently wish for. but because of the pursuit of value we are almost certainly not going back to our earlier normal. 

horsemouth wishes humanity well with their operation 'radication. 

however he expects this will take years.  

so what are the alternatives to lockdown? for keeping the economy open? 

it is worthwhile emphasising at this point that the economy has been kept open. billions of people still get up and go to work, the planes keep flying, the container ships still arrive bearing goods from far away factories where the workers still go in and do their shifts so that there can be gifts underneath the christmas tree (and indeed food on the table). 

horsemouth finds the failure of test, track and trace to be very interesting and instructive. potentially this was a very strong tool with which to fight the virus but it was bungled (certainly in the UK and in the US). who would have thought (given the extent of cyber surveillance within capitalism) that it would have proved so ineffective? 

the most usual suggestion is that society be restored to its normal level of functioning but that the old (and people with pre-existing health conditions) be shielded from it. but this is difficult to achieve when many elderly people still live in multi-generational households with their families.  so if this is not possible  it is suggested that we become more sanguine about their deaths.  from the point of view of the captains of industry (and given the impossibility of the idea of death in the minds of the living, a tendency to believe in their own exceptionalism) the over 65s should be sacrificed to the imperatives of value extraction (they are not very productive anyway and the industries relying on them (care) are secondary.

horsemouth is up a copy of the origins of totalitarianism  (thank you dave and sally). you remember, he found a quote from the introduction to it in a guardian article bemoaning the brexit debate. his reading of the country doctor also continues (p.40 so far). 

ok breakfast (and a walk in the sunshine). 

 

 

rainbows over olympia

interesting. 'basta'. things are never entirely easy. (even this late in the game). and yet the similarities are remarkable.

phew it all seems to have blown itself over and out. so far so good mutters horsemouth to himself. 

the festival for mind-body-spirit, olympia london, 21–29 april 1979 promised UFOs and psychical phenomena on the black and white poster but on the  coloured poster  it offered a tamer sounding mix of earth mysteries, yoga, dance and a rainbow dome. steve hillage and miquette giraudy soundtracked it. 

steve hillage's albums of the time were very strange. first rainbow dome (new age rather than ambient) then open which is kind of either a disco album or a precursor of house and techno. eventually the south wales branch of the neophytes found their way through to the more straightforwardly gongish guitar and hippie pleasures of  L, green and motivation radio. 

similarly (and probably earlier)  the guy from quintessence later went on to be instrumental in the creation of goa trance.  

here it is a grey morning and the rain falls (which is typical of the time of year). people are at play on their devices.  he has started reading balzac's a country doctor in a little  everyman edition (which as far as he can work out he has not read before). he was confusing it with zola's doctor pascal. 

yesterday a walk on the common. his mum got chatting to an old local dude, horsemouth tried to stand well back in a socially distanced fashion. later horsemouth showed the fall of the house of fitzgerald to his family. it was met with various degrees of resistance and comprehension. this (and the various musicians of bremen  releases  were his high tide marks of the year). 

in the rainbow dome of calculated risk

 horsemouth is up and awake. he has his coffee. (come to think of it there's still a smidgin more in the pot)

last night he slept poorly (or at least he thinks he did). this is rare. but it seems strange to him that he would lie there for 8 hours or so if he were not asleep at some point. like he says this is rare - normally horsemouth sleeps like a log. 

today? new improved sociability horsemouth. 

as a kid a friend in caerphilly had a copy of steve hillage's radio dome music, recorded for the rainbow dome at the festival for mind-body-spirit, olympia london, 21–29 april 1979  they all sat around it waiting for the drums to kick in. they waited. perplexity ruled. in hushed tones they used the word ambient. later this became a bit of a buzz word in techno.

horsemouth was probably set thinking about it by the music english heritage were playing over the sunset and sunrise at stonehenge for the solstice

later (in the herefordshire village of peterchurch) another friend set up a giant frippertronics tape loop between two reel-to-reel tape recorders. this would be sometime in the early eighties. horsemouth played some guitar into it (but failed to appreciate the requirement of it). 

back in april 2020 an invitation from new york  to listen to alice coltrane's journey in satchidananda on classic album sundays. the world was going to hell in a bucket but here was a defining statement of cosmic love.

horsemouth is taking a calculated risk (as he assumes many people round the country are). except you can't calculate any of the risks because you can't know everyone's histories, you can't get tested promptly. so far so good. (mutters horsemouth). it's looking grey out there but maybe a walk on the common day (that sort of a thing). 

ok listening to the birdsong now. contemplating breakfast. 

the sun stands still

it's a misty morning at stonehenge (horsemouth was just watching it online). given the mist there's not much seeing of anything. some security guards/ cops wander about in high vis. it's a misty morning in the golden valley too. (so much for seeing jupiter and saturn). horsemouth opens the window to disperse the condensation on it. 

a young franz kafka visits rudolf steiner and reads him a prepared speech. nearly ten years before rilke is staying on the capitol in rome near the statue of marcus aurelius. 

we have reached the longest night and the shortest day. we begin our climb back up towards the light. the equinox (day and night of equal length) is on march 20th (91 days away). then, once again, the sunny uplands of the year. we are halfway through the long dark tunnel.

the logic of the virus is the logic of the crowd. it must be refused. and capitalism provides a deep and abiding alienation that can enable this. 

late last night a chat with mike in texas. both horsemouth and mike get to write (this is very good for them).  mike reminded horsemouth of one of his birthdays - high up in the renaissance tower restaurant overlooking detroit (a detroit in ruins let us not forget). horsemouth had an excellent birthday (so much so he slept through the alarm the next morning  and had to stay another day. will tesla (the hero engineer) open an electric car plant in the downtown and bring detroit back. who can say. 

all horsemouth can say is that the bar they went to had kraftwerk on the juke box. 

detroit was built by the car. detroit was killed by the car. the car enables the suburbs (in the same way as the railway did in earlier times in london). it will be interesting to see what the effect of the pandemic is upon the cities. will the youth still want to be there? 

soon the sun stands still

2020 it would have been nice to play some gigs 

horsemouth tends to regard music making as an eccentric hobby/ bizarre psychological compulsion these days. he vastly prefers what he does  now to what he did back then (back when there was a record industry, back when there were 'deals' (allegedly)). 

he saw one gig this year (gwenifer raymond/ dr. turtle) and watched a few things on-line.(ok ok there was the mari lwyd and there was probably something down ar waterintobeer  horsemouth would have o check).

and  it will be good to be able to play gigs again (if that ever happens). 

this year musicians of bremen released one album and various EPs and singles, and horsemouth was pretty pleased with those but once again only a handful of people got to hear them. it's pretty much what it would have been - we would have perhaps played one gig in the summer to launch everything and horsemouth himself might have got in another solo gig to keep his hand in, a few more people might have received physical demo CDs of the album. but hey-ho. 

that said the people horsemouth knows who work in events, in record shops, in pubs and clubs have been pretty much decimated this year.

a friend knows gwenifer raymond's  mum and used to help engineer and produce her earlier punk type music at some cardiff music education project. she does that 'night-train to valhalla' style very well (but can she do an 'on the banks of the owchita'?)

like most musicians horsemouth guesses he's happy just to get to make the music (but then has no idea how to go about promoting it). horsemouth used to try and delegate that to other people (and now there's only him he's still like that). 

look at rob lawson and zali z krishna - there they are creating music and releasing it, writing and releasing books (and in Zali's case rendering (is that the right word?) 3D worlds and filming passing goods trains). 

in this they are ahead of horsemouth, he has not yet got his words off the screen and onto the printed page.

the music got free but it's an interesting variety of free - the musicians produce it for (nearly) free but there are still streaming companies, record companies etc all of whom barely pay. there's still a music industry (not that horsemouth ever troubled it in his earlier 'career' and not that he's going to trouble it now). horsemouth was glad to embrace myspace (and later soundcloud, mixcloud, youtube and bandcamp) as a way to get his music out past the gatekeepers and to the people. this was the main thing he wanted. 

horsemouth's model here is jacques attali's bruits published in english as noise: the political economy of music there's a lot here (as it will be read later on) about music as herald of the sharing economy . later attali will return and rearrange his thesis explicitly in the light of mp3 and the internet. but the first edition remains the more open and productive of readings. 

everyone can now do it and in a way horsemouth thinks everyone should. 

so anyway, 2020 it would have been nice to play some gigs. 

horsemouth (the night-stalker) dreamed he was in the pub (day 9)

while on a research mission with max 'crow' reeves horsemouth found one of the olympic mascots living in a pedestrian subway in canning town. five years ago yesterday. horsemouth picks the tunes. howard puts them in order and posts the finished artefact up to mixcloud. 

this morning horsemouth dreamed he was in the pub. it was run by the old boxer from the pub near the nags head. him and horsemouth were getting on much better. he didn't even seem bothered when horsemouth only had a fiver to buy his round. 

like a lot of pubs when the boxer had retired  it had become an 'and food' place. the other pub (50 yards down the road) had an early morning licence (because of the flower market) and so was always full of coked up idiots yelling shite at 6am (and after the smoking ban they would be out on the pavement too). 

fortunately horsemouth can sleep through anything. further up hackney road another gastropub had taken over, horsemouth has to say the one it replaced had such a thoroughly unpleasant clientele he was not bothered (he was there the onetime with kate and nick - that was enough). 

horsemouth thinks he's watched all the easily available episodes of the night-stalker. cops and monsters. recording everything on his handheld cassette recorder and little flash camera,  kolchak the reporter deals with goddesses, witches, vampires, werewolves, and dissident hindu sects who became shape-shifting demons. there's an undercurrent of help the aged (as if the young have got better things to do than watch lame horror serials). 

there wasn't much of this stuff around when horsemouth was a youth. you had to hunt it out. 

horsemouth the night stalker (on the 8th day of the end times)

'you ask whether your verses are good. you ask me. you have asked others before. you send them to magazines. you compare them with other poems.... I beg you to give up all that. nobody can counsel and help you. nobody. there is only one single way. go into yourself. search for the reason that bids you to write.'  - rainer maria rilke, letters to a young poet.

horsemouth is up. it's a greyish/ darkish morning. he hasn't brought his diary with him (it will expire at home and go into the box with other previous diaries) so he can't refer to it to get inspiration(he will just have to rely upon his memory - such as it is).  

yesterday there was a brief period of sunshine. horsemouth used that to get out up on the common. the sun is low in the sky this time of year shining through the trees on the way up. later he went down to visit the abbey with his mum. the workmen are working on the roof (discussing time capsules). 

he watched kolchak - the night stalker a TV series following on (or leading to?) two low budget movies in which jaded reporter kolchak deals faces supernatural creatures set loose in modern day america. (kind of in the style of eerie comics). the movies are set in las vegas (vampire), seattle (ghost/ strangler), for the TV series they relocated it to chicago. 

strange to relate he's been enjoying reading the torygraph. it's nice to read a newspaper even if it's mad as hamsters and to the right of gengis khan. he went to bed early.

horsemouth should get on with his reading - he brought rilke's letters to a young poet  and kafka's diaries. it is debateable whether either were written with an eye to publication, or whether  either author would have approved of their publication. in both the writers struggle with the problems of writing.

on the 7th day of end times

red sky in the morning.

horsemouth goes downstairs in a minute for porridge and toast (no tea, he's still on the coffee).

he worries about the new variant of the virus (excellent timing virus). he worries about the christmas super spreading event (be smart humanity, don't do as horsemouth does, stay home. do horsemouth's work for him). 

last night thriller a 70ies tv series (with diana dors as a witch) to follow on from shadows a 70ies tv series of a supernatural nature (great title credits - very owl service but more urban).

last night no reading (particularly). a meeting (at a distance). which went ok. 

on the 7th day of end times (the 3rd day where he is). 

see the sun is now out. horsemouth is going to get out for a quick womble. 

as easy as the writing down of dreams

the fluxromance is on suspension (horsemouth has left the book the eve of fluxus - billie maciunas  at home. err. oops). 

as far as he can recall the immobilisation therapy ends soon anyway and the christmas season intervenes (with its visit to relatives). the book isn't clear if the planned performance of day and night takes place for new years eve but it certainly takes place on february 28th at the fluxwedding.  there are photographs. there is film. 

instead horsemouth will avail himself of the diary of franz kafka. the writer who isn't writing modern parables. the writer who is trying to get started with the writing. 

'december 16th 1910 - I won't give up the diary again. I must hold on here, it is the only place I can. 

'december 16th 1911 - the moment I were set free from the office I would yield at once to my desire to write autobiography. I would have to have some such decisive change before me as a preliminary goal when I began to write in order to be able to give direction to the mass of events... the writing of the autobiography would be a great joy because it would move along as easily as the writing down of dreams...'

horsemouth does not find the writing down of dreams easy (because he does not remember them - he cannot, for instance, tell you what he dreamed this morning). only pen and paper is sufficiently unmediated to get them down before the business of the day begins and renders them inaccessible. 

by 1911 kafka is much more in the flow of it. but the flow is not what we remember of him, we remember the reticence, the care. kafka wanted the diary and the ephemera burned away (but brod, his literary executor, disagreed - because brod is there in the ephemera but not in the parables). 

earlier (in 1891) the poet rainer maria rilke had returned from military academy (in classic poet fashion too sickly for a military career) to prague. later he traveled to  berlin, to moscow and later on to paris. from here (1902-08) he writes the letters to a young poet, to a franz xaver kappus, born near timosoara (now the border between hungary, serbia and rumania) but then firmly part of the austro-hungarian empire. kappus was, in his life, a writer, a newspaperman, but this, the book he compiled in 1929, is the book he is famous for. kappus begins a fan of leopardi.leopardi is a fan of tasso. 

outside it is grey and rainy. horsemouth hopes he has made the right decision going to the countryside and that everyone will be safe. this evening he must attend a meeting online. 

quicklime girl (such things no longer are)

horsemouth plans an escape (hist don't tell the guard dogs). he'll let you know how things go when he's met up with the tunneling committee. 

a short fluxromance today (it is december 15th 1977);

'I tie george to my bed and read a robert graves poem to him.

 'she is no liar yet she will wash away/honey from her lips/blood from her shadowy hand/and dressed in white/descending the steps at dawn/will say (trusting the innocent world to understand)/such things no longer are/this is today.'

over on drama (freeview 20 8pm) last night j.k.rowling's blue oyster cult themed detective serial. a little bit of career of evil in one scene, quicklime girl lyrics quoted and DFTR (briefly) over the end titles. otherwise a stolid enough piece of detective fiction. 

hyde park by the end of the serpentine. a girl in a white throw, her nightie and some (white) trainers does a student fashion shoot framed by the white buildings by the fountains, horsemouth pauses to admire. what film shows up is every error of conception and execution. it is its own harsh and merciless critic. barbour wearing hunt supporters walk their dogs. 

horsemouth hadn't noticed how well this fits the flux therapy and romance. 

sweet earth flying wind on the water

harold budd RIP

here he is playing marion brown's sweet earth flying part one. the bit paul bley plays on the album with electric piano. when he was in the US army he played in the band with archie shepp. thereafter it's eno and the cocteau twins.

horsemouth is up and about. he has finished reading disgrace by j.m. coetzee. our anti-hero is in the doghouse for his misdemeanours and has retired to the  countryside to lick his wounds. except the south african east cape countryside is too dangerous to retire to. the balance of power is changing and our hero is a loose canon. he's also too old to do it, his own relationships are not secure enough. 

to help out and keep busy he helps euthanise the stray dogs and take their bodies to the hospital incinerator. much to his own surprise he becomes concerned that their dead bodies are treated with respect. 

'december 14th. george enters my room. he takes off his shirt, shoes and glasses, as usual. the room temperature is perfect. outside rain drips steadily from the eaves. the house is quiet. I have been reading confessions of felix krull. since george recommended it to me, I tell him that I am enjoying it. 

he lies down after the usual preparations and closes his eyes.'

billie is still worried by the letter from the doctor. the session goes well  though. it is therapeutic. 

tomorrow a diary entry from franz kafka in 1910.

after putting the vacuum cleaner around (see he must be bored) horsemouth rearranged his room (well a little bit). 

until now horsemouth's strategy has been to insulate his room with books (as sten puts it). to this end he had bookshelves on either side of the chimney breast on the western wall of his room flat against the wall. his room is south facing and he has now repositioned the bookshelf the nook nearest the front wall so that it is backed against the front wall revealing the white wall in the nook and providing space to cache guitars. 

he has put a mirror in the nook as well (thus adding to the impression that the room is wider than it is).

. 

on tossing the coin of doom or progress (I come down to dinner wearing a dress)

'I come down to dinner wearing a dress. I confess, george's interest encourages me to be more experimental and meticulous in my appearance. we sit across from one another eating potatoes or something... he blushes and looks at his plate. I don't know what I feel. I only want to respond, probably to please him...'

the fluxromance continues. horsemouth is editing it to supress the details of what billie and george get up to, not because he thinks you will be shocked by george (and perhaps billie)'s tastes in sexual activity, but because he wants to leave it more general. the fluxromance is not really about billie's tastes, she likes george, she likes his scene (mostly), she is reciprocating his kindness. 

but george's friends do not like her. they are alarmed by george's late blossoming sexuality, they view her as an interloper, they worry about the status of the fluxarchive after george's death.

the fluxromance will continue out to february 28th (with another appearance of zefiro torna), until the flux wedding. the fluxtherapy (the immobilisation therapy) will end on december 16th. 

horsemouth has responded to a piece by zoe williams in the guardian. 

zoe's argument is that the trope of brexit  is that now we seemingly cannot care about both practicalities and abstract democracy - and that one seemingly must now be sacrificed to the other.  that we are sacrificing economic practicalities to an abstract democracy.                      

once upon the time we possessed the recipe for this reconciliation, it was called pragmatism, we instead sacrificed a little of our democracy to remain in the EU. and as we lay sunbathing by the pool in spain we knew it was worth it.  we knew it was worth it because really deep down we know our democracy is a sham.  (indeed arguably the roots of brexit lie in the failure of our democratic process to absorb the likes of UKIP etc.). we will now have to re-learn the lesson of the weakness of democracy n the UK again, and do it  the hard way.                                                                                          

lots of arguments were made about how we would be better off after brexit (on the side of campaign buses for example) but these did not really influence people because people voted leave on the basis of democratic principle or anti-immigrant sentiment. those of us who voted remain did so out of pragmatism or a certain lazy internationalism (this is the weakness of our argument, it lacks principle). 

horsemouth admits to being surprised by the referendum result but he was not surprised by the sorry debacle of incompetence since. he was however fascinated to watch an entire segment of the political class get enthusiastic about wrecking - led (in the death) by boris pfeffel johnson the most european and the most international of us all. (born in the USA, descendent of turks, germans, and swiss french ancestors).

and so here we are. it's the final countdown (again). 

horsemouth's  guess is that deal or no deal the economic consequences will be horrific and long lasting and their burden will mainly fall upon the poor (just like covid). (it's not worth arguing about how horsemouth can know this because we will all know soon enough anyway). 

it's not so much that we've shot ourselves in the foot as that we've gone and knee-capped ourselves as well. (still it's likely to bring irish freedom forward which is a good thing)

zoe quotes hannah arendt's 'the origin of totalitarianism':

 'to yield to the mere process of disintegration has become an irresistible temptation, not only because it has assumed the spurious grandeur of ‘historical necessity’, but also because everything outside it has begun to appear lifeless, bloodless, meaningless and unreal.”

(god those germans write well) 

zoe quotes this from the hag ridden by nuclear war 1950 preface (it is typical of this day and age that quote is not from somewhere in the middle of the book nor near the end). the point however is that the world did not end in the 1950ies in a nuclear war but rather that an armed peace and reconstruction established itself (together with all the fictions of human reasonableness that go with profitability and progress). 

given the weakness of the remainer argument on democracy zoe cannot resist calling the argument for brexit 'totalitarian'. ok she makes the pretence of shying away from doing this but it's there nevertheless.  

but what would hannah arendt actually think of brexit? 

hannah's experience, driven out of germany by colleagues, friends, lovers as they succumbed to anti-semitism would presumably lead her to excoriate the brexiteers (and their racism), but is there not something vaguely disgusting in the conformity of the remainers, their interest only in their skiing holidays at the expense of the losers out to globalisation in their own countries and the refugees fleeing persecution attempting to get into the EU. hannah's experience is of a society shutting down into such a conformity. 

brexit really is the UK version of MAGA. a counterstrike against globalisation from the right. it's a bit of a tragedy that we will have to go on to learn this lesson in full and at length (but that is not to say that the US is out of the wilderness yet). the 'subterranean stream' of western history has broken out again and must be squarely faced. it is no good trying to hide in an ideal past (an arcadia) or in a glorious future (a utopia), nor in realpolitik or a return to good sense and good governance. 

the beast is lose.

return of the fluxromance

'on sunday we travel to NYC by bus... we go to jean and olga's at 537 broadway...'

the next day billie and george go out shopping with george dressed in drag.

'the shopkeepers we visit go along with our little drama,  good-naturedly calling us 'ladies'. most people on the street merely give us strange looks... a street vendor selling hosiery and hats calls to us as we pass 'hello. lovelies! I have the time of my life, prissily promenading in tawdry splendor with the exotic george...'

when they get home to massachussets they find a letter. billie had written to the psychiatrist at the queens medical centre who trained her in the immobilisation therapy, he sends a dismissive note in reply. 

this morning horsemouth dreamt he was providing foley sound and music for some kind of performance with howard. the sound making equipment was laid out on a board (little fans to make the wind sounds, little fountains to make the water sounds, various componenty electronic devices to make the music. it was in an upscale nightclub at some point horsemouth was asked if he could pack up, the others having gone home, horsemouth realised there was too much stuff to be carried.

he awakes with a slight headache. bottle of beer last night (a friday). 

he's reading disgrace by j.m.coetzee  which turns out not to be about philandering middle-aged college professors at all (that's just the set up) but at the moment (p.88) about animals. horsemouth remembers reading a book by coetzee about animals round at johnny and denise's, once upon a time horsemouth used phrases such as animal rights but of course the ethical position of animals (and of nature more broadly) is deeply complicated. 

horsemouth was listening to hidden rooms volume 3 last night. when he was into drum and bass he went to nightclubs. he only saw klute play live once he thinks. it's smart and beautiful and ugly all at the same time. horsemouth has found the original vocal on michel colombier's 1971 A&M  album 'wings' a tune called we could be flying  by lani hall.

'there's a feeling in spring...' we roll towards the winter solstice, soon it is the long climb back up towards the light. 

a break in the flux therapy to permit other plot strands to breathe (living room)

the day begins with the sound of sten shifting heavy boxes in search of his tools. 

'on sunday we travel to NYC by bus. I read the beginning of nana while george sleeps...' 

but this will not be until tomorrow. horsemouth had not noticed the one day break in the fluxtherapy until just now. he will have to improvise.

he's awake and he's having his coffee. he's just gone to the kitchen to freshen it up with some hot water. he paused to repack the fridge. 

in many ways sten is a generous and excellent housemate (and horsemouth and sten go back a long way, even back to the days when they didn't like each other, something like 30 years ago).

there's a campaign of non-violent direct action going on where sten wishes to store his meat products on 'horsemouth's' shelf in the fridge (and horsemouth does not wish to have sten's meat products stored on 'his' shelf in the fridge). sten asserts his right to the space (as he does with all space) and parks his meat product there / the vegetarian horsemouth repacks it back on sten's shelf to defend 'his' space.

horsemouth has seen the consequnces of 'sharing' with sten. it is called 'the living room' which has been rendered essentially unuseable by anyone else in the house for years as it is in fact used as a builder's yard/ waste repository for sten's plumbing business.  

horsemouth wonders how he will defend 'his' fridge space if he goes away. (part of him contemplates taking out said shelf out and hiding it until his return). 

another bone of contention is the front garden which sten wants to use as repository for building waste/ rubble/ tarpaulins etc. but which (seeing as it is directly outside his bedroom window) horsemouth would prefer to see used as a front garden. there again the pattern is similar. sten covers. horsemouth clears. 

one day horsemouth found a composter in the front garden. he promptly set it up and began filling it with kitchen waste (thus rendering it difficult and stinky to remove). like a settlement of israelis in palestinian territory it makes a most excellent fact on the ground. using it horsemouth has been able to occupy progressively more terrain. thus horsemouth has got some nasturtiums established. there are two (lime?) trees growing. he has pushed back the use of the front garden as a waste repository until just near the bins. 

the back garden is not such a bone of contention. horsemouth cannot see it. ian and daryll have got their zones of interest well established. it has reached a steady state of communal use.  

it is important to remember that everybody in the house is a hoarder but that everybody else is pretty good at keeping it confined to their rooms.

er. excepting sten to whom this notion is utterly foreign. he is in fact committed to enacting  a tragedy of the commons on a regular basis. look, he goes, look at this shortage of storage... if only we had more storage. 

all of this results from one of the positive aspects of sten's character - his enthusiasm - however when the task is done, or half done, or failed and abandoned, sten simply ups and wanders away to the next sunny upland task like the hunter gatherers who start afresh when the land is worked out. the tools/ bits remain in place, the months pass, the dust settles. 

(the day begins with the sound of sten shifting heavy boxes in search of his tools.) 

there is (of course) a heaven, a mythological happy hunting ground of storage elsewhere (in a garage in west london), the pie in the sky when you die of household storage where all the kipple will go after sten has packed it in the right boxes. because these boxes will eventually leave there is no point in investing in shelving (goes the argument). 

this is horsemouth's unimpressed face. 

the problem of the house is the like the puzzle game with the 9 spaces and the 8 numbered squares that can only slide up, down or sideways. only one space is free into which anything being moved must be put. 

everyone in the house is a hoarder. no one can resist a beer trophy (both daryll and horsemouth indeed actively promote this in the belief that it is ecological). amazon deliver. every day more bargains come. 

------------------------------

phew. that feels better. horsemouth enjoys the comedic potential of it. (and he's not actually bothered by meat)

fluxtherapy day 6 (now the pain comes in)

december 10th the play ubu roi (by jarry) opens.

riot!

december 10th the play ubu roi  (by jarry) closes.

most effective play ever!

 'stretching begins late in the afternoon. george looks more symmetrical when he lies down. I am full of thoughts but I don't know how much I should say to him. how much I should take for granted, where responsibility begins and ends. if inexperience and ignorance don't betray me, we may carry out our drama with some aplomb. perhaps neither of us is as afraid as we should be.'

more distracting talk from george, a journey round greece by boat, the birthday box (again), the films (again), political activity in the 60ies, a moment of honesty 'now the pain comes in.'

'I am easily irritated. his talk seems like pointless chatter. he's quite for a while, then scratches his right ear. he asks if it's dark outside. he's getting impatient, thinking of dinner...

on sunday we travel to NYC by bus.'

horsemouth is up and he's had coffee. sten is out the door and away to work. last night a visit from sean. 'how's your brexit going?' asked sten. 'excellent!' replied sean. 'a border in the irish sea (as it should be).' 

this morning? a socialy distanced walk with tim goldie (new neighbour) maybe. afternoon work. 

this day in 1971 phil ochs (and others) performs at the free john sinclair rally in detroit. 

you could say these things (not enough time to speak, or too much to say)

horsemouth is up. he's wearing a jumper. he has finished his coffee (boo-hoo). grey day outside. 

he enjoyed this ron geesin/ roger waters album. ron geesin did the choir and brass band bits on atom heart mother and lots of tape collage works for pink floyd. this was the soundtrack for a film.  they worked on their songs separately (after the movie roger waters redid his tracks for the soundtrack). waters tracks include an early outing for the lyrics to breathe but again you can still hear his debt to syd barrett in the song writing, his voice isn't his own yet.  

back on facebook there was classic album sundays with raj choudhuri and kae tempest talking about roots manuva's uk hip-hop album brand new second hand. now horsemouth has seen ka(t)e tempest live twice (once at a gig the gertrudes played at with a band, another appearing with an all-woman new york peurto rican hip-hop crew at a thing of adam's). she was good both times. now horsemouth doesn't know how it stands up as poetry but as an MC or rapper she can definitely do it. there was a thing at glastonbury that horsemouth thought was one of the most amazing things he's ever seen (he watched it on telly).

there's always a tendency to view people as having sprung fully formed from their own foreheads as a moment of self-creation. this is her repaying debts to the UK hip-hop scene (when people started rapping in recognisably english accents and rapping about their actual existence) and it's a roll call of uk MCs of that time (a lot of whom ended up on big dada records) ty (RIP), jhest, skinnyman, chester P, skeme...   

'the legacy of this album on my own lyrics, suddenly I was like, fuck, this has been huge for me.... this is how I learnt. this is where I learnt. that you could say these things... you could talk about politics... you could bear witness...'  

fluxtherapy day five

'this is a long session and starts early in the afternoon...'

the phone calls keep interrupting. a film club. a birthday box. 

'I don't want to think about anything happening to him, yet he might be seriously ill, he says he isn't afraid to die and I readily believe it. in spite of my caution , our relationship is romantic... we are reacting to one another, there seems to be not enough time to speak, or too much to say.

... the rest of the night I'm busy organising notes taken during the immobilization sessions. I'm suddenly turned on by work after months of desultory scratching and thinking. I work continuously for two hours and come down to the kitchen at 11pm for tea. george is there, euphoric from the morphine. we begin a conversation about films...

we sit at the table: conversation fails. he throws his hands up in a gesture of part despair, part submission.''

the secret structure of the soap opera (day 4 of the fluxtherapy)

'I am feeling a curious anger. I don't want to give direction but feel like leaving him unattended. my mind strays, but I force my attention back...

we are at cross-purposes, aggravating fantasies while trying to achieve equilibrium' 

it is day 4 of the fluxtherapy. 

billie has realised that george is in love with her. it is not a welcome realisation. 

the secret structure of soap operas is that you have 3 story strands - an ascending strand (rising in importance), a descending strand (fading away after a peak) and the continuing main strand. each gets roughly 7 short  scenes (just long enough for the action be moved on). the episode finishes with the scene of maximum drama from main story, some words and a wordless reaction shot. cue the eastender's drums.

the plan is for a new year's eve performance where billie and george will exchange formal clothing to a monteverdi madrigal zefiro torna in a piece called black and white.

horsemouth has just listened to zefiro torna  for the first time. he likes it. he likes the repetitive cello part (it waltzes round in a sort of habanera). it is the madrigal zefiro torna e di soavi accenti by ottavio rinuccini  set as a chaconne. zefiro is the west wind that brings spring. 

there's a woman's voice at the start of zarthus by robbie basho. horsemouth cannot find out who it is. 

 the fluxtherapy session comes to an end. 

'I agree to make up his face.. . By the time I finish, including hair styling, he looks like an elegant dyke. I can't stop looking at him and half fall in love.'

we end with a reaction shot on billie's face (nothing is said). cue eastender's drums. 

(fluxtherapy day 3)

the guardian/ observer has a particular skill for picking the wrong title for its articles. it is so blinkered it cannot even properly read its own articles. for example this, an article that purports to be about whether moving to the countryside will be fun or not, is in fact an article about how people think the reporting of coronavirus has been distorted by middle class interests (such as moving to the countryside). 

well done grauniad! 

horsemouth is up and he has his coffee. sten is out the door and off to work (after a slight return to get his sandwiches). 

the government's ethics advisor has resigned (when he realised the futility of advising tories about ethics). in fact it may have been unethical to take the job in the first place (argues horsemouth). .

oh look here's robert (£45 million) jenrick, always willing to help out a friend, as are the entire government really, a frightfully obliging bunch.... 

it's foggy and cold out (so sten reports). 

horsemouth is particularly taken by this video (Rage Against the Quarantine someone has called it).  this is because he likes complex time signature heavy metal and he likes crazed protestant preaching. of course the idea is that is you are right with god (as adam and eve were in the garden of eden) you can't get sick. horsemouth thinks this is bollocks. satan is not the disease/ the disease is not satan. the disease is a biochemical phenomena which can only be fought by other biochemical phenomena (vaccinations etc.) or public health measures of the lockdown or test, track and isolate variety.

You may wish it to be otherwise and yet it is so.

fluxtherapy day 3. george maciunas does not see images but hears sound (purcell's music for a while with russel oberlin singing countertenor). which is about music as healing.

billie realises there is something else going on.

'I realize that george is in love with me, and that these sessions are erotic events to him. he is not always rational and has outbursts of temper, beside his fixation on me in his transvestite fantasies. he is in a great deal of pain as well. I'm not sure that I have the stamina, and especially the scope to be responsible.' 

last night zoom beers with howard. today work midday-ish. a problematic booking thursday.  he should attempt to get his flu jab in. having completed the movie horsemouth is at a loss for what to do next. normally next would be fairly obvious (horsemouth would attempt to capitalise on the movie more) but lockdown makes this problematic (similarly the album). 

if you tattoo a union jack on your body you will be immune from the virus

'naomi klein first identified the “shock doctrine” of radical policies that conservatives rolled out during disasters, the right... (is) now appropriating this narrative for its own ends.' 

when this is all over there will of course be a revisionist history of the epidemic that the lockdowns were not needed and were ineffective anyway, that if you tattoo a union jack on your body you will be immune from the virus. 

horsemouth sincerely doubts that coronavirus was deliberately released by anyone, frankly he doubts there are any secret geniuses 'behind' anything, horsemouth is a subscriber to the fuck-up theory of history. the ruling class rule but not in a world of their making. with capitalism there's no-one driving. 

however once the virus is out of the batcave and spreading through the human (and animal, hello mink) populations it becomes clear that lockdown is the first necessary strategy, and lockdown as soon as possible. 

the half of the people who read the quality newspapers start working from home and the newspapers start writing about it as great social change, ecological groups hail it, lifestyle gurus hail it, because a capitalism that had been prevented from taking up the full productive benefits of new technology (because of its own inertia) has now been forced (accelerated) to. 

the frustrated hail any sign of movement. 

much will fall out from this. good news for the software companies. bad news for public transport companies, office rental companies and sandwich shops etc. 

(and of course the other half of the population are either still working away face-to-face (mask-to-mask, shoulder-to-shoulder on the tube trains), or furloughed, or unemployed already. but let's not talk about them.)

and horsemouth actually thinks bad news for the workers working from home. the debate is really with antonio negri's time for revolution - as the time needed to undertake the tasks sprawl beyond the working day, as the capacities needed to undertake the work sprawl beyond just-do-it to empathy (and being your own IT support), as work itself moves into your home, does this really give you more power to resist? (as negri would claim). 

and is it also, as agamben would claim, that we are surrendering too easily to the biopolitical logic of lockdown? 

but in fact this is still rearranging the deckchairs on the titanic. because coronavirus is the warm up bout for the much bigger global warming. one that the political classes (and capitalism) recognise as an existential threat, that they know is coming, and have no faith in their own ability to dodge. efforts to change up to low carbon economies are as likely to be hindered as helped by the pandemic and the task of paying for the lost production and value. indeed more pandemics are probably coming (as the last of the residual natural world is extirpated). 

capitalism (following the pattern of 2008) can but bounce the costs of the pandemic onto the workers, the forcibly contracted social realm of lockdown is the model for the economically contracted social realm of the austerity 'necessary' to pay for it. Or it can take on the global oligarchs. (creatures who have escaped the gravitational field of being human and may as well be lizards). 

just as the MAGA and brexit movements addressed globalisation from the perspective of the workers (and were thus populist ) and were at the same time a challenge to global capitalism but not to capitalism per se, so the anti-vaxxer/ anti-lockdown movement is another chaffing against the biopolitical controls/ retour a normal (but at a lower level) that capitalism has to offer. 

contrary to the expressed teaching of neo-liberalism there is no withering away of the state as all-knowing markets smoothly meet need but instead, as per its secret teaching the state is necessary to create the very conditions for globalisation and neo-liberalism (and in fact be debt holder of last resort). instead the state has had to step up. 

and what a sorry shambles it has been. it is not exactly match fit. 

and yet the state has appeared again on the field of politics (like a mythical beast) and people can see just how much it can do when it chooses. if a furlough why not a universal basic income? 

this winter brexit and flooding and the virus and lockdown. all will return, actual vaccinations and reliable testings will continue to prove strangely elusive. we don't begin to come out of this until early 2022 (though the austerity will kick in mid 2021). 

merry christmas. 

(of course this assumes that the virus does not mutate beyond the reach of the vaccine). 

1977. it's day two of flux therapy. george maciunas talks too much in an effort to distract himself. 

' love... devotion... melancholy' (the beginning of the fluxtherapy)

so someone described the music of robbie basho. his belongings scattered to the four winds of sufism reformulated. his own stash of recordings has surfaced. to horsemouth there's little doubt that basho can do it - he can go high, he can go deep, he can really play, he can really sing.

it was bandcamp friday. horsemouth doesn't think musicians of bremen  made any sales (but he'll go round and check in a minute). the fall of the house of fitzgerald has passed its 300th view.

horsemouth was up early (for no good reason) and is now a little sleepy. 

horsemouth rolls towards having made his rent for the year (december's paycheck, arriving in january, should do it). thereafter it is all gravy. horsemouth is not fussed if he makes any money this year (just so long as he doesn't die). 

'I have now examined my desk more closely and have seen that nothing good can be done on it. there is so much lying about, it forms a disorder without proportion and without that compatibility of disordered things which otherwise make disorder bearable.' - franz kafka 24/12/1910

the fluxtherapy commenced on this day in 1977 and ran until december 16th. it is a kind of immobilisation therapy where the patient is encouraged to lie still and perhaps report what comes into their mind. billie had learnt about it at the queens medical centre. really it is nothing to do with fluxus.

 it's the weekend. horsemouth is stuck for something to do. in a little while he'll do the papers and then he'll try and get on with some reading. 

when the bookshops are open again (the youth of america)

"that people kill themselves because of my blogs won’t stop me from writing”

to misquote a comment by the wonderfully grumpy marguerite duras. 

the US election result (should the government change on the back of it) will still be the 'dismal rubber stamp of the unacceptable status quo' on this larry cohen, mike davis, david runciman, all the bien pensant commentators are in agreement. horsemouth has a horrible suspicion they are right. biden is the safe candidate of centrists who won't be able to do anything because of a weak position of the democrats in congress and the senate. a weak position they deserve because of their irrelevance.  

there's an interesting survey where a third of black american youth interviewed list revolution as the best way forward. 

horsemouth thanks cameron for this track, he played it round tim's one time. (of course it's the doors LA woman really). 

of course the 70 million people who voted for trump and the armed militias that came out onto the street don't go away merely because trump loses in fact having failed to secure representation they become a bigger problem. the economic and political conditions that created them do not go away. 

'I won't give up the diary again. I must hold on here, it is the only place I can.' (franz kafka, 16th december 1910)

when the bookshops open again

when the bookshops open again horsemouth must buy some more marguerite duras. they probably are open again. he's been tempted back into reading the unburnt diaries of franz kafka, he still has the theory of the avant garde (by peter burger) to be getting on with, and he has a review  of expanded cinema: art, performance,film to be getting on with. 

in ingmar bergman's in the presence of a clown they expand cinema, the silent cinema of the day, by putting actors and musicians behind the screen. of course there's an excellent redundancy with this, if you do that you may as well put on a theatre performance. 

all is friendship, mutual aid and kindness

 cold grey morning outside. nice and toasty inside. 

valerie and her week of wonders.

it is of course an anti-clerical fairy story. the church and the bourgeoisie are rotten with vampires. your family are vampires. but sex is the driving force of the universe, the servant girls are at it, the farm labourers are at it. the birds and the bees are at it . the metonymic animals, the bees and the chickens, these represent the people, the bees fly in and out of a hive  in the wooden statues of a man and a woman through a slot where the generative organs are, the chickens are in the dovecote, chicken blood may be substituted for human blood, but the vampire is represented also as the polecat. 

our 13 year old heroine must fend off the inappropriate attentions of the vampires (even those in her own family)  if she is to recreate the family scene, if she is to enable the return of her mother and the recovery of her aunt and father (the bishop) from vampirism, if she is to escape the inquisition, if she is to grow and mature. and because this is a bright optimistic film, one filmed in the sunshine, she does it. 

it is the sexualisation of minors that is difficult for modern viewers not to worry about. like sweetback's badass song or jodie foster in taxi driver or whoever gets to play lolita or carrie  or christiane F.  people go to the cinema because they want to see (how much footage of a semi-naked 13 year old do we really need to see). 

if it were to be remade today it would probably be remade like the hunger games or twilight (or indeed buffy the vampire slayer). a fully clothed film of teenage daring-do. but it is not a night journey. most of it takes place in broad beneficent sunlight. valerie's motives are not sexual - with her  it is all friendship, mutual aid and kindness, this is what provides the cure against vampirism. her diet is not chicken and red wine, it is all honey and apples.

because this is a bright optimistic film, one filmed in the sunshine, she does it. everybody is at the picnic in the woods, her parents and aunt are returned to her (seemingly in pre-vampiric form), only the lustful priest is punished (imprisoned in a bird's cage sunken into the ground as if half-forgotten already). 

it made horsemouth feel nostalgic for the beauty of the czech republic (and poland also). for the old town squares when the sun shines and there is beer. 

horsemouth's friends would probably suggest that he should be watching more vera chytilova (sedmikrasky has a similar rabelaisian optimism, something different less so). there's a thing in milan kundera where sex becomes the thing that is possible instead of freedom (and therefore becomes tainted).  

horsemouth is not sure what he is up to today. 

it is the 180th anniversary of the birth of the reverend kilvert. he lived rural idyll in clyro near hay-on-wye. he liked them young and pretty and frequently confides this to his diary. how much notice you take of this depends on how you read it. there was a particular victorian habit of sentimentalising young girls (alice by kilvert's friend lewis carroll is a particular example of it). 

horsemouth realises he is in the wrong place at the wrong time (again)

yesterday a ghost booking. one where horsemouth realises he is in the wrong place at the wrong time (once again). 

he hates these because he hates letting people down. in this sense his prayers (to get rid of both face-to-face bookings) were answered (but not in the way he would have chosen). he could do without the journeys over there.  if he'd been less trusting and less lazy and driven more defensively he would have escaped it.

'ah well! these things happen!' was not what he said at the time. 

he won't know until friday if that's him for the year (he does hope so).

on this day in 1851 (ok maybe tomorrow)  the goncourt brothers began to keep their journal. they wrote it jointly (one dictating the other writing). they would often make notes on their cufflinks as the evening progressed people got more and more drunk and more and more indiscrete (and things generally went from bad to worse). they write as 'we'. 

they begin by witnessing the coup d'etat of napoleon III. 

the goncourts were nobles, frustrated novelists, in a position to fund their own literary magazine (unlike their rival zola who arguably took their techniques and had the greatest success with them). in revenge they begin their journal. 

there is great consolation in writing. look at this. even better - blogspot's title?

'horsemouth realises he is in wrong'  (are you my superego? mutters horsemouth). 

what was mere rage and despair (and all over something of no great significance) becomes something that can be looked at dispassionately. its poison drawn. horsemouth over-reacts to these things because of his imposter syndrome (something he has tried to escape by becoming pseudonymous, or a cartoon mule). 

at work a problem continues to be intractable. but at least there is some real effort to resolve it (this marks a change from earlier years).   

pinch, punch, first thing that came to mind

pinch, punch, first of the month. that was the first thing that came to his mind.

horsemouth is on the correct page of the calendar for the end of the year. (woo-hoo)

over on musicians of bremen  a like from map recordings (home of the diamond family archive) who seem to be based down in totnes.  horsemouth has missed seeing them play a number of times (he'll make a point of seeing them next time).

last night horsemouth finishes off the passion of anna. curiously she reminds him of an ex (that's some long repressed material surfacing right there). and curiously max von sydow in it reminds him of duncan (long, lanky, prone to drunkenness, at war with the universe). it's much more like strindberg and hamsun and munch and... (that's all horsemouth's scandiwegian miserabilists used up). 

later he listened to some lena platonos (witches is the famous track). he had fun trying to convince himself that he could understand the odd word here and there in a documentary about her (it was all in greek with a few loan words, horsemouth knew they were loan words from other languages because he understood them). he had fun trying to work out how the cyrillic letters could spell out her name. 

arcadia is on the point of collapse. it has been sucked dry by sir phillip green (an old school asset stripper). the idea of rural perfection has been destroyed. and yet it cannot be, it is being reborn in the government's new (post brexit) strategy for the countryside. 

today horsemouth goes and works. this means travel (there and back again  on the death train). horsemouth hopes he hasn't caught covid already (and he hopes he doesn't catch it today). wednesday has allegedly cancelled (that's good) so perhaps he can get some work in from home instead.