when prophecy fails

 

horsemouth thinks he got don juan's reckless daughter (by joni mitchell) out of hereford record library (so he will have taped it and had it on cassette). it is in many ways a sequel to coyote (indeed there's a recording a gig where joni runs them together). don juan...  comes together less well than hejira  or the hissing of the summer lawns (horsemouth opines) but this is what makes it interesting. it is jaco pastorius' bass that makes coyote (chopped together from four tracks of solo-ing). horsemouth likes his bass on don juan... but mainly he likes the doubled (split-tongue) vocal. 

curiously enough dorothy martin, head communicant (and automatic writer) of the chicago UFO cult that expected the United States to be engulfed by floodwaters (and flying saucers to come to the rescue)  was (wait for it, wait for it) an ex-scientologist.

horsemouth says this because he has just listened to a louis theroux interview with another ex-scientologist (but this one just denounces it as a con).  

on the night of 21 December 1954 this, of course, did not happen. the problem for dorothy was that by that point her group had been infiltrated by a pack of sociologists keen to know what would happen when celebrants were presented with evidence contrary to their beliefs. (and so we have the term cognitive dissonance from when prophecy fails by leon festinger et al.). 

dorothy moved on and up into the realm of the theosophists. still it must have been a bit of a shock to discover that large numbers of her flock were there for the purpose of study rather than worship. 

the flying saucers came up because horsemouth read an article on the lrb blog (or was it the nlr blog? no it was the lrb blog) on how the QAnoners and such like will react to having the plan disproved... and the answer is , probably they'll get out and proselytise about how they were right. 

a friend remarked that the similar moment for him was when the world revolution didn't happen in 1921. horsemouth sympathises. yes. it was self evident and historically necessary (and it also didn't happen). 

in the region of summer stars

horsemouth thinks it was the point where the european commission had blocked vaccine exports to northern ireland from the south (citing their emergency rights under article 16 of the brexit deal clause) in violation of the the notion that the north and south south should be treated the same (and allowing arlene foster to pose as a stout-hearted defender of the good friday agreement) that he finally cracked up and started laughing. 

no he thinks it was the point where it came out they hadn't consulted the irish government first before doing this, or even told them about it. the European Commission covered themselves in glory (once again), not in the least bit high-handed. 

as a stone remainer it's a bad day for horsemouth. 

but, to take a malcolm X analogy 

“if you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” 

why shouldn't the EC get the vaccines made in its territory? why shouldn't the UK get the vaccines made in its territory? why shouldn't the EC get the vaccines it has ordered? why shouldn't the UK get the vaccines it has ordered? both sides deploy notions of property rights and sovereignty and our people first. 

but similarly shouldn't the poor cunts in moldova get some vaccine (or brazil, or south africa)? 

the point is everyone has to be vaccinated, we have to drastically reduce the prevalence of the virus in humanity or new variants will be popping out like adding water to gremlins. that's the real task,  drastically scaling up production and getting the juggernaut of world vaccination moving. 

horsemouth watched an online gig by the enid a prog rock band from back in the day. horsemouth saw them at various gigs when he was a student in london. he saw them at the reading festival 1983. they were distinctly on the pseudo-classical end of prog. at reading they announced they were gay from the stage (which horsemouth thought was fucking brave considering how unreconstructed rock audiences were in those days) er. that and still playing prog after punk. horsemouth had a few albums I bought mail order.  he saw the 3  piece (plus backing tapes) line up. the earliest reported sighting by horsemouth's friends was 1976.  

it was a good show. standards of musicianship were high. 

horsemouth's friend robert lawson has been busy. he's released a new extended zither plus effects piece which horsemouth will be reviewing shortly. 

the morning after the wolf moon (black swan)

(which horsemouth didn't get out to see). 

it's another maxwell parrish morning with the golden glow. 

soon (horsemouth suspects) breakfast.

last night he watched raptus: the horrible secret of dr. hitchcock (barbara steel in colour! in a UCH cruciform building set necrophiliac medic shocker) and cronos (an early guilhermo del toro which horsemouth watched in the cinema when it came out way back in the 90ies). 

horsemouth has the window open (the better to admit the fresh air). it is clouding over rapidly.

so this pandemic thing- what's horsemouth's conspiracy theory? 

horsemouth will here quote the daily torygraph.

'in 2016, exercise cygnus “war gamed” a pandemic..

the official report from the exercise concluded that Britain’s “plans, policies and capability” were “not sufficient to cope” with “a severe pandemic”. however, the report was stamped “official – sensitive” and put on a shelf to rot. (it was only officially published in october 2020)...

the 2011 pandemic strategy stipulated it would “not be possible to halt the spread of a new pandemic… and it would be a waste of public health resources and capacity to attempt to do so”. instead, the strategy prioritised “business as usual”, anticipating healthcare rationing and 210,000 to 315,000 excess deaths over a fifteen-week period. this plan, hatched by technocrats without democratic debate, could not survive contact with public opinion...

no wonder the cygnus report was buried.' 

the article from rolls royce to skoda: how the pandemic has exposed britain’s failed ‘regulatory state’ by lee jones (26/01/21), argues that the british state has been hollowed out until it is no longer capable of doing anything by itself and only of playing the regulator of services delivered by others. horsemouth likes this analysis because blame also falls on the service commissioning governments of blair and brown. 

it puts paid to the kind of revisionist analysis similar to the lrb film on grenfell that it is all the fault of the tories. 

it took time to shift the government off this model of the pandemic 'it's too big, hospitals will be overwhelmed, nothing can be done'  to 'something can be done'  and hence their critical initial delay and dicking about. (or it may just be that boris was just too busy to attend COBRA meetings).

the main benefit of it as a theory is that it also explains their inability to sort anything subsequently. 

horsemouth supposes that the counter example is the super markets who, despite being profoundly just-in-time have kept going and met demand but then they are doing teh same thing they have always done, they are not required by events to do something new.  

at the moment just about the only good decisions seem to have been at the MHRA and NHS to have fast tracked certification and to have  bought doses of the vaccine early. but time will tell on this one - the virus could mutate round these particular vaccines, the roll out could stall, the delaying of the second jab could reduce its effectiveness. the groups that receive the first jab  and the second jab could not be the most effective ones for slowing transmission (death rate - the measure horsemouth tends to use, may not be the right one given long covid). 

the number of new cases is dropping (and has done since early january), the number of hospitalisations seems to be starting to drop, the death rate remains high but we should probably start to see falls here in about 2 weeks time. 

and then what? well you remember last summer. a socially distanced summer in the city. new strains. the pandemic becomes endemic to particular regions, chronic rather than acute, with flare-ups and reinfections. society does not un-lock, things do not get better. capitalism (in the form of rishi sunak) comes knocking on the door searching for its lost profits. 

good morning horsemouth! good morning paul!

 - good morning horsemouth! 

- good morning paul!

- haven't seen you in a while. where are we eh?

- we're in the countryside  at our parents.

- is that wise? I want to be with my friends. I want to run and play.

- well it is the middle of a global pandemic. the less contact with people you have the better. I mean, you've seen masque of the red death right? 

- yes but they have castles and drawbridges and things. you don't meet them in the queue at aldi. have at thee varlet serf, oh look red kidney beans at 30p a can. for prices this low it is worth risking death. 

- or maybe the thing/ alien...

- um...

- the best way to think about it I think is with zombie movies. it starts with just one zombie and then pretty soon it's the whole town shuffling about the place and discussing the price of brains, sniffing the air and peeking through your letterbox.

- ?

- less chance of that in the countryside, lower population density.  you've seen 28 weeks later.  that sort of thing.

- yes but I want to run and play. I'm sure I'm missing out on lots of parties and raves and super spreader events. 

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

the problem for horsemouth and paul (as we can see from this transcript) is that they want to return to their previous lives of promiscuous sociability. in fact these are not the lives they lived. instead they have already lived lives of near monastic seclusion, a seclusion made possible by the city and its anonymity and indifference, by the new, eagerly embraced digital means of data harvesting and pseudo-connection.

the new means of data harvesting will serve them well wherever they are (you've seen the matrix). at some point horsemouth and paul have to sneak back into the city (well his life is there). 

they wonder what will be there. they suspect sten will have taken the opportunity to occupy their shelf in the fridge and to cover the front garden with rubbish, . apparently sten has been busying himself redecorating the living room (so they expect that to be an unuseable building site and should either of them  return they will be in any event confined to their own room).  

tonight a wolf moon. horsemouth and paul are going to make more effort to keep a track of the moon this year.

'the banality... of evol... she knew about that... oh yes she did...'

horsemouth notes the strange inclusion of hannah arendt in donald trump's proposed sculpture park. you can just imagine the re-elected president trump's speech at the opening of it (not that it was ever intended to happen)  'the banality... of evol... she knew about that... oh yes she did... stolen elections... yes. bad bad people... we won't dwell on that... but we defeated them... oh yes'

horsemouth is up (just). rarely for him he has slept badly. but (no fear) he has his coffee. a grey day. a grey morning. 

horsemouth has been a very poor reader of late - he has read a little of the origins of totalitarianism. he knows that it is popular at the moment with spiked/ libertarian anti-lockdown types. he knows that is is popular with people trying to navigate an anti-zionism that is not anti-semitism. he knows it is popular with people trying to understand MAGA.

there is of course a tendency to read any book to hand as if it were the key current events. 

now horsemouth should be clear, he does not think we are heading into totalitarianism caused by the coronavirus outbreak, the guidance may be repressive but it's hardly a police state, nor does he think the US is rolling in the direction of totalitarianism (though if trump had won or succeeded in having the election set aside horsemouth would think so). nor does he think populism or brexit or the return of the democrats to office are signs of it. 

ok no he does think they are signs of it.

MAGA, brexit are signs of a political attempt to forge a direct relationship with the people (in arendt's terms the mob) that is actually politically mobilising (rather than the dead fossilised majorities of the democratic process). hence the sudden upsurge in maoist rhetoric ('let a thousand flowers bloom') from the brexiteer tories. 

horsemouth loves the rhetorical fury of hannah arendt's text - strangely the dictators are quickly forgotten - it only takes them to be succeeded for them to be seemingly lost to memory.  and yet he has made a very poor fist of reading it.  

it is holocaust remembrance day it is important to make sure the lessons of history are actually learned.  

100,000 dead (and the hill being symmetric) possibly 30,000 more still to come as we go back down from the current peak. horsemouth (armchair general) pushes forward the troops 'and the lines on the map moved from side to side'. 

horsemouth (standing in the office of armchair general and ultimate arbiter of right and wrong), thinks you can't blame boris for missing five COBRA meetings and not following the scientific advice and locking down early right at the start (the first 20,000 deaths or so). 

well ok you can. 

and yet on the whole (while late) the government response to the first wave was surprisingly proportionate and  correct. on the other hand you really can blame him for every fuck up since that. in particular boris should have stayed locked down longer, got levels down to much lower and set up a working track and trace and (horsemouth pauses to notice that strange moment of being in agreement with pritti patel) closed borders. 

to horsemouth repressive measures carried out against the virus, whilst marking a capitulation of biopolitical logic, are not truly repressive because they aim to lead us up and out of the pandemic. what would be repressive (and totalitarian) would be to leave those measures undone, or half-done. 

there is a tendency to say of totalitarians 'well at least they made the trains run on time' but in fact totalitarian governance does not work that way, in fact it does not work well at all. the various bureaucratic institutions of the state and the party are encouraged to compete with each other, to be seen to be doing something (whether it works or not is beside the point). in this way what we are living through may actually be totalitarian. 

life could be a dream

if it should rain you will need to be philosophical. or maybe you should just count and describe what the rainwater floats down the gutter... 

they're no longer young (but they're having a lot of fun). tom jobim and elis regina in 1974. it would have been  his birthday yesterday (he died december 1994)

'It is wood, it is stone

It is the end of the way

It is the rest of a bole

It is a bit in loneliness

It is a shard of glass

It is life, it is sun

It is the night, it is the death

It is the tie , it is the hook ...'

horsemouth is up and he has his coffee. he was dreaming about an ecological cult of young people. eventually they sent a youngster to seduce/ honeytrap him. 'oh well' mused horsemouth. 

'¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.

¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión,

una sombra, una ficción,

y el mayor bien es pequeño.

¡Que toda la vida es sueño,

y los sueños, sueños son!'  - calderón de  la barca (curiously enough boris pasternak spent time translating him into russian).

phew another meeting of the communal endeavour done. 

horsemouth has to learn to let go of the anxiety. it all rolls in a direction likely to ensure that some people are at least rehoused, horsemouth looks forward to getting this done. it's the anxiety round it not being complete. 

 .... and at some point (and with a pop) it will be done. it has been a long hard road to get even this far.

of course the anxiety is just another less pleasant dream. fortunately by a certain point yesterday evening with a little help from his friends (who are busier and thus wiser) horsemouth had managed to turn it off. 

horsemouth works this afternoon. he will try to get out for a walk this morning after breakfast. 

the black death seems to have passed peak (peak notified cases, peak hospital admissions, peak death). this is good we are coming down the mountain towards an uneasy locked down truce. hopefully the vaccinations will get down before the new variants get here. hey but at least it is hiding the debacle over brexit (so not all bad then). 

the new gwenifer raymond album is out (it's great). the dudes over at american primitive seem to be liking it. 

a stunning dawn

a stunning dawn. like something by maxwell parrish with snow. horsemouth possibly up a bit earlier (because it's cold). nonetheless he has a a window open now to get rid of the condensation. horsemouth has his coffee. 

last night he tried the sujiko which is kind of like a 3by3 grid containing the numbers 1 to 9 the sums of the four neighbouring squares you know (and maybe one of the numbers as a hint to get you started). you must then populate the other squares so that it all adds up correctly.

to horsemouth's way of thinking low and high numbers for the sums of the squares are interesting because low numbers and high numbers can only be made a limited number of ways, 10 for example (as the sum of four neighbouring squares) can only be made one way 1-2-3-4 (11 and 12 similarly so) and once used these numbers cannot be used elsewhere, similarly 30 can only be made one way 9-8-7-6. intermediate sums from 13 onwards can be made a variety of ways. 

horsemouth begins by elimination. he writes out the numbers 1 to 9 and strikes through all that he has 'used'. 

today two (admittedly small) bits of work. 

and then in the evening a meeting of the communal endeavour and the presentation of the budget for the year. this is where the endeavour plans ahead. this year has a big flat slice of handbacks (and the expenses and loss of revenue that goes with that). there will also be a smaller slice of additions to the co-op of new co-op owned property funded by the sale of larger shared housing that is less popular with the members as they age. like the sujiko the problem of development has limits and structure (and is thus solvable). 

of course what is actually achievable also determined by the times we live in also. 

horsemouth has a dreadful suspicion he's met the new junior housing minister at something (possible wearing his housing association hat). 

horsemouth is worried about spending so much time out of town. should he be? even if he gets back how much of  'life' can he actually get on with? 

soon breakfast - being a weekday it will be porridge and then a piece of toast. remind horsemouth to warn his mum that he will be working in the day and in a meeting in the evening. 

profits for some (and mere wages for most)

from jacken elswyth (betwixt and between)  some favourites from their end of the year list. 

mass digital education on platforms designed by the big tech firms is pretty much how education is being delivered right now. and the longer the crisis goes on the more it is likely to become the way in which education is delivered. is this not creeping privatisation? doesn't this give the big tech companies the same power to farm people's preferences and aptitudes (big data) that it does in business and social media? 

this is the kind of question that when it comes back we know we have exited the crisis. 

the government will then try and design a mass digital education platform (er. and fail probably). 

horsemouth is not some libertarian idiot, he doesn't think that there is a one simple overdetermining reason a why a hierarchical organisation organised in the name of government can't do the thing that a hierarchical organisation organised in the name of profit (profit for some and mere wages for most) can't, he just thinks the current crew have lost the knack. 

but we have not exited the crisis yet.  

the death toll seems to be falling (and the number of people sick and the number going into hospital in the UK at least) for this wave of it at least. this is good news, we may be moving past peak. the monday figures are normally unreliable but tuesday, wednesday we should be able to tell.  

sad news. over on 6070ies folk group a row has broken out about posting bernies. now horsemouth likes bernie. some people are having a sense of humour failure (horsemouth opines) but OK, horsemouth accepts that if we want to play together then we have to play nice. he accepts that it is not the primary purpose of the group. horsemouth would not be best pleased if loads of people were posting trumpies.  

last night horsemouth watched la femme aux bottes rouges by bunuel (fils) et jean-claude carriere (with fernando rey and 3D chess). fernando rey plays the villain, forever a lecherous old bourgeois, forever destroying art, forever mocked. but, gentle readers, art wins in the end. horsemouth can't tell which european city it is based in (madrid?) but it makes him nostalgic for european cities (as does spirals which he watched earlier). 

will the days of global travel return? when we are jetting off everywhere. horsemouth thinks not for a while (but then people he knows have been off to portugal and even further afield during the crisis). we are moving into the era of differentiated national strains (some of which are worse than others allegedly). 

after the end of the cold war (about 1990 or so when horsemouth was working for an anti-nuclear group) he remembers going to a conference at a US university on the new security environment. instead of a dazzling peace dividend  a world was sketched out of increased terrorism, migration, immigration controls, and infection diseases spread rapidly by means of increased international travel. horsemouth found this depressing (this was the darkside of the end of history). 

today snow (at least half an inch his dad reckons). yesterday horsemouth helped his dad tidy up after chopping down a tree (this substituted for a walk on the common). at the moment it is all beautiful (but at some point he will have to go out into it and discover that it is merely muddy and cold). 

in a bit breakfast.

'good morning. I see the assassins have failed'

horsemouth is up. he has had his coffee. outside it is frosty and white. inside horsemouth the light-fingered can't lift the derek jarman movie he wants so here's an arena documentary. you will probably have to click through to watch it on youtube. the soundtrack is good (horsemouth thinks it's eno). 

soon breakfast. then a walk probably. 

last night the zoom beers with howard. the week before they had got very keen on playing around with zoom backgrounds, this week they dived again into the giant smorgasbord that is their respective photo collections. howard dug out some photos from a party up at their shared flat in the roof of the nags head. maria, and  rusty and martin and laura and paul mazon and a whole raft of maria's spanish and latin american friends that horsemouth did not know. 

horsemouth and howard drank and reminisced about the kind of world where this was possible. horsemouth went off in search of early photos of himself (vain thing that he is). 

last night horsemouth watched a scandi-noir based on a true story of murder and submarines. then he watched the ITV news which was truly horrifying. we have not reached top in the UK and even when we do the numbers in intensive care will not decline for a long while. of the new variants of covid some are more infectious some (seem to be) more lethal. that great story where science comes to save humanity - there's a disease, there's a cure, we vaccinate and then live happily ever after  (clever little monkeys) seems to be more articulated. the way is longer and the night is even darker than horsemouth imagined. 

ok more later. 

it is later (once again already). horsemouth has just had breakfast a boiled egg, tea and toast (sorry vegans).

the interview with horsemouth and enza has been published (thanks emma). it came out well horsemouth thinks. it was mostly about the fall of the house of fitzgerald but horsemouth, crazed maoist that he is, managed to sneak in a little of the wider politics of the communal endeavour. 

he should go for a walk and start reading the david goodhart (head hand heart). tonight spirals. next week more work and a zoom meeting of the communal endeavour, thursday a wolf moon. and then the week after that a new month, a celtic quarter day, the six month anniversary of the release of musicians of bremen volume four (how has it been for you gentle readers?). 

'like lesser birds on the four winds'

horsemouth has been trying to learn astronomy by the blue oyster cult. 

as a side order he listened to their album spectres. according to allen lanier, the photograph on this album's cover was inspired by NY turn of the century photographer and social campaigner  jacob riis whose "how the other half lives" album depicted the classier gang members of the period in their true colors. but it's not so.  how the other half lives is a document of tenement life, the poor, the homeless, the indigent.

horsemouth sees the cover of spectres  (by the blue oyster cult)  as an enactment of their track astronomy from secret treaties. 

we are in 'the four winds' bar. 'clock strikes 12' check.  'and moondrops burst' (lasers- check), where's the map? 'behind the clockback, there you know, at the four winds bar' (good reincorporation).

the cover of spectres, BÖC’s fifth studio LP, was designed by artist and photographer roni hoffman. the cover picture was taken by eric meola, a self-taught photographer .. the laser effects were provided by laser pioneer david infante of laser physics inc. and used in the band’s laser stage show. 

roni hoffman was a NY scenester (she was consistently in the right place at the right time).  in her portfolio there are photos of patti smith, alice cooper, bo diddley, ted nugent, (hell patti smith and ted nugent go figure). 

the lyrics to astronomy are by sandy perlman. the lines (at least initially) are accompanied with an AABA pattern of chords. the chorus (the heys) is lifted off all along the watchtower (and numerous other songs) 

the four winds is the greek conception (the anemoi)  and correspond to the four cardinal directions (NSWE). this kind of fits with the map theme.  

from the expanse of the outside we are taken in to a controlled room with a number (four again) of doors 'four doors at the four winds bar' . two doors are locked, the windows are barred. one door is there 'to take you in' and 'the other one just mirrors it' - i.e. it's a trap, and in this room we are only told about the clock. 

The clock strikes twelve and moondrops burst
Out at you from their hiding place
Like acid and oil on a madman's face
His reason tends to fly away
Like lesser birds on the four winds
Like silver scrapes in May
And now the sand's become a crust
And most of you have gone away

Come Susie dear, let's take a walk
Just out there upon the beach
I know you'll soon be married
And you'll want to know where winds come from
Well it's never said at all
On the map that Carrie reads
Behind the clock back there you know
At the Four Winds Bar

Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

Four doors at the Four Winds Bar
Two doors locked and windows barred
One door to let to take you in
The other one just mirrors it

Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

Hellish glare and inference
The other one's a duplicate
The Queenly flux, eternal light
Or the light that never warms
Or the light that never, never warms
Or the light that never
Never warms
Never warms
Never warms

(the 'middle 8' and then the recapitulation) .

The clock strikes twelve and moondrops burst
Out at you from their hiding place
Miss Carrie nurse and Susie dear
Would find themselves at Four Winds Bar

It's the nexus of the crisis
And the origin of storms
Just the place to hopelessly
Encounter time and then came me

Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

Call me Desdinova
Eternal light
These gravely digs of mine
Will surely prove a sight
And don't forget my dog
Fixed and consequent

Astronomy... a star (repeats) 

now the theory is that the dog  is the dog star,  a fixed star (from when stars were believed to be fixed unlike the planets or wanderers that seemed to move against this rotating firmament of stars) and thus of use in navigation. 

wikipedia suggests the following, that  "the light that never warms" is the moon, "the queenly flux" the constellation cassiopeia,.. the "four winds bar" may be a reference to the tropic of cancer. 

now interpreting blue oyster cult lyrics is something of a holy blood and the holy grail type operation with arguments about track order and such things but horsemouth would like to point out the almost speculative realist interests in the consistency of materials - gravely digs, now the sand's become a crust etc.

today. bright, sunny and cold. horsemouth will go for a wander. 

horsemouth al centro della terra

and so we approach peak death (part II). horsemouth is a bit flippant about these things. he knows people are losing members of their family (indeed people he knows are losing members of their family).  worse than the first time around.

the government are worried that as people are vaccinated they will no longer obey lockdown and social distancing regulations. (and they are right to be worried, that's why people are going to get vaccinated so that this can be over). the government are stuck upon a prong - on the one hand they want society if not locked down, then at least socially distanced, so that the virus does not spread, so that the health service is not overwhelmed, so that the death tolls are not even higher, on the other hand they want society open again and people going out and spending and digging the economy out of recession. 

can they have both? can they have their cake and eat it? probably not. 

horsemouth's advice, and he knows he's not morally best placed to give this advice, is to stay sat down, to stay home and wait for vaccination and then... well to stay home and wait some more, because vaccinating the world is a mammoth task, because in addition to not wanting to die of it yourself you don't want to pass it on nor be engaged in the kind of social activity that brings people who may catch it and pass it on.  in the end, while it poses some problems for horsemouth, it's not a difficult apocalypse for him, he's fairly anti-social to begin with. 

but of course a large percentage of the population don't have this choice. work compels them to be out and mingling. 

outside it is sunny (blueskies). today no work (horsemouth will go for a walk up on the common. past the windchimes. it will be very muddy up there. elsewhere in the country (as if to add insult to injury), flooding. 

in ercule al centro della terra hercules travels to the islands of the hesperides and then on to hades, christopher lee hams it up most excellently as a baddy, the director mario bava continues to work miracles with lighting, technicolour film stock and costumes. (techniques he will later apply to making giallo movies and straightforward horrors - from blood and black lace to black sabbath to kill baby kill! for example). in ercule al centro della terra the country is cursed (and the cattle are dying) because hercules's side-kick has returned from hades with persephone (pluto's daughter) - see horsemouth told you it was mythologically confused - plus christopher lee has been up to his evil tricks. 

in the end it is all resolved by the power of forgetfulness and everybody lives happily ever after (until the next episode if there ever was one). 

horsemouth and his struggle for dignity and status

outside it has clearly rained. it is due to rain pretty much all day tomorrow. at some point horsemouth will have to go for a walk.

'when this bloody 'demics over (oh how happy we shall be)'

big party with cake horsemouth reckons. but will that be enough to refloat the economy? time will tell. 

meanwhile he may have been being too pessimistic about things. the admissions rate has been falling for about a week (the number of people getting sick with the virus) this means that in about another week the death toll will start falling. we will have reached peak with the virus 'controlled' by the lock down. it will then die back until we free up (at which point it will all kick off again at least until such point we have a significant proportion of the population vaccinated). 

it will take a couple of (non monday) days of declining deaths to be confident we have reached peak. 

in fact there's not really a post-covid (in the sense of eradicating the virus). in the sense that we don't know even when twice vaccinated how long immunity lasts (it lasts until the news tells us it has stopped working). further we don't know that immunity will be maintained give new mutations in the virus as it becomes endemic in the human population in the poorer countries (i.e. the vast majority of the human population), the people it would require a concerted global effort to vaccinate.

there used to be a term third world that described a structural relationship with the western world where the poorer countries are kept poor (and not just somehow by accident the poorer countries) but apparently it is not PC to say it anymore. please pardon horsemouth for this slip of the tongue he's an old man. 

this is because, vaccinating the adult human population of the planet (twice), it is a huge world historic task and yet it is a minimum to avoid the risk of another pandemic. and indeed the health measures necessary to deal with further pandemics (that elusive test, track and trace) would need to be put in place on a global scale also. 

of course this is if anyone is serious about it. of course the governments of the world could merely take measures to vaccinate their own flocks and then slouch back into herbivorous pastoralism and the sheering of the sheep. 

horsemouth regrets to say the most likely outcome is some kind of bodge between the two. 

the virus has acted as a most excellent shock therapy to move society (and by this horsemouth means the middle classes) to working from home/ consuming at home, the working classes (the ones we don't mention) still have to travel and work face to face (they are in the meat/meet world of virus transmission and death). and thus it has always been since the masque of the red death (horsemouth's only piece of historical evidence). 

there has, of course, been disaster capitalism style looting by the ruling class and their mates (they have activated their networks and pulled out some plums) in the sourcing of PPE for example, in test, track and trace,  in stimulus packages. but that's not the big change (it's just a continuation of how they are). 

horsemouth suspects that even in their myopia the chattering classes have it right - it's the working from home.  

the other big change is the rerun of the operation of 2008 where the bill for this crisis is bounced on the poor instead of the rich. there again what is ideological is likely to take precedence over what is actually in the economic interest of the ruling class. it is in their interest to run the economy hot but can they get over the ideological hurdle of  allowing the poor to get a 'free ride'. 

beyond this (and coming down fast) is the climate crisis and the measures that will be necessary to deal with that. 

horsemouth's mum is reading head hand heart: the struggle for dignity and status in the 21st century by david goodhart. this is a future of work type book published in 2020. 

in fact, having done a (cursory) bit of reading, rather than on relying on a five minute chat with his mum during which he didn't listen properly, horsemouth finds the classic metropolis strategy of reducing social tension by recognition of the value of the work of others in society - the head must learn to recognise the value of the work of the hands  and the heart. (and you know this is important because it is a member of the head telling you this).

goodhart (is it really just a name) is a head-shrinker. by which he means we have put too much effort and resources into educating too many people and in fact society would run better if less people were educated to such a high standard. (this may well be true of post brexit britain - that we must all learn to be grateful - horsemouth couldn't possibly comment). 

now horsemouth is not interested in recognition and status. he is interested in cold hard cash, in the worker's share of GDP,  in improved pay for nurses and careworkers and the dude who delivers the pizzas. in this way we can measure how well we are doing and also by means of political struggle  necessary to achieve this approach a condition where the workers have power and agency (blah blah). 

anyway horsemouth will have a crack at head hand heart when his mum is done with it to see what the contemporary styles in futurology say. (until then he'll have to make do with the daily torygraph business section). 

'everything is going to be alright'

we carry on  with discussions. things don't turn out as planned. 

today horsemouth works (but not til this afternoon). it looks like a clear run out for the next 10 weeks. then it's exam season. horsemouth is unsure when he will make it back to the seaside towns (dodging the patrols). he is, after all, paying to live there.

next monday a meeting of the communal endeavour.  

it is 6 months since the release (by musicians of bremen) of 'everything is going to be alright'  with its attack on the block/ UFO apocalyptic cover.  horsemouth really likes the beat, ghazale's voice, and howard's guitar and keyboard work,  he wishes he'd got the chance to sort out his own guitar parts on the second part of the track more (but covid intervened). 

five years ago he was away to number 1 the thames. john clarkson was away saying goodbye to prior to the monster drive to portugal (I journeyed through england, through france and through spain as pentangle sing). eventually (and we are talking days here and by means of a tunnel not shown on their maps but only proposed) they arrived in the north of portugal and paused at a motorway service station to discover how the portuguese motorway charging system worked. 

while they were away the brexit vote happened and the whole idea of europe went down to defeat. they literally got up the morning after st.joao and surveyed the wreckage of their euro dreams. 

people were already on the move anticipating the wreck. and finally we are here in the new dispensation. horsemouth should renew his passport and get one of those new health insurance cards so he can participate in the full horror of it. (travel insurance too). 

'the coo-coo bird, is a pretty bird, she 'tempts coos, then she flies...'

all over the states right wingers of various persuasions must be waiting for the knock (or on the lam already). the grand old duke of york had marched them up to the capitol (and now he's marched them down again). horsemouth watched an observers book of right wing nutjobs video (their tats and symbols)  - oath keepers, 3 percenters (III), QAnon, proud boys, plus your generic  american nazis. that's the extent of his research.

hell the dude to the left of jamiroquai (QAnon shaman or whatever) even looks like a young horsemouth (except horsemouth never rocked a beard). 

they were lead astray goes neil young. horsemouth doesn't disagree (but it doesn't make them any the less dangerous/ arseholes). 

and what about the 70 million trump voters. 

anyway. bad news on the covid front - almost a third of recovered covid patients return to hospital within five months and one in eight die (er but not within the 28 days so they're not counted). 

later today horsemouth works.

in the evening he watched the girl who knew too much (la ragazza che sapeva troppo) a 1963 Italian giallo directed by mario bava, the director of lots of the early  barbara steel italo- horrors (er.  kill baby kill  for example). it's a sort of hitchcockian confection (but lit in a  great film noir style). letícia román is great in it as the heroine, she's a dab hand at comedy. it is usually hailed as the first giallo.

watching you (without me)

what did horsemouth do yesterday?

he's already told you.

he went for a walk on the common. there were windchimes and crows. but there were people also (and dogs). horsemouth generally tries to stay out of their way. he made a determined effort to remember these occurrences and when he returned he fashioned them into a little poem/ list. 

he will go out today and see if the muses are similarly kind

later that night spirals. the last series. 

before that horsemouth has been working on practical invisibility. 

stage 1 - horsemouth meditates on being invisible and passing unnoticed.

stage 2 - after about half an hour of meditation horsemouth has become transparent and people entering the room will no longer say hi to him or appear to notice that he is there.

stage 3 - horsemouth has completely disappeared!

howard has been working on playing things with his (newly received) valencia cg-160 classical guitar. here's watching you without me by kate bush.

horsemouth continued to have a look at playing astronomy by the blue oyster cult, well the blue oyster cult and sandy pearlman who wrote the lyrics, they tended to farm out the lyric writing, especially on secret treaties where they wrote none of the lyrics. horsemouth plays it on his palma c-103. joe bouchard manages it (so horsemouth should be able to do it). he's shifted it to Am rather than Em (so key of c he suspects rather than g). 

horsemouth may have been unduly pessimistic about the time taken to hit top. new cases are down about a third which means that in 2 weeks death rates will be down about a third (er. back down to a 1000 a day). and we will be over the peak. 

the isolation/ the alienation  takes a psychic toll. horsemouth is back with his folks (and he would have in any event been in a shared house) but still. 

saturday (run and play)

 

horsemouth has made it to another saturday. huzzah. it's a grey day out. 

last night a very enjoyable (and slightly drunken) zoom call with howard. horsemouth and howard played around with backgrounds inserting themselves into historical memories (like a rerun of the invention of morel or something from a christmas carol). horsemouth did a tour of the upper gallery (the photographs of the ancestors). he guesses that in the cold light of day the photos don't make it (but he hopes maybe some will appear at some point). 

then down to dinner. (horsemouth thanks his family for feeding him). 

they live is a terrible movie (and horsemouth can't honestly say it's john carpenter's worst) but 'it's a documentary'. and an almost perfect MAGA movie, reaganomics crossed with bound for glory woodie guthrie-isms, resentment against slick yuppie capitalists and their media machine. they're not just globalists, they're interstellarists. horsemouth loves it. 

'this one can see!' 

but has a number of defects that carpenter's earlier exploitation output didn't have - for a start the soundtrack is terrible (when you think of all the genius electronic music he made for the halloweens, the fog, escape from new york, assault on precinct 13... imagine how great it would have been with one of those. 

more, there's a weakness with his straight ahead action heroes (that only snake plissken escapes - and even he can't carry escape from LA). a double bill with repoman maybe? a friend suggests the people under the stairs. 

even when he's not using his own electronic music carpenter can make good music choices, listen to the sheer swagger of  george thorogood's bad to the bone in christine for example. 

later. breakfast. a walk on the common in the rain. 

horsemouth has work clear out until the end of march. (he reckons).

at howard's recommendation he watched an LRB documentary on the grenfell fire and what led to it. kind of a close but potted social history of ladbroke grove, the westway like the cross-bronx expressway. but horsemouth finds it slightly disingenuous. the contracting out of social provision (and social housing) has deep roots in kensington and chelsea and it's popularity with recent tory governments is held to be down to david cameron living in the borough.  

but it's not that is it? that's not the whole story. it's down to the (curiously unmentioned) new labour government of tony blair, it was them who really took the ball of service commissioning and ran with it, cameron and osborn were following them. 

it wasn't just kensinsgton and chelsea tenant management organisation who were receiving glowing reviews from its own board members for their own service delivery it was everywhere all over the country. it is far from, as the LRB would tend to suggest, a local problem. if it were a local problem of an entrenched tory regime then the kind of service privatisations and contracting out that happened in kensington and chelsea would only have happened there but instead it happened in councils all over britain (and indeed all over the western world). grenfell cannot help you think through people's dissatisfaction with labour if it is so narrowly framed. 

and of course this is the defect in the LRBs position. it was, in the corbyn years, a kind of house journal of new labour in exile,  runciman et al. use hobbes as an apologia for state power, rather than in the way arendt uses him (as an exemplar of the social pessimism of bourgeois subjectivity). nonetheless horsemouth enjoys their blogs and podcasts attempting to think through where we are going. 

ok the sun may actually be shining outside and the birds singing. horsemouth may have to go for a walk. 

horsemouth calls for unity

sylvain sylvain has died. horsemouth likes the photos of him. he's 69 he's fat. he's old. he's got a guitar. he looks happy to be doing what he does. he likes the earlier photos of him (he's very stylish). 

“my best friend for so many years, I can still remember the first time I saw him bop into the rehearsal space/bicycle shop with his carpetbag and guitar straight from the plane after having been deported from amsterdam, I instantly loved him,” david johansen. 

it's the morning. horsemouth is up. he's turned the radiator off (it was too hot). 

now what would horsemouth (the armchair general) be saying I told you so about? 

'england is like some stricken beast too stupid to know it is dead' - william burroughs. 

well brexit probably. we are in the foothills of the 'teething problems' and once we are over those we are into the long term disadvantages that the additional paperwork and costs will bring. the fish are rotting on the piers, there's a border in the irish sea, supermarket shelves in northern ireland are emptying, the dutch customs are confiscating lorry driver's ham sandwiches (in a friendly humorous way you understand, 'welcome to brexit' they go). 

fortunately for the government the problems with brexit are hidden by the deathtoll from covid. 

phew thank fuck for that they must be going. 

so covid.  the last time horsemouth checked the deathtoll was about 1500 a day and it still hadn't hit top. having been in humanity for a while the virus is starting to pop out some interesting mutations. if we are lucky the vaccines work against them all. and if we aren't lucky they don't. horsemouth guesses we are nowhere  near global top,

the government are plotting major reforms  to the NHS having discovered they love it they are going to destroy it in order to save it (oh and no pay rise for the nurses and doctors). 

uk top for new infections showing up at hospital is probably two weeks away at best (so feb 1st?) and thereafter two weeks later (feb 15th) peak death. 

horsemouth doesn't think you did this to yourselves people. no. he blames the government. repeatedly locking down too late. rinsing its trust with you. failing to set up a working track and trace. and generally dicking around getting you to eat out to help out and back to school and back to work . they've put nadhim zadhawi  in charge of vaccinations - who if horsemouth remembers correctly was the education secretary taken out by an educational contractor to the dinner of the presidents where even hardened showgirls were horrified by the shoddy, sleazy behaviour of the VIPs. (horsemouth doesn't expect much from him). 

however, at some point, somewhere beyond the peak, he expects enough old people to have been vaccinated for the death figures to start properly dropping off. (at which point the government will try and get us all back to work). 

and in other distractions. they have started the hunting down and imprisoning jamiroquai and the other bison who rampaged through capitol hill. being a sacred beast  jamiroquai requires organic food and lo, no white privilege involved, a judge has granted it him. the rioters turn out to be off duty cops and ex and serving military people, one brought a tazer to the party, another ziplock ties, they can't have been thinking of kidnapping anybody can they? there seems to be footage of republican staffers opening side doors, republican representatives texting where their colleagues are, and tales of panic buttons being removed from key senators offices. there is, to quote bob hoskins in the long good friday, 'the stench of disloyalty' about proceedings. 

whether that will be enough for republican lawmakers to actually impeach trump or not is another matter. or maybe it will be enough for them to sort of repudiate the insurrection and make a few calls for unity.  

 

lacking in a sense of purpose and direction

great selection and mixing and great album cover design and illustration by dave field. 

last night horsemouth listened to don campau's show 9pm GMT at the KOWS studios a mix of Jazz and world music.  kowsfm.com 1 PM pacific standard time wednesday . it was good (some of pharoah sanders 'prince of peace', dudu pukwana, les filles de illighadad) but it was a short show. 

horsemouth spends a lot of time moaning about having to work. but then there are days when he doesn't have to work (and then he moans about a certain lacking in a sense of purpose and direction).

he has assembled a full moon timetable for the year (with various fanciful names - the first is the wolf moon on the 28th. 

a friend posted the musicians of bremen video for the track turn yr heater on (from off covers) and praised the production (as luminous in fact. thank you). howard posted over some guitar with lyrics lifted from uncle vanya, horsemouth opined it needed work.

monday the 18th is everything is going to be alright day - the 6 month anniversary of the release of the eponymous tune and with more anniversaries coming up in february. 

things to look forward to today? the further decomposition of capitalism, the lrb podcast (maybe). a walk on the common. perhaps actually get on with some reading. 

 

... and tonight horsemouth h. helliwell 'This is your life!'

horsemouth has just posted off a heavily redacted version of his life story. 

he's had breakfast. he's had his coffee. he's had his first cup of tea for the day. outside it is mild and grey. soon a walk. (he didn't get out of the door yesterday).

phew today he doesn't have to work. (friday he has to work). 

horsemouth likes to keep things brief (you may be shocked to read this having waded through blogpost after blogpost of his turgid prose). his theory of writing is that it's all about the rewrite, editing it down tighter and shorter until it shines. 

in one of horsemouth's mixcloud sessions you will find the espers version of flaming telepaths by the blue oyster cult. they do it very well (in some ways their version of durutti column's tomorrow  is even better). there's a minutemen  version of the red and the black somewhere. there's a metallica version of astronomy horsemouth believes. there's the patti smith original of fire of unknown origin. 

last night he tried to watch some giallos and euro horrors (but the wind wasn't in those sails). his reading has bogged down. (it is difficult to know what you are going to want to read  plus the bedroom light is in the wrong place to enable late night reading). 

moan moan moan.

the silver bees are gonna get you yeah

the last two tracks on thembi (morning Prayer  and bailophone Dance) were recorded in NY on this day in 1971, so 50 years ago today.  the rest were recorded  at the record plant, los angeles, california, on november 25, 1970.  

horsemouth is up. he has his coffee. later he works. he has the window open because the room is becoming a but fusty. 

sad news about ernst junger (whose novel the silver bees republished by NYRB horsemouth enjoyed). it seems he is popular with those of the fascist persuasion, and interestingly enough at two levels too. 

junger survived the first world war with only minor wounding (despite being shot through the lung at one point) and wrote a somewhat enthusiastic account of his time on the front line, for this he gets hailed, by one young reader as 'the inventor of storm trooping'. now horsemouth thinks this is a bad thing. what you read in erich maria remarque (or indeed in hesse and mann, the british war poets) is a great youthful enthusiasm for the war breaking on the harsh rocks of its realities (vast amounts of death and suffering). 

between the wars junger is a critic of the weimar state from the right (sort of like the now oft-cited jurist and political theorist carl schmitt) but, unlike schmitt, he doesn't make the mistake of actually joining the nazi party, and thus he becomes a leading intellectual light to the I may be a fascist (but at least I am not a nazi) crowd - the kind of people who cite julius evola, alain de benoist. etc. 

this enables him to refuse denazification after the second world war. thereafter junger has a long and enjoyable life as a critic of west german prosperity and the economic miracle (again from the right).  

silver bees shows a distrust of technology (but also of corporate society) and as such it is actually perfectly readable as being a reflection on adorno/ benjaminian themes. junger corresponded with heidegger. benjamin wrote theories of german fascism in response to him. 

horsemouth had a productive day yesterday - he not only worked for three hours, he also  wrote reflecting on a project. today will spend some time chopping thing together and posting (emailing) it off.

he finished off watching solamente nero a venice set giallo. which despite an inauspicious beginning is really quite decent (horsemouth liked the soundtrack). 

Charley Says...

in a little while (well at 11) horsemouth goes to work (under the new online dispensation). before that almost certainly breakfast (porridge, toast, marmalade, tea). it's not raining but it's grey skies and the temperature has warmed up (it should be about 7 celsius). 

he works twice today. he's checked out his route to work for the first one (he should do so for the second one).

phew horsemouth has worked. now he's knackered.

he also answered some email questions for an interview. perhaps he could share some of the answers with you.

Q1. what is your story as a musician?

well horsemouth really wanted to get a band together since he was about 15 but he didn’t manage it until 1990. basically he was trying to invent brooklyn afrobeat 10 years too early (and in the wrong place) - so that went nowhere. the singer went off to become the actor noma dumezweni. 

he played guitar on Lush 3.1 by Orbital (if people remember them)… and then (defeated) he gave up for a few years. when he came back he decided it was just for the fun. in the co-op he met howard, they collaborated on two CDs of music by co-op members (there were always lots of singers and players in the co-op), and then started making music as musicians of bremen which is still ongoing. 

peter holmgren played bass on one of the songs, and later on horsemouth played a gig with him at the housing co-op hop and a few years later he played a gig there with enza on vocals as well  (as peter, paul and enza).why paul he has no idea. 

Q2. you two (enza and horsemouth) collaborated (along with catastro / fille) on the film the fall of the house of fitzgerald. tell us about the project, your motivations, what you wanted to achieve with it?

horsemouth thinks enza wanted to mourn the loss of her flat, the kandinsky mural she’d done, and other artworks,

kandinsky was a part of various russian art movements but he also lived in germany and was a part of dada and later taught at the bauhaus. while we tend to remember these art movements in terms of the artefacts that left behind and their manifestoes they also had a history of performance practice, of doing performances to complement/ extend / bring to life their static works of art. horsemouth supposes that was one part of it. 

filmwise there are those kenneth anger and sun ra type films, where they are dressed up in costumes doing strange pseudo-magical things. 

finally horsemouth supposes there was mr.benn. basically it was just a game of dress up, it cheered us up during lockdown. thanks once again to former co-op member catastro/fille for filming it, editing the results and for the use of her music. without her it couldn’t have happened. thanks to the other musicians also. 

3. Where do you think housing is on the current political agenda? 

nowhere. worse than nowhere. 

horsemouth thinks (personal opinion) the tories see social housing as just warehousing potential labour voters. so why bother? but the other parties are not much fucking help either. they won’t be building anything like enough social housing to make a difference to the low-paid. nobody is coming to save us, we have to help ourselves, because, as the single homeless, we are on our own.

4. Do you think the housing situation in London is likely to change as a result of the pandemic?

with the ‘working from home’ revolution cities have got a problem. it means less people will want to live there so more property might be available (both short-life and to buy) and so rents and house prices will probably level off a bit. the gentrification will die back. 

looking into his crystal ball horsemouth thinks that probably the government will offer the commercial property sector large sums of money to convert the empty offices into rabbit hutch sized homes (jenrickvilles), and at some point there will be a fire… 

in 1985 there were about 2 million less people in greater London than there is now and there was still a housing crisis.  the cause of the housing crisis is capitalism.-

5. Do you see your futures as staying in London? 

as long as horsemouth has work and the rent is cheap(ish) he's staying. The fun will come back when the covid goes. If the work goes horsemouth would probably leave the city and live somewhere cheap and coast it until his pension, brexit has fucked the idea of retiring to the south of Europe (somewhere sunny). 

quick fire questions 

- who are horsemouth's heroes?

Gerrard Winstanley, Alice Coltrane, Malcolm X, Theodor Adorno, Karl Marx, Harry E. Smith.

- what was the last record you listened to?

it’s all youtube now. (marion brown ‘bismillahi 'rrahmani 'rrahim’ with harold budd on celeste and little bells). 

- the last thing you read?

balzac ‘A country doctor’.

- favourite london building?

knock it down and build social housing.

- best caf in east London?

horsemouth can’t afford to eat out anymore (even if there wasn’t covid). (Curry Hut)

 

  

here there's a frost and coffee ( and there will be a three part list.)

the issue with the krapp putsch is whether it is ceasarism or dictatorship or fascism (or even a coup attempt)  - the dictator is elected by the political structure to have absolute power for a fixed time period (in time of war for example), or once elected dictator decide to hold on to power (ceasarism). they don't arise proclaiming a  fascist ideology but can arise just as easily out of liberal democratic ideology. 

the golden emperor instructs the mob to burn down the crystal palace. the mob marches up the hill and attempts to burn down the crystal palace. no blame. 

it was poorly prepared (but then was it ever envisaged that it would succeed?). it's more in the line of a public relations event  - a of creating an event that shows the policy proposal (of er. take back control)

even after the invasion of the capitol and its repulsion many republican politicians continued to argue against ratification of the election result. a large proportion of republican voters believe the stories of the stealing of the election and indeed support the attempt to occupy the capitol. 

they provide a new base and low level membership for the republican party. now the republican party can either spend the next five years fighting its own base or it can work out a way of pretending that there is no contradiction between their interests and those of its more militant members.

in one scenario trump slits out to the right of the republican party and splits their (and his) vote. 

in another scenario he shuffles off into retirement (keeping his head down for fear of prosecution) the republican party elects a smarter version of him (ted cruz for example) and does well in five years time having had a night of the long knives moment with its more enthusiastic supporters and a productive sit down with the bankers.  

really we were fortunate that trump was so dumb. 

can the golden emperor actually be brought to trial? 

horsemouth should go back to his reading of hannah arendt's the origins of totalitarianism  but the print is small, and the light in his room is not good. the last time horsemouth looked we had just finished a dark reading of hobbes and were on to the lack of an effective contradiction between nationalism and imperialism. 

outside horsemouth's window there is a frost and red berries (and small birds feeding on them). horsemouth will get up and sit where he can see them. cold and clear skies. an egg for breakfast. 

last night horsemouth chatted with howard and drank two bottles of beer. they started with a discussion of guitars. later he watched spirals with is mum. 

horsemouth continues to hide out in the wilderness  far away from the seaside towns and the salt marshes. he was supposed to be going out for a long planned walk with enza (but he is still out of town). oh well plenty of time when he gets back.  the next thing they are doing together is an email interview about the fall of the house of fitzgerald. 

horsemouth is up and he's having his coffee. outside it is grey and damp.

yesterday was payday. horsemouth made the rent for the month (well a notional four weeks). overall he's still a grand better off (as a result of furlough) than he would be normally. he pauses to notice he's written 'we' in the diary. 

horsemouth is in the bottom 1% of earners in the country (it's true - he looked it up). but it's ok because he's not particularly bothered by money (as long as he has enough to live on). he could work more if he put his mind to it but he's decided (particularly in the light of current circumstances) to step back from the pursuit of money. he has cheap(ish) rent, he's a vegetarian. you can't even buy second hand books at the minute. he is sunk beneath taxation (but still has to pay national insurance). 

he is also paying into a works pension, 'saving' if you like, so he could also dip into his savings to the amount that he is saving into his works pension (this would give him an additional £2k a year (enough for the odd bag of chips and an afternoon in the pub). the rent is the major expense (by a long way). 

you will be familiar with these 'musings' of horsemouth if you have read his blog for any length of time. really it is just an effort by him to assert authority over his (somewhat challenged) economic circumstances. 

horsemouth is paying to be where the work is. but is this any longer necessary? he's also paying to be where the fun was - but is this going to come back? and now that horsemouth is older he has different notions of fun that might require a different expression.  

brexit has neatly fucked any notion of 'retiring' early to an EU country with sunshine by making the maximum time you can spend there 3 months in any 6. (ok you can still apply for residency says john). 

if the covid becomes seasonal (as horsemouth suspects it might) then horsemouth (and many in his generation) are looking at lower life expectancy (assuming they don't die still in any of the early waves) and also a limited social life.  

there were a number of points where paganini horror  looked like it might become a class proposition (whenever donald pleasance appears for example). horsemouth was a little disappointed by the 'play paganini backwards' routine - surely they should have swapped the melody for the harmony and vice versa? 

a friend has opined (somewhat controversially) that trump is not a fascist and the shenanigans on capitol hill were not a coup attempt. 

horsemouth doubts that trumps bedside reading is the journalism of mussolini, or the jurisprudence of carl schmitt, or the economic theories of the strasserites but horsemouth is of the opinion that the ideological prerequisites of fascism are pretty light - one big boss man, plenty of obedience, a contempt for democracy. as to it not being a coup horsemouth would be more inclined to believe it was a coup if they'd brought sleeping bags (intending to occupy) or if they'd sounded out the military to make sure they were onside first. 

still early days - if half the people who voted for trump believe the election was stolen, if a proportion of the trump rioters were made up of ex-service people, and given high levels of gun ownership, this is a dangerous situation. the temptation is to minimise it, point to the stupid bison hat, and laugh it off.

the expectation is that democracy is so firmly founded that it cannot fall the reality is that it is a thin layer of plaster covering some distinctly destabilising economic facts and social tensions. is this the high point of it? probably not. horsemouth supposes this is the equivalent of the the kapp putsch.  

there was due to be a zoom chat with howard (about his guitars) but howard was too knackered after work last night. they may do it tonight. 

yesterday a walk out to the abbey. 

 

a domestic conversation. recorded in the style of 'on keeping a notebook'.

 'there's a letter'

'look! there's something in it!'

'could be a postcard.' - domestic conversation. recorded in the style of on keeping a notebook. 

'if I knew what this book was about I wouldn't be writing it.' - a day in the life of joan didion, susan braudy, (1977).

 a day in the life of joan didion

horsemouth has been reading lots of snippets of joan didion on google books, introductions mostly. (often the most carefully written and the endlessly revised bits of books).  she really is very good. such seemingly harmless set up lines. 'during the blue nights you think the  end of day will never come...'

hemmingway and mailer are big influences. she thinks in terms of sentences and their weight. she taught herself to type by copying out hemmingway introductions. orwell too, orwell is in there.

she discusses orwell's why I write. she notes the weight of this phrase. the even strokes. she discusses and discards orwell's motives for writing (egoism, historical enthusiasm, aesthtics, to make a living). she discards them all, including 'to make a living' but both her and her husband made a living as writers.

'I write entirely to find out what is on my mind, what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I'm seeing and what it means... I'm not very interested in psychic cause and effect, in why I am the way I am, why you are the way you are...' 

joan didion is not writing this to you from a soviet gulag (not making the argument that this cannot stand) but instead from the demi-paradise of california. this love of the mythic california (of the moonlight drive) is all through her earlier books, as is the horror of it. she does not repudiate it until where I was from, where she suddenly sees the life of her family not in terms of the pioneer myth (redeemed by merely having got there and thus entitled to acres of free land) but in terms of the vast subsidies (for the railroads, for irrigation, for the aerospace industry and the military-industrial complex) that enabled california's colonisation. it's a chinatown moment. 

she has left california. she took her family back to new york city. there her husband and daughter have died leaving her with an apartment full of dangerous memorabilia. 

the blue nights,  those evenings in the northern hemisphere when the sun seemingly will not set, round about the summer solstice, but we all know the end of the day will come. thus they cannot really be separated even if we tell ourselves in what we experience that they can. 

this tension repeats in the tension between sound and silence in a documentary on free improv. for there to be the possibility of a sound there must be the possibility of silence. it's lovely it's all the new thing new york jazz guys (and the guys from chicago too) but  they've grown old... look there's marion brown, and john tchicai, and alan silva and roswell rudd...

it is a relief to return to these themes (writing, music) after the insanity on capitol hill. but of course we are not out of the woods. we are at the opposite end of the year from the blue nights. the days are short, the nights long, the time in between brief. and we are further north. the world is in a strange condition. alan silva with buddhist robes, john tchicai with buddhist curtains, like venerable monks. 

(under) pressure

 phew. what scenes!

horsemouth wonders what russians must think looking at this. what serbs must think. what rumanians must think. anywhere where a government has been dragged down. where a mob has rampaged through the parliament building.

exciting times.  as the advert has it. 

now of course we are all supposed to applaud the return of due (democratic) process and the certification of the election of joe biden and kamala harris.

but wait. the biden victory is marked by the failure of his campaign to connect with both black lives matter and also the hollowing out of the lives of working people that found expression in make american great again,  it marks a return to politics as normal and inside the beltway.

had this been a majority black mob they would have been shot down on the steps but because they were a majority white mob sanctified by the president himself  the cops and security guards  didn't know where the boundary was. they let the theatre play out.

what does horsemouth (armchair general in chief) think? 

the 'patriots' (and their leader jamiroquai) must be secretly delighted (while remaining 'outraged' you understand). such moments are a heady charge. now the calculation must be about when the state will move on them, before the biden inauguration or after it or indeed at all. whether there will be an opportunity to come out to play again before the 20th. 

by the way kudos to jamiroquai for coming properly costumed -as buffalo bill, as a flag painted incarnation of america (as a certifiable berserker). the rest of the crowd (hoodies and winterwear) kind of let the side down sartorially, but at least they looked like americans 

trump still has 13 days to fuck shit up. he is the betrayed king, the man who has had the election robbed off  him (and off the american people) and in particular off the 74 million people who voted for him and the people who still believe that trump won. 

congress could (in theory) impeach him before he goes or he could be tried for treason after. 

could trump run again as a republican candidate after this? er. probably not. but if he doesn't run as a republican candidate and he runs again he will split the vote (which might be no bad thing, unless you are a conservative republican). 

in many ways the long game  of the conservative right via the supreme court is won. biden could roll it back by adding additional justices to the supreme court but will he in the current situation? the situation makes biden dependent on the good graces of conservative republicans to do anything (even though he has the extra georgia seats). 

horsemouth has to snicker at this situation. situations that are fucked up and irredeemable appeal to his sense of humour. he will return (emboldened) to his reading of the origins of totalitarianism.  

exciting times.  

horsemouth heard it the other way around

rob lawson in good company on don campau's no pigeonholes show. 

horsemouth heard it as war, pestilence, famine and death. that has a nice foot. the t-shirt company has it as 'death & war & famine & pestilence'. it seems strange to be naming the four horsemen of the apocalypse as if they were santa's reindeer (but hey). 

last night horsemouth watched suspiria (again) which is, he thinks, the best of them by a long way. it combines the best soundtrack with the best visuals with the best protagonist. 

musicians of bremen have a review (courtesy of martin - of martin+angela) 

'I've only heard volume four so far but I really like it because it incorporates electronica, folk, psychedelia.. it was like travelling on a soundwave that started with forest swords, had, intermittently, flashes of john fahey, and ended with an early floyd mashup. love it.' 

of course this is such a good review that horsemouth only wishes he'd had it as a blueprint and made the album in its image. (thanks dude). 

horsemouth has finished work for the week (he had a bottle of beer to celebrate). 

'I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be.' - joan didion. 

our joan is very stylish (she knows it, she is constantly reusing the same poses, the ones that worked well before). and she writes well (this scores big with horsemouth). she works well reduced to black and white either way. her prose is the tough guy prose of marlow (as is the territory). she shows us the memory trick - how one phrase that pricks the ear from a situation, written down, will bring it back to the minds eye and permit it to be looked at afresh - the importance of keeping a notebook.

neither facebook nor blogger work as notebooks anymore. facebook because it now has no index function (the furthest you can scroll back before your patience goes is about a month, and that's not enough to introduce you to your earlier selves), blogger because it now has to do service as a diary/ as a notebook it's no longer a selection. 

of course turned round it would be,

'the people we used to be are well advised to keep on nodding terms with us.' (by didion joan perhaps) 

lest they become forgotten and inexpressed, cut adrift. 

'this is our last dance. this is ourselves'

 trying this again

it actually rectifies a defect in the original

that you can't hear how amazingly good the words are...

'cause love's such an old fashioned word

and love dares you to care for

the people on the edge of the night

and love dares you to change our way of

caring about ourselves

this is our last dance

this is our last dance

this is ourselves

under pressure.'

so it's another lockdown (horsemouth believes). (notice the way the song returns to its start 'under pressure' - crafty that). that's the problem with queen, (and to some extent bowie too) too smart to be actually loveable.

it has been pointed out that boris has a distressing habit of delaying decisions until everybody is in agreement about what is to be done and then doing that. he is, in horsemouth's parlance a pencil sharpener - as soon as the work is set the pencil sharpener will slowly begin to retrieve their pencil case, extract a pencil, disgard it, choose another, look in the case for a pencil sharpener, make sure it is clean enough, look around for a bin into which to empty the sharpenings... when the pencil is nice and sharp the student is ready to work and then another student can be asked what answer they get or how to do it. the main aim is to take avoid the risk of being wrong. to make use of the general intellect. and affirm connections and friendships.

one of napoleon's generals had a way of shielding him from unwanted correspondence - any correspondence arriving was simply shoved into a desk unread and left (if it was significant then a messenger would be sent, otherwise it could wait).

last night profundo rosso (again). available in a history of horror series. also available (mixed up in a series of horror shorts is meshes in the afternoon). horsemouth finds the grisly murders not to his taste but he finds the set design, costumes, the way things are made to move, very much to his taste. apparently argento wanted pink floyd for the soundtrack (but he's lucky to have got goblin).

horsemouth is hiding out at his parents at some point he may/will have to return. today he works (twice), permissions and connections permitting.

yesterday breakfast, work (success), faff about, a walk on the common, dinner, a movie (and repeat).

on the literary origin of tropes in the work of dario argento (and their subsequent influence)

 in the argento/ soavi (1989) horror film ' the church' there's a reference to a book 'the mystery of cathedrals' by fulcanelli. it's a plot of the type  - the book that was lost is found (chaos ensues). trusting to luck horsemouth started searching. there was a fulcanelli a noted would-be alchemist from the 20 ies and 30ies, there was speculation about his real identity, beyond the title page horsemouth was unable to discover more of the contents of the book. 

atually that's not true - he seems to have just found a pdf of the whole thing.  excepting the first page of the introduction (which seems a strange omission). 

it seems to echo the chapter in victor hugo's notre-dame de paris where we are given an occult tour of the meanings of the church, its monuments and decorations. 

the book is given as a gift by the male protagonist to the female protagonist, she seems to quote from it at some point. it doesn't end well for them. the church in the film has been built over the graveyard of devil worshipers exterminated by the teutonic knights and as is usual in these things what is buried comes to light again (to tell you any more would be to give the plot away, such as it is). 

this follows on from horsemouth's watching of the inferno the second of the trilogy the three mothers. this contains a fictitious book - the book the three mothers  by varelli (the architect of their three houses). here it is  the names (if not the roles) of the three mothers are lifted from the levana and our ladies of sorrow section of thomas de quincey's suspiria de profundis. 

horsemouth's memory is so poor these days it affords him the enjoyment of watching movies over as if they were new. 

following on from the church he started watching profundo rosso (deep red) and here it is more the influence of argento that horsemouth noticed - in the first scene (a murder) on john carpenter's halloween then, in the second scene, a telepathy demonstration that goes wrong, on david cronenberg's scanners. 

horsemouth has also been enjoying joan didion's on keeping a notebook.

'the impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way any compulsion tries to justify itself...

'keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth by some presentiment of loss.'