on playing the continuo for 'masque of the red death'

'I’m being asked to talk about it a great deal at the moment...

 I’m told ratings on streaming platforms are sky-high.' - roger corman.

horsemouth is interested to hear of people taking roger corman's masque of the red death as a style manual  for their lockdown. see the peasants grovel CHECK humiliate rivals CHECK  PPE contract through mates CHECK pact with the devil CHECK order in food CHECK retire to country mansion and behave badly CHECK. 

horsemouth will have to watch it again. instead he continued watching present day america set made for tv vampire movies (desire the vampire). having read about luigi cozzi's edgar allen poe's the black cat - which is in fact a making of the sequel to suspiria  told as a splatter horror story - he watched most of  lucio fulci's the black cat.

now fulci is mainly famous for splatter but this one is a little more subtle and features mimsy farmer as an american abroad (also to be seen in argento's lesser known four flies on grey velvet). the black cat wanders round the picturesque english village bringing death, destruction and cruelty, a psychic records the dead from inside their graves on reel-to-reel tape, mimsy farmer takes photographs, drunken rural ne'er-do-wells are slaughtered, a detective from scotland yard tries to unravel the plot. it has little to do with edgar allen poe's the black cat (but not as little as luigi cozzi's  edgar allen poe's the black cat judging from the clips horsemouth has watched). 

now horsemouth has watched a lot of horror over the last year so much so that he has forgotten most of it. he really should try keeping a list (particularly of the better directors). 

horsemouth has joan didion's why I write (courtesy of the guardian) and george orwell's why I write (courtesy of random pdf donwload) to compare and contrast. 

both are good. 

orwell takes you right back into his childhood, of feeling underappreciated, in this his understanding of the creative motivation is like otto rank's, but politics comes to save him, it is politics that puts the verve and depth into his sentences. 

with didion it is the concrete observation and the mechanics of sentences themselves that gets her through to the good work, she is too patrician to subscribe to a cause. she can admit the egotism of the work (one of the why i writes that orwell gives us in his list). 

there is more to be had here. horsemouth will go back through.

yesterday horsemouth worked (afternoon). in the morning he went for a walk on the common (very muddy). today a day off (bright sunshine, a sprinkling of snow still).