'we seemingly cannot learn the art of doing nothing. to sit and wait. to stay in. to focus on the small things. '

this was horsemouth one year ago. giving voice to the obvious received opinion (as he lamentably does).

one year ago howard had posted over a demo of a track amharic (later to become amarach). horsemouth had already recorded his guitar for it (one of the last things he recorded for the album and maybe one of the best things he has recorded ever).  

today horsemouth goes to get jabbed (9.55 up in walthamstow). he is grateful to live in a world of science and development of the productive forces where such things can happen. 

yesterday (which horsemouth now hears as sung by karen dalton) having finished hannah arendt's on violence horsemouth had a look at zola's la debacle and the goncourt brothers' pages from the goncourt journal for discussion of the 1871 paris commune. both were eye witnesses. the surviving goncourt brother writes his journal entries at the time, zola writes his fictionalised account 20 years later. neither are in sympathy with the revolutionaries but edmond de goncourt (being a noble who dabbles in novel writing) perhaps has a clearer view of it. 

'the newspapers see nothing in what is going on but a question of decentralisation: as if it had anything to do with decentralisation! what is happening is nothing less than the conquest of france by the worker and the reduction to slavery under his rule of the noble, the bourgeois and the peasant.'

horsemouth will attempt to publish edmond goncourt's comments on the day on which they happened. 

with the zola it is really an addendum to the novel's account of the franco-prussian war (the final nail in the coffin of the second empire), it is not until p.468 that the commune happens and the book is done by p.509. the idealist dies the stoic peasant survives (heartbroken) to march off into the future. in doctor pascal  (the last novel in the series) zola retreats from the scientism that scaffolded his creation satisfied that he has done enough good work.

there was a whole circle of writers round zola and the goncourts, flaubert, maupassant etc.(victor hugo is bumping round as the grand old man of the scene) horsemouth will dig around his collection and see what they have to say about the matter