'once,' said the mock turtle at last, with a deep sigh, 'I was a real turtle.'.

horsemouth awakes after slightly not enough sleep to a pessimistic mood (this is what happens when he drinks and stays out late).  he did however sleep soundly as a result of walking back from stratford (the last but one DLR whisked him there and then he spent some time looking futilely for a bus while the transport hub shut down around him). thereafter horsemouth was on shanks's pony  as people used to say. 

the giant pink supermoon followed him home across the fields. 

it was a very pleasant evening round enza's with martin. there was food (with desert), there was wine (montepulciano and chianti - both reds). horsemouth walked down; a)  to kill time and b) to give himself a chance to buy the wine. 

martin was on good form (it's a long time no see). he had news of minty. 

yesterday horsemouth practiced a little singing and playing and tried to make choices about repertoire. he's a little bored with his songs and a little apprehensive. normally horsemouth gets people to sing (and howl) along - how will this be received post covid? 

himself and enza spent some time trying to fit some words of hers to a guitar part by suke (whether it will pass muster with suke horsemouth can't say). 

on the politics of spam (the golden glow)

it's early morning. horsemouth is up. the light has that golden hour quality (maxwell parrish).  

curiously golden hour  is the title of the beer in philip k. dick's non-science fiction. 

howard was quite taken with horsemouth's last compilation for his golden hour mixcloud channel. so there may be more. he'll go through his recent postings and see what will fit. howard's main concern is music that is ambient, music that can be worked through, music that sets him up for the day. 

yesterday horsemouth did the work meeting (he is becoming reconciled to his lot). later (after an afternoon cup of coffee and a wander round) he did the meeting of the communal endeavour (which went off well he thinks).  he has two more sessions of work work left (he thinks) and then it's the summer.

the gig is firming up horsemouth will provide you with details later. facebook has placed a limit on the number of people you can spam round for events (requiring more targeted advertising). previously horsemouth would have just spammed his friends. now he may have to spam them sequentially. 

at the weekend mayday

next week the opening of the live architecture exhibition 1951 as part of the festival of britain,  the anniversary of the death of reverend gary davis, the local elections, bandcamp friday, bounds beating on lea marshes.

tonight diner with enza and martin. 

the warmachines and the werewolves

horsemouth was thinking about styles in radical publishing yesterday (when his eye came to rest upon his copy of agamben's homo sacer). for some strange reason he suddenly remembered reading a thousand plateaus while on holiday in a tent. he remembered the illustration of the goth warmachine (a cart for delivering warriors to the battlefield) similarly he remembered the bit in homo sacer about werewolves, renegades and out-laws (subjects banished from the king's realm) which incorporated (poorly) part of carlo levi's christ stopped at eboli  (the bit about wives being admonished not to admit their husband to the house until 3 knocks at night lest he still be in wolf form (or something intermediate)), 

mostly it made him think how a thousand plateaus is the model for homo sacer (despite the benjamin and the kafka). 

this morning. a work meeting. this evening. a meeting of the communal endeavour. 

yesterday horsemouth worked. and then he drank a bottle of beer and then watched borsalino (alain delon,jean-paul belmondo) in a marseille set caper movie. he came across the keith emerson clip on his travels. (these were virtual travels 

he also came across musikas's együttes on his travels. the comments claim it's 'hungarian neo-folk from 1978', horsemouth is doubtful, but it's a great tune. 

horsemouth has had a nosebleed (and now he works)

horsemouth has had a nosebleed (he never has nosebleeds) and now he works.

he's now trying to live without blowing his irritated dripping nose (in case he starts it off and he has to work).

he doesn't work quite just yet. but he needs to get set up and ready. hopefully it will be less of a parachute booking this time round (the kind where you parachute in and they start shooting at you immediately).

he will hate it while he is doing it (and curse and yell and then check that the microphone is off - phew. it's off). 

yesterday horsemouth went for a walk with tim goldie (long time no see).  they went for a walk along the riverbank. spring had sprung (though it was still a little cold). there's a photo. later they sat on the front steps and had a coffee. 

later still horsemouth sat in the back garden reading. later still he listened to the shadow over innsmouth and finished off the  giallo he had started. then a shower and then bed. 

horsemouth the empty headed

horsemouth is up and around early (he blames sten clumping about). he has his coffee. (hell he's just had the second round). 

there was some discussion of the possibility of writing a song about dogging. 

today (this afternoon) a walk with tim goldie (boiler permitting). tuesday work (pink supermoon, anniversary of the recording of crescent). wednesday - a meeting then a meeting.  thursday diner (maybe). friday payday. 

saturday mayday in england.

horsemouth has a cold (he hopes it's nothing more modern - and even if it were he's been jabbed so he shouldn't die). he was at the soluble asprin yesterday. last night he watched a little of a giallo - murderous actor returns to ancestral pile various actresses in tow  etc. 

yesterday a chat online with john in far off porto. a chat with horsemouth's mum on the phone. some reading of harry smith. 

horsemouth is a little empty headed (he will live). 

today is about getting set up for tomorrow.  

horsemouth may be playing a gig (and because of the timing he thins it will be a solo gig). he's returned the slide guitar to daddad (from open-G dgdgbd) and is contemplating a set - he reckons the usual set (you know satan, when the faun met alice, the werewolf, devil song, worldes blisse -  a very volume 3 sort of set). from volume 4 all he can really add at the moment is a version of broadbury down. he had had various other songs he could play at various other times - gentlemen john, sorrows of tomorrow, noah  ben and melanie's song crisis in the credit system and of course there were lots of potential covers. 

anyway he has time to work it up (stage patter and all). 

see. he knew he was up to something yesterday. 

 

horsemouth and howard (before and after drink)

there are photos. 

at first horsemouth and howard are wandering around wansted flats looking like respectable citizens inspecting historic world war II barrage balloon tethers. they examined the ponds, the birdlife, the horse life. 

earlier horsemouth had noticed a pub near the station with an open pub garden.

and so for the first time in over a year horsemouth and howard went to the pub and resumed their disreputable drinking ways. there was no ale only lager so horsemouth and howard soon found themselves on the lager express accelerating off into the heavens. the photos show them having a fine time of it but horsemouth has almost entirely forgotten what they were talking about. horsemouth is over fond of the drunken state, howard is a bit more sensible. howard will (by and large) call a halt earlier (if horsemouth will let him).  

and sad to say horsemouth remembers nothing of the journey home (until he opens the front door and sten offers him some latin american corn cakes).  this is a little worrying. 

still no harm done. howard got a pizza at some point (they were allowed to bring it in although the jerk chicken man on the roof was not best pleased) and horsemouth got some corn cakes from sten when he got in. consequently he's not hung over (he just seems to have a cold). 

this week. a walk monday. horsemouth has agreed to work the tuesday. wednesday - work meeting in the morning, AGM of the collective endeavour in the evening. diner thursday (possibly). 

opposing the cuts

she really is incredible (kate now kae tempest) and yes I can hear the roots manuva.

horsemouth mentioned this to a friend. she replied.

'I remember seeing her at the tender age of 16 (ed. possibly a little older) at the _________ lee bridge rd. and talking to her afterwards... I remember saying to her she was really good. she was so young...'

horsemouth remembered that she played on a night down in clerkenwell with gertrude one time (or with a band that iona was in) and with glassglue, and she MCed a bit with a puerto  rican women rap crew that adam C put on in the basement of a bar in holborn

yesterday a visit to some old friends who have moved in round the corner. (to drop off some musicians of bremen merch). 

the topic came up about opposing the cuts (something horsemouth hasn't thought about in a long time). the argument for the cuts is always that the service is losing money - the counter argument is that the service shouldn't be run for profit but as a service and be funded through taxation. horsemouth lives in one of the richest countries on the face of the planet so he finds the argument that measures that benefit ordinary working people can't be afforded laughable. 

there are (of course) two ways of opposing the cuts.

one is to go the full george lansbury and refuse to implement the changes, to force the confrontation so people either have to come over to your side or be complicit in the injustice, this is opposing the cuts. and if you win then you win.  

the second isn't opposing the cuts it's finding a path of least resistance through the cuts that enables you to keep going.  and if you survive you win (but you lose also). 

and this is what horsemouth observed the labour party in local government doing throughout the 80ies.or no to be honest they just implemented the cuts. 

but to do what george lansbury did required building a huge campaign. otherwise you are just having a moment of radical theatre 'here we are (fighting the cuts)' you say, 'and losing' reply the uncharitable as the cops cart you off. 

horsemouth (by inclination) is a path of least resistance  man. he requires a lot of persuasion to become a fight the power man. 

in the afternoon horsemouth sat in the sunshine and read - he continued with the philip k.dick trajectory, starting on puttering about in a small land in the evening he listened to the news and the shadow over innsmouth. 

today. probably a visit to howard. (horsemouth is up early he's not sure why). 

a series of conversations (that never happened) documented in a series of letters (that were never sent)

horsemouth is up. a little later than usual. he's had his coffee. 

yesterday horsemouth turned the computer off and sat in the garden for a long steady read. as a result he was a little sunburnt and toasted by the time he went to bed (not quite british tourist lobster pink but still).  

he finished off mary and the giant (philip k.dick) which reminds him of cassavetes. it's the late 50ies.  

the book concerns a girl desperate to get out of her dull southern californian town (mary)  and a classical record shop (owned by the giant) but this is not to mention the black characters, for this is a novel about crossing the tracks, this is a novel that while, it has phil's love of western classical music, admits the pleasures of black music and black life. one of the black characters is a paul robeson type singer who sings in the town's only jazz club, the other (spoiler alert) is the pianist mary eventually runs off with to san francisco. except he isn't because the publishing company demanded a re-write and he becomes a white hipster.

already the paul robeson singer is seen as showbiz and phony (in this it resembles cassavetes). 

the folk scene is dealt with too. a bad news couple come to town and they bring a proto bob dylan with them - he talks and talks but he makes no sense. 

horsemouth also read the seventh provincial letter by pascal. 

he's had a go at reading the provincial letters before (so called because they are being sent from paris to the provinces to report on an abstruse theological dispute between the jansenists and their opponents the jesuits and the dominicans (who had ganged up upon them despite disagreeing on the matter under question). 

this book (like utopia) is a series of conversations (that never happened) documented in a series of letters (that were never sent). the seventh letter was allegedly sent on the 25th april 1656 (and that's why horsemouth chose to read it).

now pascal (and his sister) are jansenists and they just want to be left in peace, but ultimately they lose and the order is disbanded. the jesuits go on to be the order we know today but because of pascal's satire upon them they attain the uniquely besmirched reputation they have today. 

in letter seven pascal talks with a jesuit about directing the intention, how the laws of god (thou shalt not kill for example) may be adjusted to the dealings of men, or rather how the laws may stay the same but the man breaking that law (not to kill say) may still not have sinned as long as his intention was not to sin (kill) but to achieve something else (to avenge a slight upon his honour for example) which is permitted. 

by the end of it we are discussing when it would be permissible under jesuit interpretations for a priest to kill a slanderer with poison (and it still not be a sin as long as his intention  was right). 

it's an entertaining read (don't say it has given horsemouth ideas). 

letter eight was sent on the 28th of may (horsemouth will revisit it then).

today a work meeting (afternoon). before that a walk round (pleasant sunny morning). 

 

practical strategies for reducing internet usage (earlier forms of the moral panic )

horsemouth is going to go back to having days off the web regularly (he says) and to try to expand it from there.  he likes the idea of reducing online time (a friend was discussing this). 

a burner phone is a good idea. horsemouth has a burner (or an old-school teacher's phone as it actually is) and (when he was working away from home) he didn't usually have wifi access where he was going. this meant for at least the part of the day when he was out of the house he didn't have web access.

of course this is all pre-pandemic and stay home. something made possible by the internet. 

similarly before there was wi-fi in the house horsemouth would have to go up the library to get online (and in hackney it was mostly shut on sundays). er-so (and this is the measure of horsemouth's addiction) he would sometimes walk over to tower hamlets to blog (was that bad of him?). 

horsemouth can't read the screen in bright sunshine so if he goes outside he has to read a book instead (this is a good strategy).  if he gets out of the house (and in a socially distanced fashion) goes somewhere else even better. 

he does however, as a child, remember his grandad saying that he shouldn't spend all his time with his 'nose in a  book' but should 'run and play'. (indicating earlier forms of the moral panic).

it's a bright sunshiney morning outside his window two cats are engaged in some strange exploratory behaviour in the front garden, gingerly picking their way through the obstacles, blocking each others paths, tails twitching with barely supressed anger.  miaowing furiously. 

yesterday an annoying (online) communal endeavour meeting beset by poor communication and poor sound (this does not bode well for next week's AGM of the communal endeavour). horsemouth suspects he was just tired and out of sorts. afterwards horsemouth and enza had a chat (this cheered him up). 

tomorrow a work meeting. at the weekend the anniversary of the kinder scout mass trespass. next week the anniversary of the recording session for most of the track on crescent by john coltrane  (and a pink super moon) tuesday, the AGM wednesday. 

horsemouth's voice over piece for Catastro/FILLE has come out. horsemouth is delighted with it and will be hawking it about on facebook (and such like)  soon. 

horsemouth out drinking campari to 3am

horsemouth out drinking campari to 3am (at an undisclosed location)

so this is how children's birthday parties end these days is it? 

dancing round the flat to bastard ugly techno 

(sorry neighbours - here's another reason to move out of town)

having worked horsemouth thought he deserved a reward.

horsemouth has worked 

he had a shower 

(he started on a bottle of beer)

hopefully that will bump up his earnings for the month. 

everything is hush hush and on the QT 

apparently

then the text came

horsemouth thought 

he might say 

'might come' 

(as if he was english)

but then he thought no

let's do it. 

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

horsemouth doesn't feel too bad on it (considering it was actually cava then campari + gin). 

later this evening an online meeting of the collective endeavour before that lots of lounging about (and perhaps a snooze). next task breakfast. 

the last poets

last night horsemouth's mind was full of things to write in this blogpost (but not this morning). 

curiously enough this morning horsemouth and sten woke up in a rhyming mood. yesterday john (they talked over zoom) had reminded horsemouth of the last poets, for horsemouth this brought back the memory of going to a last poets  gig with kate. there was only one last poet (and a percussionist), there was an ongoing dispute over the use of the name the last poets between jalal nurrudin and the duo of abiodun oyewole and umar bin hassan. jalal had (allegedly) stabbed one of the two (horsemouth cannot remember now who) in the throat with an acupuncture needle to prevent him performing leaving just the one poet. (horsemouth has to say it was one of the best gigs he ever saw). 

the photos from horsemouth's work on catastro*Fille's george lansbury work seem to be getting a fair amount of attention (which is nice).  as usual now that he has finished doing something horsemouth wishes he'd taken the time to do it better.

it looks like horsemouth &co. are to be fitted with smart meters (in pursuit of lower electricity and gas bills). sten was full of dire prognostications of sudden meter failures. horsemouth, having marched the light brigade into this narrow pass by dint of not reading the sign up agreement properly was keen to get them fitted. ian was flexible  (as, ultimately, was sten).

someone has taken pity on horsemouth, someone has posted one of the early argento's he hasn't seen (in a filmed from another screen and poorly framed version). it is an early one so it has a morricone soundtrack (but featuring a re-imagining of crazed sixties blues rock). 

today horsemouth is supposed to be working. it's a last minute booking and the set up hasn't been done. horsemouth waits to see what will happen. 

being george lansbury (to get himself in character)

so horsemouth is back from catastro*Filles after having recorded an (as if) speech by george lansbury (poplar rate rebel) and having had some photos taken in costume. they were somewhat stuck by the absence of direct quotable quotes in their meagre research and decided to circumvent this with performance. 

before he went horsemouth did some reading to get himself in character. 

despite being a firm anglican george lansbury welcomed the russian revolution and took poplar council headlong into confrontation with the government over inadequate funding for the poorer boroughs (the ones with the greatest social problems). eventually, after 30 poplar councillors had been jailed, other boroughs joined them and faced by the rebellion spreading the government caved in.  

the funding of local authorities was placed on a firmer footing and the term poplarism entered the political vocabulary for attempts at municipal socialism.  

as horsemouth mentioned when first asked to do the project  the junior school he went to in caerphilly in the valleys of south wales as a child was called lansbury park (as was the nearby lansbury park estate), lansbury and the rate rebels were well known as socialist heroes. 

lansbury habitually had mutton chops in most of the photos that horsemouth has looked at  (the chin was shaved out as was the jawline to a height of about half an inch, the rest of the side whiskers were left intact) - horsemouth does not have enough growth to achieve this. he regrets not scissoring the moustache level straight across (as lansbury did). (similarly lansbury was a white shirt man). he seems quite jovial in the pictures with kind eyes. 

as minister for works lanbury visited skara brey in orkney and got the serpentine lido built. an avowed pacifist he opposed world war 1 and rearmament towards world war 2, he called for the end of the british empire. 

in pursuit of (more) modern analogies this makes him a michael foot character (lansbury founded the daily herald - a left wing newspaper, so there are more analogies there with foot's journalism). 

horsemouth (at some point in the late 80ies, early 90ies) saw tony benn and arthur scargill address a rally at the turkish halkevi centre - he tried to get something of their 'we will build jerusalem' into his speech. horsemouth tried to get some of tony benn's implacable fraternal reasonableness into the speech also and something of horsemouth's own grandfather and grandmother's way of reasoning (on his father's side). 

it was not perfect and polished performance but hopefully there aren't so many mistakes as to detract for the meaning of it in the piece. 

once they had broken the back of it there was food (pasta in an aubergine and chili sauce) and beer (thanks catastro*Fille).

after lunch they tried to do some work on the  march sequence - shouting various slogans that a possibly more modern crowd would shout. horsemouth assumes they shouted slogans in 1921, maybe they marched purposefully in disciplined silence or sing hymns (who knows). they chanted the can't pay, won't pay  of the poll tax years . clearly those years of going on demonstrations were not wasted horsemouth remarked.  

after having pronounced themselves satisfied they finished off the beer and exchanged music - catastroFille introduced horsemouth to zam rock,  psychedelic rock of the black sabbath type made in zambia in the 70ies (who knew). 

having walked down there horsemouth walked back up. he crossed victoria park (site of the poplar rates rebels victory rally).

and it was there amidst the sunshine and the youth and the children (a kind of utopia) that the sadness hit him (he's not sure why). it took a while to shake off. but soon he had cup of tea, a glass of ricard, a phonecall from his mother and then an extended chat online with an old friend.  

today it kind of looks rubbish and grey out. this week a day of work. perhaps drop off some musicians of bremen CDs  with some friends. 

a very ubik thing to do (one liners and cosmic tragedy)

horsemouth has been having a philip k. dick re-reading session at the moment (castle, androids, scanner darkly, valis, radio free albemuth), he has some of PKD's non-science fiction (those will probably be next).

valis and radio free albemuth are related. the publisher asked for a rewrite, he gave the original manuscript to a friend (this is radio free albemuth) and then utterly rewrote it (and this became valis). after his death the friend came forward with the original manuscript of radio free albemuth (which horsemouth is really enjoying this time round - last time he just thought it was inferior to valis). 

valis has the one-liners and cosmic tragedy, radio free albemuth sticks closer to the 'events' (the move to southern califormia, the pink laser beams etc.) it has the advantage of the character of president f. ferris freemont (666 see) who drags the US down into fascism in a nixon/trump style. both would go well with an adam curtiss documentary (and indeed that's exactly what horsemouth watched last night).

horsemouth's copy of ubik seems to have vanished (which is a very ubik thing to do). 

today horsemouth goes to impersonate george lansbury for a voice over for a friend who is making an animation about the famous poplar rate rebellion (an early outbreak of municipal socialism). he tried to do some research on george lansbury but ended up being distracted by historical accounts of the development of the lansbury estate in poplar. 

now of course some of this is now scheduled for demolition under plans to redevelop chrisp street market (curiously enough in its 70th anniversary year) some of it the result of  the live architecture exhibition, conceived as an adjunct to the main festival of britain exhibition in 1951. this was the dome of its day, visitor numbers were low, sabotaged by poor transport links. 

now horsemouth grew up in the valleys of south wales (as you know), he went to lansbury park junior school in caerphilly near the large and modern lansbury park estate. he remembers a teacher telling the story of lansbury and the rate rebels. when (later) he lived in poplar he was very pleased to see the mural in hale street.

anyway he will walk over. he may try wearing a suit and a grandad shirt to attempt to get into character. 

in the paris commune on this day in 1871 goncourt observes the policy on art. 

'in the place vendome the scaffolding has been put up in readiness for the demolition of the column' 

'the venus de milo is hidden... it is thought courbet is on her track, and the silly employees fear the worst if the fanatical modernist lays his hands on the classical masterpiece'.  

next week horsemouth has a day of work (which he has foolishly agreed to and which he will have to sort out monday morning), an online meeting of the communal endeavour, and a meeting about future work (or the absence of it). 

the rose of cimarron (and the coming financial bubble)

RIP norman rusty young steel guitarist. member of poco, writer of rose of cimarron.  it's fairly epic (ending in strings). 

there was the best explanation yet of NFTs yet 'a new manifestation of a very old form - the financial bubble'. 

there is lots of cheap money sloshing about the world finance system released by governments to make up for the 2008 financial crisis. not all of it is going to be sensibly invested. 

last night horsemouth watched the perfume of the lady in black (1974) a minor giallo staring mimsy farmer with a slight alice in wonderland element. he'd attempted to sit out in the garden and read but the sun was too intermittent and the wind too cold. yesterday was mainly taken up with horsemouth's blogpost on tendentious topics. 

today it's a bright sunshine-y morning but cold-ish, certainly good until 2pm and possibly until the evening. horsemouth is continuing to investigate works proposed restructuring and to have a think about what he wants. he's agreed to some work tuesday (it will help bump up his wages).  wednesday a meeting of the collective endeavour (leading to the AGM on zoom wednesday the week after next). friday the consultation meeting on the restructuring of horsemouth's work. 

horsemouth is somewhat surprised to have the post covid economic slump come and find him so early, he never saw it coming. but  the truth is that where he worked was the low hanging fruit of the crisis and easily picked, it was on a branch away from the main activities of his employer, it was inherently risky given the difficulties of predicting demand. 

in a way perhaps the thing to do is to embrace the change (that said horsemouth does like his comfort and predictability).  

the week after next - may eve, may day, the anniversary of the death of the reverend gary davis, the mayoral and local elections, bandcamp friday. 

 

on 'woke' as being a symptom of the decline of the left (and trans rights)

there are a number of issues that horsemouth (as a stone coward) avoids.

the first is the kerfuffle over trans rights.

gender re-assignment surgery (technology) enables something new in society at the levels of gender/ sex to emerge. this is profound because it is at the basis of how our identities have been constructed by society and how we construct ourselves. this is inevitably going to cause disruption (but only really at the level of the changes required by black liberation, gay liberation etc. within the new left (and indeed within the old left) and within society as a whole. 

horsemouth thinks the left (as a whole) is in decline but that this is not because of an excess of 'woke' but because of wider structural factors (changes in work, changes in patterns of accumulation, and, well, history). 'woke' is in a long tradition of terms (PC, politically correctness and before that 'right on') used by those strange 'friends of the left' who claim to have the left's interests at heart but upon closer examination turn out to be filthy liberals/ enemies of social justice etc. . 

but also used by people on the left navigating the minefield of received opinion on the left.

it is a familiar argument, it can be found in orwell where he complains the left are bicyclists, teetotalers, vegetarians and advocates of free love rather than people who share exactly the same opinions as the average working man. 

horsemouth thinks the greater problem is that there is a fundamental generational disagreement about how change happens (who makes that change and how they make it happen). 

like he said he tends to keep schtum for fear of being yelled at. horsemouth may not see 'infinite kindness' as a solution to this but he would probably approve of a strategy of careful politeness. 

horsemouth was challenged on his belief that this was progress.

these changes both bring in the new but they also resuscitates the old. in the pre T+ days 'butch' and 'drag' used to get accused of negatively reinforcing existing gender roles - it's not like there were halcyon days before controversy. but the proliferation of pronouns indicates (in part) that people wish to try living as something beyond the pre-existing gender division. what was metaphor and performance in the 70ies, 80ies (from er. boy george to amanda lear to skin) has become literalised in the flesh. yes it 'enables some to live a less miserable and more fulfilling life' (as horsemouth's interlocutor says) which is to be welcomed, but yes 'women bear.. the brunt of the tyranny which is gender.' 

sexual liberation/ gender equality is an incomplete project and gender reassignment destabilises the terms in which it was conducted and there's no easy way out of this it's just going to have to be lived through (or er. avoided which is mostly what horsemouth does). 

horsemouth subscribes to the notion of progress in that we could together create a wonderful libertarian communist world of sexual liberation/ gender equality but most of the time he thinks changes in society are just changes in discourse that benefit some and harm others but ultimately make us who we are and wish to be. 

out of loyalty to his LGBT+ friends and his principles of live and let live horsemouth must say that society should enable people to live as they want to live. 

but well done (horsemouth says to his interlocutor) for standing up to the orthodoxy that it's all easy and without contradictions. ok everyone may now rain fire on the poor mule's head...

ok horsemouth has finished writing this (and meanwhile the sun has gone in - there's a metaphor there). 

it is the 25th anniversary of the release of the box by orbital. multiple friends of horsemouth worked on the video, he knew paul orbital well enough to stop and say hello. indeed horsemouth played on lush 3-1 by orbital and later on he played on a track on the solo project of their sound man (mickey mann) - a track called crow road. (he has since lost touch with both of them). 

yesterday a zoom call with john clarkson (who is doing well thank you for asking) and a coffee and a walk around with andrew minty (ditto). 

today. more reading and a walk around probably. horsemouth either has a cold or coronavirus. he suspects he'd feel much worse if it was coronavirus. 

horsemouth's media diary ('b-boys got to document')

'increased reading matter since 80s... better bedding...actually altogether big improvement.' 

so a friend of longstanding has reviewed horsemouth's bedroom (he had posted a photo of it on social media). of course to give you a proper vision of horsemouth's book hoarding horrror of a lifestyle he would probably need to take a reverse shot. horsemouth's room is a the bottom of the house (so it doesn't get as much light as previous abodes). still it is south facing. 

horsemouth thought he should construct a media diary for you.

horsemouth wakes up puts on the coffee pot and then turns on the laptop. his first thought will be to check the weather outside - if it is sunny he will be pleased, if it is rainy and grey he will be phlegmatic. 

he begins by checking the notifications and messenger in facebook (perhaps responding to one here or reposting something there). soon enough he is opening up blogspot and begins typing this.  we are moving towards six months of horsemouth making a blogpost every day (as a result of the die back of the facebook notes facility) when he has finished writing the blogpost to his satisfaction he will put a link to it back on his facebook page (with some teasing comments to try and encourage people to click through and read it). 

really however he writes it for himself. it is one of his favourite parts of the day. as he likes to joke, he 'gets to make sense'.  if horsemouth has to work then it is cut short or postponed otherwise this takes as much time as it takes.

really he should open up a word document and type for himself but he has no particular skill with plotting so he is unlikely to write a novel. this leaves poetry and theory. 

he will then listen to news briefing from the bbc i-player radio 4 page (possibly sitting out on his front doorstep in the sunshine) clicking it off before prayer for the day, then he will retreat indoors to cast his eyes over the guardian online - news first, then business, then society (for the housing news mostly).

if something annoys him particularly he will post it to facebook.

at some point he will get bored and turn the computer off and go and read in the back garden in summer, on his bed in winter. yesterday he was reading divine invasion a biography of philip k.dick (he's been on a PKD re-read recently). he expects he will finish it today (and possibly pick up the sidelined a scanner darkly again). 

sten has just whitewashed the back wall of the garden (well horsemouth says garden but it's not as he would have it but rather as the lowest common denominator of how the 4 people in the house would have it) and admittedly it does look instantly much better with the back wall being whitewashed (maybe this will trigger further tidying up). 

yesterday morning howard visited (he was off into town on a bike related errand) bringing a rucksack full of drum parts, a cymbal, john clarkson's thumb piano and melodica and some clothing (jeans, short sleeved shirts, two t-shirts). one of the t-shirts was a magma  t-shirt (sean will be delighted). horsemouth immediately took and posted a 'selfie' of himself in it and then took the aforementioned photo of the room - well actually no, he got sten to take it). he then posted these up (and a clip of magma playing). 

he is gratified by the number of likes they received. 

at 1pm (or later) he listens to the world at one. 

often he turns it off early because he finds it annoying. yesterday he then took a look at the LRB blog, the NLR sidecar blog, the Independent newspaper (news and business pages). he might check his own email account or the work email account. yesterday he also did some messaging on linkedIn  which he joined years ago but has never really used.

then at some point he will get bored and start reading again (out in the back garden) or go for a walk. 

he is walking less because of the pandemic - he is less likely to alibi a walk by a visit to the supermarket as he is trying to limit himself to one shopping trip (or less) a week (and the second hand bookshops have been shut). he is a little bored with the part of the marshes he is nearest too (that said yesterday he had a nice wander by the river). the wild rocket is not out yet (he will pick some of this if he sees it), he will sometimes pick wildflowers (buttercups, daisies, others he cannot easily identify) and display them in a vodka bottle full of water in his room. 

at six pm he listens to the six o'clock news (when the living room was useable he would often watch this on the tv but it is not currently).  lately he's taken up listening to the shadow over innsmouth (a h.p. lovecraft inspired serial) in the evening 

thereafter night falls and he draws the curtains. he may read some more but often he just goes over to youtube to find a movie. last night he watched a documentary of philip k. dick and then, following on from youtube's suggestions william freidkin's  to live and die in LA which he thought was kind of dull. 

and so to sleep. 

er. today (as soon as he has got this done) news briefing and a wander in the morning (because it is sunny). today (at some point) the david runciman talking politics podcast from the LRB (released on thursdays) - it's a bit liberal and bien-pensant. there's also the grenfell podcast on the bbc (a reliably good blood boiler). 

ok. allez! salut maintenant!

 

this is a year not like any other

>

it is the the 60th anniversary of john fahey's first recordings for joe bussard and  the 1000 incarnations of the rose festival is still occurring (in the parallel universe that is forever 2018). 

later this morning howard comes up to visit. he will drop off a rucksack of respectable looking clothing (jeans, t-shirts, shirts such like), suitable clothing for teachers in the modern age but perhaps a little too frayed to pass muster. they will be slightly too large for horsemouth (but he has a belt and is a fan of the baggy look anyway). seeing as horsemouth almost entirely clothes himself out of charity shops he doesn't think fit will be a big problem. 

the rucksack will also contain various drum parts and stands that horsemouth and howard used in the recording of volume four but howard no longer wants hanging round his flat (horsemouth entirely sees his point). there's a keyboard as well (but that's probably a separate trip). 

this is a year not like any other. 

big news...

rent is the major expense in horsemouth's life. 

horsemouth's life (in the seaside towns) is based on paying less than market rent (on continuing to be with the housing co-op he is in) and on having that money come in from work. his savings means he cannot receive state aid but they also mean he can afford to slack it out on not full wages (or indeed no wages) for ages and ages.

the question is can he afford to slack it out until pension age? a whole lamentable decade away (hopefully the government will not bat it further away). 

if he were to move to porto (which he could do for half the year in two 90 day tranches 90 days apart for example) he would be paying half the rent he does currently (for that half of the year). at one time (pre-brexit) he could just have moved there (but the great british public in their wisdom dot dot dot). 

normally (at this time of year) horsemouth faces the summer of boredom. work is over for the year (he works the student year) and then he sunbathes, reads, plays guitar, and (if he is lucky) goes on holidays.  this year he does not know. 

it's been a funny old year already. horsemouth has already spent 1/4 of it at his parents. the new dispensation means he can work from home.  

musicians of bremen release a NFT (no not really)

'for the record . . . I don't want to return to normal as it was . . . NORMAL  was broken  . . . I want something better . . . can we build it please?' - mervyn syna.

what would this look like? horsemouth does not know (that would be up to you). 

he suspects something like communise the housing. establish widely distributed warehouses where people can go and get whatever commodities they want. establish a rota to do the street cleaning. start growing food. he then remarked to a friend (myk Z)  that they had been early adopters of the notion of communising the housing and so should be used to it. 

in other conversations (well typed exchanges on facebook) another friend (chloe) became interested in the notion of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) in art.

'anyone else finding NFT art a really depressing concept? instead of looking for ways to take 'payment' for art outside the capitalist matrix, let's employ a really dirty way to get filthy rich.'

'...this was my reaction to just the one article I’ve read in Time. It’s almost like as we are on the brink of stepping outside of the capitalist matrix here come the capitalists to hyper monetise the up till now free creative digital arena.'

horsemouth mentioned that his friend ben had been writing about 'this sort of thing' for a while. high prices for art (as an item to store looted value in) have been around for a long time but, as chloe noted when an NFTed digital work of art had just sold for $60 million 'I knew we were in trouble.' 

horsemouth has not thought about such things for a while (hey he's a lazy old mule). 

in way NFTs function as a unique, un-manipulatable way of establishing provenance and ownership of digital art items (that were previously easily duplicatable and thus effectively free). but they also function as an advert for blockchain technology as well, providing the 'halo effect' of art and creativity on a damaging resource hungry technology. artists want to get paid, they want to make their art, they need to eat and they want the validation that only money can bring.

'there’s a real split at the moment,' says chloe, 'between those genuinely looking to an alternative way and those getting sucked in by the supremacist capitalist bull crap of ‘you should have this because you deserve it’. The environmental impact alone should be putting people off when you consider how much we all know about how fucked we are as a species, but no ‘get rich quick’ wins every time.'

ben makes a critique of beller. 

ok something has come up (work meeting). horsemouth will return to this later when he's read the beller article properly. 

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

hmm 'interesting' work meeting. 

 

1000 incarnations of the rose - when will we see its like again?

 it's the third anniversary of the 1000 incarnations of the rose american primitive guitar festival. 

american primitive guitarists from all over the planet gathered in takoma park (fahey's birthplace) for a festival of american primitive guitar. though (curiously) it was named after a robbie basho tune. 

when will we see its like again?

increasingly horsemouth thinks that it was robbie basho who was the genius player of the scene and that john fahey was just the originator.

philip k. dick spent some time in the washington suburbs (he went to school in silver spring maryland) when he was growing up. (horsemouth has learned from reading lawrence sutin's life of him divine invasions). dick found it conformist and dull. it was the setting for one of his non-SF novels, puttering about in a small land. 

in our parallel history of the paris commune (1871 to the present) the aristocratic edmond goncourt wakes to bad news. (and yet for all his reactionary bluster he sees it as it is)

'on awaking this morning, I saw that the fort at Issy, which I thought had been taken, was still flying the red flag. so the versailles troops have been thrown back again...

why this stubborn resistance? because in this war, the common people are waging their own war and are not under the army's orders. this keeps the men amused and interested, with the result that nothing tires or discourages or dispirits them. one can get anything out of them, even heroism.' 

meanwhile (back in the dreadful present) news that the minister for social care, helen whately,  despite earning £113,612 as an MP and minister, claimed £3,250 in housing rent from the taxpayer each month between april and november 2020 – £26,000 in total during those eight months alone.

if whately claims £3,250 a month for the whole of 2020/21, she will receive £39,000 towards her rent during the financial year. this is on its own higher than the estimated average annual pay of her constituents, the average full-time earnings in the UK, the average nurse’s salary – and over double the average full-time care worker’s pay.

horsemouth, for the life of him, can't see that the representation of social care being achieved by this vampire is worth the money spent on her. in the sea with it snarls horsemouth. 

horsemouth fails in his duty

so where did the blue oyster cult steal the chorus for flaming telepaths from?

murray krugman (the 'in the trenches' producer of their records, unlike sandy perlman who was the ideas man) spills the beans.  murray is admirably clear eyed about where the talent lay, what worked and why (if a little disgruntled). horsemouth also read an interview with joe bouchard (the bassist), the glue, the band's moral centre, the one who brought the tune for astronomy. there's a lot of instrument swapping going on, joe writes about one song on each album (but they're usually good).  hot rails to hell, 7 screaming diz-busters, wings wetted down,  astronomy, morning final, nosferatu.

horsemouth generally subscribes to attali's theory (to some extent it is adorno's theory also - at least as far as his ghost writing in doctor faustus) that music prefigures wider economic and social forces rather than reflecting them later. 

personal computers, the internet and mp3 profoundly altered the musical commodity, the changes are still working their way through the complex network that is the music industry and through the wider social function of music. 

similarly the pandemic has essentially halted live music and whether that will recover to its previous form is also a matter for debate. now you can stay home and gig / now you can stay home and jam but now also songwriter performers are selling off their rights because of the collapse of live gigging incomes. 

musicians, song-writers, record company owners may or may not be best placed to see what is happening but it is important to remember that in attali's theory the economy of music is predictive of the wider economy.

we are in the world of the gig economy and a 'piecework' work from home but also a world where everybody is creative and an artist. if we are not having our five minutes of fame but instead our digital long tail.

horsemouth hasn't kept up with contemporary art world debates (and their distressing habit of declaring everything a non fungible token NFT). howard was remarking that lots of people have a phase where they read the wire  and it was similarly with horsemouth and art theory. something interesting was going on with the commodity status of art and people were discussing it. 

here is maria lassnig's life as a song. she's pretty much famous as a painter but she would also dabble in films (as you know horsemouth has an interest in slightly surreal artists films and would like to make some more). 

yesterday horsemouth was supposed  to watch various things but he failed in his duty. instead he finished off the curry he got from howard and watched an LRB documentary on eric hobsbawm. he may post it here another time (it was pretty good).

the sun is shining (it's a pretty good sunday morning). 

horsemouth is back from howard's new gaff (an interregnum)

horsemouth is back from howard's new gaff in the wilds of east ham.

he was there to catch up and help howard assemble his new bed. there are photos. once they'd got that done successfully they ordered in a curry - which was awesome (probably the best they'd had in a decade they opined, certainly (for horsemouth) the first since lockdown). they settled on old school reggae as the music for the sesh. they drank two small tins of modern IPA while waiting for the bed components to arrive and then a bottle of cobra each with the curry. 

manfully horsemouth volunteered to take the doggie bag home. (he's just fed some to sten for breakfast who pronounced it most excellent). 

in the morning (before he went) he did some reading.

'we remain, to use gramsci’s terms, in an interregnum, where the old is dying but the new cannot be born.... progressive populists and progressive neoliberals are now in a coalition...' 

so remarks nancy fraser over on new left review's sidecar.  this would be your biden administration (and your adoption of keynsian levels of debt to fund measures necessary for the pandemic in the west), the perhaps temporary defeat of the MAGA populists. over on the grauniad larry elliot notes that the economic orthodoxy round neo-liberalism  and austerity didn't fall in 2008 but it seems to have fallen now. 

of course this is an unstable amalgam and will fall at some point. 

horsemouth is having a pretty good apocalypse. 

he doesn't think he's had the covid yet (legendarily horrible). they've jabbed him (first round and he hopes there'll be enough for a second), work furloughed him over the summer (when he doesn't normally earn any money) last year (and it looks like they're doing it again). if it has deprived him of the joys of second hand book and record shopping (and going up the pub, and eating out and take-aways) it has at least also deprived him of that expense. 

as a result of it he spent more time with his folks out in the countryside over this last year (and that worked well they were on good form). 

when the weather warms up (and he can sit outside) he'll get his reading mojo back. youtube and suchlike enables him to watch all the films, videos and listen to all the music he could hope for. 

weather wise it is greyer and colder today and for the next couple of weeks than horsemouth would have hoped for (still it's not as bad as he feared). horsemouth has had his coffee for the morning. 

'vanity. oh vanity'

 

more philosophy queen has surfaced on the internet together with lots of antifamily. 

horsemouth dreamed he was in porto. he was happy to be in sunshine. ze was off at some family do. horsemouth met a woman by the escalators(! - they don't have giant exterior escalators in porto - that's barcelona out near parc guell) at the bottom he had difficulty in paying because the ticket machine was somewhere in an ordinary office. that's where he met her. she was welsh (horsemouth noticed he was upping his welsh accent to keep up). she had the ticket machine (it was some kind of a card reader) though horsemouth had got on the escalator with some kind of a paper ticket. he thinks they went to a bar or restaurant. 

what triggered this dream? probably beer and tremocos with sten. 

he watched pasolini's edipo re with silvana mangano. he liked the sets and the costumes and frankly the whole thing. 

and the sunlight. 

today a bright sunshine-y morning. later off to howard's  new gaff (probably). 

yesterday was 8 years since the death of thatcher. still horsemouth remembers being stopped and searched by the police on the day of the thatcher abdication...  and that was a  glorious day because at the time it seemed as if the thatcher reign would go on forever. 

''cos when they finally put you in the ground

they'll stand there laughing and tramp the dirt down...'

there is an argument that by focusing on thatcher and reagan and the personalities (the cult of the personality) we miss the deeper structural changes that were happening (an argument adam curtis makes in his interview with david runciman) and horsemouth thinks this is true. for curtis individualism has unleashed a horde of directionless squealing piglets upon the world who now cannot be coraled and represented. 

curtis is right that brexit and maga represent a rejection of what the liberal lefts offer to manage everything in the best possible way. quite where it leaves us all is moot. 

next week the 1000 incarnations of the rose festival of american primitive guitar live from takoma park. 

nobody expects the spanish deportation!

so goes the latest gloating over the damage caused by brexit. (but it did make horsemouth laugh).  

here, recorded 50 years and 2 days ago, we have alice coltrane and strings. 

'I think the music sounded exploratory. I’ve played pieces from ‘universal’ in concert. the reaction wasn’t ‘oh my, we have to become cosmical, we have to go into some mystical experience.’ the people just heard a joyfulness, a light-heartedness about it.' - alice coltrane

yesterday horsemouth discovered that alice played on a laura nyro record, most noticeably on the track map to the treasure. 

horsemouth wishes his friends who have escaped to europe luck. similarly he wishes his european friends who are here luck (and his non-european friends). basically horsemouth is a globalist. he believes in international travel and your right to live anywhere on the globe you chose, with whomever you chose. europe he viewed as a sort of first step to that. it was by no means perfect, as syrian refuges being turned back by german gunboats off the shores of turkey would be the first to admit, as serb, croat, bosnian refugees from the war there would admit, as greek, spanish, portuguese and italian people done down by its economics would admit. 

nonetheless the opportunity to retire to sun, sea and sand was a considerable benefit to horsemouth and he is sad to see it become more complicated. 

similarly he is sad to see brexit kick off another round of instability in the north of ireland, another performance of the carnival of reaction

the economic harm brexit is causing is being hidden by coronavirus (and probably won't come out until after it is over). the european commission is making itself look bad with the dicking around over exports of the jab (but conversely if horsemouth were in the EU it would look to him like the commission was trying to do the right thing by getting the jab for its citizens, maybe). 

in fact horsemouth finds himself calling for isolation in the face of new variants (so he's not really a globalist). the demand has to be to vaccinate the world and to stay home, to pursue a policy of eradication rather than toleration. he thinks living with virus  is a strategy for endless death, endless disability and ultimately doomed to failure and lockdown again as new jab resistant varieties of covid emerge. 

it is however going the other way. the capitalists are keen to reopen for they have not realised they are fighting a living opponent. 

today a grey day out. grey and cold (this looks like april). sten is out the door and off to work. horsemouth has bought a coffee grinder he is looking forward to using it. 

all the colours of the dark

the painter pietro perugino crops up in torso (1973) an italian giallo film directed by sergio martino (all the colours of the dark). there you go an artist, so you aren't just watching a sleazy slasher film with loads of naked bodies. not exactly a recommendation for the university of perugia, the student body loo good but the faculty has issues. (as usual a great soundtrack). 

yesterday the 50th anniversary of the recording of three of the tracks from universal consciousness by alice coltrane - of the three horsemouth chose sita ram. the sleeve notes list three recording dates. tulsi on tanpura (following on from the great journey in satchidananda), clifford jarvis on drums, jimmy garrison on bass. harp and organ on this one. probably the last album recorded in new york before the move to the west coast but after alice's visit to india and ceylon (as was). 

horsemouth shared a call for urgent action in response to the new variants of covid from members of the Lancet Covid-19 Commission Taskforce on Public Health. the vaccine will not be enough (because we cannot currently vaccinate the world fast enough to stop new vaccine resistant variants popping out. we are living in the moment of delusion that this is possible and in the rush of gratitude to the vaccine). society will open up again (and then it will all kick off again). third wave in summer (or third wave in winter). the government are promising no more lockdowns horsemouth thinks this is foolish. he thinks the vaccinations program will stall in any event because of dust ups with the EU over the limited supply. 

he is a cheerful monkey isn't he.  

yesterday a trip across the fields and up the road to aldi (cheap piazza, fakemeat, 2 bottles of beer, onions, pesto). he would have bought more but he didn't realise he'd brought a spare bag with him. he abandoned sten at toolstation and returned to sit in the garden and read. 

it's another bright sunshine-y morning. today the first anniversary of the death of john prine. next week the anniversary of the 1000 incarnations of the rose american primitive guitar festival in takoma park in 2018 (the height of human civilisation), the week after the mancom (of the communal endeavour), the week after the pink supermoon and the AGM for the same. 

he will continue with his reports from edmond de goncourt our correspondent at the paris commune 1871. 

'everything lingers on a moment (and hastens on to death)'

horsemouth is slightly scandalised that mixmaster mike is scratching with the robert johnson album - aren't they rare by now?

over on metamute an interesting article.

the first part is 'a view from the trenches' of opposition to the restructuring (cost cutting)  universities are attempting (based on a model of 'never let a crisis go to waste' in response to the pandemic).

the second part marks the financialisation of education but also how this changes the understanding of the value of education leading to changes in what education is supposed to achieve (think of the mantra of employability).  peter thiel, dominic cummings the nay-sayers among the speculators on the return on investment of education, the proposers of a different type of education.

the article is interesting, because it accepts the model of the disruption of education, of the need to respond taylorisation of education and of its disciplines with an education that trains students to work across disciplines (so that their work will not be taylorisable and thus have some value). 

yesterday the weather was colder (but the sun still shone). horsemouth walked over to the supermarket in the fields and bought a coffee grinder (himself and sten have a stash of coffee beans), some pre-ground coffee (3 doublepacks of lavazza red label at £5.80 each - which is what passes for a bargain these days), 5l of cooking oil, enough cheese to kill a pig and two bottles of beer. later he read in the garden. 

he's moved on from valis and do androids dream of electric sheep? to philip k. dick's a scanner darkly. instead of rhipidon society (a collection of good and true friends) we have our hero surrounded by his frenemies and sunk deep in paranoia.

and he is justified in this because he is in fact an undercover cop (a fact he cannot always remember). 

don't get horsemouth onto the subject of spycops.

horsemouth has been making some efforts to learn to play the boy in the bubble by paul simon. he can't do it yet - he can't sing the verse lyrics while playing  the guitar part (the chorus is fine). however while he was round howard's he persuaded howard to sing the verses (and that worked well). 

so maybe that's a way forward with it. 

the sun is shining (but it is cold out). that's better weather than was predicted already.  horsemouth has had his first (full) cup of coffee and is about to go round for a second half. whence he will wrap up warm and sit around in the sun. 

it is difficult to imagine all this was possible (and may be possible again)

free gigging. free festivals. anarchy man!

like the minutemen (a band on every block, and every few blocks a venue they could play) here and now offered a different economy of music to the paid gig and the record. 

surprises here? daevid allen's 'no drugs onstage' policy. 

it's tendentious to say they were the first placed band of the hippie underground. horsemouth would argue they were distinctly the second rank (beneath  hawkwind and gong). while people may have their issues with dave brock and his politics (the kind of issues they don't have with saint lemmy) it has to be admitted that he took the band into another era of free gigs on that west country circuit (hence adrian shaw and harvey bainbridge - successive bass players from the south west hippie scene). 

it seems strange that the whole economy of the festival circuit once existed. and then that rave was successfully grafted onto it. 

it is difficult to imagine all this was possible (and may be possible again). 

horsemouth had an unusual talent for missing history. sometimes this served him well (the poll tax riot? he was out of the country), at other times (hawkwind play treworgy) he kind of wishes he'd been more bold. 

musically (frankly) it's all a bit poor. there is a pull to the mainstream in here and now (but that said it was good music to dance to). horsemouth has a cassette somewhere coaxed out from oxford . 

yesterday horsemouth sat in the sun and read. he finished off valis and moved on to do androids dream of electric sheep. once again it is the thing round empathy and pulling together that strikes him, the humans have the advantage because of empathy. the replicants lack of empathy is seen as a grave defect (lack of solidarity makes it difficult for them to have a slave revolt for example). 

this lack of empathy is not, as in contemporary views of autism, seen as a superpower. partly this is the rise of the nerds and the relative cultural importance of brain work. 

what is great with  philip k. dick is his use of his own personal shit being played out and worked through once again. 

afterwards horsemouth watched a large chunk of the good, the bad and the ugly an unrelenting vision of sadism, greed and the disasters of war against which can only be posited a rugged individualism. the lack of empathy the characters display for each other is a function of the society they are in (they literally can't afford it if they are going to survive). as such it actually functions as a critique of the state (war), the  modern world, and our alienated condition under capitalism.

the hippie idyll, the free festival scene, is marked by a spaghetti western like reality overlaid by hippie idealism that cannot overcome its circumstances.  

still it was instructive to try. 

today a walk horsemouth thinks (if only to the supermarket).  

6 months of confiding

true to his words to you horsemouth did not get up to much yesterday. 

he started watching five men of edo (1951) a samurai drama but gave up. 

the yakuza dramas are essentially picaresque action films, they are comedies - zatoichi  arrives in town, outsmarts the villainous locals, takes up with the virtuous locals and defends them from the evil local boss (much carnage). at the end he wanders off into the sunset (and they play his song again).

the samurai dramas are different. we are enmeshed in a world of obligation of feudal society. people's lives are destroyed by these obligations. they are tragedies. take 47 ronin as an example. the ronin will get their revenge for the fall of their master (but then everyone will have to commit suicide). 

horsemouth gave up on five men of edo and took up with the modern day kaza-hana (2000). drunken ruined salary man and suicidal sex worker go up north into hokkaido to die in the snow. by the end of it death has been averted and a stable nuclear family has been constructed. 

the couple are at a hostel in the north in the snow in the kitchen. a guitar is produced and a very bad entertainer starts to play (he's been coming there for 10 years and always does the same show). one part of the show is an impersonation of zatoichi (ending in an as if zatoichi style swordfight with the audience). 

he has a copy of david rattray's how I became one of the invisible (1992 semiotext(e)) round here somewhere. it is a clever admixture of carlos castaneda style shamanism with the desert fathers with beatnik travellers. apparently there is a new edition out with more of david's writing in it.  

it's six months since the release of confiding. horsemouth wishes he'd done a bit more work on it. it should probably have been on the album rather than out on its own. the slide guitars don't really work. they'd tried to record it several times and thrown the previous takes away and sadly those were the better takes in terms of horsemouth's playing. frustratingly several sections of it work really well. horsemouth should have been satisfied with his work on these. 

a courageous horsemouth would have just deleted the slide parts where there's singing. they aren't really doing anything, or doing it well enough to be worth keeping, they just dilute the listener's attention. that said he doesn't like the keyboard sounds either. 

today. more lounging around and reading and probably a walk. there's sunshine coming in the window (that gives him some hope).  for the last six months (since the death of the facebook blogging tool) he has been posting every day - his need to diarise has gotten the better of his need to publish.

a wander round (thank god, civil war has broken out!)

horsemouth is back from a wander round with howard. sad to relate they drank beer (small tins of modern IPA) and ate snacks. 

they started midway between their respective 'gaffs' (in the corner of victoria park), thence to the boats with the coffee (though they did not partake) and then on down the canal to the bow tescos (where they loaded up on the beer and snacks). they adjourned to the millfields to drink, eat and chat and then over the new bridge and round the island to the channelsea inlet and abbey creek. there are photos. thence up the green way to stratford and back to howard's via the dlr. 

there pizza and more beer. they listened to howard's collection of yemeni music and the new floating points/ pharoah sanders album (which they both think is impressive, rising up into alice coltrane like orchestral textures). horsemouth tried out howard's new guitars (a nylon strung and steel strung one) and pronounced them good. there was some discussion of how to cheat B and Gm chords. 

it will be horsemouth's last visit to the flat (howard is on the move)

at roughly 6ish horsemouth departed for the dlr at stratford he made the unfortunate discovery that the north london line (the overground) was out and there was a replacement bus. however after a goodly while it seemed to horsemouth that the replacement bus was heading further east rather than back west so he got off and fortunately found a 425 (as eulogised by official burnt toast) which delivered him to homerton hospital. 

now this has probably been horsemouth's most active (and most exposed) day in a long time. he now plans to go back to staying in and driving defensively for a bit (by way of mitigation). that said it was fun. it would probably have been better to walk but horsemouth brought the bass guitar back with him and so went for the dlr. 

yesterday there were events in horsemouth's paris commune diary. 

the reactionary edmond de goncourt writes;

'the sound of gunfire, about ten o'clock, in the direction of  courbevoie. thank god, civil war has broken out! when things have reached this pass, civil war is preferable to hypocritical skullduggery. the firing dies down. has versailles been beaten? alas, if versailles suffers the slightest reverse, versailles is lost!...

finally a newspaper tells me that the belleville troops have been beaten! I am filled with a  jubilation which I savour at length. let tomorrow bring what it will.' 

in other good news. 

horsemouth may have made a sale (thank you dude) on bandcamp friday. work have furloughed him (and seeing as the furlough may run up to september) he may even make enough money to pay tax this year. the apocalypse is enabling him to save money, if he survives, this may be useful. 

at the opening of utopia (and bandcamp friday)

 'and if you look back,

try to forget all the bad times,

lonely blue and sad times

and just a little bit of rain...'

horsemouth hadn't realised quite how good fred neil's voice is (he thought he was a better writer than a singer), but this tune really shows it off well (almost tim buckley levels of beauty). dolphins as well, largely because it has a great turn at the end. 

horsemouth is reading valis by philip k. dick. at some point he writes a giant exegesis on his experience (the one where god or the soviets fire pink laser beams full of information at his head). in the novel PKD is not above playing his own mental illness for laughs but the exegesis is real.  

similarly in alberto toscano's article on the documentaries of adam curtis horsemouth finds the tale of abu zubaydah who has been detained without charge and tortured by US authorities for almost two decades. he tries to recover from a shrapnel wound to the brain by writing a diary, a ‘vast collage of memories and feelings’ (amounting to some 10,000 pages). 

finally there is ubuweb a vast collection of dada and surrealism where we can run and play. 

indeed a friend has just opened such a utopia  - haretopia - all rendered in cartoons. horsemouth is gingerly exploring. 

meanwhile (back in the meat world) it is bandcamp friday when the few remaining citizens of planet earth who have not yet done so can purchase a copy of musicians of bremen's fine albums. (or howard's solo electronica or rob lawson's zither music).  

today vast purchasing of musicians of bremen's entire oeuvre/ horsemouth and howard will probably go for a walk. thereafter horsemouth will probably go back to being careful again (until the boredom drives him out of doors). 

the photos are back from the developer (things in life)

the photos are back from the developer for the new lifestyle horsemouth ordered. they did a few mock ups and a run through to see what the composition looks like (it looks pretty good says the old mule). 

yesterday horsemouth and enza went for their long delayed walk (we are talking about a quarter of the year here). if it was not the gloriously sunny day promised by the forecasters it was at least warm and dry. they met half way (enza was a little early and horsemouth was a little late). 

they adjourned via the canal system to a leisure area with various boats, open coffee stalls and outdoor bars preparing for re-opening. there they planned for the succession of the chairmanship of the collective endeavour (later enza would phone horsemouth to reveal that martin was in fact not retiring and his succession would in fact not be taking place). 

later they would wander up through hackney marshes to horsemouth's front doorstep bar for a bottle of beer and to avail themselves of  the facilities.  it was there that the photograph was taken. 

then they wandered back down to the park before parting company on the bridge marking the border between their two realms. he lent her the fictions of bruno shulz and the invention of morel. 

what they didn't discuss was making more art of the fall of the house of fitzgerald variety (though enza does have another project on the go with suke but then suke also has another project on the go, so god knows when the first project will come out). 

today is the start of chungking express month. the policeman's girlfriend (may)leaves him on april 1st. he resolves to keep collecting tins of pineapple (is it?) until may 1st (when he'll admit it is over). dennis brown's song features. it's two stories of the three originally planned. 

meanwhile the government has written a report on structural racism in the uk (written by some structural racism deniers);

“the well-meaning idealism of many young people who claim the country is still institutionally racist is not borne out by the evidence”.

oh do fuck off (sighs horsemouth). 

to horsemouth this is a sad reversion to type. the necessity to make social expenditure (furlough etc.) caused by cornoavirus gives the tory party the opportunity to tack left into a one-nation toryism (land of hope and glory etc. etc.) , but they can't take it unless it is on their ideological terms. horsemouth is glad this is the case because it means at some point they will fall (however the wait will be fucking tedious).

he's not sure what to do with today.  there appears to be some sad reversion in the weather.