they put a black girl on the cover (and everybody lost their minds)

elsewhere on  the not actually american american primitive scene 

gwenifer raymond has played a gig (horsemouth believes myk went though he had to take a carer to deal with the electronic ticketing lark). the gig review in the guardian (by kitty empire) says a number of things that are worth unpacking;

'her specific field of solo guitar is known as “american primitive” – almost everyone involved now agrees that is a highly problematic name, because it both appropriates and patronises the work of its black inspirations, but a new one hasn’t been minted yet. john fahey (1939–2001), the father of the genre, coined it...', 

it is worthwhile pausing to explain what fahey might have meant by this term. it is a satire upon attitudes to the blues and hillbilly music as 'primitive' music from the time before the great veneration of such music in which we now live, the use of such terms in visual art to describe the adoption of allegedly primitive techniques by avant garde visual artists in the west (think picasso), and perhaps also upon the limitations of fahey's own playing. 

like a lot of fahey's writing it is particularly double edged. it is worthwhile noting that as much as fahey trained at being anything it was as an anthropologist. which is about not assuming the 'superiority' or 'inferiority' of cultures but investigating how they work. 

'american primitive long remained the preserve of white guys. great as many of them have been (the late jack rose in particular), that is now changing. a recent new york times article profiled a series of non-white, non-male and non-binary solo guitar players breaking the mould; raymond is one of the rising talents quoted...' 

that this article was controversial in american primitive guitar circles horsemouth has to admit. 

at first he thought it was another outbreak of VOGUE disease (they put a black girl on the cover (and everybody lost their minds)) for indeed they had put a photo of black american primitive guitarist  yasmin williams at the top of the article. but no, what drew american primitivists ire was the incorporation of fahey, wearing his 'white guy' suit, into contemporary discourses around race, culture, cultural appropriation and representation. in this formulation fahey can only be a racist and a bad guy guilty of cultural appropriation and of patronising the genre's black antecedents. 

that's just his structural role in the discourse (as a white guy).  

now horsemouth thinks it is good that all sorts of people are using  the solo instrumental steel string guitar as a means of self and cultural expression but this now.  and now is and then was, and how things worked then we don't have immediate access to. 

and when fahey was making his synthesis then was definitely then. fahey was obliged to formulate american primitive  at a distance from delta blues both by reason of the racial divides of america in the 50ies, 60ies and to be frank right up to the present day, and to be frank that's why such an article is still possible.  but fahey also made a virtue of necessity of that separation. fahey is not engaged in a recreation of old time-y music, a heritage project such as stefan grossman, norman blake, he's out there incorporating classical motifs into the music trying to break the music free from an understanding of it as mere sociological document. 

in some respects it is a moment similar to be-bop (in amiri baraka's telling of it in blues people). but unlike be-bop it is not collectively authored, american primitive is almost entirely fahey's thing. other guitarists  either follow in his slipstream (robbie basho, max ochs, harry taussig etc.) or their work becomes recontextualised in relation to his (peter lang etc.). there is also what it is not, it is not the new age windham hill guitar music, it is not the folk-baroque of bert jansch, john renbourn, or davy graham either...

anyway. horsemouth always wonders what to do with it. he doesn't really play american primitive himself he doesn't think. but it certainly makes him think about how he plays acoustic guitar. certainly some of the things he plays have been formed in its image. 

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ok it's a grey morning. but yesterday cleared up nicely after a slow start. ok yes the sun is making progress burning off the haze. 

yesterday horsemouth and howard sat out on the steps (or sat out in the back garden) making use of whatever shade was available. they were in horsemouth's room for a bit, they got the guitars out (horsemouth has many guitars now) and tried out playing some duets together ('bert and john' joked horsemouth). it sounded good - perhaps there are a few recordings to be had like that. horsemouth demonstrated his attempt to sing and play a solo version of amarach that he's preparing for his first (and probably only) gig of 2021. 

there was beer. there was pizza. but they were both fairly restrained. howard is fairly busy next week, horsemouth has some babysitting. howard is back round thursday (he's getting his second jab). 

one two. so marijn filius, who horsemouth met as a result of this social media lark, has put out an album (well a cassette) of his songs (and it being the modern age they're available for download too). and very good it is too. horsemouth is impressed. 

today a walk (weather is looking a bit shit though)

today a walk with howard somewhere - horsemouth is not sure where (weather is looking a bit shit though). 

already this morning a discussion of r. buckminster fuller's idea to project a world map onto the surface of a buckminster fullerine (a 3D shape that's roughly spherical that can be made out of flat panels or even an appropriately cut flat piece of paper (think of a geodesic dome and reflect it through its basal plane).

now once upon a time horsemouth was really into this. this was a long time ago when he was in bush house his fake brooklyn afrobeat band. the other band members were resistant to the notion of world music  and so horsemouth was attempting to reformulate that notion in a way that might be acceptable to them (frankly horsemouth should have just given up right then and there). 

he  bought a book on world map projections (a propaganda pamphlet for the peter's projection which, like all maps, is a  flat piece of paper showing the surface of the world that is in fact on the surface of an oblate spheroid. crucially displays them with their areas proportionally correct - a curved line is longer than a straight line, a curved surface in 3D has a greater area than the flat area linking its four points and so on (don't tell the flat earthers). the continents that mainly benefit from this are africa and south america that in peter's projection you can see are much much larger than europe or the united states. 

in the book of world maps there was a picture of the world map projected on the surface of a buckminster fullerine and this could be stored (before cutting and assembly) on a flat piece of paper - such as the a flyer or a poster for a gig. 

horsemouth had access to a photocopier through work and so he got on with making poster and flyers for the band. eventually they stopped him and returned with a new logo and concept for the band which was a piece of windows clip art.

- bitter horsemouth? 

- no. why bother? it's a bit galling to have been prevented from being unsuccessful though.

he was also a big fan of turning the world upside down (there is no up sign in space). in that this also revalues the relationship between the global north and the global south. his inspiration for this was leon rosselson's the world turned upside down. 

last night he watched umberto lenzi's sette orchidee macchiate di rosso (7 bloodstained orchids) which is a typical giallo (rember he'd watched most of lenzi's spasmo a few days before), the main title theme by riz ortolani is good in a get carter kind of way. he also watched a little of the shogun assassin films (inspired by the same manga series as the lone wolf and cub tv series but much better made). 

other than that he was out sunbathing in the back garden (one the builders were gone from next door) and before that out reading and listening to the radio on the front doorsteps. 

in 1871 the paris commune has gone down to defeat (at 4pm yesterday afternoon according to general macmahon's proclamation). on the 28th goncourt tours the ruins.

'the large scale destruction begins at chatelet and carries on from there. behind the burnt out theatre, the costumes have been spread out on the ground: carbonized silk in which, here and there, one catches sight of the gleam of golden spangles, the sparkle of silver.

on the other side of the embankment the palais de justice has had the roof of its round tower decapitated. there is nothing left of the new building but the iron skeleton of the roof. the prefecture of the police is a smouldering ruin, in whose blueish smoke the brand new gold of the sainte-chapelle shines brightly.' 

meanwhile, also on the 28th (it was a busy day for horsemouth he must needs catch up), pascal publishes his eighth provincial letter. pascal and his sister are jansenists, it is a catholic sect that has just gone down to defeat at the hands of the dominicans and the jesuits and will shortly be disbanded. pascal's sister in particular will not recover. pascal is mightily laying into the jesuits (as lying, deceitful and morally bankrupt) with the weapons of satire and selective quotation. this book has been widely read since then and has been ruining the reputation of the jesuits ever since. 

the jesuits seek to find a way that sins can be excused and discuss a wide range of cases - for example is it a sin not to pay a black magician who has contacted the devil  to predict the future on your behalf? yes it is because he has made reasonable efforts. on the other hand if he had used astrology everyone knows that does not work so you are under no obligation to pay him.  

howard on guitar this time again (introduction to my favourite things)

so horsmouth and howard plan to meet up sunday. it's half term. maybe they'll get on with some music (or maybe howard will be too knackered). 

it's the birthday  of harry everett smith promulgator of the necronomicon of americana, of american primitive, the anthology of american folk music.  

yesterday was the anniversary of the recording of live at the village vanguard again - john coltrane, alice coltrane, pharoah sanders and rashied ali take two tunes we think we know (naima and my favourite things) and show us them reconfigured. curiously horsemouth's favourite thing is  jimmy garrison's solo double bass introduction to my favourite things. 

last night horsemouth watched spasmo (1974) which is an umberto lenzi giallo with a reliably excellent morricone soundtrack. umberto was an uncharacteristic italian director in that he was an anarchist  rather than a communist. it's the usual diet of  carnage and cut off before we got to the end (but it made a change from ronin movies). 

at last! a seriously wrong headed article from the LRB

'he (cummings) put less stress on the repetition of the same mistakes, the same prevarication, in the second wave.'

well er. no he didn't. and horsemouth can say this because the day before yesterday he sat there and watched all 7 hours of cummings testimony. 

cummings laid government dithering out clearly in the first wave  and then equally as strongly and with added exasperation on the second.  in the first wave there is some excuse the government  didn't know what they were dealing with, the plan just wasn't there and there was little or no testing available. none of these excuses works for the second wave there the blame is solidly with boris for in person refusing a circuit breaker lockdown. at least  in cummings telling of it. 

'in response to a series of adroit questions from dean russell about the structural and institutional lessons that might be derived from his experience, he could only return to johnson’s personal flaws.'

er. no. cummings whole position is that westminster and the civil service are dysfunctional. he went on at length about this. in comparison the committee was more interested in discussing barney castle and the rose garden and any a.n.other off topic bollocks that they could bring to mind. 

the writer is hostile to cummings physicist-king project and presumably is happy to accept the kind of death tolls inflicted on us by the bumblers of westminster to resist it. democracy is not failing to purchase PPE because 'that's not how we do procurement'  that's just lethal fucking incompetence. what is anti-democratic is to let them get away with killing us (the people, the demos) in these kinds of numbers. 

and of course it's pointless to think that anything is going to happen as a result of this investigation or the covid public inquiry later. 

there is no one sensible around to make use of the information (same with the grenfell inquiry). hopefully cummings testimony  might delay unlocking until what is going on with the indian variant becomes clearer (which would be  a good thing in terms of keeping the deathtoll down).

what it won't do is depose matt han(d)cock (who is being kept around to be the scapegoat at the actual public inquiry). if hancock was responsible and failed  and so should go then logically boris was responsible and failed and so should go also. it will be the work of the public inquiry to show that it was entirely matt hancock's fault or to take so long that no-one cares any more.  

and then he can go.

or maybe they'll declare themselves blameless. 

next week. beaucoup babysitting. howard get his second jab. the week after horsemouth gets his second jab. 

three years of volume three

it's three years since horsemouth and howard (musicians of bremen) released volume three.

really of all musicians of bremen's albums, this is the horsemouth album. 

volume two was the howard album. 

volume four is an attempt to (re)combine their approaches. 

how does it look (looking back on it)? 

it's howard on the front cover with what looks like an owl of wisdom growing out of his head and horsemouth on the back cover (photo taken at no.1 the thames by john clarkson), in the booklet there's a photo by denise of horsemouth playing guitar at debden campsite with denise's son osin and on the back cover of the booklet there's a drawing of horsemouth by howard from a photo taken before their brick lane gig. 

he's got a CD down out of the racks. opened its jewel case and is playing it (but on shuffle so the choices may surprise him). 

we've just had Serpent(S) - which started as a ukulele loop by howard and then horsemouth added some wannabe south african guitar (and then they started with the whistling, melodica and throat singing). it was one of the two improvised/ semi-improvised tracks.

worldes blisse a tune horsemouth tried to learn from edward lee's music of the people. the oldest tune in his set (15th century). horsemouth modernised the english (and probably fucked up the tune). horsemouth liked the miserableness of the lyric which can probably be best paraphrased as life is shit and then you die). 

then let all mortal flesh keep silence a recording by nick lacey from a few years earlier (recorded in his bathroom at horsemouth's insistence). it's (mostly) an old hymn tune (picardy) played on a nylon string guitar. fahey does a version of it but his version is clearly influenced by semi-improvised organ versions of it. horsemouth regrets not doubling it up and having himself and howard do wordless chanting monks on the end of it (but hey, it's good and short and apocalyptic).

then satan (your kingdom must come down). horsemouth learned it from a willie nelson record (he says - but really he learned it from off youtube, and he got it wrong as well). it's a gospel blues. horsemouth likes the militant, mobilising possibilities of it. 

on the banks of the susquehanna the second semi-improvised one. horsemouth set the guitar up in openD tuned up to the same pitch as the harmonium (about 50% above standard). howard pressed the button to roll the tape (there is no tape horsemouth it's digital) and off they went. the guitar is one take. howard did some overdubs of the harmonium (a loan from john clarkson) and used echo to double everything in a call-and-response style at the end. in inspiration for  the title is in part a tribute(ary) to fahey's habit of naming things after rivers and in the other part to southey and shelley's plan to start a pantisocratic commune in america. 

the devil. horsemouth had this song sitting around for ages. he had the guitar part and then one day the lyrics came very quickly. he got peter holmgren (who was sharing a flat with howard at the time) to play double bass on it (which improved it a lot tbh). 

funeral music  is a daddad guitar instrumental lifting themes from fahey and ending in a basho style (horsemouth hopes). again it was recorded by nick lacey some years earlier  and then edited down out of this larger piece by howard, who added the sound effects. 

when the faun met alice. frankly this would better be called the subdivision of the octave.  

her hair like some glittering gold this is basically horsemouth trying to learn and play debussy's la fille au cheveux de lin (and failing). it has a nice pentatonic (scottish) melody. horsemouth is particularly proud of the ukulele introduction.  

sliabh na mban so this is horsemouth's friend denise ishaque singing in gaelic. horsemouth heard a version she recorded of it with graham and thought it would be a good thing to do so he worked up the guitar following her vocal melody. there's a second part where horsemouth puts in what he fondly imagines to be an african guitar part and howard does a stunning impersonation of horsemouth singing. in a third part it all dissolves in tape echo/ the sea. 

listening back to it there are (of course) a few things horsemouth would do differently. but overall he's very proud of it. 

satan, worldes blisse, the devil, when the faun met alice form the backbone of his live set. her hair like some glittering gold makes sometime appearances (it requires retuning from daddad to openG).  the rest of it languishes unplayed. horsemouth may make some efforts to play sliabh na mban out in future (er. but he can't sing it). 

today a surprisingly good morning. yesterday horsemouth was out in the back garden sunbathing a lot. 

horsemouth and his covid diary (summer is y-cumen in)

'thanks to arthritis I am now much less mobile than I was... static semi-isolation is scarcely a hardship or even a disruption of my routine...'

so arnold bennett begins his covid diary (expect a lot of these). a writer goes to meet a dissident in the former soviet union. 'how do you get so much done?' asks the writer. 'house arrest' hisses the dissident.

there are things here people will recognise (wearing the same clothes for months, home haircuts for example) on the domestic scale. conversations carried out with social distancing. kilvert apparently visited bennett's house in london (before bennett owned it). 

before facebook alzheimered itself (when it was still possible to access your memories on facebook as you chose) horsemouth downloaded his blogposts for the covid year. he should probably take a look at chopping them together into something more easily readable. 

of course the benefit to horsemouth in writing the blogposts is in the writing of them and the reading them back. he has his material close at hand.  

horsemouth didn't get anything additional done during the pandemic. there is a kind of dawning belief around that it is over, horsemouth thinks not. nonetheless people are preparing themselves, psychic gears are turning. howard's got his second jab next week. horsemouth has his mid june. politicians are getting the knives back out. 

clearly summer is y-cumen in. (here piggy piggy!) horsemouth goes to play a gig in far off weirdshire (aka. hereford) (he thinks). he's starting to think he can work up versions of tracks from volume four. 

in addition to alzheimering itself (be here now consumer!) facebook now places stronger limits on the number of people you can contact about a social event (limiting its value to you as a promotional tool - unless of course you are going to pay). 

the sun is shining in the window (it really is a beautiful morning). horsemouth will go for a walk (hell he may try and get the shopping in). 

there's nothing from goncourt (our correspondent in paris in 1871) today but he will be out and about tomorrow. 

last night horsemouth watched lone wolf and cub until his eyes started closing (starting at some point after the 6pm news). in some ways it is kind of like tabu - social convention as death-in-life, but also there is power in the sense of self-control in lone wolf's journey along the edge of hell. (there's cheerful imagery for you). 

horsemouth watched dominic cummings performance at the parliamentary health committee (and the concomitant poor performance of lots of newbie MPs). horsemouth is not surprised by the revelations (he always thought boris was useless and murderous), he always thought the state was actually useless in a crisis (merely lucky). it shows the limitations placed on development in the UK. all dominic wants is a decent technocratic managerialism with proper procurement and some decent planning and he can't even have that. 

horsemouth has chosen a the mellowtrons track from the compilation sten put together of the various bands on the scene at the time.  the names will appear in different roles, here as graphic designer, there as musician, here in their own bands, there as a session musician on someone else's record. he always liked the beat on lee's tune (he's got a new album out), he said at the time it had to be the lead track on  the album. 

horsemouth thinks there were three of these compilations (I can't believe it's not trip hop, broken beats and dirty promises, this film's crap (let's sample the soundtrack)) and then the moment passed. 

 

the fall of the commune

'today I was walking beside the railway line near passy station when I saw some men and women surrounded by soldiers. I plunged through a gap in the fence and found myself at the edge  of the road on which the prisoners were waiting to be taken to versailles...'

the paris commune has fallen and the government forces are busy massacring, interring or exiling the defeated communards.  the communards respond by killing 63 hostages. the massacre that people know about, the one at pere-lachaise cemetery will happen tomorrow. goncourt is making his rounds. somewhere in the city maxime du camp (flaubert's mate) will be making his rounds too. 

'no one knows the exact number of victims of the bloody week. the chief of the military justice department claimed seventeen thousand shot.' so wrote prosper-olivier lissagaray, who had fought on the barricades during bloody week, had gone into exile in london, and was writing soon after the events. later he will claim 20 000 in paris and the the surrounding countryside. the bodies were originally buried in mass graves in the parks where they fell, roughly 7000 were eventually re-interred in the public cemeteries.

'20,000 killed in the streets... lessons: bourgeoisie will stop at nothing...' lenin will later remark. 

maxime du camp (flaubert's running buddy) investigates (in his les convulsions de paris). he comes to an estimate of  only 10,000 (but even so). 

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

it's a grey day. outside the workers are unloading building materials from a lorry. they've blocked in one of the neighbour's cars while they do it who is remonstrating (because presumably they need to get to work). ok they've got the lorry moved. 

next door the downstairs kitchen has been removed. the foundation for the new back wall has been poured. the upstairs flat's kitchen is supported on props. the steel lintel to support it has arrived and the hole has been made in the party wall with the next next door neighbours to support it. the new extension is being built out pretty much to the boundary lines of the garden. 

next next door is a very inspiring conversion of a house like horsemouth's into four two bed flats (up into the attic, down into the basement, extended out back on more than one floor) but (as sten pointed out) it took almost a year to do. horsemouth thinks of all the additional members the co-op could house if it adopted this strategy.

but then he laughs at his own stupidity to think the members would ever agree to it.  

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horsemouth's analysis of the upcoming changes in university education is flawed. he had focused too much on employer staff pressures, changing in working habits (zoom lectures and the like), and foreign student numbers. he had forgotten that most of the money comes from the government in the form of student loans and as such is directed by the government's ideological approach and its fear of mounting unpaid student debt (or at least that is the alibi).

'we know something is coming and that it’s going to be bad. we just don’t know what it is yet,' says one vice-chancellor.

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

like horsemouth said earlier it's a grey morning. he's a little stuck for things to do. his routine is boring him. horsemouth is onto series 3 of lone wolf and cub. he has worked to defend the peasants not for his usual 500 ryo (a lot of money clearly) but for a bowl of rice (claiming that each grain must be worth at least a  ryo because it incorporates the work of the peasants). 

as horsemouth is a completist and an archivist he is showing you a track by the second incarnation of his band that was on a compilation. it doesn't totally do it for horsemouth (but it sounds better than he remembered it). later they recorded a better sounding version (and had some mixes of it). a while ago horsemouth was contacted about this track by a fan of it from norway/denmark (wow). 

 

in which horsemouth makes claims to fame

yesterday was the anniversary of the release of the brown album by orbital in 1993. there's a certain  track (lush 3-1) featuring  a certain guitarist (entering at 2.58 under cover of some double time hi-hats).  paul and phil make horsemouth's guitar sound amazing (like a berimbau in fact) - horsemouth was majorly inspired by the headhunters 'you got it, you get it' at the time, he recorded them his classic ascending soukous solo (but they mustn't have been in to it). 

horsemouth gets a credit on the next track lush 3-2  as well, apparently his guitar part was used to gate or filter another part and there seem to be guitars on some of the remixes of lush - these may be horsemouth, he can't remember. the DAT of horsemouth's playing went off to the remixers (so who knows). 

there we have it ladies and gentlemen - horsemouth's claim to fame. 

horsemouth would also include for your attention his playing on crow road by mickey mann (aka. pressure of speech and orbital's sound engineer at that time). horsemouth does a bluesy slide riff on a guitar in standard tuning (again it's another great effects treatment of his part).  later in the song he does some scrapping of his guitar slide on the guitar strings to impersonate the sound of crows (inspired by adrian belew). 

horsemouth at the time was less appreciative of this music and the scene than he should have been. he had his own fish to fry (or so he thought). 

somewhat later but on the same day in 2015 (on our curatorial timeline) and horsemouth and howard are recording noah round at howard's. horsemouth finally gets to use his ascending soukous solo. 

horsemouth also got to use an ascending soukous solo on his recording with enza and suke but suke doesn't have time to push that forward right now (so it's on the backburner). horsemouth is proud of his part (and will have to work out how to move the song forward so that he will get to hear it). 

horsemouth spent some time in the day singing amarach. it would be good to have a set for midsummer that represented musicians of bremen  more accurately than horsemouth's heavily biased towards volume 3  solo live set. 

last night a meeting of the communal endeavour which horsemouth thought went well. doubtless he is storing up problems for himself later by not dealing with the game of thrones now. 

back on this day in 1871 the paris commune has fallen. goncourt is out and about;

'all day long, the guns and rifles have gone on firing. I spent the day walking round the ruins of auteil, where the damage and destruction is sucha as might have been caused by a whirlwind...

paris is decidedly under a curse! after a drought lasting a whole month, there is now a wind of hurricane force blowing across the burning city.'

 

'it's the dream isn't it.' (the light of an eclipse)

last night horsemouth dreamed. matthew from triple negative was in it. the dream occurred sometime after 4.30 (horsemouth was strangely restless and woke up then).

there was a sheet about a song with a list of the authors along the top horsemouth was trying to take it out of the box and matthew was stopping him.  he looked as if he was about to say something horsemouth leant in to hear what it was. 

'it's the dream isn't it.' remarked matthew hopefully.

then the dream popped and horsemouth woke up. a little later he wrote it down (in the half-light he couldn't see if the pencil was actually writing). there was more of the dream earlier (but horsemouth does  not remember it). 

the dream left horsemouth optimistic and cheerful (he'd seen matthew and he'd been in the dream). 

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

there was an interesting economist podcast about covid (please ignore this if that's the way you roll) 

what is the true death toll from the coronavirus epidemic? 

to be counted in the official statistics you need to be tested and in poor and middle income countries this is not a priority. 

a better estimate than the 3.6 million deaths given by world governments is provided by the excess deaths statistics (how many more people have dies in the last year when compared to an ordinary year),  many countries do not however report excess deaths so it has to be modelled, this suggests with 95% probability that the real figure is between 7.1 and 12.7 million.. 

this gives a different shape to the pandemic. most deaths in pandemic have actually happened in the poor and middle income countries. the pandemic is getting worse not better - the epidemics in individual countries show a wave shape (as control measures have an effect), the pandemic globally has not, it has been rising since march last year. 

there are problems with supply chain for the vaccines, there are problems with keeping it working while it is expanded to meet need. there are problems with getting the jabs to where they are needed most. 

covid 19 is a global phenomena and it requires a global response - this has not happened. only 100thousand doses have flowed through covax. 

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

today the sun is shining. at some point yesterday horsemouth went for a walk. later today a meeting of the communal endeavour. 

in 1871 on this day goncourt watches the fall of paris from burty's house (later he will escape back to his own). 

'when I awoke I looked for the corpse of the national guardsman who had been killed yesterday. it had not been removed. it had simply been covered with the branches of the tree under which he had been killed. 

the fires burning all over paris were creating a light like the light of an eclipse.' 

today the sound of firing came nearer and nearer

'stop philosophising and get on with the story!' - footnote p.44, the makepeace experiment, avram tertz. 

'at daybreak I fell into a sleep haunted by nightmares and explosions... today the sound of firing came nearer and nearer...' - journal of edmond de goncourt, night 22nd/ morning 23rd may 1871.

on this day in 1791 edmond de goncourt had gone over to visit the art critic philippe burty and had ended up trapped inside his house as a result of shelling and national guardsmen press-ganging anybody out on the street into building barricades. by today  versailles troops (those of the french republican government) take the street. the dead body of a national guardsman left lying in the road views it all dispassionately. this will be the start of la semaine sanglante (bloody week) when the french republican forces will massacre the communards and exile many thousands of them. 

meanwhile edmond de goncourt and  philippe burty will be  early adopters of the japonism style of art (burty coins the term in 1792), like french william morrises they see in japanese handicraft construction, the support for artists under the feudal system, the aestheticisation of life (for the upper classes) the hope of relaunching french society and french arts and crafts. 

there's a similar movement in music with debussy. 

burty was also the populariser of an etching revival. he wrote a book promoting the work of charles meryon ('sailor, engraver and etcher'). meryon born in paris with an english father and a (probably) spanish mother. meryon enlisted in the french navy and travelled widely. 

as a child he attended a theatre performance in which two skeletons were out in the fields digging, this so horrified him he had to leave the theatre, outside he asked his mother.

'mama. is it in order to disgust men with agricultural pursuits that the government sends skeletons onto the stage.' 

yesterday horsemouth did not get much done. he wandered out into the marshes. there a group of students all practiced the sword with wooden swords. ichi, ni, san, shi.  a bit more artful composing and costuming and it could have been a shot from one of the lone wolf and cub episodes horsemouth has been watching lately. that people are properly buried, named, revenged, seems to be important (which is strange in a show that regularly leaves stacks of dead bodies all over the place). 

the numbers 4 and 9 are apparently considered unlucky in Japanese: 4, pronounced shi, being a homophone for death (死), and  9, when pronounced ku, is a homophone for suffering (苦). 

horsemouth is not sure what he will be up to today. 

what have we learned today? (anything sensible that would bear repeating)

last night horsemouth babysat. 

this morning he has a slight headache as a result of polishing off a small bottle of leffe when he finished his shift when the parent returned (possibly he should have just said no). he's just had his coffee (maybe that will sort it)

we are rolling towards one month to get his shit together for his first gig in ages (at least a year probably more like a year and a half). he just played satan trying out a little turnaround (sounding good but one song does not a summer make). 

last night was cold (horsemouth was under the duvet and a sleeping bag). this morning is grey. 

'we have long called for this transition to a new contract structure with a far better balance of risk and reward,' - firstgroup chief executive matthew gregory.

under the contract, the government takes all revenue risk and retains cost risk up to agreed levels.

the media are reporting the changes proposed for the national rail networks as if they were renationalisation. what is being nationalised are the losses, what is being nationalised is the risk, private companies will still operate on the railroads and still take their profits. inevitably the railway companies (and the new network company great british rail) will want to take the post covid opportunity to restructure (horsemouth forsees a lot of this). 

and what of horsemouth? 

horsemouth has been a miser (none so mean as a cardie  his grandmother would often say - at least according to one auntie). hopefully this will now prove to have been beneficial to him and enable him to work less over the next decade. 

unlike the financial crisis, where the effects took a long time to reach him (if indeed they ever did), with covid the effects have reached him almost immediately. businesses will want to take the opportunity to get out of lossy or risky sectors, they will be driven to do so by the scale of 'the losses', government support merely delaying those decisions. the process itself  is designed to reassure you of the economic necessity of the decision, but it lacks the detail necessary to ensure that horsemouth can satisfy himself of the 'economic necessity' of the changes (even if he agreed with such a thing). 

horsemouth's assumption is that at some point (when he is 67 say) his state pension will kick in and he will be returned to that blissful state of being on the rock and roll -  freed to pursue his hobbies and interests. 

the tarot cards indicated that horsemouth was comfortable with all this. 

but for now a bowl of museli and a cup of tea. listen to the morning news on the radio (well on bbc i-player) and cast an eye over the guardian, link this blog to facebook and perhaps see if horsemouth said anything sensible in previous years on facebook that would bear repeating. it's a saturday so there's no world at one for him to turn off in anger and frustration. 

more babysitting at the start of next month. 

shopping as a cure for boredom versus the communal endeavour

yesterday  over to the supermarket in the fields  and back (roughly 4 miles). fuel? a vegetable pattie and a piece of quiche (museli for breakfast).

4 bottles of beer (2L)

1kg each sweetcorn, frozen peas, linda mccartney's fakemeat sausages.

1L yoghurt

horsemouth should probably get in a bag of rice (against apocalypses). 

he was guilty of going shopping as a cure for boredom (something he hasn't done for about a year). 

it's 24 years since horsemouth joined the communal endeavour (his housing provider of choice). he has lived in single, he has lived in shared, he has lived in flats, he has lived in houses, he has lived in co-op owned, he has lived in short-life, he has lived in tower hamlets, he has lived in hackney (so far he has not lived out in newham but never say never). four places he has lived have been 'handed back', three times he has moved voluntarily. he has volunteered his labour to bring disused housing back into use (and endured the criticism of the politicos for doing it).

the mission (should anyone decide to accept it) is to create housing for single homeless people in london at the kind of rents they can afford to pay. every year this will get more difficult. the co-op is a small one and the day will come when it will have done all it can (but that day has not come yet). of course the truth of the client group is that they are not the homeless as in the street homeless, they are more the badly housed, people in search of comparatively low rent to enable them to live their 'creative' lifestyles. horsemouth likes the people (by and large). 

anyway meeting of the communal endeavour monday. a brief round of game of thrones to select the officers of the co-op, chair, vice-chair (spare chair), treasurer and company secretary and then on to the business of the day, which is hand-backs (aka. people losing their homes).  

brexit, covid (and the government's 'hostile environment' towards EU citizens, immigrants, anyone without a union jack tattooed on their arse) will change lots of things for the co-op and its' members. but these changes have not yet worked their way through to expression. the dynamic is still the one of regeneration and gentrification sweeping the poor out of the city. 

london's population was reducing all the way through the 20th century until the 1980ies as more people left greater london itself and commuted in. from the 80ies onwards it began to fill back up with many people from many different countries and from all over the UK working to service its artificially expanded economy (driven by the profits made in the financial district, the large education and health sectors etc.). it became a 'hip and happening' place to be, whether this will survive covid is another matter. working from home (telecommuting as it was once called by the futurologists) will change the balance of the city between offices and housing. etc. etc.

but not just yet. not soon enough to stop people from losing their homes. 

back in 1871 in the paris commune goncourt is in the place de la concorde trying to pick up information on how the siege of the city by republican forces is going. he returns home but is awakened in the night by the call to arms. 

'... soon, drowning the noise of the drums and the bugles and the shouting and the cries of 'to arms!' came the great, tragic, booming notes of the tocsin being rung in all the churches -  a sinister sound which filled me with joy and sounded the death-nell of the odious tyranny oppressing paris.' 

from here we move into the suppression of the commune in the bloody week la semaine sanglante. 

it's a grey morning. horsemouth babysits this evening.  

horsemouth as he would wish to be seen

horsemouth has been asked to provide photos of beautiful humanity as evidence. but he thinks this would spoil the moment (and when photographed they would probably look very ordinary). when horsemouth goes for walks upon the marshes (yesterday he walked up and back to the wetlands centre - overpriced coffee and back, about 7 miles all in) people seem to want to talk, to acknowledge and be acknowledged.

he's reading a very short, fairly interesting and reasonably cheap book about quantitative research (this goes alongside his reading of abram tertz's the makepeace experiment - soviet era kid develops mind-control superpowers and takes over his collective - not like pasternak, more like bulgakov). 

silverman, the author of a very short..., is in thrall to a sociologist called sacks (an ethnomethodologist). great lines will suddenly pop out of his prose (horsemouth thinks). 

'common truths... rarities will mysteriously germinate in the charged space between them'. 

horsemouth provides you with a a lot of evidence here - we are moving into six months of him writing this blog everyday, six/ seven years of blogging everyday on facebook and then transferring over the best to blogspot, before that he was blogging on my space (all the way back to 2002 he thinks).  

he portrays himself as he would wish to be seen. still it's not like he's filling a questionnaire or being made to write a diary as homework after class (that should count for something right). he's volunteering this material. 

of course horsemouth is keen to stress what he as actually done (been for walks, been to the bank, bought a coffee) as well as the books he has read (or is reading). the philosophers don't tend to tell you this, ok rousseau is happy to tell you that he has been for a walk. in general they don't want to tell you anything about themselves that might get in the way. 

horsemouth (on the other hand) is keen to obfuscate (and elaborate) to see if there is anything in the material that can be juggled  and made to shine. he is less keen to tell you if he begins but fails to finish a book. 

but in general, this, the creative part of horsemouth's day, is all done by about 9am. 

outside a big lorry has just pulled up and they are delivering materials for next door. they've propped up the back wall of the upstairs flat (now they just have to build everything underneath it - there's some kind of a metaphor there). bricks can only be laid 3 courses at a go, the max speed of gentrification is determined by the going off rate of concrete. it's all a bit robocop out there (human capacities extended by giant hissing hydraulics).  

but when it comes to getting the bags of cement into the house they have to be carried in by hand. 

it's 22 years since the release of ghost dog  and its soundtrack, the thing that makes it. it's a pleasurable movie. 

today horsemouth is not sure what he is up to. it is grey and cold outside (it has, so far, been a substandard may). horsemouth's song with enza and suke is on the backburner for a bit (he'd love to be getting on with it, it's a good tune). he should probably get on with preparing a set for his midsummer gig. he will probably take two guitars (to avoid onstage retuning) and the banjolele (to play high rise strutter's ball). he's a bit bored with much of the set (but then no one out there will have heard them before). 

is horsemouth happy?

last night horsemouth was back watching the lone wolf and cubs. lone wolf defends the peasants. the corrupt and oppressive power structure (and their running dog lackeys) are vanquished (well chopped up by lone wolf and then buried in the fields by the peasants). and life goes on. 

earlier horsemouth got the overground up into highbury, walked down into  islington (to his bank) and then walked back mostly down the canal... as far as broadway market anyway, about 5 miles all told. 

humanity you are beautiful. four weeks still to go before horsemouth gets jab two. by which time the indian variant will have well established domestic transmission and probably be the majority strain in community testing. .

of course wandering through crowds (like taking bus rides out east) this is not the smartest thing to be doing in a pandemic. 

having returned home horsemouth's  plan was to sit out and read. in which garden depending on which side of the house has the least building work going on adjacent to it. but instead the skies opened and fired biblical quantities of hail down at the earth and horsemouth snoozed. 

next door (eastwards) they are extending out into the back garden. they have already taken down the little porch that led off from the kitchen and laid the foundation for the back wall. still it is supposed to be quite a long build. the advantage is it's a downstairs flat so they won't be going up into a loft extension (and further reducing the amount of sunlight the back garden gets in winter and thus its chances of drying out). 

the back garden is a disaster zone, a waste dump, a workshop. the front garden horsemouth struggles to keep as a garden (in the teeth of other house members who want to use it as a waste dump). horsemouth's key 'fact on the ground' here was placing  a composting bin dead centre - the contents of which are far too stinky to move. 

horsemouth has a sore throat (again) but he figures it's either howard's (non-covid) sore throat or cancer. 

the pharrell williams track reminds him of being in porto, well in gaia actually on the other side of the river, he got the boat over from just up from massaleros and and was wandering along beside the river towards the sea when he heard happy being played from some kind of municipal fitness event. the sun shone, horsemouth was dressed in t-shirt, shorts and trainers, he had a little rucksack with a towel, a book, a diary, a  pen, a bottle of water, some suntan lotion, and probably some bread rolls and cheese. 

it doesn't take much to make him happy (just international jet travel, sunshine and cheese). 

they need to hear themselves speak (that is enough)

horsemouth is up early enough to notice that the sun is rising much further to the north than he had realised and illuminating more of the sidewall with the neighbours (the west wall) than he had realised. this means it will also shine on the decking at the back of the garden first thing... actually no, the recent brace of loft extensions east of the gaff will prevent this. 

anyway. it's a beautiful morning outside. summer is ycumen in etc. 

'the scout mindset'  (as touted by dominic cummings) is one of flexibility, of being willing to admit to errors and to correct them. you didn't get it wrong it's just an update. horsemouth has struggled at the communal endeavour. he struggles with people whose main aim in life is to do nothing (because you can't get nothing wrong). horsemouth has come to the conclusion that they need to hear themselves speak (that is enough). anyway nothing he can do about it now.  

last night he watched the process church of the final judgement.  it's a con/ it's a cult (or so everyone now seems to agree now that the founder mary ann is dead) - the actual members get off fairly lightly, their kids less so, their dogs (they were very fond of german shepherds) do pretty well out of it. it is another cult seeded by the scientologists (once you've seen the mind control it's hard to go back to dealing with people honestly).  

it's interesting to see that it got going among architects (and embassy workers and the like). there is something very j.g.ballard about this. 

today a walk and a wander round. yesterday some dangerous leisure shopping (where horsemouth gets bored and wanders up to a supermarket - where there are people and there may be coronavirus). he stocked up on the fake meat (£6) and coffee (£11.60 - 1kg), beer (3 bottles, 1.5l). he checked his bank balance (holding up nicely mr.jones). this follows on from monday's shopping. 

horsemouth supposes the thing to do is to get the activity in before the indian variant hits.  he doesn't really know what it will do. even if (because of vaccination) it doesn't kill so many people there are the dangers of it leading to many more cases of long covid and chronic disability. 

autumn leaves (like someone in love)

 

 

yesterday howard was up visiting. (the last few times horsemouth has been over to his or over to wanstead flats/ park). they started with tea. then the cheap pizza. 

they exchanged news of recent musical endeavours. howard is still singing well (curses). howard's guitar playing is really coming along nicely and he commented favourably on the guitars horsemouth gave him to play - the paesold, the resonator. what they didn't do was get two guitars in tune and have a jam.

for some parts of it they sat in the sunshine (when there was sunshine to sit in). at some point they cracked the beers horsemouth had bought the day before (and polished them off). they listened to an antonio carlos jobim greatest hits (good sitting in the the sun music) and then retired indoors for a joni mitchell greatest hits compilation (starting at you turn me on I'm a radio). howard noticed the similarities between raised on robbery and help me (horsemouth agreed but noted the funk and soul elements on the former). 

they also listened to bill evans from left to right (electric piano and acoustic piano in alternation with an orchestra - and thus simultaneously urban and supper club at the same time) and speculated on the kind of movie it would soundtrack. they decided on the stars first (al pacino and diane keaton), a 70ies divorce drama set in NY, no boston, no washington. their house like the house from the exorcist, the season? autumn shading into winter - lots of montages of going shopping at the farmer's market etc. 

horsemouth pulled up some photos of joan didion for visual reference. perhaps at some point wearing a long dress she gets into a muscle car and drives very fast round the beltway (is that even possible?). the plot? - diane keaton's had an affair in california, she's not sure if she wants to be here any more. 

kind of like love story (but without ryan o'neil and ali macgraw). 

listen to all the cinematic elements - in the orchestral arrangement, in bill's playing. listen to that brass section introduction to like someone in love. 

maybe the film should be called autumn leaves (boom boom).  

the session ended with a brace of drum and bass tracks 

(exocet demon speed, makai beneath the mask,  tech level 2 chemical, dj trace the mutant revisited). 

horsemouth can't help but remember the nags head years - he lived just down the road from shoreditch, while he only made it up to metalheadz sunday sessions at the blue note a couple of times  later he would regularly make it to grooverider's night grace on a sunday (where he played things batteringly loud). good times. wednesdays there would be dylan's night or there was a japanese crew who did a drum and bass night (DJ T-AK , tendai). 

horsemouth is going through a lone wolf and cub phase (similar to his zotoichi phase earlier). 

today. horsemouth doesn't know. he waits to hear about tomorrow (work- is it on?). this week he's got nothing on the calendar. a meeting perhaps. next week la semaine sanglante (the end of the paris commune). the week after, a meeting of the communal endeavour, anniversary of the release of musicians of bremen volume three, anniversary of the birth of harry everett smith.  

the last days of may

noise from the VOID is on Mixlr

yesterday the sun came out and horsemouth walked  up to aldi with sten. he shopped on auto (beer, museli, pizza etc.)

surge testing in hoxton and dalston over the south african variant, the indian variant rising up the pop charts pop pickers and there's always the homegrown kent variant. boosterish boris keen to unlock and give us the maximum opportunity to spread the virus.  

horsemouth doesn't get his second jab til mid june (and then he has to go and play a gig - assuming it doesn't all go to shit again). 

'this is likely to be my last prose piece. all sorts of considerations make me believe it is high-time this shepherd boy stopped writing and sending off prose pieces and retired from a pursuit apparently beyond his abilities. I'll gladly look about for another line of work that will let me break my bread in peace.' 

so writes walser in an apparent abdication letter. he doesn't give up the writing habit until much later (when they've got him in the asylum).

work thinks there's more work. horsemouth thinks it is done already. time will tell. meetings next week of various sorts. 

coming up soon the first meeting of the communal endeavour in its new dispensation. (let the rock-rolling recommence). back to the war to create more  housing. in the last week of may the end of the paris commune, 3 years of volume 3 - the anniversary of the release of musicians of bremen volume 3,  the anniversary of the birth of harry everett smith.

june. rent rises, second jab. gig. 

 

two dreams. or a dream in two parts

it's a rainy grey day out (horsemouth has left the front doormat out, he does hope it's ok).

just now two dreams. or a dream in two parts. 

in the one horsemouth was working (he was with two interpreters). they were wandering round a 1950ies institution for the technical education of young boys. horsemouth accidentally blundered into one of the master's rooms (through a glass door). he emerged not best pleased. horsemouth took charge of managing him (it was not clear whether horsemouth and the people he was with had any right to be there). sadly the best french he could manage was a rather feeble parlez vous anglais? when the answer was no (unlikely in horsemouth's experience) horsemouth thinks he managed not a problem (but he can't remember how he did it) and then I speak a little french. soon and suddenly the lecturer was off (and horsemouth was noting stuff down) then the lecturer was literally off he was by a building on the other side of a field lecturing away and horsemouth and one of the 'terps hurried after him (the other had a more leisurely approach). there seemed to be cactus and such things about.

they then wandered back along the path towards the more leisurely turp both moaning about his attitude. 

(did horsemouth mention access to this school seemed to be a via a narrow tunnel through a hole in the wall?)

in the other part of the dream horsemouth was out and about in a part of hackney/ the east end that he never visits. it is located between the bits of east london that people know but its still unknown and so has not been gentrified. (there are lots of semi-derelict old buildings) in fact it has remained in the 50ies. routemasters came out of the bus garage near the junction (on which was built a pub with way too much natural light - the glassy junction - this is actually a pub in southall that tim and darsavini discovered and denise showed him. you could see right into it, it looed like a great boozer.) 

this is a recurrent location in horsemouth's dreams. there's also a similar east european town and a  spanish/ portuguese town.

in many ways these are nostalgia/ farewell dreams. ostalgie (nostalgia for the east - nostalgia for life in the former east (germany) - strangely when horsemouth looed this up online to check the spelling he found a link for a movie called do communists have better sex - apparently in east germany women did have better sex. 

mindful of eleonora's comments about writing down dreams as soon as you have them horsemouth made an effort to remember it (and that presumably is what woke him up). 

a small (and not very blue) tit has just come visiting (looking for spiders for breakfast horsemouth guesses). 

horsemouth is up early. in a bit he'll go and recover the doormat (no sense rushing it. plenty of time) .

yesterday horsemouth did some cleaning (he must be bored). he put the brush and the mop about on the two floors of the house that he uses (kitchen, corridors, stairs, some of the more accessible bits of horsemouth's own room), he beat out the rugs from his room and even put one through the washing machine. the living room and indeed much of the front corridor are still full of sten's kipple and so uncleanable. 

horsemouth was late to bed having bumped into sten (himself returning late) with a particularly stinky french cheese (a neuchatel) and a loaf of bread. horsemouth hasn't had any stinky cheese in a long time. sten had been dragged out on a family errand that he described as utterly pointless and unnecessary (nonetheless he seemed much more cheerful for having done it). earlier horsemouth had tapped sten up for a small can of modern beer (flavoured with rhubarb) but at that point the family crisis had intervened. 

horsemouth has been having a fine old time going through the music he plans to use for his next golden glow mix (and then he succumbed to the happy fantasy that he was DJing out and people were liking it).

steve hillage - garden of paradise, tudor lodge - willow tree, robbie basho -mehera, jackson c. frank - tumble in the wind, the heath brothers - smiling billy suite (part II), fred neil - just a little bit of rain (live), alice coltrane - sita ram, john handy & ali akbar khan - the soul and the atma, miles davis - feio, richard twice - if I knew you were the one, donald byrd - christo redentor, chiwoniso  - zvichapera, nico - abschied (minus the screamy bit), fontella bass - this would make me happy...

... and so on down through his blogspot account. horsemouth tried playing the miles and the donald byrd at the same time (an old trick of graham's, miles goes well with most everything). 

horsemouth has a gig coming up (virus permitting). he's been envisioning playing. trying to pick songs. he has over a month to get a set together (so he can afford to cast his net widely). at the moment he plans to take the banjolin so he can play highrise strutter's ball (he wonders if sten still has his bear eared fleece hoodie). 

  

'and an idiot shall lead them' (musing on punk)

horsemouth was too young for punk (or so he thought at the time). later he thought he was too old to be in a band. he would have been about 12 when the sex pistols played caerphilly castle cinema. 

and in fact the sex pistols were really just a boyband copy of richard hell and voidoids and the new york dolls. horsemouth thinks the best book he ever read on the whole thing was by fred vermorel who hung out on the vivienne westwood end of it. he emphasises the art school roots of it. 

lots of people emphasised the working class roots of it but frankly all the Oi music that came out of that was terrible (ok fun also (but by and large terrible)). the people who were interesting rapidly depart into post-punk or goth, not the least john lydon's PiL.

of course it went on a long time. but there was two tone and there was mod and there was electropop and reggae and electro and rap and eventually there was house and then all the proliferating genres out of that. 

on this day in 1871 during the paris commune courbet's artists committee meet. later he gets a lot of the blame for the destruction of the vendome column (after the fall of the commune).

on this day in 1969 alice coltrane, ron carter and rashied ali recorded huntington ashram monastery. there's something special about a ron carter bassline. it's one of horsemouth's favourite alice coltrane records. 

on this day in 1971 she's back in the studio recording tracks for universal consciousness (hare krishna and sita ram).

it's a grey day out (but it's not supposed to rain). 

how will horsemouth survive when the money stops coming in? it's less that he needs the money to survive but more that it assuages his anxiety about surviving. furlough enables him to make the rent. the tarot suggests all will be well but it may tae horsemouth time to get comfortable. horsemouth thought he was living cheaply (but then the lockdown came to show him what living cheaply really looked like). 

'and I am the pendulum that swings and never stays'

the first set up

so if horsemouth remembers correctly the cards were: 

the high priestess (la papesse)

the hanged man (le pendu)

the wheel of fortune (la roue de fortune)

horsemouth had lied in framing the original question. (when is he ever completely honest?) 

who was horsemouth really asking about (and who for)? 

the cards used were a marseille pack. 

it has a strong red/ green / blue/ yellow theme. the characters seem drawn from closer to than the rider-waite cards, there is less mythological kipple at the edges of the frame.

the hanged man is waiting (he's literally hanging around). disconnected from the earth. his legs crossed and his hands tied behind his back. how did horsemouth get into such a position we may ask. what foolishness led him to this? does he like it there? or is he being punished?

the reverend sabine baring-gould  wrote the poem on broadbury down at the site of a famous gibbet where the dead bodies of criminals were hung in a cage and left to rot;

'and I am the pendulum that swings and never stays, 

the death clock of a bad old world that cankereth away'

the high priestess - well her you know. you see she is the only creature who is on the ground (and can thus walk around) in this set up. 

the wheel of fortune has 3 beasts on it - a blue winged monkey with a sword and a crown is raised up, but soon he is deposed (and then he is rising up again). or is it other moneys who will come to take his place. such is the world (how horsemouth initially misnamed this card). 

the second set up was (allegedly) about horsemouth's job prospects. 

again the hanged man appeared (more waiting), 

the lovers (les amants - do you see what horsemouth means about things bleeding in?) 

and horsemouth's old friend temperance.  

horsemouth is protected from on high, or maybe he's a protecting figure. it all looks good. maybe in the relation between the cards is the tower,  maybe a card hides unselected at the bottom of the pack. 

of course it is better to travel hopefully,  not to try to see the destination before you get there. 

but then horsemouth could have confused himself more by consulting the I ching. instead horsemouth likes the tarot,  he likes the images, the bonne hommes, their colours and the dispositions of them.  like love itself it all works by condensation and displacement. 

last night horsemouth went round a friend's house. there was food and horsemouth brought the beer and they talked. (and the tarot cards were produced). they were hunting around for music to play, horsemouth played ederlezi and then king tubby meets the rockers uptown which led into more king tubby. later  horsemouth got to play his album (twice?). 

this morning horsemouth has had his coffees (er. and two paracetamol). 

it's a rainy day out there. horsemouth doesn't mind it yet.  

a phonograph of blind joe death

 'Oh Dear The Guardian has deleted my comment pointing out that every article they write about musicians is along the lines of ´She/He has been to hell and back but is now a lot more comfortable knowing who they really are. *

I would like just once to read about someone who is cheerful and well adjusted and not the usual ´My drug hell/I am such an outsider/feel my angst´ they always churn out..'

* copywrite Willy Donaldson..

so writes rob lawson (of far off riogordo parish). 

meanwhile someone horsemouth doesn't know has written a book about fahey tying him to the existentialists (those purveyors of authentic experience). you can read some of it over at university of north carolina press. 

you see there are some problems with fahey. that he isn't a blessed saint. that he ended his life in poverty. that he wasa bad tempered curmudgeon. fahey wrote and fahey japed. fahey parodies the whole earnest folk thing and then the whole ethnomusicological thing.  there is satire and burlesque. 

...and this is america, this is the washington suburbs and california and oregon in the 50ies, 60ies, 70ies, 80ies, 90ies, this is collecting trips to the south, this is road trips to rediscover old blues singer. this is america fractured by race, racism and the legacies of slavery and american people fractured by that.

there was a recent disturbing moment on american primitive guitars. 

the NYT publishes an article about the increasing diversity of the american primitive guitar field headed up with a photo of a young black woman, american primitive guitarist  yasmin williams. fahey and the previous 'old white male' founders of american primitive guitar are taken as automatically problematic compared to a young, often female and often multi-ethnic 'new guard'.  it's lazy journalism and analysis but that's not to say there's not an element of truth here. 

horsemouth welcomes the article as (minimally) a list of interesting musicians to research. 

people are primed to row this in the style of culture wars but people should be honest enough to admit that nothing could be more problematic than a style rooted in the blues and the music of the american south (a style itself rooted in minstrelsy). 

that fahey himself was 'not a racist' as his supporters claim cannot extricate him from this conjunction (it cannot extricate any of us, that's the problem). when fahey first plays this stuff he sings as well (under the name 'blind thomas') but there is simply no convincing place for him to sing from, no convincing voice for him to sing in, so he becomes an instrumental musician but with a vaudeville routine as 'blind joe death' but even this does not work and he has to become 'john fahey' american primitive guitarist, a presenter of american fingerpicking guitar as 'a concert instrument', a player not just of the blues and folk but also deploying avant garde classical motifs. 

it is important to remember the young fahey, the confused angry kid saving his money to cut 100 copies of his record, it is important to remember old fahey, the sick old man (still angry), it is important to remember the fahey of his 'career' - the record company owner who finds his own replacement (leo kottke - who does what fahey does 'better'), the guitarist who is not norman blake or stefan grossman (some kind of 'heritage' musician, a conservator of old time-y guitar), nor the other american primitive guitarists,  but one who has his own musical 'voice', a voice  that extends beyond the guitar into sound collages, into writing about music. 

sometime in the 60ies vivian maier takes a photo of musician blind arvella grey  busking on maxwell street, in chicago. she probably doesn't even develop the photo. she works a day job as a nanny. she carries on taking photos (like a soviet era writer writing for 'the desk drawer'). 

it's a privilege to get to make your art, it's a privilege to have people hear it or see it perceptions of artists and musicians are trapped in 'mad, bad and dangerous to know', we are all still trapped in societies that are racist, sexist, homophobic, and within our unreformed selves. 

horsemouth has been practicing high-rise strutter's ball on the banjolin. today he has to go and buy some food (he's rapidly running out). he will read more robert walser (he promises), later he will probably watch more lone wolf and cub. a sunshine-y morning (but it has faded off already). 

'the sea shall rise over your heads and drown you all'

'nonsense on my right,

nonsense on my left,

there is no mercy.

there is no justice.

the sea shall rise over your heads 

and drown you all.'

so screams nico at the start of the video for abschied (farewell) and she screams well (she sounds like she means it). it has a nicely concrete brechtian line (that's no way to greet an audience). there's plain talking for you. then she's off into into the usual churchy harmonium modes. 

a fashionably dressed male-model style goatherd wanders around the rocky wilderness. there's a dullness and a greyness to the filmstock. eventually he walks out of sight. 

ooof that's annoying. the smart meter fitters failed to show up. (and horsemouth was waiting in too). no communication from them. no nothing.   still nice walk with tim goldie instead.  they want him to text in a review/ they want him to book another visit on a premium rate phone line / er. bollocks to it all. 

other than the walk with tim goldie this completely spoiled horsemouth's mood for the day. even on the walk with tim goldie some dude sat down on the other side of the river and stared. on his last visit someone displayed inordinate interest in him and followed him back across the bridge. (what the actual fuck! mutters horsemouth. as usual only two steps from a paranoid meltdown).  

just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. remarks horsemouth sagely to himself.

further thoughts on scottish independence 

horsemouth spent the afternoon modifying the lyrics to gil-scott heron's the revolution will not be televised to apply to the current scottish situation but he would like to make some remarks to help him clarify his opinions on it.

first off if the scots leave the tories have an inbuilt majority in the rump state of the former UK (england, wales, cornwall, isle of man?, northern ireland?) even without biddable unionist support. as usual horsemouth would expect partition to bring about a 'carnival of reaction' (as james connolly would put it) on both sides of the border. economically he would expect it to be  hard on the scots and scottish workers to end up paying for it and he expects that spain would block any attempt to get scotland membership of the EU on the basis that it wouldn't want to encourage catalunyan seccession. 

horsemouth's tendency is towards integration in global capitalism leading to its overcoming globally by the workers united as a world class  rather than retreat into relying upon smaller nation states to defend abstract rights. 

eventually the workers have to settle accounts with the bosses wherever they are. 

horsemouth knows that this seems far less likely to happen than the water rising up over our heads but still until the water rises up over our heads we have to keep trying.  

nonetheless he can see the attraction of being maitre chez nous and no longer being under the despotic rule of the tories (or indeed any other party in westminster). for 50 years at least the economy has been run in such a fashion as to best suit the interests of the south more generally and the capitalist class more particularly. 

and for the last 50 years or so rule has been imposed upon the scots  on the basis of mere democracy from the majoritarian south. (of course the same could be said for the north of england, wales, northern ireland).    

the tories have successfully played upon these tensions in the north of england (and to a lesser extent the south of wales) but they are prevented from doing so in scotland by an accident of history. 

anyway. fuck it. horsemouth has to go and buy some food before he can work this morning or he will be going hungry during the day while he works (and this will not improve his temper). 

forward to scottish independence (horsemouth goes walkies with howard)

so forward to scottish independence.

 question. 

... and will we see wee willie krankie in the tower and bused in british troops preventing scots from voting (as in catalunya) and after all that will the spanish veto them (re)joining the EU? (oh look another land border with the EU) and will faslane become like guantanamo? will betty remain head of state? or will it be a republic?

if the scots rejoin the EU (huzzah) will horsemouth be able to get EU citizenship courtesy of his scottish grandmother (born in yorkshire)?  

meanwhile south of the border (in what the english laughably call the north). 

tracy brabin has been elected as west yorkshire’s first-ever metro mayor.

this means she will have to give up her day job as an MP.

this means labour face another by-election up north in batley and spen while the natives are restless and ungrateful. 

it looks like, while labour have the opportunity to delay going for a by-election, once mandated by a writ (usually within 3 months), it should take place within roughly 21 to 27 days.  so september?

yesterday horsemouth digested the political news and went off for walkies with howard 

(this time they were trying not to end it by getting slaughtered in a pub like last time). 

they got the bus up and wandered round wanstead park. they got an ice cream in at the tea hut and then sat watching the lake and the people with a bottle of beer. (howard brought the bread and humous, horsemouth brought the beer) the people were gorgeous. they tried visiting the arches but it was a bit shit. 

and then they walked back. howard had had a sore throat and had lost his voice the previous day. he recommended the donald byrd track at the start, horsemouth recommended the writings of robert walser. 

today. the electricity and gas people are coming to fit smart meters. horsemouth has changed suppliers and its part of the deal but frankly he should have stayed with the last lot. prices haven't gone up (particularly) but consumption has gone up because people are at home more as a result of lockdown/ working from home/ increasing age and disability. in any event there are penalties for leaving them early so horsemouth will be staying with them until february.  the sums are small RENT is the big expenseand and from june (together with council tax and water rates) it will be getting bigger. nonetheless locked down/ furloughed  horsemouth is saving money hand over fist. 

howard remarked that now horsemouth was a man of leisure (rather than a beast of burden) he would have to find something to do with his time. (will he though?)

continued speculation on the motivation of the monkey-hangers (and why horsemouth will not be joining in)

noise from the VOID is on Mixlr

horsemouth is up and about. (ok well he's gone into the kitchen and made coffee). last night while he slept some friends far away played an on-u sound session.  

last night more lone wolf and cub. disgraced the former executioner for the shogun wanders feudal japan as an assassin for hire all the while pushing a babycart containing his young son. the child is an interested observer of the carnage. 

zatoichi, as a mere yakuza or gangster,  is down with the common people, lone wolf, while he helps people, is more concerned with social form, that people have a code one they are living by, that elevates their actions above mere self interest. it is not as 47 ronin for example where the maintenance of society requires vast amounts of suppression and death (this horsemouth just finds depressing).

zatoichi likes to get drunk. he likes to eat. he likes to laugh. he likes to gamble. lone wolf does none of this. 

nonetheless there is something deeply enjoyable in the design of everything.  the material frugality of it appeals to horsemouth (he is a make do with less kind of guy). 

yesterday horsemouth was bored (and boring). he went out for a womble but his heart wasn't in it. he has walser's masquerade to be getting on with (but he made no progress). 

he spent an inordinate amount of time 'proving' that nothing could be told from the hartlepool election result (the tories got in in what used to be a safe labour seat). 

let's look at the conservative victory in hartlepool in detail shall we? 52% vote for the conservative on a turnout of 42% of the registered electorate. so at best 22% of the registered electorate voted conservative. this is (of course) given the government's handling of coronavirus on its own is 22% too much. 

elections are elections and deeper social processes are deeper social processes - as a way of working out what people are actually thinking first past the post elections are a very blunt tool. and much of the chattering about them is really just chatter. this is especially true of elections in which only 48% of registered voters can be arsed to vote (and frankly that's most of them these days). 

incumbent governments often lose by-elections (we take it as a consolation, they are in power but at least we gave them a bloody nose) but not in their heartlands - there their share of the vote might go down (to much oohing and aahing) but the locals might just have correctly reasoned that they were going to get in anyway (so why go vote). 

in the local elections labour has lost councillors by the shedload and this has been translated into losses of control at a handful of councils because of inbuilt labour majorities (where they have a majority). 

horsemouth says build whatever theory suits you because on that sand it won't stay up for long.  events will soon knock it down. 

the game the establishment plays is called divide and rule and all the stuff about it being the fault of  london, the woke, the young, the left, labour remainers etc. is just division. the young are your kids and you are launching them into a world that will offer them far less opportunity than even britain in the 80ies under thatcher. 

the poor labour showing in hartlepool might have been caused by the colour of keir's tie, or his policies (or lack of them), the attitude of the left, or maybe corbyn's policies or brexit or 1066 and all that. everyone will have a story that makes sense. what people won't do is travel up to hartlepool and interview loads of monkey hangers (the abusive british term for people from hartlepool google it) about why they did it.

it probably didn't make the news (because no one died)

NICO reading part of the poem ULALUME by EDGAR ALLAN POE.

Music is by spanish band NEUROMIUM. the video by kenneth anger.

check it out - first as tragedy then as farce (though grenfell wasn't actually the first time). 

a fire in a block that still hasn't had the inflammable cladding removed a full four years after grenfell. and on a more serious note this is a residential block, the fire was on floors 8 or 9 with 10 more floors above it. the fire broke out in the morning on a friday (so I guess there were a fair few people home). 140 people were evacuated. fortunately it looks like it didn't spread. 

and fortunately it was in one of the lower rise high rise blocks. a resident from a nearby block makes it onto radio 5 (the waking watch did nothing) at 11.05am. the fire started on the 8th and she claims spread to the 18th. 

and meanwhile former housing minister  gavin barwell (the man who really should have sorted out the problems with the building regulations) was on the radio while it burned. apparently the current housing minister robert jenrick visited it last night but declined to meet the residents. 

and it probably didn't make the news  (because no one died). two residents were taken to hospital with smoke inhalation. 

horsemouth continues his investigations into robert walser. 

'canetti shared kafka's admiration for robert walser. he read walser's 'short pieces, the most beautiful things in modern german literature' again and again. he was one of his favourite writers... he writes that 'he (walser) is becoming more and more important to me. I am convinced that without him kafka would not have come into existence, and in any way I hope one day to explain he means as much to me as kafka.' 

horsemouth remembered correctly that canetti was into walser, but he cannot find him in the autobiography (it has no index). possibly this is something to read once he has read the walser (certainly he hasn't read it in a long time).  canetti was knocking around vienna and berlin at the right time - karl krauss is the big influence.  canetti is a crowd theorist and this can be traced from hobbes  and into arendt or agamben.

of course the meaning of the crowd these days is very strange. 

today it's a rainy and grey day out. 

horsemouth isn't back on the music making until sunday the 16th. he has allowed himself to realise he was robbing some led zeppelin for his second riff on the tune with suke and enza so he'll have to knock that on the head and come up with something else. 

next week

er. payday. ascension day. probably the last bit of work before the summer holiday. 

a borderline near poverty ( 20 years of diarised life)

'we must break out of the ‘debate’ set up by communicative capitalism, in which capital is endlessly cajoling us to participate, and remember that we are involved in a class struggle. the goal is not to ‘be’ an activist, but to aid the working class to activate...'  - mark fisher, exiting the vampire castle. 

'one learns very little here, there is a shortage of teachers...' - robert walser, institute benjamenta

horsemouth met mark fisher a few times quite early on, when he taught down at orpington college for example. he was at heart a populist, that's his weakness as well as his strength. one reason he's big now is because he hustled (the blog, the Wire, hauntology etc.) rather than just writing for the academics. his exiting the vampire castle is a good article and it certainly diagnoses a problem that has become more intense since. 

it reminds horsemouth of howard slater's 'evacuate the leftist bunker' but for a later post-internet age.

horsemouth is having a robert walser reading session. 

he has a copy of masquerade and other stories (in a quartet encounters edition) and a copy of institute benjamenta (in a serpent's tail edition), he's reading his way through the stories and the introductions/ afterwards by the likes of  his fans (christopher middleton, william h. gass). max brod liked his writing, kafka too, sontag later, he passed unnoticed amongst the expressionists, horsemouth seems to remember canetti liking him (must check that out).  

walser shares many of kafka's problems, but kafka's solutions are better. walser is the small to kafka's large, the shallow to his deep. 

'lightly attached to people, to the formalities of society, to any work which lies beneath another's will like a leg beneath a log, and more in love  with localities and their regularities (like the seasons) which do not require him, walser draws a borderline near poverty for himself and lives his increasingly frugal life in little rooms, in donated left-over spaces, in otherwise unoccupied attics, in circumstances straightened to the shape of his thin frame, shrunk to the size of microscopic script...' 

from the introduction by william h. gass. in many ways this is horsemouth's strategy too, make enough to live reduce one's needs to what will get one by. it is the poor scholar's problem. 

it is bandcamp friday. horsemouth will get hustling. it looks good out (he will go for a wander). 

we are moving into six months of horsemouth diarising every day on blogger. 

previously horsemouth used to do this on facebook and transfer a selection of it to blogger. but facebook have killed off their notes tool (and your ability to go back and visit it). before that horsemouth diarised on myspace (after that died they very thoughtfully posted him a big textfile with all his posts in it). horsemouth believes that something similar can be achieved for facebook. 

we are moving on into 20 years of diarised life (his actual handwritten physical diaries are not this, they are mere notebooks, appointment books).