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).