horsemouth's voice-over for catastro*/FILLE's george lansbury animation is now available on youtube (go take a look).
horsemouth has had his coffee. the crows are perched on tv antennae. it's a bright sunshiney morning.
horsemouth is up late (he has no idea why he slept so well or so long). yesterday was another day when horsemouth found it difficult to get anything moving forward (he may have been over optimistic in reporting his return to his usual sunny panglossian optimism).
the sun refused to shine for long enough for him to get comfortable in the back garden, he has bogged down in his reading of puttering about in a small land (the tragedy has been prepared, it is all about to kick off, horsemouth can't look). he dipped into the origins of totalitarianism.
sten and horsemouth have socialised the coffee purchasing and had laid up big supplies of coffee ahead of the pandemic (and truth be told brexit) trying to beat the price rises they anticipated. these are now exhausted meanwhile the price of coffee has remained stable at about £5.80 per 500g for lavazza red label.
in the interest of micro-disclosure they have opted for big 1kg bags of lavazza red label beans as a means of keeping the price of coffee affordable. to this end horsemouth has purchased a small cheap coffee grinder (£10 asda) which seems to do a tolerable job if not overloaded. the results smell great but horsemouth is not as impressed with the taste as much as he would have hoped.
there was some interest in home roasting at one point until horsemouth realised it would not in fact save him money, it was just a route to gourmet coffee. (in which horsemouth has no interest).
horsemouth spent a while investigating his pension (because he may be able to access it early).
he was auto-enrolled a mere 5 years ago when the government started forcing employers with part-time staff to make pension provision for them but on the last date it was possible to do so. nonetheless they have contribute more to it than horsemouth does (which is helpful).
of course if he takes it early they may well pay him less (horsemouth will have to think about it).
... and so it won't be a lot (but as the asda advert has it every little helps).
today horsemouth goes to a social event (this occasions some anxiety) and then he's away down to suke's to do some recording. there was a plan to go for a wander with howard but horsemouth has decided he can't do both (plus is could all crash and burn - at horsemouth's insistence mind you- at drink o'clock).
he did originally intend to post monty python's mayday in england but he has decided it's homophobic and a xenophobic and not their strongest work.
there seems to be a row brewing on american primitive guitar following on from an article in the new york times - sample line
'since the heyday of john fahey, the genre has been seen as the province of white men. a new generation of diverse players is rapidly changing that.'
horsemouth will give it a read (when he has headspace) and let you know what he thinks. music stands (or falls) on its own merits and yet (as with all the great american music) there is a fault line of race running through it.
this article, in particular in its characterisation of fahey, is not a hill horsemouth would chose to die on. from what he's read fahey was not a fan of the 60ies folkies attitude to black music and the blues because it deployed it politically (he said) rather than recognising it as the great art it was. (though in the era of civil rights how could it be otherwise).
on the other hand this article is an interesting collection of guitarists new to horsemouth. he'd only really heard of gwenifer raymond and marisa anderson before. on the matter of representation as someone from the valleys of south wales horsemouth feels it's good to see a welsh guitarist (gwenifer) make the lists. there is a relationship between this music and politics and representation, but as fahey himself would note, it's complicated
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