in defence of horsemouth helliwell (struggle with imaginary foes)

after a wrestling with cookies horsemouth is with you (fucking shitting things). track him all over the internet then (like he gives a shit). 

horsemouth likes it when things work easily. he is suitably less enthusiastic when they don't.

all he really has to tell you this morning is that it is still a grey day outside. 

horsemouth has dylan thomas's adventures in the skin trade on the go (they have reached the apartment full of furniture), he also has in defence of raymond sebond by montaigne (he has read the introduction). it is a 50p second hand edition that was once (according to the sticker on it) in the indiana university bookstore.

until now horsemouth has been misunderstanding this book. he assumed it was a defence of an old friend of montaigne's (such as etienne de la boetie) but it is in fact a defence of a writer from 200 years before montaigne, a doctor working in 15th century toulouse who wrote in a latinised spanish. finding the book in his collection, montaigne's father asks him to translate it but what we really get is a precis of its ideas. 

'man is not inferior but one of the animals' 

montaigne is interesting because he writes about himself and the process of writing (freya stark was interesting for similar reasons). he may be the first in the west to do this. 

yesterday horsemouth went for two walks on the common, both were cut short by the necessity of avoiding his fellow humans. his fellow horses he was fine with. on the common he mainly struggled with imaginary foes (those of the collective endeavour type), later he tried to find a place where he wasn't sitting and reading while his aged father tilled the soil (it's a bad look he knows). 

in the evening he watched the post. tom hanks and meryll streep refight vietnam in the name of journalism, feminism and gracious good manners against the charmless (and only seen yelling into a phone) richard nixon. it's not all the president's men, or rather it is, it is that self-regarding re-telling that makes conditional events look like outcomes of a deep seated sense of justice (it is a vietnam war that once again doesn't feature the vietnamese). 

the hero is in fact bob macnamara. he has his people write a document that exposes the whole shoddy mission creep and futility of the whole thing. this can then leak. he permits himself to see it and once it is written down it can be passed on to the people it was not intended for. 

it's rubbish weather for the next few days. horsemouth will read and such like. 

bandcamp fridays is still going on (horsemouth thought it was over) - next date august the 6th.