mommy was a bank robber...

so horsemouth found the one film made by barbara loden, actor's studio alumni, sometime wife of elia kazan (and curiously actress in the swimmer). what it's most like is bonnie and clyde. but it's not like it at all. yes it is a 70ies set story of ne'er-do-wells meeting up and robbing banks but it has none of the joy and self-assertion of arthur penn's movie (before they go down to their bloody deaths). it is as if it had been made by an italian neo-realist or an uncharacteristically dour nouvelle vague director.  what it is perhaps nearest to are the films of john cassavetes. 

loden directs and stars in it. other than her it's a largely amateur cast, with largely improvised dialogue and everybody is great. we start in the pennsylvania coalfields (poverty and environmental degradation enough to drive anyone to drink) and end up in a bar with drunken hillbilly music (it's kind of like southern comfort in that regard with the cajuns). in between she gets involved in a bank robbery (but largely out of passivity), the male bank-robber is just some anxious OCD bread-head, anxious to make money as proof of his worth, already too old for this line of work and is well-played by established actor michael higgins. 

and it's a good film. well made. it comes out. gets a botched release and dies a the box office. she dies aged 48 of cancer so there's never a chance for her to make another.  

michael gove has been filmed dancing to techno and chatting to random locals in an aberdeen night club. will he do a brian harvey and tell us about better living through chemistry? will priti patel be able to get the drug sniffing dog round to him before he's used up all the evidence? 

other than that yesterday was a bit of a wash out.

sten's just out of the door to work. horsemouth is still waiting on his 'not-enough-money-to-actually-retire' cheque. today shopping (cheap pizzas, museli, pasta, whatever they actually have left on the shelves after brexit). 

autumnal (pale horses)

there will be good days after this (but horsemouth isn't seeing them in the forecast). here's mike oldfield's hergest ridge (released the day before yesterday 1974). hergest ridge (the place) is in herefordshire  but horsemouth has never been (it's up in the north west, nearish to leominster, it would require a special journey).  

yesterday evening TV -  len deighton's funeral in berlin followed by agatha christie's the pale horse.  

the pale horse (at least in this production) had appreciable folk horror elements (witches, corn dollies, lammas processions, cursings,  hair loss) and a 20s/30s setting and (of course) modern casting and concerns  (which horsemouth thinks is good - there's a myth being made that the social progress  of recent years has always been in existence - horsemouth likes this). 

len deighton's funeral in berlin on the contrary shows us the berlin wall and the cold war, things definitively stuck in the past  (well maybe the cold war is back). 

other than that horsemouth read (the LRB from june and may this year). there was a review of hunter biden's memoir (the errant son) and review of some books on edo (the city of the shogun).  this fits in with horsemouth's other readings/ watchings. 

really horsemouth should be getting on with things (how often have you heard him say that). he likes to pretend that he is loading up his brain with a feeling for the territory and that soon it will start to vomit forth considered and intelligent text (but that may not be the case). he has found a small single-serving vodka bottle he has been using that as a slide (with the laramie tuned open G). 

for various reasons horsemouth will not be away to the cloud forests again this year (he will have to make do with his domicile in the marshes). 

sunny this morning (thereafter rubbish)

sunny this morning (thereafter rubbish).  horsemouth types this sitting up in bed with a jumper on and the duvet over his knees. 

not broadcast at the time footage has emerged of the incredible string band performing/ miming to october song, broadcast/ not broadcast on dutch VJOEW TV. recorded on 2nd October 1967. the clip has some awesome tape distortion sound. 

horsemouth finds himself contemplating autumn but there's still a few weeks of decent temperatures and sunshine to go. 

horsemouth found a podcast with some genuine BOC fans reviewing secret treaties (or at least people prepared to say nice things about it). the main thing it makes horsemouth realise is that he much prefers through assembled albums where some effort is made to take you on a  musical journey with transitions (even if deliberately abrupt transitions) between the songs. roadhawks has this, 12 dreams of dr. sardonicus has this, even warrior on the edge of time has this (certainly in the assault and battery/ golden void transition). and secret treaties has it a lot, submarine noises, tape collages of musical boxes... 

murray krugman (the day to day producer in the studio) deserves a lot of credit for assembling it. 

horsemouth regrets not being able to get a musicians of bremen volume four into this format for you. lots of the songs have part IIs and would have been ripe for stitching together (but hey-ho). 

secret treaties is the sum of the talents in and around the band. none of the lyrics are by band members (leaning heavily on patti smith, richard meltzer, sandy pearlman) and are mostly  incomprehensible gibberish. one of the panellists makes the very good point that albums were very mysterious before the internet, you only had the cover, the lyrics and whatever they deigned to tell you on the sleeve to work out what was going on. rock lyrics seldom have to do more than suggest a mood.

it is all taking much longer than he would have thought

suni mcgrath he had 3 records on adelphi: cornflower suite, the call of the morning dove and childgrove '69-73. in 2006 he recorded this song seven stars.  you can find about 25 of his pieces on youtube. 

this really is very good american primitive. 

it is all taking much longer than horsemouth would have thought to turn himself into a retired gentleman. hopefully they now have everything. horsemouth scans the email for a breakthrough (no breakthrough). 

last night he went over to minty's and they jammed for a bit. horsemouth returned with the rest is noise (alex ross) and a copy of prog magazine. horsemouth has just discovered that he left with andy's guitar (and that andy still has his). oops (and they weren't even drinking). 

in the day he read about bakhtin (who interestingly like pasternak turns out to be another child of the neo-kantians at marburg through his friend kagan). horsemouth has bakhtin's book on rabelais round here somewhere from whence the concept of the carnivalesque that gets taken up in teh discussion of music a lot. 

having finished the hawkbinge  podcast horsemouth attempted to test his toleration for other podcasts discussing music - he searched for blue oyster cult ones and was rewarded with a podcast that ostensibly compares two albums (in this case graceland by paul simon with secret treaties by the blue oyster cult - strange juxtaposition or what?).

now graceland had a big effect on opening up interest in south african music beyond south africa (and thus african music in general beyond africa). there had been some interest in african music before (as the record labels had scrambled to try and find the new bob marley following marley's death) - there were attempts to launch king sunny ade and the nigerian style of juju music with its big bands featuring many multi-layered guitars (this was one of the things horsemouth first saw and listened to). 

graceland is the one that does it however. by incorporating the african music elements in under the rubric of doo-wop, rock n'roll, zydeco, gospel, elements already familiar in the west and by making them a foil to paul simon's nervy anxious lyrics.  

it's interesting to hear all of this clumsily discussed and yet the hosts demonstrate an affection for the music. they are much more comfortable talking about the blue oyster cult's secret treaties and its snarky, sarcastic take on heavy metal. 

we have reached the weekend. this has a very notional meaning for horsemouth the retired man (it's no longer a matter of cracking a can of beer as soon as he gets in the door friday night). 

it's a decent sunshine-y morning. horsemouth should take minty's guitar back. 

my father worked in a call centre (and his father before him)

 horsemouth is up and awake. he has had his coffee. today looks like it will be a decent day. 

50 years of focus. ok there are youngsters on the bass and on the guitar but the drummer and the organist can still kick it. the audience horsemouth worries about. it starts to rain. they put on their waterproofs. get up and start to shuffle towards the exit. 

he has exhausted the hawkbinge podcast and will now have to wait another month for the quark, strangeness and charm  episode. now the transition to new wave hawkwind is quite a transition (quark, PXR5, hawklords), horsemouth wonders how the neophyte will take to it. later (beginning with levitation if they are not doing the live 79 album) there is the transition to the huw lloyd-langton years and a period of relative musical competence (and progressive boredom in the shadow of NWOBHM). thereafter horsemouth confidently expects the young man to lose the will to live. 

horsemouth continued his researches into the tokugawa shogunate and edo - if the principle of equality is to be discarded how will people be reconciled to a world rigidly controlled by status? it kind of goes with the hokusai (horsemouth will have to finish listening to the lecture to find out how). 

horsemouth's researches into joe biden have ground to a halt. 

john harris is wandering round the somewheres of britain (swansea, milton keynes...) in the post credit crisis, post brexit, 'post' covid moment. 

there are various things horsemouth should be getting on with. he's trying to shepherd the ship of his life into the harbour of semi-retirement the better to focus on the things he actually wants to do (whatever they are) and to avoid having to work and commute about during the pandemic (unlikely to 'end' anytime soon horsemouth concludes). the virus has been coming closer. horsemouth assumes that with the jab the death and hospitalisation rates will be lower even as the numbers of people with it rise. 

yesterday horsemouth wandered up into the hills to catch up with claudia.

forgotten fragments of songs

it's a greyish morning (and apparently it is going to be grey all day). ho-hum.

hold on a sec horsemouth will see if he can rustle up some coffee. (ah that's better).

horsemouth has been reading branko marcetic's yesterday's man: the case against joe biden (front wall book potlatch - free) which goes quickly. it's a necessary corrective to any idea that joe biden will do anything useful. 

the john renbourn collected (flashback records - a fiver) is great. 

yesterday horsemouth sunbathed in the back garden (and even came in and hid from the sun at some points). he went up to the cafe to chat with minty.  this morning he's wearing a jumper.

he's been enjoying the hawkbinge podcast - what is very enjoyable is seeing what kind of opinion of the classic albums would be formed by someone unaffected by the peer group pressure of hawkwind fandom. what if you didn't have to pick brainstorm as your track from doremi? what if you could pick the jangly 12string songs instead? or the mellotron and violin workouts from warrior? 

their intention is to go through hawkwind's studio albums chronologically (bypassing the live albums) but this may already be misconceived. they've already had to break stride for silver machine the single (the rhythm track recorded live) and space ritual (a double live album featuring many songs not recorded elsewhere). even the studio albums are not integral things - hall of the mountain grill is padded out with  two tracks recorded live  (paradox and you'd better believe it), warrior on the edge of time features the already released single kings of speed. 

the live is the key resource for hawkwind. 

hawkwind's output is very conditional (a product of circumstance rather than planning). there are no magical talents - there is a dave brock/ nik turner tension (minor talents), distorted and hidden by the addition of lemmy and simon house (genuine talents). 

there is a pleasure in being reminded of forgotten songs (web weaver for example). it's a strange stub of a song. horsemouth had totally forgotten there's a vocal on it (a decent harmony even) because it's mixed down as texture. did they run out of lyrics? 

today horsemouth goes to pick up some keys (and maybe play some music - we shall see). 

snow, moon, and flowers (edo, kyoto, osaka)

horsemouth is back in his normal homestead. it is a cold grey morning (horsemouth is even wearing a jumper as he sits up in bed and types this. ok he has taken it off he was too warm). 

horsemouth is up a book about hokusai (and a biography of joe biden entitled yesterday's man) thanks to a front wall book potlatch by two gay dudes (thanks dudes). they emerged from the house while horsemouth was making his selection and then volubly headed off in the direction of town.

the book on hokusai is great. hokusai lived in edo, the new capital of the shogunate (japan's military rulers) rather than the old capital kyoto of the emperor, who remained alive but as a figurehead/ religious leader. edo was perhaps one of the first megacities (with over a million inhabitants by the end of the 17th century).

horsemouth is of course familiar with edo (and the tokugawa shogunate) as a result of his lockdown watching of the tv series of shogun assassin, zatoichi, shinobi no mono and a little concurrent reading. 

hokusai drew from an early age. before he worked as an artist he worked as an assistant in a bookshop and trained as a block-cutter. between these two stages there were professional copyists who copied the design and specialist printers who actually did the printing. this division of labour continued until about 1904 when yamamoto kanae started cutting the blocks and pulling the prints himself.  edo was the centre of the single print industry, books were more likely to be published in kyoto and osaka. 

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

yesterday horsemouth went for a coffee with martin (long time no see) and then relocated from where he was staying (the riverside gaff). later he watched a thinly plotted jailbreak movie. whilst in the seaside town of  islington he dropped in to the most excellent flashback records and bought a john renbourn compilation (collected). 

horsemouth is slightly dreading the appearance of any songs he might recognise. he's enjoying the careful mix of acoustic and electric guitars. 

it is the fourth anniversary of horsemouth and hoard's duo gig just off brick lane four years ago. 

'suddenly he started speaking about marburg...'

'suddenly he started speaking about marburg. this was the first description of the town and not of the school which I had heard. later I was convinced that it is impossible to speak of its antiquity and poetry other than like this, but at that time this enamoured description made to the clatter of the ventilator fan, was new to me...'

good morning people (and what a beautiful morning it is). horsemouth just heard birdsong. 

today horsemouth had planned a comparison of boris pasternak's writing about the medieval city of marburg and m.john harrisons fictitious city of viriconium. 

eventually he (boris) gets there,

'I stood craning my neck and breathing hard. above me towered a dizzy height on which in three tiers stood the stone maquette of the university, the town hall, and the eight hundred year old castle. after my tenth step I ceased to understand where I was... the streets clung to the steps like gothic dwarfs...'

the city is the lead character. pasternak tells us more about the city than he does about the personality and appearance of his beloved. like viriconium it is a city with a high city-  a city of philosophy and history and science, and a low city.  

a little while later he is in venice. but venice is well walked and written already. 

horsemouth has found a podcast where a neophyte is introduced to the music of hawkwind album by album. his judgements are sometimes utterly wrong-headed (and then sometimes shockingly perceptive).  

there is (of course) something deeply wrong with a band who can lift longfellow's a psalm of life  for the verse of a song and then add a chorus of 'assault and battery of the human anatomy maaan!' to it. (and not in a good way). 

thinking about it the post silver machine history of hawkwind it is one of the supression of lemmy - someone with talent and the sidelining of nik turner (his songs are forced down the batting order and eventually he is ejected from the band), it is also the professionalisation of hawkwind - simon house, alan powell (actual musicians). 

on hall of the mountain grill lemmy is allowed a song lost johnny,  he's allowed to sing the b-side of the single kings of speed  (er. a track you may have heard of called motorhead) and you can hear him fully formed already, he can sing, he can write and what he does is fully stamped with his personality. but this must be prevented from happening again. curiously the band has lost focus and will not play to its strengths, but in some ways it is doing its best work. 

still. nobody can sing well. 

it will fall. 

from quark it will reform around calvert's lyrics.  

the podcasters have (of course) sabotaged their own work by only looking at part of hawkwind's work (the studio albums) much more of the tale is in the live albums (they've already had to admit space ritual) and in the singles (silver machine) and the compilations (roadhawks in particular), the books, the side projects. 

how will they retain the will to live throughout the years of endless regurgitation -  the 90ies, the noughties, the 2010s? does our genial host really think there is much in this worth saving from annihilation's waste. 

they are excellently slapdash (failing to notice the literary antecedent to the track steppenwolf in herman hesse's identically named novel for example) and formulaic. 

horsemouth is planning a trip to the bank but he's also noting the covid uptick (and from quite a high level) and the imminent return of schools (that great driver of sociability and infection). horsemouth has gone all howard hughes about these things (er. except when he's drunk). 

 

, 

the garden of the afternoon

 

it's the morning. horsemouth (as he noted yesterday) has survived again. howard came round and if they didn't get out to walk and talk at least they did discuss things, ate a pizza, had some cups of tea and a glass of beer each and er, then... went up the pub for 3 pints or so. they ended up prowling chatsworth street for food (which in retrospect was a bad idea). the advantage is that they now know the noodle bar isn't all that. 

later he did the regular sunday phonecall from his mum and watched some tv. sten is back, daryll is around, ian is off n the highlands. 

horsemouth is playing you suni mcgrath's garden of the afternoon - which is pretty great. (neat ending).

horsemouth has a small cup of coffee. 

yesterday's recycling find? a brace (well six) of LRBs from earlier on in 2021. huzzah! while horsemouth is a voracious reader of their blogs and podcasts (same for the NLR) it is rare for him to actually buy and read a whole issue. 

ok now to get this blog posted up and a second small coffee in. 

horsemouth has survived again ('a despot clothed in dissident's garb')

as the ernest borgnine (2nd in command) character remarks at the end of the final battle scene in the seven samurai, 'we have survived again.'  and he falls to his knees as he does so.

horsemouth has survived again. he makes it to one of the secret turning points of the year. 

nearly four years ago horsemouth and howard played a duo gig in support of the as yet unrecorded musicians of bremen volume three (and because it is horsemouth's favourite thing to do). this was effectively a pay to play gig but horsemouth accepted it because he wanted to play (and in particular he wanted to play the new material). 

it was a harmonium and ukulele (for howard) and guitars (for horsemouth) gig. they went on first, rocked the spot and then left and then sat in the park drinking with a few friends. 

the broadband where horsemouth is remains buggy (or something). 

yesterday horsemouth was feeling angsty. it was a can't do anything today must wait for tomorrow kind of day. horsemouth went out for a couple of prowl arounds. in a normal year horsemouth would deal with such anxiety by retail therapy (keep his apocalypse stockpiles of coffee, museli, rice, pasta high or go browse for second hand books) but in the conditions of the pandemic he is trying to avoid this. 

as far as horsemouth can see the covid figures are on their way back up (in the three categories - cases reported, hospital admissions and deaths - you would expect each to take about 2 weeks to feed into the next). 

that said horsemouth is having a busy social whirl today. first a meeting with howard (a walk and a talk), then a barbacue and key handover (maybe) up in the hills of walthamstow (the cloud forest), and at some point horsemouth has to get in the regular sunday phonecall to his mum  (instituted as a result of the pandemic). 

oh well it's just got easier the barbacue (about which horsemouth was being anxious, well anxious about doing two things in a day) has just been cancelled (now horsemouth is disappointed - he'd started looking forward to it). 

so yesterday horsemouth was telling you about boltanski and chiapello and their new culture of capitalism and what should appear but a blog on the NLR about agile firms and agile software design that references it. now horsemouth wears two hats - he is a 'despot clothed in dissident's garb'  - on the one hand he is with the workers against the evil exploitative capitalism, one normally best resisted with a thoroughgoing shveikian inefficiency, and on the other hand he likes the romance of development, one that calls for the melting of solid things into air. 

horsemouth four loom weaver

a grade A grey day. rain later say the beeb. 

meanwhile cyclists set off on their bike rides. people walk purposefully  down the canal towpath for exercise rather than to get to a specific destination. 

there are a number of things horsemouth could be doing. 

he could be working on subtitling (closed captions) his george lansbury piece. or he could be working out who to ask for help with chopping down the fall of the house of fitzgerald from its epic like near  15 minutes to a more playable at a particular festival 10 minutes. but even then horsemouth is not utterly convinced they fall within the right geographical area or friendship group to get in. 

horsemouth supposes that he wants people to see these productions that he was involved in and that if he wants that to happen he has to take this task on. 

in general horsemouth could do with seizing the means of production.  if he is not going to be a worker (employed by capitalists to work on machinery bought with their capital) then he will have to be an artisanal small producer in his retirement. 

it is as if horsemouth were a four loom weaver working away in his farmhouse growing pale from lack of sunshine before the new manufactories had opened (except that now it is after the factories  have closed). 

the theory (in boltanski and chiapello's the new culture of capitalism) is that capitalism reformulated itself as creative and experimental in order to deal with a turning away from large corporate capitalism by potential management cadres. unable to respond adequately to the worker's critique of capitalism (that it is exploitative) capitalism instead responded to the artists critique of capitalism (that it leads to standardised products and stultifying uniformity). 

horsemouth is not entirely sure how this fits in with rentier capitalism - he guesses that the rich (the new rentier class) are retiring from capitalist production the better to live off their investments pushing all the risk out onto the people who are precariously employed or working in start ups or in under-capitalised artisanal companies. 

the people are supported in this by the state by means of in work benefits, retirement incomes, redundancy cheques, food banks, allotments, work in the informal economy etc. but they are farmed by the state also (VAT, tax, NI, fees for education and professional registration) 

it is knocking on for a year since the release of covers by musicians of bremen. 

horsemouth brought painbirds (he'd been playing it with minty), he's pleased with how it came out (he likes the organ).  howard brought turn your heater on but it was horsemouth who reworked it to the telephone love rhythm (sort of), softening its edges in the process (which may have been a mistake).  howard brought their second attempt to record blue crystal fire (which is kind of a secret track). 

these are horsemouth's usual wibblings.  

ok he's had his coffee (now it's time for toast). 

a morning of administrations (when horsemouth should have been out in the sunshine)

that was his yesterday. and his today is even worse. he has spent it hungover and remorseful.

 the morning of administrations

this was horsemouth pursuing his retirement. horsemouth had to print out some documentations. fill them in. scan them and send them off to the requisite place. hopefully that has all gone smoothly. horsemouth as usual was a little anxious but he has at least made a start and possibly made a finish of it. he probably won't know til monday.

today horsemouth blogs late and full of remorse after a few pints with steve to celebrate his achievement. he woke up in the morning had a coffee and promptly threw that up (and the remainder of the delicious falafel wrap he'd had on his way back the night before? he threw that up as well). 

of his walk back he remembers very little. he walked up mare street (he remembers next to none of this) and must have come through the graveyard and emerged on the bottom of chatsworth road (there he remembers having a dawdle trying to work out which gaff to back to - he picked his main gaff.

horsemouth has been showing photos of his paper diaries (houseman's peace diaries 1992 - 1995, work diaries 1998 - 2013 mostly appointments, lyrics, a few real entries and some scribbles plus a cassette of a bush house recording session monitor mix (1991-2?) 3 songs cia, soundsystem, run from this.

the advice of his friends - when everything gets weird, burn those puppies and get on a plane to the island. 

the moment that changed me: the world discovered my secret blog

'it was probably letting it be published in the grauniad  that pushed the self-destruct button. HR started reading it, my boss started reading it, their boss started reading it, soon the entire department was closed down to prevent me telling the truth about the boredom and stupidities of modern work. 

and all I got was a big fat redundancy cheque...'

this is of course not what happened to horsemouth. nor was he transformed into a writer by this experience that he didn't have. 

this morning horsemouth woke up in his main abode, having gone there to guard the property from felonious youth (imaginary) and to watch a movie, daryll was in anyway (it turns out). he felt guilty he was leaving the gaff he was cat-sitting unprotected by occupation.

this morning he got up. put the coffee on and looked around for the laptop (but of course it was at the cat-sit gaff). he could (of course) if he'd thought about it, used the netbook (such a frightfully loyal and battered little machine) currently sitting neglected in a corner of the room. 

yesterday to horsemouth listened another great mix from jacken elswyth of the shovel dance collective and betwixt and between tapes fame. and following on from that he listened to part of vinyl coda by philip jeck. horsemouth saw philip jeck play once at a wire event on turntablism with various luminaries from the UK turntablist scene. 

today horsemouth goes to the library hoping to use their scanners and printers. in the evening he goes to the pub with steve. 

friday howard is back from his journeys in the alfriston area (and might be coming round to avail himself of the shower (er. and then they might go for a beer).

sunday the anniversary of the release one year ago of covers. 

horsemouth is contemplating trying to get the fall of the house of fitzgerald into a short film competition (mostly so that it will get shown and people will see it). to do this he would need to get it cut down from about 15 minutes to less than 10 minutes. he is hunting around for a way to get this done (but perhaps he should check with his collaborators if this is ok first).  

no more problems . all problems have been solved

Diana Collier - Ode to Riddley Walker from Steven Paul Collins on Vimeo.

it's a beautiful morning. it sounds like they were running the washing machine upstairs and are now putting the vacuum cleaner round (they must be very houseproud). outside people sound like they're scraping weeds out of the cracks in the pavement and huge refuse lorries reverse back and fore through the narrow curved roadways of fake mews in search of giant booming wheeled containers of waste. 

the giant industrial process of removing our shit and our waste and our packaging has begun like an alien invasion.

horsemouth (and his digestion) seem to have emerged unscathed from eating a pan of rice he left on the side for two days.  he watched a sci-fi movie about first contact with aliens whose gift to humanity is a language that opens the mind up to the future and to the past (sapir-whorf). 

no more problems . all problems have been solved

the right to left (or left to right) sentences you are reading have the arrow of time in them (says the film-maker who shows you one series of moving images after another). and in film we have learned to read the flashback (and even the flash-forward), we activate the resources that enable us to suspect causation and a story in what we see.

the aliens have a language of giant filigree 'O' ideograms. 

this is a radically un-derridean thing to do (or perhaps it's very derridean). in derrida things are haunted by their possibilities, things are haunted by inbuilt instabilities from their extended foundings, things are subject to time.

the film shows the baleful effect of solaris and 2001 in that it goes cosmic as its solution but it does so using the new temporal logic that film affords. (of course, having known linguists horsemouth wonders what they make of it). 

if all problems were in the fullness of time always already solved would not all conversations be angelic (and what would be the point of having them other than that we have always had them). 

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

so here it is, horsemouth is retired (ok no there's various bits of paper he has to fill in and scan and send off first - but the principle is the same). what will he do with his time? will he get on with his novel now? or his rock opera? 

certainly he's got to get on with the business plan for the communal endeavour (as do the other people who said they would er. who horsemouth is supposed to be leading through this delicate task). here the task is iterative but it must be made to appear that consequences follow from facts, priorities follow from mission statements and strangely isolated values.  

phew the giant clanking machines are gone (at the level of waste it produces capitalism cannot hide its essential nature). 

maybe horsemouth's spaceship visit was just such a waste management machine. maybe horsemouth was looking out of the wrong window when he was looking for them. 

the sky has clouded over. the beautiful dawn already contained the grey day and already contains the setting of the sun. 

what will horsemouth do today? 

giant machine helicopter taking off/ alien space ship landing noises

this morning, when horsemouth got up and went for his morning pee. there were giant machine helicopter taking off/ alien space ship landing noises outside the window. he wandered out onto the balcony (in his underwear) but, unable to see what was going on, wandered incuriously back in. 

it's a coldish/ greyish morning - the seasons are on the turn it feels like. horsemouth has a jumper with him (cautious beast). 

last night horsemouth watched peterloo (well as far as the march setting out). it's all going to end badly predicts horsemouth the scaredy cat. the peterloo marchers wanted universal male suffrage so that the working man could be heard what they got was chopped up by the cavalry.  fuck the ruling class snarls horsemouth from under his duvet. 

yesterday horsemouth went to visit andrew minty. they had a bit of a jam. (it was nice to play the old tunes and to hear some new ones).  horsemouth was out of practice with the singing (when it came to his turn) but it was fun to do. he chatted (briefly) with sam, bands getting better, getting their acts together.

it's a strange world to launch into - everything is a calculated risk. austin songwriter cari hutson; 

“we can’t afford to sit out shows, we have to vaccinate and mask up or everything we’ve worked our entire lives for will be gone. and it’s so upsetting to work so long on a craft and lose opportunities left and right, because people would rather believe vaccine conspiracy theories than at least try these precautions out...”

reputedly there's an indian summer on the way (a reprise of summer lasting out into autumn). this would suit horsemouth fine (he thinks).  today not a lot of very much. he has finished his coffee in a little while the news and toast. 

horsemouth dreams (monsters against gentrification)

horsemouth dreamed. the first part of the dream involved him being at a venue where he was consoling a short haired woman who was feeling nervous about playing the gig. don't you feel nervous when you play, she asked, and then added you are playing next week. immediately panicked horsemouth hunted around for a flyer (see text is best) before caving in and asking an organiser. the organiser relied that yes it was a horsemouth and horsemouth gig. the two horsemouths (it was then horsemouth remembered that he had dreamed before about such a gig - that there was someone in competition for the name of horsemouth (which he'd robbed from reggae drummer leroy 'horsemouth' wallace anyway and so could hardly complain if someone else decided to use it). 

there were other features in the dream. a galloping bus ride down towards kings cross followed by a a charge through the backstreets to mornington crescent over humpbacked bridges and alike. (when is horsemouth on a bus these days?). there was also a monkey on the bus. earlier horsemouth had snapped and destroyed his debit card (by sleeping with it his pocket). his mum and dad were in the dream (which means that bit of the dream must have been back in herefordshire). earlier horsemouth had been on the tube. 

having achieved great success with his first monsters against gentrification photo horsemouth has put up another one in the hopes of replicating his success.   

yesterday he managed to read some of pasternak's safe conduct and watched a music documentary on the doors recording LA woman (one of his favourite albums). he had it on cassette as a kid, he remembers listening to it as he returned to town with his brother in the car one time (that must have been a CD presumably).  

today a visit to minty (long time no see). 

godzilla and the march of the new builds

horsemouth has posted a picture of himself as giant horsemouth (as if godzilla) rampaging round docklands destroying the new builds (people seem to like it). he posted a blue oyster cult playing godzilla clip to go with it (larded with lots of footage of godzilla doing the do - oh no! there goes tokyo! godzilla!). horsemouth is warming to the blue oyster cult's catalogue - they were hard workers, whipped into shape by a good production team (sandy pearlman and murray krugman). 

he also posted a picture of himself in the george lansbury costume. he should probably take to playing gigs like this (in fact he's already done that once but now that he's gone grey it looks even better). 

is this the end of urbanisation? ask PICTET (ostensibly for the FT but in fact advertorial content). of course not they answer. there are winners and losers in the post-pandemic economy but the truth of it is the larger the city is the more its economy is defined by hospitality, and it is hospitality that has taken the full brunt of the covid restrictions, and so the bigger the city the longer it will take to come out of post-pandemic depression. further, as one venue owner put it, 

'we are definitely not through the worst - once the public purse tightens up again, it will tighten up and more so, and that will squeeze our model more than others.'

here the public purse is consumer spending. each shock accelerates changes in employment (and these are not usually to the benefit of the workers). 

retail as well, in the sense of physical high street stores has taken a battering (particularly in the centre of larger cities) and will continue to take a battering. 

construction seems to have marched through the pandemic but it is like a giant lizard, it doesn't know it is dead yet. neither offices, nor shops, nor flats in destination larger cities are going to seem as appealing in future. those detached houses out on developments in the smaller towns those are going to be attractive. 

the interesting thing is that the crash of values in retail space, office space and residential space hasn't happened yet (and indeed it may never come). 

for horsemouth, as one of the generation who came back to the city after their parents had moved back to the countryside, this seems a crazed retrograde move (like planets zig-zagging round the heavens) but it is (of course) all entirely commensurate with capitalist development and rent farming.

yesterday horsemouth achieved very little. he watched pirates of the caribbean  (er. the one with the dead pirate hunters) and then he watched peter sellers in an entirely forgettable caper movie after the  fox strangely directed by neo-realist hero vittorio de sica. it features the following two-liner;

'what does neo-realist mean?'

'no money.' 

what to do when there's breakfast

yesterday in the afternoon a meeting with howard.

a beer and a chat. a breakfast out on chatsworth road. then a pit stop to pick up more beer and a final beer out on hackney marshes. howard walked off up the hill to homerton station. horsemouth headed back to the borrowed (cat sat) gaff. 

work wise it's been a demanding year for howard and frankly he's knackered. it looks like there will be no musicians of bremening this recording season. horsemouth will have to do some noodling himself to keep his hand in. there was a discussion of cyclic time - equinox to equinox, solstice to solstice, the celtic quarter days between them. 

horsemouth has just heard that ayub ogada has died. apparently he died 2 years ago. horsemouth saw him supporting jah wobble one time.  here's on of his songs arranged for violin and kora. 

 yesterday horsemouth called in at home to prevent mission creep in the living room and to do a little laundry. in the evening he watched tv, first the news, then a glories of wales tv show, then the eagle  (being a modern adaptation of the eagle of the ninth).

a sad and angry young man has run amuck in portsmouth. he shot his mum. a three year old girl pushing a toy pram, her dad, a random couple (who didn't die), two more people and finally himself. apparently there had been an incident before but the police had returned his gun to him after he'd agreed to go on an anger management course (and so he was able to run amuck and shoot people). this is the problem with guns - it just makes it too easy to go and kill people. gun control is why the uk has a comparatively low murder rate (this is why horsemouth is in favour of gun control). 

today another greyish day with temperatures at the seasonal average. horsemouth is unsure what he will be getting on with. 

learn to swim (the olympic park under water)

yesterday a grey day. well except for the evening (by which time horsemouth was watching the news and settling down to dinner). later the watch lifted from terry pratchett (horsemouth regrets being so humourless that he didn't appreciate these at the time). 

in the confluence stick in the wheel have posted up a lammas mix and it includes alula down. 

NASA has published a sea-level rise/ regular flooding map and, tragedy of tragedies, it appears to wipe out the east end (of the seaside towns).  of course the olympic park as a whole won't flood (much of it is up hills) but the river valley of the lea is looking like a good flooding candidate (as is most of the flat meandering meadows and floodplains since built upon to create tower hamlets. think about horsemouth's walk of a few days ago. 

as a friend notes the LDDC and newham council appear to have just agreed a massive new housing development that will build on a significant amount of the olympic park green space. of course horsemouth wants housing at social rent built regardless of everything else (even if it is through a poor door out back by the bins and on a floodplain but that's just him). 

docklands seems to go also (oh dear, how sad, never mind). tate, tate modern, chelsea etc. 

to horsemouth there appear to be a number of complicating factors. it's mostly about catchment area - not in the sense of where the school pupils come from but where the water is collected from that can then roll downhill over the concrete and asphalt (or bubble up through the drains) and into your basement flat. it's a networked flow rate problem (er. and thus a bit difficult to solve). several of horsemouth's neighbours got flooded in the recent spate of storms and as horsemouth lives in a basement room this gives him pause for thought. 

as the sea level rises the column of water it will support in the drainage system gets higher thus the flow rate of water the antiquated victorian drainage system can remove from the city's streets (and housing stock) is reduced. 

one solution is to enable the city streets to absorb more water by, for example, planting more trees, digging up more asphalt and concrete and regreening it into soil and plant cover so that the rain is absorbed where it falls and does not need to be drained off anywhere (e.g. further downhill into people's basement flats).  more tree cover is going to be an excellent idea as the city heats up in summer (you see horsemouth quite likes the eco-apocalypse). 

of course this can happen architects blueprint ways or detroit-style urban collapse ways. 

in the light of this, and despite the building safety scandals, the communal endeavour's investment in tower block housing  is beginning to look fairly smart. horsemouth has been thinking about this a fair bit (this and moving the communal endeavour towards net zero). 

today. a wander around with howard (maybe). the weather outside isn't looking so good. 

in which horsemouth has a sudden desire to look at the thames

it's a grey morning (but that doesn't mean very much). all the cloud could burn off and it could all go glorious by lunchtime.

yesterday a 6-7 mile walk down the hackney cut to the river lea to bow creek ending up looking at the thames (horsemouth had a sudden desire to look at the thames). no boats (that horsemouth can remember) apart from the river bus service. then back via chrisp street market and the dlr/ overground to hackney wick then a final mile up the hackney cut. 

everywhere the signs ofunaffordable redevelopment. he passed near new providence wharf (site of a recent cladding fire) but did not pause to check out the scorch marks (forgive horsemouth's levity, this time no-one died). he did however take a loop round bow ecology park and over the bridge onto city island, earlier a wander through cody dock and the industrial estate (waste management hell). he passed by the curiously lopsided redevelopment of robin hood gardens.

river dave (the hermit of the merrimack river) has been turfed off. his house 'accidentally' burned down while being dismantled while he was in jail for refusing to leave. strangely dave has (belatedly) discovered that he loves humanity, for horsemouth having his dwelling destroyed would be the final straw.   

thoreau (before he writes walden) writes a week on the concorde and merrimack rivers about a boating trip made with his brother. the book does not sell. 

there was an equivalent hermit of the lea valley (mr.windsor?) but he's long gone (howard or darsavini would know). 

in chrisp street market horsemouth bumped into paddy on his way back through hackney wick he spotted jaime (not rory-lucy but the peruvian musician one) grabbing a quick bite to eat before a music and healing training. 

the walk left horsemouth's poor feet aching and his face a little sunburned (we have passed the midpoint on the decline from summer solstice to autumn equinox but still the sun can do it). he lay around and snoozed the remainder of the afternoon. 

he was intrigued by the story of river dave (he was impressed by his house - now reduced to ashes).  a few days ago horsemouth was retelling the tale of the north pond hermit (but the north pond hermit survived by robbing other cabins and so cannot become a self-sufficiency hero). 

according to horsemouth's roving reporter there are rail strikes in germany. it's the kind of thing that is never mentioned in britain (that the germans have strikes). 

in the comic strip an attack upon the beats. and then to bed. 

the solipsism won't write itself (one day soon it will all be possible again)

one day soon it will all be possible again - horsemouth remarked to a friend of international (or even inter continental) travel (but it applies to lots of other things).

he urged his friend to let him go about his daily business - the solipsism won't write itself. 

last night on tv kensington and chelsea (on the london boroughs) followed by richard e. grant's in the footsteps of writers mostly cheerful olive oil dispensing folk from the mediterranean, golden olive oil, perfumes, bright sunshine, shady arbors.  horsemouth boiled some rice and then added the potatoes and onions he had cooked the day before (and some satay sauce). probably something similar tonight. 

horsemouth has the julliet balcony door open leading on to the bird-feeders. the pretty little sparrows fly up, notice horsemouth typing give the alarm call (one-two-three) and then fly away.  the parakeets are distinctly more cheeky (when they come). 

the cloud is parting and the day is warming up. of course horsemouth should be satisfied with his marshside rambles, his holiday cat-sitting, his holiday reading and his life of leisure. but he can't get comfortable. 

yesterday 5 miles or so there and back to leytonstone station via coronation park, sidmouth park and the heathcote and star (no horsemouth did not stop off for a beer). 

today nothing particular planned. in a minute horsemouth will have some museli for breakfast (and maybe some toast).  later some walking and reading and perhaps some desultory guitar playing. 

'what is terrible when you seek the truth, is that you find it.'

horsemouth is up and he has the cup of coffee. he slept solidly. he will draw a veil of discreteness across his mission for this morning. 

yesterday he made it across the marshes to the supermarket in the fields and later he made it back out to sit in the marshes to read. he was back with the susan sontag, with her appreciation of victor serge. maybe he should get the tsypkin or the pasternak on the go while the spirit is with him and it can be viewed as a project. 

he watched a little of tiger bay (largely based on a zoom conversation he had with john in far off porto who was reading a novel set in cardiff docks in the 50ies). horsemouth's dad was a customs officer at cardiff docks in the 60ies/70ies so he visited it a few times. he remembers either acres of stinky estuarine mud or merchant ships floating at anchor. tiger bay, jim loves julian more than splott. horsemouth supposes there must be a cardiff set film before the ravey davey gravey human traffic. horsemouth's cousin now works at the welsh assembly, the barrage hides the stinky mud. 

yesterday he failed to make it to the bank (what's the point?). he found little to thrill him on tv apart from the news. 

horsemouth will have to check in a while if his first pay of the new freelance era has come through. 

it's a bit of a grey morning but it looks like it might burn off. horsemouth can hear the parakeets. he's on the clock (slightly) to go and do this thing. 

mission accomplished. he's got a guitar with him and has had a play and a sing through a few things. he's picked up some rice and some sauce.

there's the sontag discussion of 9/11 (and abu ghraib). horsemouth will read these and then come back to it (seeing as we are moving towards 20 years of the war on terrror with the imminent collapse of afghanistan again). 

 

weird of hermiston (tales of brave hammy the hamster)

 it's a rainy gray morning (but to be fair at least it's not bucketing it down). 

horsemouth reclines on the sofa. he has a cup of coffee (cafetiere coffee granted but still). all is not quite good with the world but still it is an improvement. last night horsemouth cured a dose of gringe with a bottle of beer and a phone call from his mum. horsemouth will check some emails - he has been accused of being rude. 

horsemouth faces the problem of global investment capital - low returns. interest rates on savings accounts are now typically of the order of 0.1% - so for every £1000 you could invest for a year you would get a quid surplus (after fees). so you put your money into something higher risk and before you know it you are on the wild ride of global stockmarket booms and crashes. 

it makes it difficult to be a low rent bloated capitalist or even a humble trustafarian leisure worker. 

horsemouth is (truth be told) a little bored (and anxious also). he is departing the world of the job and the employer  for the choppy seas of freelance employment (or he will do once he's got his insurance together er, maybe).  his mum seems most reluctant to tell people about his redundancy, she feels the shame of unemployment. horsemouth just liked the look of the money all in one go without having to work for it (that's how much of a short-termist he is). 

last night horsemouth watched a little of the music of jack bruce. he used to own some of the solo albums (record and tape in camden downstairs mostly) but one day (nearly 25 years ago) as he was moving out of his old flat the door blew shut closed behind him with half his record collection still inside (and he thought - you know what - fuck it). he had bought into the notion that all the blues-rock and prog he owned was worthless. 

horsemouth is a hoarder yes. but he's also a collector (he likes the thrill of the chase). he has brought some underutilised books with him in the hope that having been talked up by susan sontag horsemouth will develop the willpower to read them (or read them again). 

the flat where he is staying looks out onto the canal from the kitchen window (tales from the riverbank). the joggers jog past. the beautiful girls, the good looking couples, the boaters go about their al fresco and very public lives, cyclists. at the front of the flat  there are bird feeders wrongly sized for the parakeets who attempt to upend them in frustration, it is a pleasure having a tv again (but there is nothing on). horsemouth watches the news. 

today he was going to go up the bank (but it's raining and, given the low interest rates, what's the point). tomorrow a handover.  

and thereafter the weather should start to improve. 

at the sign of the green parakeet (in the hills in kentucky at election time)

last night much music (of the on tv and on the computer sort). 

the 1969 memphis country blues festival featured many of the people horsemouth is interested in (john fahey, 'backwards' sam firk, bill barths, bukka white, mississippi fred mcdowell, the bar-keys, johnny winter etc.).

fahey takes part in a jug band. there's a blues dude playing mandolin (so it can be done). 

mississippi fred mcdowell also makes it into southern journey revisited a travelling back through the towns visited by alan lomax and shirley collins getting in touch with the families and communities of the musicians they visited (sky arts 9pm). 

as someone comments of mississippi fred mcdowell most people just frail at the guitar mcdowell plays exactly the same tune as he is singing on the topmost strings with the slide (and keeps time with the other strings). 

before this they are up in the hills in kentucky at election time. 

right now horsemouth is just up (and typing badly). just outside the window is a green parakeet. while the smaller birds are adept at using the bird feeders the parakeet is just too big and contemplates a greater larceny (trying to bite through the supporting carabiners for example - hooligan). ah that one has been chased off by another parakeet (that's also having only limited luck with the bird feeders).  

it's ok, it's after seven. it's a perfectly decent time to be up.  

instead of the predicted rain decent sunshine. it seems to be clouding over. 

horsemouth has decamped to his cat-sitting gig. he's just had his coffee. last night he cooked and ate. he hooked up to the broadband  (and watched tv).

the susan sontag has moved on to an appreciation of anna banti's  artemisia - like lampedusa's the leopard in part a mourning of the family house (destroyed in the second world war like lampedusa's house), in part like tsypkin's summer in baden-baden a novel with two time tracks both of which concern writing. next up victor serge. horsemouth has dug up his copy of the tsypkin and of pasternak's safe conduct (as mentioned by sontag) and will have a go at (re) reading them. 

so if horsemouth  isn't musicians of bremening it (musicaly speaking) what will he be up to? he will have to reactivate his other musical connections and get on with it (he supposes).  there is a raft of material he could be getting on with (kind of like the material he used to get on with as horsemouthfolk). 

that reminds him he should repo his guitar from howards. 

'we're bust I say. we're bust you say...'

Duncan and the Cardboard Cutouts · Horsey4

as ian returned to the house last night (with his Ipod on) he heard in his ears the sound of duncan tangy howling to make a decision. for indeed ian had copied the track when making a CD copy of the horsemouth and goatboy album. now what was that monosyllabic title? ah yes. bust.

'we're bust I say. we're bust you say...' 

sadly horsemouth can play you none of this online (he was very proud of his arrangement of that particular track). he can however play you tracks goatboy recorded later. 

horsemouth is in the midst of two arguments (the disputatious best). 

the one he regards as pointless and unnecessary (but perhaps it will clear the air). horsemouth is inclined not to argue but these means the minor misunderstandings that build up over time that can begin to sap one's willingness to engage with things. the other he regards as necessary (important even) but ultimately pointless. 

for the first he has suggested a cooling off period for the second it is important to keep pushing. 

it is the (seventh?) anniversary of the second ever musicians of bremen gig played for tim goldie down in dalston (they were promoting the newly completed volume one). musicians  has been a good and very productive space for horsemouth, he has put his talent in the service of an interesting project and the results have been good.

there have been disagreements before maybe they will resolve themselves. 

at first he thought the song ian was singing came from the first musicians of bremen  album (but no). 

horsemouth is at a point of transition. the road has run out on the sinecure. the pandemic has come along and put the whole working/living in the city  equation under question. it has altered the whole balance of life expectancy. only time will tell where it is all going (or indeed where horsemouth wants his life to go). 

there have been gaps in the productivity of musicians of bremen before and of horsemouth's involvement with it - the current tranche of material was two years in the making (and is now one year old), volume two is almost entirely howard (horsemouth sings on one track and plays guitar on two out of ten).  tomorrow will be the 6th anniversary of its release. 

... and then there will be a near three year gap until volume three. (horsemouth cannot remember why that was). 

at some point althusser discusses the silences  in our writings (the times when we do not write, the things we do not say). the hole in the text that suggests the material that must fill it. 

it will be a rainy grey weekend. and then horsemouth will be away to the bank rather than back out east to make more music. 

 

be who you want to be (sometimes)

a great track from the late great john hassell. less effects than usual. from something of a vanity project (but don't let that put you off).

fernando pessoa (and the heteronyms) is in the news (well the reviews) a biography has been published and it is reviewed in the grauniad, by boyd tonkin in the FT, by alberto manguel. 

'pessoa died as discreetly as he lived, leaving only bills and a trunk stuffed with papers that editors are still toiling to decipher and assemble.'

over 25,000 manuscript sheets were in that wooden trunk.

horsemouth realises he is preaching to the converted. there's a video on facebook of a russian woman yelling 'buy my stuff' at a cat. she's kind of right, the people who have bought your stuff cannot buy your stuff again (just because they like you). more people have got to hear your stuff (and then maybe then one of them will buy some).  but conversely the people who really like your stuff (and buy it) would probably buy more stuff if they could. horsemouth has no financial goals relating to his music or his writing. once upon a time he wanted to get paid to make music (now he thinks that despite the technology coming into existence to ostensibly facilitate this it's actually an impossibility). he just wants people to hear it. (if they like it good. if they don't MEH.) 

really he makes music because he enjoys making music. 

horsemouth is not sure what he is up to today (being grumpy probably - going for a walk before the skies open and the deluge comes). 

a little later.

interesting horsemouth has rowed with two people today. the one row he thinks is necessary (but probably pointless), the other he thinks is unnecessary and pointless (and probably harmful tbh). ah well. let the dice fall where they may. 

rows are often necessary 'to clear the air'. horsemouth hopes his rows for today will have that effect. but if they don't they don't. 

curiously horsemouth managed to get something done while he was waiting (he hopes).  

even death becomes his admirers

Sideways Through Sound · Radio Show 04-08-2021

horsemouth has just walked home in the beautiful dawn light coming from the east across the marshes (having spent the night guarding a friends property, leaning out of the window and growling at passers-by, rushing up to the door barking, this sort of thing). 

yesterday (after a visit to check that the property was secure) a day of lounging in the garden and reading at casa horsemouth (the builders next door are strangely absent). he has found a decent pen that works too, after about a year of not possessing one, having formerly being reduced to a large scrawl with an orange laundry marker. 

he has 'borrowed' a copy of susan sontag's at the same time and is misreading it.  

in this book the voice writes of her mother's dying  (in the forward) but it is the daughter writing (horsemouth eventually worked out). we realise we have been reading an account of susan sontag's death (but many deaths are so similar that we did not at first realise it). 

and then horsemouth realises it's not her daughter but her son. the line 'so in this writing, let me be one of those admirers, and not a son...' this (at first) horsemouth read metaphorically and without comprehension (and pressed on). 

sontag planned to write on aphoristic thinking 'as future publication of her notebooks will show' (krauss, adorno, benjamin, cioran...) but death overtook her. she is great company (she writes well) and she keeps good company - pasternak, rilke, tsvetayeva, dostoyevsky, tsypkin, sinyavsky... 

pasternak, rilke, tsvetayeva correspond '... angelic conversations. nothing to teach. nothing to learn.' but when tsvetayeva is added the whole thing blows itself apart, and then after rilke's death reforms itself. 'if you were alive this is the letter I would send you today.' writes pasternak to the dead rilke in safe conduct.  

on death you become your admirers (as auden wrote of yeats apparently). even death becomes his admirers. or maybe all except for death. for only death does not die. (horsemouth is fond of folk death, a cowl wearing, scythe wielding harvester of the living).  

tsypkin (the archetypal writer for the desk drawer, for the future) and sinyavsky were to meet (but then sinyavsky was arrested and revealed to be abram tertz).  tsypkin (the son of an unpublished writer father) is eventually published but his book (summer in baden-baden) is lost again (only to be found in a charing cross road second hand bookshop by sontag). 

she shows you a beautiful memory palace where each writer has their place and gives you just enough of each writer so that you want to have more. for horsemouth it sketches out a project of reading (summer in baden-baden, safe conduct etc.)

today horsemouth goes to make music round howard's. 

he had planned to go direct from where he was staying (but then the temptation to blog first and rethinking which guitar to take overcame him). he aims to travel after the morning rush. while the weather is good now it is due to piss it down after 5pm.

howard is reading  pierre clastres account of his time with the guayaki indians (as translated by paul auster). this is another book that is nearly lost and only survives by a miracle. horsemouth remembers dave social control quoting fitzgerald's translation of omar khayyam 'one moment in annihilation's waste'. 

horsemouth goes to make music. perhaps to record it. to attempt to leave some survivals behind him and to attempt to survive through them. 

friday the seventh anniversary of the second ever musicians of bremen gig, sunday the sixth anniversary of the release of musicians of bremen volume two. a weekend of rain but perhaps after that a decent august.

t(e)mpus fugit (horsemouth the paranoid)

there. is that coded enough. (horsemouth the paranoid). 

last night (with the aid of daryll) horsemouth watched some tv in the living room. he watched richard e. grant's tourism fest in the footsteps of writers which included a segment on carlo levi and his christ stopped at eboli.

this they portrayed as a searing indictment of southern italian poverty, people living in caves in the 20th century (shock horror etc). but it seems to horsemouth (and he could probably do with re-reading it) that levi's book is as much an indictment of the class structure of rural southern italy (an utterly venal and incompetent bourgeoisie) as it is of the communist intellectuals of the north, who fail to understand that their one size fits all developmental variety of socialism is just not going to work in the south. 

now (of course) the town is a UNESCO world heritage site and a city of culture (and tourist destination) and the caves are revealed to be cave churches or are converted into boutique hotels. horsemouth was shocked by his recognition of the town from the movie. 

in a second horsemouth goes to get a shower and then he goes to lock things up and function as a watchman (or generalised factotum). there is a visiting cat (but an animal is not depending on horsemouth for food). it has belatedly dawned on horsemouth that he has a responsibility. 

today a beautiful morning. yesterday a pleasant day. horsemouth went down to visit tim goldie in his pleasant waterside des res. ducks paddled on the river, boatpeople continued their idyllic existences on troubled only by the biting of the mosquitoes. 

howard has sent some more tracks to be thinking about. Gsus says howard. Gsus what? asks horsemouth. thursday they meet up to do more work on the music. 

horsemouth looks forward to retirement. anyway now to go.

alter ego that game called telephone

horsemouth was having a max ochs moment. 

'oncones...

now that’s a beautiful name , I don’t know where it comes from but it was given to me so I will accept and wear it with pride. that music is the soundtrack to the art film starring the artist harvey cohen. he runs though the whole thing and the film is called “running harvey cohen.” I recorded that music for the film, and I guess it was like that game called telephone, where you whisper a phrase in the ear of the person next to you and by the time harvey cohen rushes back to you it’s oncones...' 

- max ochs, interview for tompkins square, january 2005. 

horsemouth has tried to find the movie online (he has failed). the harvey cohen may be this harvey cohen an artist involved in the early days of krisha consciousness in the US (or it may not).

a year ago horsemouth had just done a social media fast (of one day). many years before he had managed a whole two weeks (whilst on holiday in spain). 

and of course there was a part of his life before social media (but it was a long time ago). social media and alter ego are very much related to horsemouth, he becomes horsemouth when he launches the horsemouth and goatboy project on the then functioning myspace (now a deserted zombie infested mall). 

yesterday a radio documentary on the power of alter ego (all this horsemouth knows already). and here (with max ochs) a lesson on the power of telephone - on the possibilities opened up by mis-communication. he has keith johnstone's impro round here somewhere. 

horsemouth is very taken by the housing podcast a very useful podcast on housing matters. decarbonisation. rent and benefits. grenfell and the fallout. new regulation in the social housing sector.

decarbonisation has been occupying horsemouth's thoughts (what with all the rain and all the flooding, all the extreme heat events). it turns out that several basement flats on horsemouth's street have been flooded. that gives the mule pause for thought (as he types this from his basement room). 

yesterday horsemouth tidied out the shite stored under his bed. there was an abortive attempt to hang the mirror in the living room, horsemouth took the IKEA bookshelves upstairs, cleaned them, and then populated them with books (and other shite sad to say). he also cleared out the corridors (to some extent).

today horsemouth probably off to examine his digs for another round of cat-sitting. riverside views claims his benefactor. 

notes written on a monday morning in the seaside towns

'what a strange status this book has, and how strange its destiny has been.' 

- michel trebitsch in his preface to henri lefebvre's critique of everyday life.

it's a bright blue beautiful morning in the seaside towns (horsemouth thought it was supposed to rain).

yesterday horsemouth did a few practical things. himself and sten put the curtain rail back up in the living room (as part of horsemouth's bring the living room back into use and remove sten's shite from underfoot project).  if he moves the IKEA shelving up into the living room he can probably get the books back in there and out of the bathroom (don't ask). the key to it is probably getting the tv back into service. 

he also sorted out his jeans and t-shirts so as to remove the ripped and torn ones (sadly the tb-303 can you feel it? t-shirt has to go, but the james acord t-shirt he'll keep, his akira t-shirt went west a long time ago). horsemouth has plenty pairs of jeans (there's really no need for him to be wandering about in anything ripped and torn). 

he's also chucked his blue quechua coat (£20 - five years service).  the real task would be to sort out the socks and underwear. actual shirts he hardly ever wears. jumpers/ fleeces he also has too many of.

horsemouth supposes he should go and find a clothes recycling station and actually get rid of them. (stuff is not gone until it is actually out of the house - and no that does not mean the front garden).  

he had a plan to tidy up the kitchen (but he didn't get around to it).

seeing as horsemouth has been made redundant over the age of 5_ he can activate his works pension now and he's been looking into doing that. not that it will be very much (about a grand a year) because horsemouth is one of the 'compulsory enrolled at the last minute by his employer' workers so there's only about 5 years of contributions in it - to be honest it was probably this additional expense that killed off horsemouth's job, it just took a little time). 

horsemouth is keen to activate his works pension because, while work has the advantage of disrupting horsemouth's boredom, he is a lazy sod who would like to do as little of it as possible. this will have to last him out until he hits his state pension (whenever that will be). 

horsemouth will cheer up when his actual redundancy cheque hits (but on the downside he'll probably have to give the work laptop back as well). 

this week more cat-sitting (but closer to home). thursday horsemouth is off round to howard's to work on material for the next musicians of bremen album, sunday the 6th anniversary of volume two. later in the month the first anniversary of covers. 

lefebvre has a funny kind of life. the PCF (the french communist party) should have embraced him with open arms but in fact they are not sure if they want the gifts he brings to the party (it's like with althusser later). lefebvre is close to the situationists, he's interested in everyday life and how people actually live it.  

last night horsemouth found some welsh prog (bran - he doesn't remember their photo being up on the wall of the welsh language teaching room when he went to school in the 70ies, budgie yes.). he watched a 1923 silent movie salome allegedly (well at least according to kenneth anger) made entirely by a cast a gay people in the style of oscar wilde and aubrey beardsley and a 1933 movie lot in sodom. 

lammas and the anniversary of the release of the fourth musicians of bremen album

'me and ---------------- listened to yr album stoned the other night, flipping great. I’m going up the loft to find the previous one later. do u have any copies of the early ones left?'

- an anonymous review (by a certain comix enthusiast).

august 1st. lammas. and the anniversary of the release of the fourth musicians of bremen album. 

horsemouth can offer you one other review: 

'like travelling on a soundwave that started with forest swords had flashes of john fahey and ended with an early floyd mashup.' - martin (of martin and angela)

in honour of the  day horsemouth is playing musicians of bremen volume four as we speak as it were. 

the vocals on amarach have just hit. howard had the ukulele and the vocals. horsemouth brought the guitar parts and proposed the keyboard under the vocals. it's curious how well it came together (seeing as by that point the pandemic had hit and horsemouth was reduced to emailing in suggestions). it ends with birdsong, joggers, cyclists and overheard conversations about lady gaga.

there is (of course) an element of pink floyd envy there. horsemouth's favourite track on the album (and probably favourite track by musicians). 

ok next up (courtesy of shuffle) dark was the day.  almost entirely howard. a perfect short pop song (with an incredible string band homage). horsemouth added the bass (which is just root notes really but. like the dude's rug, seems to pull the room together nicely). 

blindspot. really the album is an album of pop songs by howard. again horsemouth adds a bass part (but this time more in a NY style) and some guitar. 

broadbury down howard had made the instrumental (giant distorted organs that he wanted to take in a more mbv direction). horsemouth dug up a poem by folksong collector the reverend sabine baring-gould and sings it with howard's backing. he liked the little organ parts (again very pink floyd again he thinks) and is pleased with his slide guitar part. howard takes over towards the end and horsemouth's guitar starts impersonating sequencers. kids yell. 

fallen snow. starts with ghazal's voice and howards 8 string ukulele and then it's time for the synthesized string sections. at the end howard kind of takes it hip-hop (most strange).  this is the re-discovery of this listening session. 

I will not go. so this is howard on guitar (recorded on his phone if horsemouth remembers correctly) and lots of backing vocals and melodica. again it reprises into some varispeeded fingerpicking by howard (with more of that late fahey feel). horsemouth thinks of these last two tracks as a pair. 

sandstorm. so this one seems to owe more to gary numan, early human league, jean-michel jarre, all that sort of stuff and probably it follows, horsemouth and howard were imagining soundtracking a horror movie. horsemouth really struggled with the guitar part for this. eventually he managed to get a decent take of  a follow along part on the resonator.  

wonky. this is howard in its entirety. as if late era john fahey was from manchester, as if it were psych. it kind of should have come straight after amarach horsemouth thinks (fucking birds). perhaps his second favourite track on the album.  

am I born to die? the old wesleyan hymn as sung by doc watson, here with horsemouth and with howard joining in. horsemouth on guitars and organ (open G tunings all round) going for a droney feel. 

pagodas. a horsemouth guitar instrumental. lifted from parts of debussy's pagodes trying to channel peter green. horsemouth had great fun with the crash cymbal he'd found in a bin. 

interesting to end it there. 

really the album is, at its heart,  an album of pop songs by howard (dark was the day, blindspot, fallen snow, I will not go). but it is  dragged off course by horsemouth's folky leanings (am I born to die? pagodas, broadbury down). it shows the strength of howard's ability to arrange things in the studio. amarach and wonky stand out for horsemouth, blindspot is the one that he feels has been neglected.  

one final thing. horsemouth loves howard's cover art. it's colourful (but excellently mashed up).

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horsemouth is back at the homestead. he missed two possible events to go to yesterday (he was busy tidying out the living room in an attempt to bring it back into into use. horsemouth damned and blasted (and cursed and vituperated) and shifted heavy loads. he also unblocked the corridor. 

yesterday (earlier) howard called round dropping back the bass drum (from pagodas) and the spare, i.e. less used keyboard (the casio CTK1150 - another street find). they got the guitars out and had a play and sing along through the new material and after pizza and tea they had a bottle of beer.   

today (maybe) a tidy up in the kitchen (to discourage mice). reading and farting about. maybe a walk up onto the marshes to look at the lammas fields. 

it is lammas, the festival of the 3 faced god lug and the baking of the bread with the new harvest of wheat (blessed be the bakers). the rough mid point between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox - there is still time in the sunshine to be had.