on postponement

horsemouth sleeps under a sleeping bag (the zip on which is broken) and a light (11 tog) summer duvet with a flowery pattern on it. in bed he normally wears a t-shirt and a fleece in winter (and underwear for his nether regions). he has difficulty getting the sleeping temperature correct - he is either too hot or too cold, he is seldom, like baby-bear's porridge, just right. 

in the bad old days an alarm would go off in the morning (for many years the ganesha alarm clock but in later years just his mobile phone). for many years horsemouth's first word of the day was 'fuck' or his first thought would be 'who's phoning me at this hour?' 

one problem with not heating the house so well  (leaving aside the fact that it is cheaper to do) is that horsemouth wakes up earlier. he also persists longer in a semi-waking state before this (and this is when the difficult memories come and assail him).

eventually these difficult memories drive goads into his flesh until he needs must rise.

now you may well argue that seeing as the mule is a lazy beast that it is good that he is up early, even or indeed especially, because he doesn't have to work then the least he can do is not be comfortable. 

if this is your view you have your wish. 

horsemouth is now up. he's got his second jumper, trousers and socks on. currently he types this sat up cross-legged in bed with the sleeping bag over his knees. he has his cup of coffee and is about to sneak a second seeing as sten is either not up or is out of the house already. 

he is now writing the blog post for the day. this is probably the most fun he will have, he is getting to make sense. 

one of horsemouth's main defects is postponement. this is why he hasn't phoned you or sent you that CD. this is why he never calls round. this (no doubt helpful) thought occurred to him while he was sleeping (or on the edge of sleep). it then became a battle to remember it, not to lose it to the world of dreams. 

his postponement seldom rises to procrastination. with most tasks horsemouth is reliable and can get on with it. hell he likes having tasks and structure. he was for many years blessed with a show up, do the job, go home type of job, and this, for many years, felt successful. in comparison (and earlier) many of horsemouth's endeavours (larger scale projects) were not marked by success but (horsemouth thinks) by failure. 

horsemouth has one task of importance coming up  (a presentation). he is dreading it. there will be a vote which he would like to win. whether it will be live or on zoom is a moot point at the minute. live there is more chance for debate (but also more for conflict), on zoom it doesn't work so well (so there is less chance for debate and therefore for conflict). with more debate there is more chance of people's positions shifting and therefore a good result (maybe). 

instead of getting lost in the conflict (there has been rather a lot of conflict over the years) horsemouth hopes to try and present it as simply and directly as possible and conduct himself well. he is always a pessimist about these things. horsemouth has to learn to treat these things lightly. 

horsemouth would have liked more success but he was probably not the person to deliver it. he's not fleet enough of foot, he doesn't have the gift of the gab. 

last night horsemouth (having gonged down the heating - himself and ian were finding it excessive) retired to bed early (hell he tends to review most of the winter from bed). he watched a number of ghost stories (a BBC m.r. james ghost story at christmas the ash tree and an ITV imitator haunted - the ferryman).  he listened to some of jacken elswyth's latest mix (great as usual) and to some of his own 2021 golden glow mix. in the day he had been for two walks on the marshes (he will try and get in two more today). his health is returning. later maybe some babysitting. towards the end of the week he needs to go and chat to martin. 

yesterday he was getting into a premature summary of the year. it is good to remind himself that he gets up to stuff, that he gets things done. 

 

books, gigs, films, events november 2021

films/ podcasts etc. 

- island of the fish men (italo-lovecraft horror, owes more to the island of dr. moreau - sergio martino)

- dagon (spanish set lovecraftian horror)

- the case of charles dexter ward/ the whisperer in the darkness/ the shadow over innsmouth bbc podcast

- oncle yanco (agnes varda profiles jean varda and his aquatic lifestyle), alice coltrane 16mm documentary, sri chinmoy parade and gig

- the stalls of barchester and other bbc ghost stories for christmas

- shades of darkness (edith wharton, l.p.hartley ghost stories), 

- supernatural (1977 bbc horror)

- blood beast terror and kiss of the vampire (hammer horror)

- rivals of sherlock holmes (early episodes)

- UFO ( a few episodes from the first series)

-two teenage girls review 'don't fear the reaper'

- mc libel2 

- french connection 1

- a spiral of mist 

- talking politics podcast

- grenfell fire podcast

- hawkbinge podcast (25 years on)

- feast on this podcast (don campau incredible string band special)

- queen of spades (part)

- sergio martino interview

- assassino al cimitero etrusco (1982 italo horror sergio martino)

- tv adaptation of michael dibdin's cabal

books

- immortality (milan kundera)

- elizabeth costello (j.m. coetzee)

- the blueprint (theresia enzensberger)

- black snow and a country doctor's notebook (mikhail bulgakov)

- the craftsman (michael sennett) - first few pages

gigs none

events 

anniversary of recording of world galaxy, journey in satchidananda day, 6 months since horsemouth's last stroke of paid work, anniversary of regular service being established on blogspot

soon we will be ascending back up into the light (all be it but slowly)

good morning. good morning. good morning.

horsemouth's cough is improving. the coldness of the air set him off a little when he went for a walk yesterday. 

yesterday there was an online outage (it is strange how anxious this made horsemouth feel - did he not live decades of his life without access to the world wide web? in a world of books, and tv and diaries and letters). 

before that there was a strange boiler event (we were held hostage at the mercy of the water flow sensor). a friend (out of london) was without power because of storm arwen. when horsemouth's mother phoned horsemouth checked that his parents were ok - the storm had snapped off the top half of a fir tree 20ft up  (but fortunately not dropped it through the garage roof - it was a big tree). 

yesterday horsemouth felt a distinct pessimism, this morning he is feeling more optimistic. we are literally half way to the solstice from the quarter day, we are thus into not just the dark quarter of the year, but the dark eighth. soon we will be ascending back up into the light (all be it but slowly). 

in 2021 horsemouth played a gig (for the weirdshire people - thanks dudes). in 2020 he played no gigs but he did release an album (plus 2 EPs and a digital single as part of musicians of bremen). in 2021 he released no music. well ok he released a golden glow mix (to go with 2020s golden glow mix). 

he did however record in 2021 (with catastro/fille and with enza) but these recordings are temporarily stuck in process. PPE (peter, paul and enza - inactive since 2019) briefly reformed (and then unformed again). 

horsemouth already has a gig booked for 2022 (as musicians of bremen at water into beer - cheers martin).

in 2020 he worked on a film the fall of the house of fitzgerald (with catastro/fille and enza). in 2021 he voiced george lansbury for an animation of catastro/fille's for the centenary of the poplar rates rebels. he would (of course) like to do more such work in 2022. 

he has kept this blog going (past the demise of facebook notes tool) and on into the sunny uplands of blogger. he is writing more as he has fewer early starts and without the pressures of work and travel. really and truthfully though this is a diary rather than any form of publishing - it is the confusion of these two that gives it its unique flavour. the harry everett smith anniversary encouraged him to read various articles including one on ed sander's archive. 

horsemouth has two remaining tasks this year - the first a meeting of the communal endeavour, the second he needs to get his booster jab in (and then he is free to go and hide in the countryside). he will then be free to plan his retirement (or scuttle back to the comfort and regularity of work). 

today it looks greyish (but not impossible) out. he may be at a conference on zoom in the afternoon (or he may not).  he may be babysitting tomorrow (or he may not). 

back from out east (city slang)

horsemouth is back from out east (he does like it out there, it's like traveling back in time). 

first himself and howard tried out some songs then they went to the pub with pizza (two pints each and pizza - well howard had a carbonara pasta dish which he pronounced most excellent). then they relocated to the large empty pub on the corner which was selling volden session (one of their favourite beers). 

when questioned by howard about his musical plans horsemouth had to admit that his various collaborations were effectively stymied by circumstance at the minute and that probably the thing to do was to go off and woodshed  a new series of solo tunes. (so he is in a position to vary his live set). 

as usual horsemouth would gladly have stayed out longer (getting more and more incoherent) but at some point howard called a halt and sent him off home with a falafel wrap.

this is of course an expensive hobby for a poor mule to have. he really should try and do it less. the next opportunity for such things will be after the meeting of the communal endeavour in early december. thereafter horsemouth will get jabbed (his bertie wooster) and then it will be the solstice, horsemouth will (probably) be back with his folks and he doesn't tend to drink much there. 

back at home horsemouth continued watching the superstition series (horsemouth would have watched this in 77 as a kid - werewolves, ghosts what's not to like) and fell into a deep slumber. 

it looks like a cold and clear skies day out there. 

learning and playing other people's songs (the music itself delivers the answer)

it is the anniversary of the peter, paul and enza gig. (sadly it looks like the trio is back on hold for the next little while). 

horsemouth is of the opinion that you have to change the songs you do. he has never seen the point in 'playing it like the record'. as a young guitarist he wishes he had engaged more with learning and playing other people's songs. he would have learnt a lot from doing that.  

the change with horsemouth comes when he starts playing guitar round at people's parties (and round the campfire). at that point it becomes pretty much pointless to do anything else other than sing songs that people know.

at the moment all collaborations are on hold. in theory howard should have more time after christmas but he also has a backlog of his own songs he wants to get on with (and songs where he plays guitar this time).  enza and howard are too overworked to be getting on with things, catastro/fille is stuck putting lyrics on one tune (that would probably be better off with wordless vocals). 

people have their own creative processes and are constitutionally not inclined to take horsemouth's (admittedly self-serving)  'advice'. horsemouth is in a 'tetchy' part of the year where he is frustrated with humanity. probably the only thing to do is to sit down and 'woodshed' and work out another round of songs to record. 

the bert jansch (LA turnaround) film has surfaced again. it's a great document. bert is remarkably graceless here, and not just to the dude from the monkeys. and yet the music is awesome. red rhodes (amazing pedal steel on fresh as a sweet sunday morning)  and the other session dudes come across as sensible and hard working.

in a way too much talking and hanging out is a bad idea (it just gives you more chances to get on each others nerves). horsemouth is a great believer in the idea that the music itself delivers the answer - as soon as you start talking about the music you just drown it out. when things work they obviously work, when they don't that too is obvious. 

horsemouth is not process oriented, despite his manifestly limited talents he is in fact results oriented (he loves the moment when it comes together). this (and a fundamental lack of musical knowledge) is probably why he can't play jazz. 

it is 30 years since the death of harry everett smith (avant-garde film maker and compiler of the american folk anthology). we are 22/23 days off the winter solstice (the darkest day of the year). he is still a fortnight or so off his booster jab. horsemouth is supposed to be at a conference on zoom this morning (but the link hasn't appeared). 

on the debt farming of students (and pass the (accursed) parcel)

phew. horsemouth has made it to the weekend (once again).  the recycling is out (but strangely there's no sign of the binmen (hail the binmen). 

last night a virtual meeting of the communal endeavour (it's always a bit of a strange experience, like  being a ghost trying to contact the living). forward to the meeting with the people (to see what they think). 

'those who graduated in 2020 took out an average of £45,060 in loans, according to a report from the higher education policy institute'

one student sent a freedom of information request to the student loan company wondering if, at £61,000, his debt might be the largest in the UK. but in fact it turns out that medical students (and postgraduates) regularly end up owing £100k (which seems to be a bit of hurdle to get over before you can get to the main purpose of your working life, to save for your pension). 

but ladies and gentlemen. we have a winner! it in fact turns out we have an anonymous winner. 

the largest debt amassed by a student in england is £189,700. 

now this is a very special kind of debt. it is not just the fact that the interest rate charged on it is a whacking great 5.6%. 

one respondent to an online survey said that in the three years post-graduation their loan had increased from £49,510 to £60,081, and that (at this rate) by 2050 they would have £152,000 worth of debt.

our winner is thus not necessarily that exceptional and different from the herd - merely an early starter. 

'it (becomes).. a regressive tax on people from low income families.' because poorer students have to take out the highest maintenance loans and do not receive support from their parents. the debt and interest accrued on this hits them hardest.

this, horsemouth opines, is debt farming the middle classes, a raid on the wages of young workers. but it also strikes horsemouth as politically foolish. the youth must feel that there is a benefit to life under capitalism, that their brains and hard work is rewarded (otherwise what's the fucking point). horsemouth's parents generation definitely feel this reward and validation, horsemouth's generation less so, their children even less - and this is not a good political trajectory. 

horsemouth is fortunate in that he doesn't have the kids (his brother has the kids).  

horsemouth was also fortunate to be educated in the time of the student grant and with the financial support of his parents (who had benefited from the post war boom and the opportunities that wider access to education had provided). horsemouth basically scraped through his university degree and subsequent employment, launching into the devastation and conflict of the thatcher years. he has lived out a life (of reasonable comfort) on the margins and aims to slide gracefully towards the exit from the world of work into the land of pension.  

enough of him. what about the wider picture?

student debt is also a strange kind of debt. repayment does not start until the now ex-student starts to earn £27k (shortly to be dropped to £23k but still). 

there therefore exists the option (for the indebted student) of bouncing the debt onto the state by having a working life earning less than this  (if not deliberately then just due to marketplace conditions meaning low wages - such things as brexit or the coronavirus pandemic). now state debt (we are told) is very bad thing and must be purged with tax money (and money saved by cutting services and welfare programs).  

this is not a good look. 

it is a game of pass the (accursed) parcel between the banks and the state.  

of course the state is not just the debt collector of last resort but also the bank of last resort. above a certain point there must be a temptation not to pay the debt off but just to inflate it away. 

ah there's the binmen. 

it's a grey day outside. horsemouth will schlepp about. sten has just left for work. horsemouth is supposed to be virtually attending a conference on net zero saturday and monday (he will see if his invite has arrived).  

on the eulogies of dead french composers

this one is for erik satie (apparently).

horsemouth has tried learning various saties - gnossienne no.1 for example, he attempted in his early days. gnossienne no.1 uses that zorba the greek type rhythm (at least in horsemouth's version of it). horsemouth did try stealing it for a song of his own for volume four but it didn't survive the initial weeding out phase.   

he had also earlier attempted je te veux  a commercial waltz that satie wrote with lyricist henry pacory (as sung by pauline darty - the queen of the slow waltz). horsemouth sang it in french (but he didn't have anyone around to check his pronunciation at the time so he doesn't know if it is saveable or if he will have to rerecord it). 

he started work on some of the other gnossienne but got discouraged. 

of course in some ways erik satie is the father of claude debussy (and in other ways, at other times,  the other way round). horsemouth has attempted a version of debussy's la fille au cheveux de lin on musicians of bremen volume three (under the title her hair like some glistening gold) as a slide guitar piece in open G (it has a 'scottish' pentatonic sort of tune). 

similarly on volume four  he attempted some fragments of pagodes under the title pagodas. (he regrets not renaming it something more adventurous - cuban pyramids was one of his better titles, it has a slight habanera rhythm). 

he also attempted (in his early days) a version of la cathédrale engloutie (the drowned cathedral). now this was too long to learn to play so horsemouth played various parts and then, with the aid of the sheet music (god bless the works library and photocopier), went through copy and pasting the parts he had played to where they fitted and retuned them where they didn't. the result was reasonably successful but is lost in the deserted mall that is my_space.  

both satie and debussy liked lifting earlier tunes - both incorporate the french folk song nous n'irons plus au bois into their work (and horsemouth has some music for it round here somewhere). 

the main tune people know by gabriel fauré is his pavane (op.50) which has a great spaghetti western sound to it (at least in horsemouth's imagination). horsemouth has got the first part of it learned (but then gets lost) and so never progressed to recording it.  fauré wrote lots of songs, and set lots of poems by french poets of the time - at one point horsemouth had chant d'automne (song of autumn - baudelaire and fauré) worked up and was making progress with après un rêve (after a dream) from an anonymous italian lyric translated into french by romain bussine. 

horsemouth also had a theme by georges bizet learnt - bizet wrote it as incidental music for a play by alphonse daudet called  l'arlésienne (the girl from arlés) but the fragment ended up being more famous from its use in a setting of the mass as an agnus dei (lamb of god). this would have annoyed bizet who was an atheist. horsemouth recorded it roughly one time (again he presumes it is lost on my_space). 

partie de campagne was a film by jean renoir from a guy de maupassant short story, which, after a disastrous production that was nearly rained off was saved in the cutting room by the music of joseph kosma (the author of  les feuilles mortes (autumn leaves) - horsemouth has looked at this, he's interested in doing a version in both french and english). horsemouth recorded partie de campagne as a slide guitar piece (but it could probably do with more singing on it).  

now almost all of these horsemouth only learnt sufficiently well that he could bluff his way through them. he has an impatience with detail. 

last night horsemouth spent an evening with the don campau radio show and his incredible string band compilation show followed up by the discovery of a mix called the devotional music of popul vuh online. 

anywhere is · The Devotional Music of Popol Vuh

horsemouth then read more of bulgakov's a country doctor's notebook.  like carlo levi (or indeed chekhov) he is a city doctor thrown up against rural poverty and superstition, at times bulgakov even starts to sound like levi (or is it the other way round),

'many years have passed since then. fate and the turbulent years have put a long distance between me and... ' 

this evening a meeting of the communal endeavour. looks like a decent day out of the window.

15 years ago today horsemouth starts to blog (a 'thank you')

thirty one years ago robbie basho is playing a gig in bonn. it has gone well. he finishes off with california raga, 'bonn ist supreme' he says by way of thanks to the audience and by way of leavetaking, 

'thank you.' 

15 years ago horsemouth starts to blog (on my space - remember my space). it takes a while before he is represented by a photo of himself on facebook (when that comes along) instead he makes some illustrations of himself as a mule in photoshop (using a drawing by goya). it is as this creature that he starts to blog, advertising his music mostly. he finds the facility to chunter on and then have a look at his thought (such as it is) deeply useful. he finds the notion that this is some kind of publishing over exaggerated but nonetheless reassuring. 

reading/ writing/ blogging comes in at number four in horsemouth's list of things he has done that have made him happy (after singing and playing, dancing and DJing, and travelling). he thinks this is an underestimate. 

thank you for reading him (or indeed listening to his music).  

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and so to the present. horsemouth is one of those increasing number of people who have exited the workforce and are no longer looking for a job, there has been a sharp rise in early retirement among older workers and horsemouth aims to be one of these. 

in part this is caused by zombie businesses  shedding workers, the pandemic and brexit shocks themselves and the likely fall in returns means that the debts of the firm can no longer be serviced unless workers are made redundant (the alternative is to make whole management sectors redundant instead or to pay less for capital). under normal circumstances these  undead creatures would simply have stumbled on but given the double shock of brexit and coronavirus the management have taken the opportunity to restructure. 

most of horsemouth's work colleagues had additional employment elsewhere or could be reabsorbed into the sectors of the business that are still viable (see the argument made above). the argument that horsemouth's sector is a service (and should thus be protected from the harsh but strangely selective laws of the market) has not flown. the clients will redistribute themselves round other more commercially run agencies offering a poorer service and poorer wages and conditions to the workers by means of casualisation. 

such is the logic of capitalism. 

and in part it is also caused by technological change. in response to the pandemic universities have increasingly sought to teach via zoom/ teams etc.  (this retains the lecture and  workshop formats). horsemouth finds this manage your own IT and be your own office future uncongenial, he doesn't expect it will fully stick but nonetheless more of the work itself (and the unremunerated tasks that go with it) are IT based. here in a strange re-run of the great leap forward horsemouth was expected to input his own payroll and wrangle his own access to different university IT systems without any real training. 

horsemouth has simply reached the point where he is tired of it. 

horsemouth has (for a number of years) been reducing his involvement in the world of work. he has been operating on the basis of 'as long as it pays my rent (it's alright)'. while he enjoys his life in the seaside towns (he genuinely likes the scuzzy multiculturalism of it) he is no longer convinced he needs to be here. in fact what he really needs to do is chase cheap rent. he has a number of legacy projects he wishes to complete and then he really should be going (unless cheaper rent can be achieved in the seaside towns in which case horsemouth would gladly stay).

it will, in any event, take horsemouth a while to work out what is possible. 

outside it is a grey morning. horsemouth has had his coffee and now he could do with getting some museli in himself. in a bit he will get his first cup of tea of the day, listen to the radio 4 news and then look at the guardian (online). bulgakov's a country doctor's notebook continues to go well. 

 

a city mule's notebook (time is sutured together)

phew. horsemouth has just recovered some random mechanical component that was left in the kitchen (and then put out with the recycling). the place to look for it occurred to him while asleep (or dozing)  last night. 

november 29th the events in the bulgakov short story the steel windpipe take place (remind horsemouth to tell you about it then). the next short story takes place on his birthday (so the date of that is presumably discoverable also). bulgakov's a country doctor's notebook goes well. he wrote the stories in it at the same time as his more experimental stuff (just for a different magazine). horsemouth has the white guard round here somewhere. the master and the margarita  appears to have vanished (there's almost certainly a copy at his parents). 

before sleep last night, in the shades of darkness series, the demon lover (1983).  robert hardy points out that the first world war and the second are in fact the same war, time is sutured together and the ghosts can come back.  but what about the lives we made in the meantime? in the waking dream. 

coming thursday a (delayed) meeting of the communal endeavour. and coming early december a meeting of the whole communal endeavour to decide something important. 

yesterday a walk out to the velodrome with TG. some litter picking and a coffee. horsemouth was quite tired when he came back (he's still not fully well). 

on closer analysis the great resignation (the workers in the US turning away from work) turns out to be mostly women leaving the workforce because there's a shortage of childcare (post covid). this of course does alter the composition of the workforce and availabilities driving up wages, but not sufficiently to deal with the increased cost of living due to inflation in energy (gas) prices. in the UK an increase in people who have exited the workforce and are no longer looking for a job. a sharp rise in early retirement among older workers. 

horsemouth is still in the not going anywhere/ not doing anything / lockdown phase of covid response - his costs are therefore relatively low. how low is difficult to tell because he's been living off the cash he got out at the start of the pandemic in the vain belief it was going to be useful.

when horsemouth was a child the uk was referred to as the sick man of europe  because of it's chronic economic problems, and it looks like we are going back to this (ok ok now we will be the sick man not-in-europe but you get the picture). the times will be sutured together. boris (horsemouth must say) is not looking happy (he's definitely not twinkling). they've given him a speech and told him to read it (oh look he's lost his place). he definitely doesn't look well. he looks a bit sick in fact. levelling up  in fact looks like levelling down (and even that looks like it can't be achieved - the levelling bit horsemouth means).

horsemouth should get in some food shopping (a wander over to aldi - potatoes, museli cheap pizza etc.). he needs to get enough to cover the next few weeks so he isn't nipping up the corner shop all the time. denise is over visiting mid-ish january (so horsemouth will have to be back in the seaside towns for then). 

to concern ourselves with our lives, with the levers that are within our reach

it's a monday morning. it looked like sten was out of the door to go to work. horsemouth has already filled in his diary page with jottings.

in a pyramid (well ok a triangle) the rent money from the year is decomposed into 6 month and 3 month tranches (he also decomposes it into the amount he pays per day to sit in the seaside towns, on either 5 day (earning), or 7 day (living) weeks). elsewhere on the page the amount he has in his current account. 

there is a list of chekhov and pushkin short stories also (indeed he has conflated chekhov and pushkin into a list). but these have gone on the backburner while he starts bulgakov's a country doctor's notebook (this is bulgakov wearing his sensible doctor's hat). chekhov was a doctor too (and sensible). now that he has more time horsemouth proposes a re-reading the russians campaign (it's been decades since he's read the dostoyevsky).

horsemouth is living out of the cash he got out of the cashpoints at the start of the pandemic (and the cash his housemates give him as their share of the gas and electricity bills). it makes it look like he's not spending any money (er. except in the pubs and except on rent). 

sten is talking about more insulation. this may be a good thing. soon the frosts will come (it's probably time to move the paint back indoors). the power company are bumping up the direct debit, horsemouth cannot move from them until the spring. 

wednesday the anniversary of horsemouth starting to blog (15 years ago)  and bonn ist supreme day, thursday astral travelling day, saturday 30 years since the death of harry everett smith day.

we the people (who should know better). 

horsemouth thinks one of the reasons why the UK is famously stable is because none of the levers of power connects with the actual people. there is the house of commons (a kind of puppet show peopled by rural solicitors) granted (and every 5 years we are allowed to stick a cross on a piece of paper to elect a rural solicitor to that place) but there also is the house of lords and the aristocracy and the royal family (unelected and populated by patronage and heredity), there are the judges, and should things go tits up and properly third world there are the army and the police and the security services, the famous deep state. 

meanwhile in downing street there is the prime minister and his advisors and across town in the city of london the financial institutions and board rooms (unelected  and unrepresentative).

the british ruling class have been at it a long time and they roll in depth. successive ruling classes were not guillotined but fractionated out and confined to particular parts of the apparatus. the existing system is about ensuring representation for different parts of the ruling class rather than the representation of the people.

this is horsemouth's understanding of it.  

of course once in a while the ruling class slip up - as they did over brexit by not just promising but actually having a referendum (and by then letting themselves be bound by the result). horsemouth has to confess it was genuinely popular. the people seized the only lever offered them after a prolonged misdirection campaign by the murdoch press. 

the political moment is strangely fertile in these moments after the end of history (but not in a good way). 

where this will take us all horsemouth shudders to think. the default state of the state is tory. labour are entrusted with it (or with the electable parts of it) only when the tories have debauched themselves. the things can only get better moment may come again (or it may not ever again). 

here we see the young bulgakov and chekov (doctors both, stoic in the face of universal tuberculosis, of the middle ages that exists outside the front door of well-to-do russian families). bulgakov the novelist cannot stop himself from chanting down babylon and manifesting devils in the street but he cannot get published until the thaw.  until then he is known only for his plays. 

horsemouth votes now (he is old). if he had an allotment he would cultivate it.

it makes sense only to concern ourselves with our lives, with the levers that are within our reach. 

 

‘human culture is by no means the firmly established thing that we once supposed it to be’

so remarked art critic ernst cassirer (somewhat ruefully we imagine) from his new home in america. invited to write a pamphlet on how things got to this terrible pass he cites the irrational current in art. horsemouth has his an essay on man round here somewhere.

last night horsemouth had a dream about finding more boxes to keep books in (he's only just remembered it) but (in the dream) he was somewhat overdressed to lug them back to where he was living. he watched two edith wharton ghost stories from the 80ies shades of darkness series - ghostly goings on in country houses - one starring dot cotton as the ghost (she does make a good ghost). 

yesterday howard visited. he'd picked up his new guitar (yet a.n.other hohner from a grey haired lady just  round the corner from horsemouth's - £14 and a beauty). they had half a cheap pizza each, a bottle of beer each and watched a filmshow. 

in other guitar news howard had  heard tell of nashville tuning (daddad) - horsemouth uses this a fair bit,  the laramie is currently tuned dadfad - open D minor, but it normally reposes in daddad.  

but horsemouth doesn't do what the nashville players do and replace the bass strings with treble strings so that the two halves of the guitar neck are tuned exactly the same (rather than one an octave down from the other) so (dad)dad. thinking about it horsemouth is not exactly sure how they tune these (that's the extent of his bluffer's knowledge). 

the filmshow

• agnes varda's oncle yanco. oncle yanco is (in fact) painter and collage artist jean varda. he lives on some boats together with some other hippies. howard noticed how good agnes was with the light. arthur miller had purchased one of his works (women make the world) for anais nin. anais had been dreaming about owning a houseboat. eventually she moves over from LA to san francisco. 
• alice coltrane at home 16mm film (1970). alice takes us to the coltrane residence up in the dix hills. the kids open the gate, she drives in in a sports car. the interior decoration is amazing purple walls and such like, there's a clip from a gig with rashied ali and pharoah sanders. the kids sit around backstage, michelle shakes a tambourine. 
• sri chinmoy parade and concert (1973) new york.  mahavishnu john mclaughlin and devadip carlos santana jam on the back of a carnival float and then play an open air gig in honour of their guru (they sing a song of the type jai guru). they wear huge thick white identical hoodies - very hip-hop avant la lettre.  

it doesn't look like too bad a morning. it looks like the sun will clear the houses opposite. horsemouth will go for a walk. since work finished he's walking a lot less and seeing as it is his major source of exercise this is a bad thing. 

furthermore he's running short on food. he could do with picking up some bread and some pasta sauce. he figures three more weeks in the seaside towns before he can split to the countryside. 

'no verdict...' (peace in kenosha and the correct use of time)

'no verdict will be able to bring back the lives of anthony huber and joseph rosenbaum, or heal gaige grosskreutz's injuries...'

you'd think they'd manage to secure the conviction of the guy who is on film shooting them though. 

'just as no verdict can heal the wounds or trauma experienced by jacob blake and his family...' (jacob blake shot and paralysed, officer not charged and  returned to duty). that was on film too. 

after these thoughts on the futility of legal process this there is a call for peace from wisconsin governor tony evers. 

'we must have peace in kenosha and our communities, and any efforts or actions aimed at sowing division are unwelcome in our state as they will only hinder that healing.'

what kind of healing can take place if there is no effective legal process wonders horsemouth. at one time it was held that police brutality would die out because there would be  armies of citizen journalists filming any such events and the police would be prosecuted because the evidence was unanswerable (this was about 10 minutes before the LA 92 riot). this has turned out not to be the case. 

elsewhere in wisconsin (in a better wisconsin) joni mitchell skates on lake mendota and onto the cover of hejira looking somewhat like a crow (in b&w) the wind blows her across the ice her shawl acting like a sail. 

meanwhile in rio gordo (near malaga) robert lawson and joel knispel (both of the riogordo freedom orchestra) sit down to improvise of an afternoon. this is the correct use of time. rob even plays slide guitar for the first time in a while. people come in, the dog barks...

horsemouth did not make the correct use of time. he read a little (black snow) and made a list of actually existing recorded horsemouthfolk tracks that he might redeploy on a solo album sometime. (he's a lazy sod - too lazy to contemplate re-recording). 

black snow never happened. this we do not discover until the afterward.

'I should have warned the reader that I had  nothing whatever to do with the a foregoing jottings... maxudov had no connection whatsoever with playwriting or with the theatre in his life, and he remained what he had always been - a junior employee of the newspaper 'the shipping gazette'...'

after a 140 page part 1 the book stops suddenly a mere 30 pages into part 2 with this caligari type disavowal. we are only just getting into the rehearsals for the play and into the full horror of 'the method' (the thing the book is famous for). 

later (in the evening) horsemouth watched zoltan - hound of dracula. jose ferrer manages to keep a straight face. a much better  people in an RV being terrorised movie would be race with the devil. 

today howard visits (he's picking up a new guitar locally - what another one? so it would appear). it's a grey day (so maybe a walk). next week a meeting of the communal endeavour (monday? wednesday?) leading to a meeting in about a fortnight's time. thereafter horsemouth will get his booster jab and (all things being well) go and hide at his parents for the winter solstice. 

things are so fucked up nobody has any idea what is really going on (but anyway. that could never happen here.)

good morning. good morning.

it's friday and the bin men have been. they have taken the rubbish rubbish but seem to have disdained the recycling. horsemouth doesn't think this is a big problem (the recycling doesn't stink, it's good to get the rubbish rubbish properly gone). all hail the binmen. 

2021 was a bulgakov centenary year (well 130 years of mikhail bulgakov) and horsemouth is enjoying black snow. everybody gives bulgakov's narrator excellent advice about negotiating the fraught world of the theatre (it's just that he can't bring himself to take it). 

typical chapter title? 'chapter 13: I perceive the truth' 

horsemouth is a late and incomplete adopter of the incredible string band. he finds the flitting between genres in their songwriting a bit irritating but once in a while they settle and make something really awesome. of course as an improv/ compositional trick it's genius. their playing as well is always super good taste (never too much/ never too little). 

on 13 march 1851 the first forward (or futures) contract was signed for 3,000 bushels of grain (to be delivered the next year) and we were off. what had not yet been grown or made (always present to some extent in capitalist valuations) was now factored in. 

last night there was an adaptation of michael dibdin's cabal (1992) on tv. horsemouth was kind of shocked to discover how late these books were written. their main preoccupations are the bank ambrosiano scandal (1982) and the aldo moro kidnapping (1978). they are a kind of anglophone reception of leonardo sciascia's things are so fucked up nobody has any idea what is really going on paranoia. 

now once upon the time this was viewed as purely an italian malaise (but now the whole world is in some conspiracy theory/ fake news quagmire). there is a point of contact with the bulgakov - the art of living in a society where the slightest mis-step or mis-statement can result in you being shipped off to siberia. bulgakov plays off onto life in the theatre, dibdin runs it (gogol style) as bureaucratic comedy. 

but anyway. that could never happen here. sagely remarks horsemouth. 

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

a grey morning and cold but also the gateway to the weekend. horsemouth still has a disgusting cough. he doesn't have far left to go with black snow. part two is twenty odd pages compared to part one's a hundred and forty. 

'always the same dream unachieved' (recorded but unreleased recordings of horsemouth exist)

stuck for something to read? here's georges rodenbach and his novel bruges -la - morte (well some of it anyway).

georges rodenbach was a belgian symbolist poet, novelist and friend of edmond de goncourt (matter of fact the whole family - georges, his wife, his son constantin - make it into goncourt's journals). 

'rodenbach today denied that maupassant had had any talent declaring that he had never written a single quotable phrase in any of his books...'

in any event horsemouth has too much on his literary plate to be reading the rodenbach now. 

stuck for something to listen to? howard has been busy over on mixcloud. there's an ambient and a chill-out mix for your delectation. 

strange changes in the world of work (brought on by the ability to work-from-home). it seems in the in-demand (but possibly under utilised) technical youth are now working two jobs at the same time (rather than one job after another), they are thus getting paid twice for the same time.  horsemouth is reminded of the french term perruque  (eng.'wig') for a piece of work done on an employer's time and destined to be sold elsewhere. 

nice work if you can get it (remarks horsemouth). horsemouth wonders how it fits into the time for revolution  negri schema (that the working day has broken its banks and the capitalists are now dependent upon the time (and human qualities) of their workers to turn a profit - thus putting political power back in the hands of the workers). 

it affects the kind of workers you have to have on staff (in case something goes wrong) but most of the time are being underutilised. it's all great until both jobs go bad at the same time.

it is (of course) a phenomena that disproportionately affects guardian type workers (and this it is reported there), the vast majority of workers in the world are still being dragged into a physical workplace and supervised. it is of a piece with loose talk of the great resignation where unemployed workers have decided to delay their return to the workforce in the light of the low pay on offer (or gone to work in different sectors of the economy). one problem with the return of inflationary pressures is that it is likely to make the wages even lower in real terms. it is the usual chaos of the capitalist markets (is this any way to run a planet?). 

horsemouth was having a think about what recorded but unreleased recordings of horsemouth exist. (he's a lazy sod, he doesn't want to get in to re-recording things). 

from the early horsemouthfolk recordings gnossiennes (sic.) no.1, je te veux (both by erik satie) and indian dream (lyrics by percy byssche shelley) exist, as do recordings of horsemouth and denise playing black is the colour (of my truelove's hair)  and ride on. highrise strutter's ball exists from the soundtrack of the fall of the house of fitzgerald, katie cruel, japan and a (poorly sung) version of bright phoebus exist (or could be brought into being with a little work). horsemouth has already taken funeral music from a longer instrumental recorded by nick lacey and could go back and get a version of partie de camapagne (kosma, monteiro). 

more may exist (hiding on a dusty CD-r somewhere or as an attachment on an email) - horsemouth will be having a hunt. similarly it might be possible to sneak on versions of his recent work with CATASTRO/fille and enza. the disadvantage (now that horsemouth comes to think about it) will be that these files are in the form MP3 (or similar).  

three things about horsemouth and the answers to five questions

three things about horsemouth

1. horsemouth(folk) is a pseudonym and anthropomorphic and a piece of identity theft, perhaps even cultural appropriation...                                                                                              horsemouth(folk) is a pseudonym, he robbed the name from leroy 'horsemouth' wallace, a legendary reggae drummer (our horsemouth is not a drummer). in the movie rockers leroy 'horsemouth' wallace gives a great speech about how he knows that 'all of the youth shall witness the day that babylon shall fall' . our horsemouth  no longer experiences this amount of revolutionary certainty. it is thus a piece of identity theft, maybe even cultural appropriation. horsemouth(folk) feels a bit bad about this (but it was largely an accident).

            horsemouth (we will revert to calling him that) is  anthropomorphic. he claims to be a mule                    who walks on his hind legs. he does this because while horses may be noble beasts, mules and                donkeys are metonymic workers and peasants. 

2. horsemouth normally claims to be welsh (he was born in birmingham).  he does this on the basis of his welsh granny (on his mother's side, from gorseinon) and having grown up there as a kid (llansamlet and then caerphilly). when he was 16 his parents moved to south herefordshire near the border with wales (his mum's family are from up near leominster). conversely his father's family are from sheffield, his yorkshire granny (on his dad's side) was scottish, and so on. 

when horsemouth is not claiming to be welsh (and side-by-side with it) he claims  to be a proletarian internationalist ('the workers of the world have no country') - what matters is to side with the producers of the world against the vampiric idle rich. 

in recent years horsemouth has re-embraced his welshness (now that it's considerably more fashionable). the accent though (to the extent he ever had it), is gone. his accent (such as it is) is a bit indeterminate. horsemouth would assert he is from the middle class (that's what you'd think if you heard him speak), nonetheless he would assert he was a proletarian (someone with no capital and thus nothing to sell but their labour) but the facts might be against him here. 

certainly horsemouth would work but if he can get by with doing less he will. he's just trying to work out how this would be possible.  

3. horsemouth likes to pretend to be a nice rational, kind beast. (but the facts might be against him). he has been helped in this opinion of himself be his former work (which was of the socially useful and thus poorly remunerated kind). really he suspects he has been mostly harmless and a little selfish.  he is rapidly ageing 

and the answers to five questions

1. who would play you in the movie of your life? probably an age inappropriate 'me' or an animatronic mule. maybe john hurt. not mississippi john hurt but the british actor (is he still alive?). horsemouth's life does not need a movie, he suspects it wouldn't make a very good movie, instead it needs movies that horsemouth himself will star in. there will be films of horsemouth doing various things. 
2. where would you go if you had a two week, all expense-paid vacation to anywhere in the world? porto. go visit ze and john probably in autumn or spring when it is hot (but not so hot one would be tempted to hide indoors). get the bus to the beach and swim. wander round a bit. 
3. what do you love on your pizza? what do you absolutely loathe on your pizza? pizza is nice. a nice posh sourdough pizza with more tomato sauce on it than cheese but to be frank horsemouth would  probably prefer a curry with some naan bread. (vegetarian of course). the advantage of going for a posh pizza is we could probably get in a few glasses of pale ale to go with it and sit around and talk shit (he's guessing it's him and howard who would be going for this food). of course later they would end up in the pub (horsemouth is vastly over fond of drinking beer). 
4. what would your dream job be if money wasn’t an issue? pretty much what horsemouth is doing now (but more of it and more of it paid). to make more films, more music and do more writing and have more people see, listen or read them. horsemouth may not yet be in the position where money is not an issue but he would certainly like to be in the position where it is even less of an issue. this is possible because horsemouth has no problems being poor. 
5. who is the person who has shaped your life significantly? that's a difficult question to answer. other people could point to wives, husbands etc. but the different eras and regions of horsemouth's life have different presiding figures. horsemouth's life is marked in its depth by the interventions of a few friends and of a few lovers and, to a lesser extent, by all the people he has read and listened to. horsemouth does not feel his life has a significant shape, he does not think it would make a good movie (not enough happens and there's no consistent plot development), he hopes the few songs he has been involved with making will be strong enough to survive.  he feels a number of recordings, films, writings, will have to stand in for him in people's memory of him and also the songs that he has listened to, that made him. (fuck it he'll probably end up as a playlist). 

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

a pleasant looking morning out. the cough seems to be dying off but his throat is still sore as fuck. a found quiz online (that horsemouth has decided to volunteer himself for). he filled it in yesterday afternoon (mostly) and then revisited it this morning. he wonders if it will be enough to satisfy his addiction to autobiography. 

 

horsemouth afflicted by the contemporary amnesia (galaxy in...)

horsemouth is afflicted by the contemporary amnesia. for some reason facebook does not want to show him posts from a year ago. horsemouth cannot thus tell you a then  and now story.

last night the french connection. great to see new york so grimy, so fucked up and dangerous looking. this time horsemouth notices roy schneider (busy working away as cop no.2) rather than gene hackman (cop no.1). 

outside a beautiful morning (whoops horsemouth is up late). his sleeping is improving as his coughing diminishes but his throat is still sore. he has his coffee. 

today is world galaxy day also. 

alice coltrane shows us the wide cosmic views (with strings - galaxy in... olodumare/ turiya/ satchidananda) yes,  but she also shows us fierce gnarly improv re-visitings of her late husband's work (my favourite things and a love supreme). 

sorry horsemouth was just off down a what if  wormhole. 

hannah arendt's the origins of totalitarianism  is a big, gnarly, book to fit into the current times. in a way arendt has difficulty speaking to us, some of the text is elucidated by recent events, some of it remains obscured, her nuclear war fear (where sennett starts with her, on that freezing NY corner in 1962) is  the thing that speaks to us least. 

horsemouth is up late. there may be sun in the sitting room. horsemouth has two books on the go (so he should probably go and do some reading).  

tomorrow the electrical safety check. thursday is alabama day. friday the frost moon (and a partial lunar eclipse). 

on common sense and self-interest

today is world galaxy day (as is tomorrow). the anniversary of the recording of world galaxy by alice coltrane. it is the alice coltrane with strings album recorded 50 years ago today (and tomorrow). recorded in new york and mixed in LA.  

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

horsemouth has two books on the go at the minute (there is no particular virtue to this - if he can't face reading the one he can probably face reading the other).

the first is mikhail bulgakov's black snow. stalin has found him a job in the theatre... but it's with stanislavsky.  to punctuate it in a horsemouth style.

'I saw a new world yesterday. (and it was repulsive).'  this is actually what bulgakov says of literary parties. there is a beautiful raging disgust to it. 

the other is richard sennett's the craftsman (2008) which was big (if unpopular) with the anthropologists back then. (there was a brief period when horsemouth was hiding out with the anthropologists). horsemouth has it in a given away free with the times (and potlatched 13 years later) edition. 

soon enough we are with total quality managers and mobile phone manufacturers but first we meet sennett's then teacher hannah arendt on a freezing new york street corner. it is 1962 and the cuban missile crisis has just happened. arendt is hag-ridden by thoughts of nuclear extinction.

she was already feeling it when she wrote the preface to the first edition of the origins of totalitarianism in 1950. for arendt 'the engineer, or any maker of material things, is not master in his own house; politics, standing above the physical labour, has to provide the guidance' as sennett glosses their 62 conversation. 

sennett wants to show us a more thoughtful craftsmanship, perhaps a more nuanced take on heidegger's cottage in the woods and there the crafstman working away, a 'guiding intuition' of making is thinking.

and what a lot of problems that velleity would solve. 

and horsemouth suspects it is not so.

a while ago horsemouth's brother was reading (and encouraging his friends to read) hannah arendt's the origins of totalitarianism. now this is a difficult book because its origins and concerns are with the rise of antisemitism and of fascism (it is a book of the 50ies written in response to the 20ies, 30ies and 40ies). but it is also concerned with that nuclear war fear, with that moment where 'never has our future been so unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest - forces that look like sheer insanity.'

now it may be that that moment actually  'popped' with the cuban missile crisis in 1962, when both sides blinked, that the years of CND and greenham common were just a long afterthought, an empty repetition. certainly nuclear extinction now looks like 'sheer insanity' a possibility ruled out by 'common sense and self-interest' and it is hard to explain to people that for many years it looked like a real and imminent possibility. 

and that those years may come again.    

for horsemouth, reading the origins of totalitarianism  at his parents in the christmas of 2020, and in the light of donald trump's attempt to steal the election and the capitol riot (and indeed brexit) it was impossible to read it as anything but an account, a prefiguring, of the rise of trump and of brexit. 

now horsemouth's brother is obliged to take the opposite view over brexit to the one that horsemouth does, that it was a rational decision to refuse the gradual undemocratic federalism of a european super state. horsemouth doesn't disagree that what was going on was undemocratic, but seeing as he doesn't value westminster democracy that highly he was not particularly inclined to mourn its loss (in some ways he viewed the material benefits of the EU and foreign holidays as outweighing any democratic deficits and would think it was mere common sense and self interest to do so).

horsemouth had his beautiful euro dream on the banks of the douro in porto on the eve of the UK brexit referendum (he had arranged to vote by proxy he hopes this was achieved). the youth of porto walked past on their way to the beach at matosinhos, horsemouth and his new found friends danced to a car stereo, the guy had set up selling beer out of the boot.   

the next day horsemouth woke up with the hangover and to the brexit referendum result - which was brexit. 

imagine him like charlton heston at the end of planet of the apes. 

to horsemouth arendt's talk of mobs and cross-class alliances is confirmed in the (half-arsed) trump putsch but also the whole ukip, brexit phenomenon, that seething dissatisfaction finding the least useful target and with some witless (yet tactically adept) counter figure to lead it. trumps vote went up during that election campaign and millions believe that the election was stolen from him. biden got in though but is unlikely to do enough to shift the economic and political conditions that made trump a viable candidate. trump may well run again (and here we are still stuck with his mini-me boris who shows no sign of getting out). 

so those years may come again. they are not over. it is cold on that street corner in new york where hannah arendt wants to make sure her students gets it, there is no way back out through heidegger, through craft and the forest clearing. 

faced with such times (worse times even, as a black woman in the US of the 50ies and 60ies) alice coltrane shows us a beautiful fusion of outer space and spirituality.  but of course attending to our craft does not enable us to escape the dreadful politics that surrounds us and the years that may arise from it. 

 

... and horsemouth has made it to sunday

good morning. good morning. horsemouth is up and awake. the weather continues to be very mild and horsemouth's lungs continue to be fucked. he sits up in bed with in a slightly fleecy t-shirt and sweaty armpits. there was coffee in the pot already when he woke up (so he just had to add hot water). he's just gone back for seconds. 

in a bit a shower. (if he's ill the least he can do is enjoy the luxury of it). 

and he is ill. his cough may sound disgusting but he doesn't feel too bad on it. in the old days he would have to get up and throw himself out of the door to get the train to work (coughing all the way to the train, throwing up his breakfast coffee). then he'd have to work. then he'd have to come back. at least he doesn't have to do that anymore. 

variously his boss would moan at him for showing up to work with a cough and demand to know whether it was flu he'd had or a cold on the sickness self-certification forms. horsemouth responded with an email that was as near to fuck you as possible. 

it's three years since richard wildhare shared a link to chiwonisu's version of zvichapera (such is the accuracy of our externalised digital memory). later on a visit horsemouth played it back to him (convinced he was bringing richard something new that he did not know). it's just one of those great performances where everything just comes together. 

four years ago he was meeting with denise and darsavini in the florist's arms (denise was back over for a visit). 

horsemouth was wondering about the horsemouthfolk tracks he recorded back in the day and put up on myspace.  the gig is far enough away that he's not wondering about it. the cough is altering where his voice is (which is making singing a bit strange). 

horsemouth has made it to the weekend

he has an absolutely filthy cough and a dribbling nose and intermittent headaches (but the toothache seems to have died back so that's a relief). 

he's up. he's had a coffee and a hot shower. he slept tolerably well. he suspects he has a way to go before he starts feeling actually better. 

yesterday he started on michael bulgakov's black snow (an account of his time with the moscow arts theatre of stanislavsky rendered as comedy). typical chapter title? chapter 3 - I commit suicide. later he watched some italian equivalent of the sweeney (or maybe dirty harry). it may be his feverish state (or the standardised nature of tough guy thriller dialogue) but he thinks he is understanding more of it. 

horsemouth listened to the grenfell podcast. 14 years before the fire at grenfell tower there was some knowledge of the risks of cladding fires in the government. one civil servant in the department of communities and local government, who specialised in building regulations,  included diagrams showing the risks of fire spreading cladding systems in documents from as early as 2003. 

so yes that's 14 years before grenfell. 

wisdom with hindsight (in a two time track novel)

so horsemouth's snotty nose and sore throat seems to have abated and been replaced by a new improved snotty nose and a filthy cough. there's the odd twinge from the tooth. horsemouth's day begins with a coughing fit where he coughs up a lot of glycoprotein and then the coffee he had drunk for breakfast (truly life is unjust on more than one level). 

horsemouth has finished reading theresia enzensberger's blueprint, an enjoyable, if slight, fictional recreation of one woman's time at the the bauhaus - she gets to see both the weimar  and the dessau incarnations. (horsemouth believes he visited the dessau site in about 1995). 

on the cover is a colourised photo of students at the bauhaus (presumably the dessau site) - the girls lean out over the lip balcony, the guys  are on the ground floor appealing upwards, of the photographer (on the next floor up from the girls) we can only see the tip of a shoe. 

of course if the photo had been left in black and white its diagonal composition would have been more evident. 

our heroine survives the rise of fascism (and the less than wonderful attitudes and action of her mainly male teachers and colleagues) and escapes to new york where she works in the planning department. she is eventually bounced for opposing robert moses' midtown development and becomes a writer. time has revealed the problems with gropius's projects (as the book points out a walk up the hill to the social housing estates built to his plans and a few conversations with the tenants would have done so),  so there's a lot of that wisdom with hindsight (in a two time track novel) here. 

horsemouth is grateful to the author for introducing him to bruno taut (as well as showing him round two of the incarnations of the bauhaus). 

this morning a grey day. if the clouds part horsemouth will be sunning himself in  the front room. if they do not he will review the day from his bed. 

horsemouth has got his date for his booster jab (it's about 1 day earlier than he thought it would be but it's a much shorter walk). 

a famous chinese proverb (if you should be defeated in battle... )

at 48.29 (slightly before) sergio martino discusses a famous chinese proverb (and it's one of horsemouth's favourite proverbs too) - can you tell which one it is? they don't translate it (so you'll have to work hard for it). 

meanwhile horsemouth was up last night suffering with dental pain. he's feeling better right now. he's got some oil of cloves from ian (that seems to be doing the trick) and he's had some paracetamol to take the edge off (that seems to be doing the trick also). if that doesn't do the trick there's some proper pain relief about also. to complicate matters he also has a shocker of a cold. 

he's been out, put some credit on his phone, and postponed the various things he has to do. he will now go back to bed and see if he can get in a snooze. 

it's a full six months since horsemouth last did a stroke of work.  the works pension (about £50/ month) continues to arrive - sadly horsemouth is drinking it (he will have to start avoiding pubs again and putting effort into sitting outside on the front steps). has horsemouth settled into his 'retirement' (or is he still in the process of transition?).

he has been reading about the bauhaus - gropius, schlemmer, klee, kandinsky, johannes itten, and the  related doesburg. 

one year since regular service was established on blogspot

what horsemouth should be doing is turning around and re-reading elizabeth costello but he's not, he's gone straight on to reading theresia enzensberger's novel about the bauhaus blueprint (which is great so far) - klee, kandinsdky etc. etc.

it's three years since horsemouth's first solo gig at water into beer  in south london, he thanks martin howard and lou for getting him on. horsemouth (a motivational speaker with a sideline playing music as he was recently advised to rebrand himself) very much enjoyed it (it was just the right size).

he's playing again in early february (assuming everything goes to plan/ he does not die etc.). 

it's one year since regular service was established on blogspot following the ending of the facebook notes tool (and indeed the great myspace blog dieback). now horsemouth would have preferred to keep the daily diarising and the curated list of interesting posts separate (but it was  not to be).

sean has been reading his way through the blogpostings (he has surfaced in the email). 

last night a modern take on dagon (2001) - a slightly delicatessen kind of take. 

capitalism, the beast, as horsemouth sometimes refers to it faces a transition problem, it had assumed that the old carbon producing companies would be profitable forever (but instead they must be shut down) these losses leave them with little ready capital to kick off the whole renewables/net zero thing. further there will be inflationary pressures as the scarcity of the carbon drives up prices of all the goods dependent upon them. 

'procrastination has reduced the chances of engineering an orderly transition...'

add to this climate refugees and instability.

horsemouth's plan (in as much as he has one) is to retire to the metaphorical hills. 

. 

natural (in)justice (freeview 232 - eight lessons and a postscript)

horsemouth watched a parliamentary debate (freeview 232) on the parliamentary standards office (the mechanism by which MPs discipline themselves) a debate where MPs argued largely about the process of how MPs discipline themselves rather than about the real issue of what restrictions should they place on themselves and their ability to earn large sums of money doing advocacy work while also receiving a generous £82k/ year salary (their expenses are paid separately). 

that this can lead to problems can be seen by the case of owen paterson (now an ex-MP, he has ceased to be) who was receiving £8k a month from a medical equipment company who went on to win £500 millions worth of government contracts during the covid epidemic. the problem for owen paterson was that he was bang to rights (said even the tory members of the committee) but there weren't enough lawyers involved and it violates notions of 'natural justice' (something of a buzz-phrase with the tories after robert jenrick's deployment of it) said his tory supporters.

by resigning paterson escapes suspension by the standards committee and a recall petition, whether he can go on to escape criminal charges and still get his lordship are other matters. 

one problem with the tories covid response was that they went to their network and that network was the old boy network of plausible businessmen and large scale subcontractors (like dido harding and G4S for example). now if this works and it's not too expensive nobody complains,  it's just a ticking off when the dust settles desperate times require desperate measures etc. but the problem is that it hasn't worked and it has cost billions (and not just ordinary billions but hundreds of billions).  

this makes the real tory aim to get out in front of this and knobble the regulator before the angel of death starts scything through the tory party. getting owen paterson off the hook was just a pretext. boris has had serial (ok 3) run ins with the regulator and there are more to come. 

of course in this vain hope it resembles the lloyds names scandal (that too was supposed to scythe through the tory party destroying their majority). (hint: this never happened).

of course no one would want to see a return to the days when MPs were carted off in handcuffs for their expenses and paid advocacy fiddles (and bullying and sexual harassment) because there was no mechanism within parliament to remind  them not to engage in illegal activity and to gently usher them back onto the straight and narrow. 

the new preferred form of the regulator would be something like the independent expert committee (that deals with accusations of bullying and sexual harassment). this is a judicial process has lots of lawyers involved in it and has so far (to horsemouth's knowledge) only convicted one MP who remains an MP (this must be a great comfort to the victim and any whistleblowers). 

more blasts from the past last night horsemouth watched helen steel and dave morris fight off mcdonalds in the mclibel  court case live from the COP26 youtube feed (at about 9 hours and 19 minutes in). they are ably assisted and supported by a young keir starmer. on appeal (and defending themselves against a multinational behemoth because legal aid is not available for libel hearings) they manage to win on the majority of the claims in their incredibly carefully worded leaflet.

he applauds their sheer bravery and pig headedness and their stamina. the tendency now is to view it as having had a big effect on the healthy eating debate (morgan spurlock's supersize me etc.), at the time many would have viewed it as being about the animals, but dave and helen make it clear that their aims were broader. 

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this morning  horsemouth was just discussing the communal endeavour with sten. to do this successfully horsemouth has to infect sten with his utter pessimism. sten has correctly identified the policy horsemouth is advocating as 'managed decline' - the endeavour shrinks in size (we adjust to this and we continue on). 

there are of course lots of things the endeavour could do but the only policy that people are unequivocally in favour of is do nothing. the housing stock is old victorian houses - the kind that are difficult to heat, difficult to insulate, and increasingly becoming difficult to let. retrofitting them to move them towards net zero is a hell of a task. 

daryll is just off out (sten should be later but he's not yet).

horsemouth has finished reading elizabeth costello by j.m. coetzee (or as he will be renaming it eight lessons and a postscript). coetzee has novelised his non-fiction (including his the lives of animals). if horsemouth was conscienious he would re-read 

journey in satchidananda day (the animals)

Journey in Satchidananda - Alice Coltrane from Sadhu on Vimeo.

good morning. good morning. and it's a monday morning too (start of the week). 

today is journey in satchidananda day (when the vast majority of journey in satchidananda was recorded up in the coltrane family home in the dix hills). we are talking about the cecil mcbee, tulsi, pharoah sanders, rashied ali and majid shabazz tracks on the album (everything except isis and osiris). 

now horsemouth spends a lot of time singing the praises of huntington ashram monastery (ron carter bass lines) but really satchidananda is the perfect alice coltrane jazz album. there is also the ashram religious music by her (which is also amazing and may indeed be even more amazing). 

last night a telephone call with his mum (and then a horror movie). 

horsemouth has nearly finished j.m.coetzee's elizabeth costello - which is once again a novel about the animals as horsemouth would once have put it, a novel that is concerned with animal rights. think of coetzee's disgrace - disgraced lecturer moves back into the countryside of the new south africa but this is almost too big an issue for the central character. what he ends up doing is volunteering helping at an animal centre euthanising and burying stray dogs. coetzee has written non-fiction about the animals and in  elizabeth costello he has his ageing female author beset by the concerns of famous authors (jet lag, representation, the role of the novel, conference speeches etc.) but also by animal rights. 

to be honest never thinks about the animals these days - he's a vegetarian (and has been for 30+  years), he's even had spates of veganism, the animals is no longer the overarching moral necessity that it was for him when he was  younger. (of course if you can do it, not eat animals horsemouth means, then do it) the whole thing seems to have been absorbed without remainder into consumer capitalism. 

last week the past came close: first some random plainclothes cop identifying him as a squatter, then a friend from long ago posting a photo of horsemouth from back in those days. this makes horsemouth paranoid and nervous - he has no desire to return to those bad old days. the whole thing was heavily infiltrated by police spies, people were getting arrested and jailed left right and centre. to horsemouth this seemed like vast overkill, he presumes the police spies were getting promotions out of talking up the threat that these vegetarian children (mostly young girls in their late teens, early twenties) posed. the result of the jailings was a self-fulfilling prophecy to make the whole scene darker. 

eventually, several years after horsemouth had left, barry horne died on hunger strike in a UK jail (it was just the anniversary). 

horsemouth was warned off. but he didn't take the advice and it nearly cost him dearly. like he said he's glad to grow older. he hopes it is all far enough in the past to be dead and buried. he was never anything big, he was frankly just a loudmouth and an idiot. 

most of elizabeth costello's concerns can be reflected in milan kundera's immortality (er. writing, posthumous fame, what is the novel for? etc.) everything except the animal rights. you'll pardon horsemouth is he stops with these topics (and a little non-specific workerism). 

and in other (safer) nostalgia it's the hawkbinge podcast covering the album hawklords 25 years on. this is peak hawkwind of their silver age, the bob calvert/ new wave years - bob is singing well and writing good lyrics (psi power, freefall, the only ones, only the dead dreams of the cold war kid) the new band (harvey bainbridge, martin griffin, steve swindells) are young and fresh and playing well. there is, of course, some egregious padding with remakes of earlier tracks (flying doctor, 25 years, even this is the age of the micro-man which is a lift from fable of a failed race on the previous album). 

the youngster calls it right on the podcast, singling out bob's lyrics for praise. next month PXR5 an album that was recorded previous to 25 years  and with the old line up of the band, a contractual obligations album. again it is a dog's dinner of good songs and lazy bullshit, and cutting across that  songs well recorded in the studio and songs recorded live. (but we will just have to wait a whole month for that). 

the hawkbinge podcast has moved horsemouth's thinking -  he now see's astounding sounds  as the first of the calvert era albums (it's position is distorted by the 'proper' musicians - paul rudolph, alan powell, simon house - on it who make of it a more musicianly album, he used to see it as an outlier), but it is also the last of the honking saxophone nik turner era albums. 

ok horsemouth must get on with the day. 

'the past is so bright I've got to wear shades'

so horsemouth is back from east ham where he went to visit howard and pick up the resonator (and drop off the telecaster copy). howard played horsemouth the new tracks he is working on (and horsemouth approves). 

howard had no food in the house so they went off to the pub by the park for pizza and beer. they sat in the back garden and listened to lots of bowie and t.rex - later at the end they swapped to jungle. on their way back to howard's they got fascinated by a large but empty pub and decided to adjourn in there for yet more beer. the music was decent (they played aphex twin). 

eventually they managed to throw themselves out of there and get a £3 falafel wrap. it was this that fueled horsemouth for the journey home. 

back at howards horsemouth played howard some of the bally sagoo stuff. but howard was knackered and horsemouth was soon off and away back to h_____y. 

a photo has emerged of horsemouth on his way to stonehenge (or the west country in general) in about 1986 or 1987. he can see the family resemblance. 

today horsemouth will be shuffling around recovering. 

special article: some thoughts on the conviction of claudia webbe MP and the likelihood of her being recalled and losing her position as an MP

horsemouth is relieved to know that the penalty for threatening to throw acid in someone's face is a suspended sentence and some community service - or at least that's what you would gather from the case of disgraced MP claudia webbe. horsemouth fears however it may be some time before she exits public life. 

she was very busy in labour (on the national executive etc.), former islington councillor too. 

'in february 2021, webbe apologised after an investigation by the parliamentary commissioner for standards found that she had broken the code of conduct for MPs by her multiple late (by months) registrations of remunerations received for her role as a councillor in islington.' 

it's interesting that she hasn't resigned as an MP yet.

it's a suspended sentence but it's over a year so if the appeal fails (and it could be many weeks (months even) before that comes to trial)  and then  if the recall petition achieves enough votes (10% of the registered voters in the constituency - so 7,438 signatures in leicester east) then claudia webbe will lose her position as an MP and there will be a by-election in her constituency. 

if she wishes to stand again she would have to stand as an independent but she was a parachuted in candidate so she's unlikely to take much of the labour vote. if she wins she's back in. if she loses she's out. I think she probably won't stand. 

so how long could this process take? 

fiona onasanya, the former MP for peterborough, was convicted for perverting the course of justice in december 2018, her final appeal was refused in march 2019, triggering the recall process and a by election in june 2019.

because of covid and cuts to the courts system court cases can take a long time to go through these days. 

so let's see how much money claudia webbe MP stands to make if it does indeed take a full six months to work through the appeals process and recall processes.

the basic MPs salary is £81,932/year - so that's just shy of £41k (nice work if you can get it). while she is on a number of committees it doesn't look like she receives extra money for this. 

last year she claimed for £50,101.09 in expenses (june 2020 to end of may 2021) so that would be something like the same again then if she last out until may  (and indeed it may be more, during the COVID-19 pandemic MPs were able to claim additional expenses of up to £10,000 to support the costs of them and their staff working from home.) in addition to pay for winding up staff contracts and office rent an allowance is available (up to £46,000 as of July 2011). so at least she won't be out of pocket for these expenses. 

while she may not be eligible for  resettlement grant (she won't be losing her seat at a general election) there may well be winding-up allowance (essentially severance pay) probably at about £12k per year 'served' - so about £24k) and then there's the pension (about £2k/year per year 'served' so about £4k).

... and then (of course) there will be the matter of how much she profits from selling either her london or her constituency (leicester east) home. seeing as she was an islington councillor for 10 years I suspect her 'main' home will be the london one. 

but hey, it will be nice to see the guilty being punished (should that ever happen).

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of course it is interesting to see who actually gets recalled.

a recall petition could have been triggered in the case of owen patterson (conservative), but the house of commons, following a government whipping action, voted to reject a proposed 30-day suspension in november 2021. the government subsequently backtracked on that position and proposed a new vote, but patterson chose to resign, so no petition will occur. he obviously doesn't need the money. 

a recall petition was not triggered in the case of rob roberts' (independent but formerly conservative)  six-week house suspension in may 2021 as this case was judged by the independent expert panel rather than the committee on standards. this was described as an 'anomaly' in the procedure. he's still an independent MP.

MPs voted to suspend ian paisley junior (DUP later independent) from the house of commons for 30 sitting days, beginning on 4 september 2018, because he broke paid advocacy rules by receiving hospitality from the Sri Lankan government without declaring that to the commons. following his suspension, the recall of MPs act 2015 was invoked for the first time since it received royal assent. that triggered an abortive recall petition so he's still the MP for north antrim.  there's a very amusing article online that argues the recall petition failed because it was effectively hidden from the public (so not enough signatures were acquired).

christopher paul davies (conservative MP for brecon and radnorshire) pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud concerning Parliamentary expenses,(march 2019) and on 21 June 2019 he was removed from office by a recall petition. 

interestingly he was later selected as the conservative candidate to contest the ynys môn seat at the 2019 united kingdom general election, but stood down after other welsh conservatives criticised his selection. 

and then we come to fiona onasanya (discussed above) and claudia webbe (if her appeal fails). two black women, two labour politicians  and so,  unlike ian paisely junior, owen patterson, rob roberts, unlikely to be protected by sectarianism, government whipping, or an 'anomaly of procedure'. 

horsemouth is  glad boris has been knocked back on his first attempt to knobble the parliamentary standards regulator but he will soon be back at it (and probably when the dust has settled, with labour assistance).

“make no mistake, this is not some accidental misspoken comment. this is part of an orchestrated and deliberate attempt to not only undermine the independent authority of a regulator but to influence decision-making and set a marker down for the future.” 

- dave penman, the general secretary of the FDA union, which represents senior civil servants.

'are you off squatting?' 'no mate. way too old...' (nostalgia)

anybody know of any squatter action near leyton jubilee park? yesterday horsemouth was stopped by a plainclothes copper claiming to have served a 'closure notice'. probably he had come across the footbridge  from the marshes. 

he had ID (horsemouth checked - you can't be too careful these days) and grey hair.

'are you off squatting?' he asked. horsemouth was just returning from the supermarket and so had a full rucksack and a tote bag

'no mate. way too old...'

back in the day horsemouth was a dirty squatter. he thought of himself as a lifestyle squatter in that he liked the life. he liked the wombles/ stig of the dump/ DIY aspect of it. he liked bringing empty houses back into use.  there was a squatter community, there were pubs they went to (and parties afterward), and in the summer there were festivals.   the city was full of empty houses, empty flats, empty warehouses - the population of london had been falling since the first world war and it wasn't til the mid 80ies that it started going back up again. 

he could, of course, at any point have gone and got a bedsit and paid for it using housing benefit and gone and got a proper job (and blah blah) but why would you.

later (after a series of unfortunate events) he dropped back into society and went and got a job and started paying rent for somewhere to live, initially with friends, and at some other friends' flat while they were away on holiday, and finally he ended up in the communal endeavour housing co-operative where he has been for the last 20 or so years. 

the job paid the rent and there was enough left over for horsemouth to start living in reasonable comfort and start saving. the years rolled on. horsemouth became a boring and perfectly legal citizen. 

he is still fucking cautious when he deals with the cops though. best avoided is horsemouth's advice. 

horsemouth's friends suggested that maybe the copper had been in a coma / time warp for a few decades and was trying to find the action, or maybe he was just suffering from nostalgia. 

the law changed (but pretty soon given the english system of common law there was enough wriggle room for people to squat non-residential property and off it all went again but at a lower level).  the parks are full of homeless people bedding down for the night in tents. this is progress? remarks horsemouth.

come to think about it that may be what yer man the copper was off doing. 

the government everybody in program to get the rough sleepers off the streets at the start of covid shows what can be done when the government puts its mind to something. and yet the government (labour or conservative) remains committed to using its resources and muscle to provide subsidies for the over inflated housing market  or for the part rent part buy aspirational voters likely to vote for them rather than poorer people in greater housing need. the housing associations, the TMOs, the ALMOs, the council housing departments, all the providers of social housing have all been mercilessly battered to discourage them from creating further social housing.  

the eventual consequence of all of this? the grenfell fire where 72 people die. the homeless people in the park. the not so youngsters living at their parents. the vast farming of the young for rent money that will leave them poor in their old age. 

horsemouth is giving up. he's upped stumps and back to the pavillion. he's just grateful to live in a house with central heating. 

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later today horsemouth goes over to howard's. he doesn't know if they'll do anything musical or just walk around a bit before trooping off to the pub.