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.
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