‘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.