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.