on the last day (climbing difficult second album mountain)

'I suddenly realised that if I didn't do a second album it wouldn't get done.' 

horsemouth is up. well actually he's sitting up in bed. he may have to open a window (his parents tend to run the heating high in the morning). 

linda perhacs has a realisation. she did the first album (but it didn't take off) so she went back to her job as a dental hygienist. decades later she got emailed about how the album was an underground hit. it's another rose simpson, vashti bunyan type moment. her first album was sampled (by prefuse 73 for example) but the results were underwhelming. 

the clock is (of course) always ticking. it's just that sometimes we can't hear it. 

it's the last day  of the year  and horsemouth will be attempting to be reflective 

that's the function of this bit of the year 

(that and eating as much food you can before it rots). 

the winter solstice has passed, the sun is creeping up the horizon and getting higher in the skies but overall this side of the planet is cooling down (so we still have the bones of winter january, february, much of march to endure). given the rise in gas prices horsemouth hopes for a mild winter that does not test the heating system and his wallet unduly.

meanwhile horsemouth needs to have a number of realisations, about his music, about where he is going to live, and, more widely, what he is going to do if he is not going to be working. 

for the music horsemouth needs to climb difficult second album mountain. 

there is musicians of bremen stuff that is a duo, or howard's stuff, or horsemouth playing on howard's stuff, volumes one, two and four would be good examples. horsemouth thinks that howard will release a solo album next year (in 2022 maybe 2023) in line with volume two. 

and then there is the stuff that is horsemouth's stuff (with howard playing or singing on it) volume three would be a good example.

horsemouth needs to do another volume three. 

now horsemouth could revisit his pre-musicians of bremen  recordings and put those out (and they are decent and characterful and they are him). but more he needs to get together the repertoire for for volume three part two. 

really this is what he should have been doing over the pandemic. (and indeed before his first gig on the new season in february). 

and meanwhile horsemouth needs to have a number of realisations, not just about his music, but about where he is going to live, and, more widely, what he is going to do if he is not going to be working. 

  

'pages of rambling incoherent argument or trivial reminiscence' (the last love song)

'a heterogenous mass of prose, in which passages of profound reflection alternate with pages of rambling incoherent argument or trivial reminiscence and pieces of serious and subtle criticism lie bedded in matter whose interest is long since dead.' - introduction by helen  darbishire to de quincey's literary criticism. london, henry frowde 1909

last night  the last hawkbinge podcast of the 70ies (the end of the golden years and the silver years) - a nod to live 79 (the declaration of the new project). live 79 is where horsemouth comes in - it is on that tour that he first sees them live, granted he has heard lord of light and has bought quark, strangeness and charm. they open with shot down in the night. 

in the day horsemouth made two walks on the common -he is thinking of renaming the top of the common hergest ridge (even though it is not hergest ridge) . 

later a zoom beer with howard (who was back from christmas celebrations). horsemouth hadn't done his homework so the discussion could not take place. howard seemed taken by the collage of dreams notion which horsemouth mentioned as being present in both the white guard  and in dylan thomas's under milk wood. 

he read some of a biography of joan didion online. it occurred to him that joan and philip k.dick were probably knocking round berkeley at the same time. (both are very californian writers). if he could find the joan didion book he left here he would probably read it. 

it's a grey morning. we are nearly at the end of the year. horsemouth will probably not attempt an end of year list but he will attempt an end of month list (of books read, films watched etc.)

having dispensed with the proformas (and the books he has read) horsemouth is probably going to have to work out what to say to you directly.

you find horsemouth at a transitional moment and it's not just that he is stuck between years or hiding out at his parents in the countryside. the work has ended and so the necessity to stay in the seaside towns has ended. on the other hand horsemouth has no firm real plans to move out. he has a somewhat enlarged library to potlatch for starters. hell he even has some furniture (not just portable bookcases and boxes of books). he certainly has guitars, some keyboards and other musical instruments. 

the house of the turbins (the white guard)

'events. what events? the white guard is fiction.'

having been so prosaically real the white guard ends in a welter of dreams (just as in under milk wood). alexei turbin (the elder brother/ the sensible one/ the analogue for bulgakov himself maybe) survives the siege of kiev (at least in the novel he does, in the play he dies). within the novel he survives because his perfect sister (elena turbin) prays for him when he is injured and sick with typhus. eveybody has behaved honourably (apart from the generals, a few sneak thieves and elena's husband). 

nekrasov writes an epilogue. he visits what he tells us is the house. he tells us about going to see the play (the days of the turbins) at the moscow arts theatre and about the reception of this and bulgakov's other novels (as they arrive from out of the maw of censorship).  nekrasov knew the kiev of the time (though he carefully claims not to have known any white russians). 

if the bulgakovs are the turbins (as nekrasov claims) then the turbin family is mostly destined for exile in paris.

who knows what is destined to happen in the current tussle over kiev. 

in the book horsemouth found his bookmark - a pale pink zone 1 tube ticket from 30th june 2001. horsemouth hid it gingerly back in the book. 

yesterday a bright sunny day (and not too cold). horsemouth went for a wander up on the common in the morning (taking the bulgakov) and ran up the drive in the afternoon (for exercise). he finished reading the bulgakov in the evening (he is trying to get back into the habit of reading). 

today a grey damp morning (but the weather is still mild). we move towards the end of the week and then the new year. 

horsemouth continues to hunt for an end of year statement that gives him a clearer vision of where he is going and what he is doing but he probably needs to be doing it for it to come. 

 

2021 - how was the year for you?

'the impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way any compulsion tries to justify itself...' - joan didion, on keeping a notebook. 

horsemouth has survived 2021 and at some point in the night of the 31st (and with fireworks - but not out here in the countryside) it will become 2022. 

and thank fuck for that. 

 horsemouth is reusing this proforma how was your year for you from january 1st 2019

2021 began well at least (despite the fact that it is after the final countdown and britain had left the EU). a friend of howard's has an internet radio show over in funky kingston (the comfort zone on green futures festival radio 8-11pm fridays) and he played two tracks from the latest musicians of bremen album - sand storm  and dark was the day.  

nevertheless horsemouth has had only a moderate year in terms of cultural production. horsemouth had thought he was entering a productive part of his life but this was largely supported by other people's willingness to engage with digital technology which- he must admit - he is not that keen on doing himself. 

horsemouth hopes to do some recording in 2022 (but he has none planned currently). he can either re-release something he has recorded before, or he can pay or cajole someone to record him. hmmnnn. 

horsemouth did one gig last year at cafe babar in hereford for wierdshire (24th june - midsummer - thanks sproatley). he has one planned for the year coming (down at water into beer in february - thanks martin). musicians of bremen did not release anything of their own in 2021 but howard may release a solo album in 2022. howard put together a number of mixes over on the golden glow. two of these this year used material selected by horsemouth (thanks howard).

horsemouth has been slowed down by the pandemic. he has been distracted by the apocalypse. the apocalypse of staying home (if not so much the apocalypse of reading books as he would have hoped). instead it has been the apocalypse of farting about on the internet. horsemouth has survived this far. 

he worked with catastro/fille and with en za (thanks to both - though this material isn't out yet). horsemouth hopes this will continue in some form. an attempt to relaunch peter, paul and enza failed (thanks to all - one day we will get it up and running again). 

in 2021 he did voice over an animation for catastro/fille (poplarism) and that was released. he would like to do more of this (but on the other hand he just saw an AI powered voice over/ text reading service advertised on youtube so that's probably his (putative) ideal  job out of the window (again). 

but there were no major projects released in 2021 (like 2020s the fall of the house of fitzgerald or the slew of musicians of bremen recordings).. 

he kept on writing this blog. he read a fair bit (though not with the concentrated effort that he has managed in previous years), he watched a lot of films (mostly giallos, horrors, and ghost stories). 

horsemouth's paid work has ended. he has been made redundant - the working from home and the furlough did not (in the end) save his arse (though it seemed at the time it might). he's probably not doing enough to prevent boredom but he has savings, the redundancy cheque, an advance on the pension and his works pension (small though it is). 

and because he's staying home he is in fact spending hardly any money at all (except for rent).

but though he knows he shouldn't  he's been back up the pub (with howard), and out to get pizza, and on public transport. he knows he can't really afford to do this if he's going to avoid working again. 

his homestead (the gaff) - horsemouth remains cautiously pleased with. he has returned the living room to use and cleared out the corridors. (of course he expects it all to roll back down the hill while he is away.)

meanwhile the back and front gardens have gone to fuckries again and will need to be purged.

in his room he needs to have another book sale if he is going to get mobile. there are a lot of books horsemouth bought just for the pleasure of a bargain or passing interest and he's not sure that he loves them enough to want to move them again. 

the communal endeavour all meets online now. horsemouth has genuinely tried to keep his eyes on the prize and to avoid annoying people. in the wider world politically horsemouth expects it all to continue to be shit, just because brexit is 'done' it doesn't mean that the current spate of nationalist bollocks won't drag on forever. he apologises to his EU friends.

he walked less than in previous years (no walking for work/ not much walking for books).in previous years he'd replaced getting the tube into the centre with getting the bus in and for anything not directly in the centre he'd taken to getting trains or tubes round the outside of zone 1 and walking in. further he had extended this to walking to bookings, or between bookings, whenever possible. generally when there were still physical bookings horsemouth would attempt to get there for the least amount of money possible (even if it took more time).  

if he bought far fewer second hand books and fewer CDs than he would have in a normal year, he also spent far less on coffees, sandwiches, croissants, bags of chips etc. he continued cooking more regularly (but a limited range of dishes). he continued to be a lazy, morally compromised lacto-vegetarian. 

for yet another year he didn’t manage a foreign holiday (but hopes to manage one in 2022). he spent a lot of time at his folks (which has been good).  

horsemouth thanks howard, enza, catastro/fille for joining him in his creative endeavours and all who have read, watched, listened to him, or liked or commented on the things he has produced. in particular he thanks m.j. filius, marc cattini, john clarkson, mikey gee, matt boyce, martin howard, zoe gilmour, and remotecore (is that you fergus?). 

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

having used a pro-forma horsemouth may write again later on to get his necessary revelations in. 

   

'I loved yugoslavia. I just thought it was great.'

brian aldiss was spoiled by his time in the far east with the british army he reckons. part of his time was spent painting murals and putting on dances in a converted barn in sumatra. the british were occupying it to keep out the dutch on behalf of the local dictator (and because they'd been thrown out of india by the indians). this (occupying sumatra to stop the dutch from returning) was another bit of colonial history that horsemouth had never been taught.

eventually (three years after the end of the war) there's a troopship home and a sad arrival at liverpool docks to post war housing shortages and rationing. brian gets a job in a bookshop in oxford (and a typewriter and writes a satirical novel about it and he's off). 

but he cannot settle because he had been spoiled by the far east. he fell in love with yugoslavia almost as soon as he saw it - probably after the trieste film festival which he used to attend with harry harrison (deathworld, the stainless steel rat etc.). he was an early explorer of yugoslavia by landrover (who knew). they were so pleased to see him they gave him free petrol coupons for a year. 

'I loved yugoslavia. I just thought it was great.'

brian is an engaging host and absolutely charming. he's 79 when he's interviewed (he will last out until he is 92) and if his memory for names is shot his face still lights up with pleasure at the memories of the times and the people. 

horsemouth saw him speak at the british library on a bill with norman spinrad, john clute  and michael moorcock (sean had gotten tickets) probably a decade ago now. (yes june 22nd 2011).

it's a grey, foggy wet day out. horsemouth's brother, and his wife and his kids, are up visiting. people seem to have side-stepped the current covid wave (or perhaps they haven't and maybe we will find this out later). 

horsemouth is not sure what to do with today. breakfast and then a walk at some point he guesses. 

'a metaphor for current social commentary'

it's a misty morning and horsemouth is up late.(probably those two glasses of wine he had with his dad). but at least it isn't raining (as far as horsemouth can see).  

yesterday they did not make it out to govilion but they did make it up onto the common for a wander about.  later a restrained meal in the dining room. 

today horsemouth has to decamp from his old bedroom (to make way for the children) and into the spare room (from where he will have to decamp every time his dad wants to use the internet or watch tv).

last night (later on) horsemouth discovered a series of interviews with brian aldiss (SF writer and amiable old duffer). aldiss was old enough to have fought in the second world war (in burma). the dropping of the atomic bombs on japan probably saved his life he once said. he was a writer (that's what he did) he said. 

yesterday the news cycle was suspended (at least on radio). news briefing (5.30am) seems to be on holiday. normally when he is back at his parents horsemouth starts to read the torygraph (who are engagingly apocalyptic about the prospects for capitalism - hurricane on horizon as gas prices skyrocket etc.). this time it has not happened yet.  

horsemouth just previewed the golden glow (to remind himself what was on it). chiwonisu, john handy, steve hillage, alice coltrane, miles davis all sounding like samples that could be assembled into some musical whole. 

looking back through his blog posts he was reminded of the track he was trying to write based on across the universe - he should try and get that up and running again. he has a gig early february (covid permitting) it would be good to have a new tune for it. 

so here it is (merry christmas)

there's a pattern to the releases of the horsemouth as guest DJ mixes on the golden glow. there are three in the first wave (18/12/2015 to 24/10/2016) and there are three in the second wave (24/12/2020 to 12/12/2021). three of these (as you can observe) are clustered in december. 

of course the current (second)wave may continue beyond its allotted three (mid-october would seem to be the cut-off point). 

yesterday horsemouth put up the first of the current wave - they are thematically linked by using stills from the fall of the house of fitzgerald. 

next year horsemouth will probably re-organise the golden glow festival so that it commences with the three december mixes (on their anniversaries the 12th, 18th and 24th) and then a distribution of those from the rest of the year (possibly at 6 day intervals). these will be in some kind of chronological order (by month? by precedence?) but which order horsemouth cannot yet say.

so here it is...

in a bit breakfast (it's the weekend so it's eggs rather than porridge). horsemouth doesn't know if the family will make it out for its usual christmas ramble round the section of the  brecon to newport canal near govilion but time will tell. his brother and their family should be arriving boxing day (covid permitting). 

last night horsemouth watched a somewhat alarming movie. 

return from the ashes  staring ingrid thulin, a young maximillian schell, samantha eggar and herbert lom. our max is a chess prodigy (but he's also an insufferably selfish individualist) by the vagaries of fortune he ends up plotting to kill off his meal-ticket wife (ingrid thulin). the author of the novel on which it is based (le retour des cendres - hubert monteilhet) liked gratuitously alarming plots and cynical amoral characters. moneilhet also liked literary references so there is a brothers karamazov quote. it slightly reminded horsemouth of clouzot's les diaboliques (clouzot liked the director j.lee thompson's work ice cold in alex, tiger bay) but it is (of course) not as good. 

the celebration of the life and work of joan didion must come to an end

horsemouth includes two clips from griffin dunne's the blue nights. joan is now an old lady. she rattles round the new york apartment that is full of stuff accumulated from her life and that of her family before her. her husband and her daughter are gone. she still writes amazingly. horsemouth doesn't have any of her work here (he is relying on dipping google books). he's not really familiar with the novels. 

RIP joan didion (if it helps imagine she's joni mitchell)

'we are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. as we were. as we are no longer. as we will one day not be at all.'

great sentences (and stylish as fuck)

RIP joan didion 

so where to start reading her? 

horsemouth recommended the white album and slouching towards bethlehem. if it helps imagine she's joni mitchell. she has a very cool eye and she keeps a notebook (to aid her memory for the particular,  for that couple in the bar that one time). 

around her everything is going crazy. 

in the early stuff she comes up against that californian madness. she's the wrong generation and in the wrong place (LA rather than san francisco), she's film industry rather than music industry (all that hanging around). she's moved back to california from new york (later it's back to new york and later again...). she's too WASPish to get free, too patrician for the hippies. she's from there, she knows the evil that lurks beneath the sunshine. 

'this book is called slouching towards bethlehem because for several years now certain lines from the yeats poem which appears two pages back have reverberated in my inner ear as if they were surgically implanted there...' 

yesterday (before the news) a podcast on yeats. 

so begins a preface. having written the journalism she must now write the preface for it. formally that space is there and it can be (carefully) filled.

look at the title of it. a preface. look at the weight of it, it's a preface (not a careless preface, not introduction). type it. look at it. feel the weight of it. strike it out if it does not work. and only it can tell you if it works.  there's a lightness to it, a sense of choice, a sense of getting the authorial voice just right.  it always reads as if it could be read out loud. 

later her husband dies (suddenly). then her daughter (who has not been well) dies. she writes a grief memoir the year of magical thinking. and it's good but  is properly irritating. irritating in the same way that discovering that susan sontag became a wholefoods and sunshine nut when she discovered she had cancer is. she tells you about the stuckness of grief. she shows you it. she shows you herself. and she makes you stay with her while she dwells with it. 

horsemouth projects similar things with joni mitchell. if it helps imagine her as joni mitchell. imagine those words in songs. imagine those scenes recalled to memory from a few lines in a notebook. 

in 77 she gives us why I write. a title lifted from orwell. it's not, on the whole, a successful piece but, together with on keeping a notebook (look at that montaigne-ish on), it gives you her the writer, some of her techniques and obsessions.  

she taught herself to write, she tells us, by retyping out hemingway. now horsemouth does not do hemingway. but he sees it. 

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

and after a long break the hawkbinge podcast returns with their review of PXR 5. 

now PXR 5 is a grab-bag of an album, probably a contractual obligations album, and yet much better than it has any right to be. musically this is down to keyboard player simon house and bassist adrian shaw, lyrically this is down to bob calvert (high rise, uncle sam's on mars, robot). but soon all of these guys are gone and we are in to  the post hawklords era of the live 79 relaunch with huw lloyd-langton. this will lead to a last undisputable masterpiece levitation and then... 

the mission they have set themselves is to slog through the studio albums in the order and condition as originally released. but as a christmas gift they will go back to deal with the bonus tracks and rarities. 

and then next year it is on to the eighties. levitation  and onward. captain dave brock is indisputably in command and it's all very regular and competent and not very earth shattering. (horsemouth wonders how the young dude will do when he realises the band's glory days are over and we still have three decades of it to come). 

who knows maybe horsemouth will be tempted to listen to this stuff again and re-discover why he liked it. 

'the lists of manuscripts formerly owned by dr. john dee' (death turns out to be under insufficient surveillance)

say it ain't so.

horsemouth has been following up the antiquarian researches of m.r. james (rather than his ghost stories).

in his the lists of manuscripts formerly owned by dr. john dee he finds the name of j.o. halliwell (no relation/ spelled differently).  halliwell is famous as a collector of nursery rhymes and folk-tales (in particular the three little pigs) but also as a bookthief and errant son-in-law of even more legendary book collector sir thomas phillipps. 

it was from phillipps that halliwell is supposed to have stolen a book, fleeing the family home with the book (and phillipps' daughter).

here we have a jamesian plot of shady goings on  - dee 'not merely an alchemist and a spiritualist but a really learned man', the sack of his library at mortlake by a witch-hunting mob, the dispersion of his books among many collectors (including his diary to j. o. halliwell and subsequent publication), and then the theft of a book from a father in law, the son-in-law and daughter flee.  

'of the general character of the collection a few words must be said. it is in the main a special one got together to assist dee in his peculiar studies...'

later horsemouth finds m.r. james issuing advice to curious pupils at eton on pursuing antiquarian goals in the wanderings and homes of manuscripts. 

meanwhile the philosophers have been feeling left out of the pandemic (they have been sat at home missing thought). 

the problem for the followers of agamben and foucault is that when if you theorise a medicalisation of politics (and a politicisation of medicine) and then when it happens for real (and on a global scale), you  must have something useful to say about it.  

agamben bemoans the state of exception we find ourselves in (the state that begins the moment when governments suspend existing laws), he bemoans the lack of philosophical resistance to it (have we learnt nothing from his books?). he argues covid is an insufficient cause (horsemouth re-read marco d'eramo's article on it and some other commentaries on agamben's original pieces). for agamben in march 2020 it simply doesn't kill enough people to warrant the state taking the powers it has. 

in the picture of the sovereign from the cover of hobbes' leviathan plague doctors appear. 

but as the pandemic progresses the state behaves more like benjamin's baroque sovereign. the sovereign is indecisive. the panopticon of epidemiological surveillance necessary turns out not to exist and has to be bolted together on the fly (and then the technology turns out not to work or have unintended consequences that require it to be turned off). the state is torn between its need for business as usual  and its alleged desire to enact a fully medical regime (and it ends up doing neither to anyone's satisfaction).

in the US 800,000 people have died so far. in the UK we are nearly at 150,000 deaths. in brazil 618,000. in the world to date 5.3 million. this seems fairly compelling to horsemouth. these are likely to be  underestimates of the numbers  (death (globally) turns out to be under insufficient surveillance). 

in europe the medicalisation of politics may reach a fuller flowering with more compulsion (and more struggle against that compulsion). for the rest of the world horsemouth cannot say. 

there is of course a movement on the streets that criticises the measures necessary to fight the pandemic - the anti-maskers, the anti- lockdown activists, the anti-vaxxers, the conspiracy theorists, but the philosophers are prevented from throwing their weight behind them (as a wild analysis, a folk-political science) by a fastidious caution. 

where science has done great work the state is revealed as unprepared, a mere confidence trick, and its medical arm to have been underfunded, under-resourced, under staffed. the populations of the richest countries in the world  are revealed as unhealthy, the medical needs of their citizens unmet. 

foucault provides three disease models (leprosy, plague,  smallpox - there is possibly a fourth, madness) and the strategies of social control and subjectivity for dealing with them. camus takes the plague and urges us to get our hands dirty with the necessary work of exclusion (there was artaud too, whose mayor of cagliari knew it was coming). saramago and wyndham take blindness (in all its necessary metaphor) to push society over the edge and into collapse. later in his same fictional world saramago takes silence, where the people will not vote, as a strange delayed symptom.

horsemouth is not seeing the new world being built in the ruins of the old (and he is not seeing any build back better either). he is seeing the rage with and disaffection from politics continue to fester (the situationists would be delighted). 

when this pandemic is over (oh how happy we shall be) horsemouth forsees a backlash against science for having brought us the bad news. ok gongs for some on the vaccine side (and possible assassination by anti-vaxxers later), but practically universal execration for those with the courage to call for masks and lockdowns as the state (following the model of 2008) makes the poor pay for the crisis with yet another round of austerity.

 

the planet people live from stonehenge

it was a clear sky (so it must have been a cold night). you can see people's breath steaming in the air. the planet people are at stonehenge. horsemouth must say it's a beautiful sunrise (but there's been a frost). kids run around playing tag. others walk around to keep warm. those cheap warm clothes from china make a difference. 

horsemouth is up early watching the live stream (with relaxing ambient music) from english heritage.  of course at one point getting to the stones for the solstices was a sacred (revolutionary) duty. 

five years ago (was it? horsemouth tells a lie - six years ago) horsemouth was there with steve and john clarkson (shortly before john departed for porto).  when horsemouth went it was grey skies and low cloud (and one of the warmest ever). 

last night (to celebrate the solstice) horsemouth took a walk round the edges of his parents field (horsemouth travelled counterclockwise - he does hope this is correct). a friend was over visiting nearby garway hill (horsemouth had forgotten the name of it). 

he has written a poem.

solstice 2021

the bench at the top of ewyas harold common

the skirrid and black mountains visible.

the sugar loaf hidden (by other hills).

is it called orcop hill?

the transmitter

the watch-tower

the ponies wander about looking shaggy

guy with 2 dogs passes

dulas church is still the same

pontrilas saw mills likewise

in the golden valley there was once a trainline

and railway stations

a line from pontrilas to hay-on-wye

another line ran from hay to hereford

alongside the river

kilvert tells us

all gone

there was a book

bill at the trout

worked proof reading

some of the books in that series

books about railways

over the brow of the hill

the valley that leads down

to the ford

by the trout

the pub has been shut for years

the income from the pub alone

could not keep them going

(bill and pauline)

coming back through the woods

above the house

trees snapped in half by the recent northerlies

suspended above the forest floor

waiting to fall

back at the house

a pine tree

an old christmas tree planted out

many years ago

grown huge

snapped in half

sawn up

the shavings mulch for my father's fruit bushes

today. well er. breakfast and then horsemouth does not know. (the 'k' is still sticky on the computer). they continue to feed him well. there is talk of re-opening pontrilas railway station. (this will mean herefordshire would have five railway stations - hereford, leominster, ledbury, colwall and pontrilas). this would certainly be useful for horsemouth.  

in the golden glow  extended solstice celebrations it is time for the third golden glow with guest DJ  from the 24th of october 2016. following this one there will be a break of 4 years (real time) but only 2 days symbolic time until we relaunch with those made under the conditions of the pandemic. 

something new is started (which cannot be expected)

last night horsemouth watched the recent(ish) m.r. james ghost story number 13 which curiously enough was adapted by justin hopper a poet horsemouth has seen  with a number of bands in recent years (with sharron krauss, and with strange harbours was it?) 

following on from jonathan miller's whistle and I'll come to you, you have the run written and directed by lawrence gordon clarke; the stalls of barchester (1971), a warning to the curious (1972), lost hearts (1973), the treasure of abbot thomas (1974), the ash-tree (1975). 

these are the key ones, uniting (as they do) an m.r. james story and lawrence gordon-clark's direction. 

the solstice is this afternoon 3:58pm (if you want something that' a mathematically averaged one time). otherwise, if it's an event you are looking for, there's a winter solstice sunrise 2021 live from stonehenge (streamed courtesy of english heritage if you can't get there) at about 08:09 GMT.  he will endeavour to be up and around for both. 

from five years ago horsemouth notes the following; 

'a friend has just bah-humbugged the solstice. this is ok. horsemouth doesn’t expect that all his friends will share his enthusiasm for the ancient agricultural timekeeping mechanisms of the heavens. it is cyclical time versus messianic time...'

at easter (in line with the heavens no doubt) laura kuenssberg is being kicked upstairs (this is bad news) but it does mean she will cease to be the bbc's main political reporter (and boris's main external cheerleader). 

horsemouth seems to have survived the shopping trip to TESCOs uninfected (well actually that we won't know for a weeek or so). 

wes streeting MP claims not to know what laura kuensberg's political opinions are (she's that professional a broadcaster). he's an MP. he's a labour MP. the man is either a dullard or a liar (and a very bad liar at that). but either way he's a joke and he's got to go. (tbh to look at he reminds horsemouth of piers from the new statesman, you know, alan b'stard's  witless sidekick). 

laura K's political motivations can only remain opaque to someone who needs the some political courtesy extended to them - and streeting does need that, he is, as a friend put it, 'a right-wing shit'. 

seven years ago horsemouth was playing a solo gig at cafe bohemia (well he invited howard up to sing on the werewolf and minty up for I still miss someone. there are photos). 

it's a greyish morning. the family seem to have survived until the dawn. later a walk on the common and then some kind of observation of sundown and sunrise. we reach the shortest day of the year and the longest night of the year and from here on the only way is up  back up into the light. but temperatures will drop (true winter will come). tomorrow the last golden glow from the early run (24th october 2016) and then it is a four year gap until the next one. 

now that everything has been said

it's the day before the solstice. later horsemouth goes with his mother to get the food shopping in from TESCOs. he does not like this idea (but he recognises the necessity of getting in the food and if his assistance enables his mother to do it in a quicker and safer fashion then that is all to the good).

right now all we really know about the new variant is how infectious it is, or, given the 2/3rds vaxed state of the london population, how well it evades the vaccine. we don't yet have the statistics to tell which it is we are seeing as the main effect and by the time we do it will be everywhere.

of course horsemouth's plan is to stay out of the way until it is clear just how lethal omicron is. (or was it omnichron? all of time.) 

horsemouth believes in the vaccine, testing and public health measures (lockdown, social distancing etc.). by this he means that they are being proposed and operated in good faith. 

in this he is unlike his friend the anti-vaxxer on the common who believes that while most shots contain just saline (in an attempt to put people off the trail), some of the vaccine shots contain poison. a friend posted a link to the anti-vaxxer march yesterday in london which, in a strange sight that he never thought he would see again, called for  no communism. 

now horsemouth cannot guarantee to you that there will be no long term health effects from the mass vaccinations because nobody can yet but he is reasonably confident that we are not being deliberately poisoned en masse. just he is reasonably confident that there is actually a coronavirus that causes 'covid', and that there really are patients in hospitals etc. 

horsemouth's friend the anti-vaxxer believed we were all being slaughtered as a result of the great reset in capitalism (inspired by the masons and their call for more world wars). horsemouth questions why anyone would bother with this, they are making their money off us, and when we are (reasonably) docile, surely it would be much easier (and profitable) just to let that roll on without pandemics and such like.

the main beauty of conspiracy theories is that they give you some measure of control over difficult material. you have understood, you have seen through the mystification or the ideology, and now you can act together. lord it is a beautiful thing (unless you have fallen for yet another mystification). 

as an ex-animal rights-er and anarchist horsemouth can tell you this. he has seen the beauty of ideology from the inside. 

it is (of course) permissible to question whether lockdowns are necessary, whether vaccinations are necessary, whether masks are necessary, and (indeed) whether saving the lives of predominantly old people (those mainly killed by coronavirus) is necessary. 

horsemouth thinks all the above are necessary. 

it is important to explain that horsemouth brings no expert knowledge to this situation. he just thinks it is highly unlikely that the ruling class are engaged in fooling us (ok they are engaged in fooling us about capitalism and our need for the current ruling class).  it is simply too complicated a deception involving too many people not to leak. horsemouth supposes that the virus is real and the danger is real and once the danger is real then the measures to deal with it are necessary. 

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

above horsemouth's second ever golden glow mix - tracks selected by horsemouth and mix assembled by howard. it came a mere 3 months after his first one when horsemouth and howard were in the first flush of enthusiasm for the project. we are now up to six appearances by horsemouth as guest DJ. as you will ntice certain people appear more than once (alice coltrane, willie nelson, nico, robbie basho, john fahey, jackson c. frank, pharoah sanders, fonatella bass (both with the art ensemble of chicago and solo)) and this defines the aesthetic range of it. there's folk and american primitive but there's cosmic jazz also.

 

so farewell then lord frost. 'the EU can fuck off.' that was your catchphrase.

tory grandee sir roger gale last week became the first tory to say he had sent his letter to the chairman of the 22 committee.  if 54 letters in favour of a vote of no confidence in johnson are received , they will be required to stage one. lord frost may be jumping ship because he knows he can make nothing of the brexit turkey he's been given rather than the 'principled' non-brexit reasons he has been giving, but still it is damaging for boris. boris the club-footed's recent performance won't make frost think he is likely to miss anything by not staying on. ah but the news just keeps on giving.

the consequences in the north could be quite profound. the DUP are threatening to bail from stormont bringing back direct rule from the UK. 

well at least there's christmas (maybe that will prove a circuit breaker). what boris should be doing is calling another lockdown (but he probably doesn't have the balls or the political capital right now). 

2022 is of course pronounced 2020 (II)

'here's hoping 2021 will be a better year and the forces of light will win out over the forces of darkness and an arcadia or utopia will be established' wrote horsemouth at the end of 2020. horsemouth has kept an eye on politics but so far there's been no magical transformation. he has been waiting for that moment when 'something new is started that cannot be expected' (to quote hannah arendt).  

we move towards the solstice and horsemouth's reliance on cyclic time. soon we will be heading back up into the light.  

today horsemouth still hasn't sent his letter. yesterday he once again forgot there was no one o'clock show. he went up onto the hill on the common but it was a misty day and he couldn't see over to the black mountains. 

horsemouth is holding out for the next episode of the hawkbinge podcast. it's only PXR5, which is an album of grab bag tracks released after the band who had recorded it had been sent their separate ways, it's unfinished business. lots of hawkwind is unfinished business, there's a song about flight, the only ones on hawklords, surely that should have been on captain lockheed and the starfighters?  each album is just a snapshot, an assemblage, distorted by attempts at a hit single, stuffed with tracks recorded live and solos by players long since ejected into deep space. 

early next year there's that strange and solitary outbreak of musical competence levitation (of course what there should be is the transitional and crowd-pleasing live 79). 

today a misty day. horsemouth will have breakfast and then head out on his usual walk up onto the common. 

 

the golden glow solstice festival begins

'this morning, north shropshire has fallen to the liberal democrats with the third-biggest swing against the tories since 1945'

horsemouth  is of course delighted. he'd just like to rub that in a bit prime minister. (he should probably look up when the other two even bigger swings against the tories were).

apparently the vikings celebrated with winter solstice with weeks of feasting so horsemouth has decided to stretch out his celebrations by revisiting the golden glow  mixes he was involved with. 

he starts with this one from 18th december 2015 featuring sproatley smith, canned heat etc. (but opening with a call to ganesha - the remover of obstacles). he 'ends' with the one from 24th december 2020. between these he strings the golden glows from the intervening years (6th of march 2016 and 24th october 2016). 

after the official end of the festival he will be offering up the two golden glows subsequently recorded (31st may 2021 and 12th december 2021). the structure is a day on and then a day off. he will be endeavouring to listen to them himself in an attempt to recapture the animating passions of those years. 

he will of course be producing an official festival calendar (but this will have to do for now). he realises this structure is a bit arbitrary and will probably be reworking it in subsequent years. 

today a rainy grey misty kind of day. last night a zoom beers session with howard (3 bottles) then the last episode of quatermass and then the haunted palace (1963) (more lovecraftian shenanigans seemingly based on the case of charles dexter ward and set in the village of arkham). he will finish this off this evening. 

horsemouth has exhausted the house stock of beer - this is rare he is normally a fairly abstemious drinker when he is at home. he did a little reading of hannah arendt's the origins of totalitarianism (a present from his brother last year). 

won't you come see me (the fall of north shropshire)

of course in the current epidemiological crisis horsemouth recommends that you don't come and see him, that we all learn to eek out the solitude just a little bit longer. having survived this long horsemouth is trying to survive a little longer. 

but in fact it's not solitude is it (because of the internet a more disconnected life is actually possible without starvation). his folks go every day to pick up the newspaper. horsemouth does not like this but he does like reading a newspaper (even if it is the torygraph). 

this would be the point to dazzle you with hannah arendt's thoughts on isolation and loneliness  but horsemouth hasn't read them yet. he'll try and get on with some reading today. 

the new variant (omnichron is it? all time) is even spreadier than the previous ones, horsemouth has to admire the viruses commitment to the capitalist principle of continuous improvement. 

it's a grey day out (and down to near zero in a few days) but mild at the moment. 

last night die! monster. die! boris karloff beset on all sides in a radiation fuelled lovecraftian horror/ sci-fi mash up. (god bless you samuel z.arkoff and american international pictures).  there's karloff grey haired and in a wheelchair (for most of it). but still working (poor sod). it was put out as a double with mario bava's planet of the vampires (alien with space vampires essentially).  

the lib dems have taken north shropshire from the tories (probably the best result possible in a former tory safe seat with a solid 200 year record of electing tories). this is something likely to add to pressure on crown prince boris (be sparkly and amusing about that fatboy). 

up at 8am this morning (creditable performance). today horsemouth will self test and chase his money/ reassure himself that he does indeed have access to his savings. he will go for a walk on the common (maybe two walks) or substitute one walk for a little physical labour. 

on the day of the north shropshire by-election (the significance of the onion)

horsemouth had been waiting in the underground bunker with the other refugees. andy had come to save him. horsemouth had to abandon some stuff (the tent). 

outside on gower street a cold wind blew. the street itself was flooded with black water and dark. there was snow. horsemouth and andy conducted a game of football across it. ever so often a sports car would charge at incredible speed down the middle of it.

such was the dream this morning. horsemouth is up late. yesterday 8am (respectable), today 9am (not respectable). 

it is the day of the north shropshire by-election. on offer are various extents of humiliation. it is noticeable they haven't sent up boris on a charm offensive.

last night a bottle of beer and another m.r. james ghost story a view from a hill but before that a meeting on zoom of the communal endeavour. horsemouth supported what he took to be the improved communication proposal. this time communications performed in a satisfactory fashion. 

yesterday horsemouth did some physical labour (fortunately there was no one around with a camera). he cleared off fallen branches and helped his dad haul up some logs from the bottom of the garden. there's more yet to do. (it is, of course, the kind of work that can't be done by AI). he also did a quick walk up to the common. he's still feeling a bit whacked from his jab (hopefully it's the jab). 

at some point horsemouth wants to get in some phonecalls to transfer some cash (he needs to make sure it works).  

bumblebee (horsemouth in the wilderness)

horsemouth is back at his folks so he will be out of mobile phone communication for most of time. message him on facebook or send an email if you should need to get in touch with him. 

horsemouth was just dreaming about wandering round leyton. (he thinks he was schmoozing for a gig).

looks like the whole album of homegas (a totally under-rated freak folk from a commune thing) has surfaced. they were on takoma. the first track is the best the rest have a kind of incredible string band feel to them. 

the light in horsemouth's room is placed in such a way as to make reading in bed difficult. he's brought a slab of books, he hopes to make progress of the origins of totalitarianism, the white guard he  hopes to finish off. 

today a visit from relatives. tonight a meeting of  the communal endeavour on zoom. boxing day his brother's side of the family come. (assuming no lockdown etc.). in a bit breakfast then a walk on the common. 

two years ago horsemouth was bemoaning the brexmas election. the nation (well 31% of the electorate) votes for boris (er. and the tories and er. getting brexit done).  then his seasonal poverty was merely of a temporary cessation of work kind (now it is a more definite or at least longer lasting cessation). in the car on the way over from the railway station horsemouth chatted to his dad about when he took early retirement (hint: it was earlier than horsemouth has taken it and the state old age pension started earlier too). horsemouth's mum kept working for a while (in different jobs). 

they are comfortably off - horsemouth will have to be poor. but that's ok his needs are few. 

'this morning I woke up'

good morning! good morning!

actually what horsemouth hears in his head is this morning I woke up by gila

horsemouth is feeling slightly ropey  from the jab. (at least he hopes it's the jab). he's either too hot or too cold (and he feels like someone has 'dead armed' him - did that used to happen to you in school?). 

he will be taking the laptop to the countryside (he realised after he'd packed his bags). he's started the day with two paracetamol. (he ended yesterday with two paracetamol). 

last night m.r. james's  a warning to the curious (no archaeology in east anglia thank you, especially no digging up the crowns that protect the realm). after that a film nothing but the night featuring christopher lee,  peter cushing, and diana dors. 

it's michael hurley's 80ieth birthday and he seems to be getting his moment in the sun. 

this may be my last time (morning final)

horsemouth is up. howard has put up the latest golden glow (12.12.21 with tracks chosen by horsemouth) but horsemouth is experiencing problems getting it to play. as a pleasant surprise he discovers swan arcade's babylon is fallen lurking on the end of his previous mix (after vaksine!  by sanba yo). ok for some reason it just started working.  

so the staple singers into gila (a popul vuh folk offshoot apparently - thanks sean). 

obiero by ayub ogada (horsemouth saw him him the one time playing supporting jah wobble down in islington). it's a great performance. obiero into greetings to saud (pharoah sanders in churchy mode pianist joe bonner does a great job in the drone). 

ok now he's hitting some of howard's selections what's been coming... or maybe it's dorthia (the girl andrew minty recommended, horsemouth hasn't listened to all of it yet). ah-ha spirit of the water by camel (prog giants) then pentangle rain and snow (howard seems to have found the live version - which is good). 

next the instrumental for one love by nas - now this is a push button  mixtape put together by q-tip using a track by the heath brothers which itself uses an mbira (or thumb piano).  you may remember that track from a previous compilation. it stops and starts. now a piece horsemouth doesn't know (ali farka toure plus flute? probably further east knowing howard's taste - daymallah majid bekkas). 

karen O and willie nelson's take on queen's under pressure. ok so it's karaoke but to horsemouth this opens up the lyrics (which are so good). 

flash of the spirit was a very influential record for horsemouth - an african percussion ensemble farafina  and loads of ambient music bods (john hassell, brian eno, daniel lanois). when horsemouth was in a band with a sampler he sampled it to fuck. next up kathy smith's awesome travel in a circle (or richie havens' record label).  then ellen mcilwhone (of no fear) covering jack bruce's weird of hermiston (see having a woman singing I am going to a wedding (dressed in black) is just a more interesting proposition. (again a live version).

ok what's this? october song the incredible string band horsemouth. it has something of a song for ireland  about it. next up lani hall doing love song (horsemouth finds this song a real heartbreaker). then into bonnie koloc's the wind on the water (that's a voice another heartbreaker). 

one by howard that horsemouth that horsemouth doesn't recognise (sounds like t-rex so it's probably devandra banhart) then morning final by the blue oyster cult and a nice transition into you got it, you'll get it by herbie hancock and the headhunters. the berimbau of the headhunters going into the mo chara  of michael o'shea.  (er. and swan arcade  again). 

today six months since horsemouth last got jabbed. 

this morning horsemouth goes to get jabbed. not up in walthamstow (like on previous occasions) but just round the corner. it's still a bit dark out to work out what the weather is doing (grey skies opines horsemouth). it's six months since his last jab - he'd booked it just before the government changed its advice so you could get the jab five months after your previous jab (this may have left him a bit vulnerable and under protected). and once it was booked there was only one or two weeks difference in re-booking it. 

the latest variant is the prince of re-infecting people who have had it before and of infecting people whether they have been jabbed or not. allegedly getting his booster in is about the best thing horsemouth can do. horsemouth plans to go and hide out in the country for a bit. he'll test before he goes (the better not to kill his parents).

ok so he's finished his coffee. now it's time for the museli. 

‘thisday, thatday, otherday, someday, yesterday, today and next day’

'the trouble isn’t the ghost, but what the ghost reveals.'  

so says jack hanson in a recent edition of the baffler when reviewing the ghost stories of edith wharton. horsemouth had taken up reading the NYRB website (because the LRB and the TLS are really stingy in comparison).  there's a zoom session between NY literati - the top two seem very pleasant the guy on the bottom is annoying as fuck. he does, very wisely, warn the youngster of derrida as an explanation of ghosts, warning that it drains the joy from things. 

last night horsemouth lay dreaming. he was wandering round some small town with howard (and someone else). horsemouth caught up with them sitting outside a pub and preparing to order some food. later they were camping out in the countryside. in the night there seemed to be strange military activities going on with stealth planes or light aircraft. horsemouth crawled through the darkness to get a better look. 

seems like we will be having ourselves a covid christmas - shop keepers, teachers, sign language interpreters of horsemouth's acquaintance, they all seem to be getting it right about now, horsemouth (from his privileged position of economic inactivity) advises caution. 

horsemouth goes to get booster jabbed monday morning (he hopes he hasn't left it too late) and then he tries to high-tail it out of town as fast as his little legs will carry him. there's a kind of parallel with the white guard, there the dudes are waiting in kiev for the inevitable arrival of enemy forces. (and as to kiev and moscow  don't get him started).  

horsemouth found a basho special online from NTS and charlie drakeford. the dudes over at american primitive guitar seem to like it. michael hurley has hit 80 (he gets an NYT article). god that man is indestructable, and still looking good). 

'I never thought of a career in music. what I do is goof off — and try to get away with it.'

in the absence of a new episode horsemouth listened to the hawkbinge podcast on hawklords - 25 years on again. the new musicians (harvey bainbridge, martin griffin, steve swindells) are competent (and can carry a tune), bob calvert is inspired, the barney bubbles packaging  is awesome, they produce what is probably the best album of the silver age (of the calvert era), certainly the one with the best songs on it. 

yesterday horsemouth discussed it with mike T (just as he was going out the door).  mike was critical of flying doctor but strangely accepting of 25 years itself (a silver machine re-lick) - the two weakest tracks on the album. the youngster points out the bowie in bob's vocals (and he's not wrong). 

horsemouth includes for your delectation the oumou sangare track howard included in his recent ambient mix. it's funny who, of the african musicians, gets taken up by the youngsters, opined mike T. horsemouth is glad he took the time to go early to the brockwell park field day a few years ago to go see her. she was moaning about how strong the sun was (which was strange for someone from mali horsemouth thought). 

‘thisday, thatday, otherday, someday, yesterday, today and next day’

horsemouth no longer relies on the seven days of the week.  or rather despite not working he still does. today (this evening) another spot of child minding. monday the jab. tuesday the train. thereafter horsemouth goes to practice his new immunity in the countryside. 

musicians of bremen back to back in the golden glow

good morning! good morning! horsemouth is up early (why he's not so sure).  

howard is stuck at home so he's been getting on with some tasks. first off he has done a new ambient mix (these normally go down well) - about an hour in oumou sangare appears singing mogoya (which fuses lots of things very well).

and yet howard was still bored so horsemouth has sent him over a list of tracks with instructions to forge it into a new golden glow  mix. horsemouth doesn't have enough tracks for a full mix yet so he suspects they will be doing a combined mix (back-to-back he believes the term is). it will be the first time where they have both chosen tracks for the mix. either that or a shorter than usual mix. 

last night quatermass (1978), the one with the old people hiding underground  and a mass rapture at wembley stadium. this featured irene handl - who interestingly enough was  president of the lewisham branch of the elvis presley fan club.

there were other films after but horsemouth couldn't be bothered. 

horsemouth is issuing howard with songwriting advice - howard has a very promising song but horsemouth doesn't think it is fulfilling its potential. this is because it is a song of rejection (not a getting-it-together/ love the one you're with song) and this is (to horsemouth) inherently unpromising material. ok there's a nice juicy contradiction there but how to deal with it is the problem. 

it may be that horsemouth (as a self-described sleazy opportunist) is just not the right person to be asking about this material. but it is not about the sexual politics of the situation but about the needs of the song. 

later mike T comes over to visit. 

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

so what did horsemouth get up to in 2021? how much does he remember of the year?

well it is, now he remembers, the year of his redundancy, the year when the wheels finally came off his earner. he was paid out until the end of july and since then he has been living on his redundancy cheque (and an advance on the first 10 years of his works pension - which he can take early). all this took considerably more time to organise than horsemouth thought it would. 

in the first half of the year he lived on a mixture of furlough and work pay. excepting the odd lab work was online and did not involve travel. 

jim bermingham died, a friend was evicted, horsemouth presented (or rather he didn't but he had been planning to and that planning took rather a long time). the communal endeavour continues to be a pain the arse. 

as far as horsemouth can remember right now he only went to one gig (triple negative) and only played one gig (at midsummer with haress in weirdshire). it was a hard year at work  for howard so there was little progress on the musicians of bremen front - howard will probably release a solo album next year. 

meanwhile horsemouth voiced over george lansbury for catastro/fille, he collected together some tracks for a golden glow mix, some songs he worked on with catastro/fille and enza failed to come out (so maybe that's something for next year). an attempt to relaunch peter, paul and enza failed (which is a pity). 

he celebrated the anniversary of the paris commune and of the festival of britain exhibit at chrisp street market. he read some of hannah arendt's the origins of totalitarianism (this was probably his only theoretical project in the year). 

he hid out at his parents in the countryside til mid-march (the better to dodge the plague) and then returned there for a few weeks in june. he will be returning there as soon as is possible. he hid out a couple of weeks up in the forest. 

he read less than he thought he might (of late he has been attempting to get back into more serious reading), he played less guitar and listened to less music. he spent more time farting about online and watching bad horror movies. he has diarised entirely on blogger. he has written nothing of an extended nature. 

he went for lots of walks (even if he no longer has to do it for work). he didn't buy many new books or CDs. 

as usual with the year some people have died and left the party and more people have been born and joined in. horsemouth did some babysitting/ childminding. monday he goes to get jabbed, then he's away to the countryside. 

'... 98% of satanists...'

a recommendation from minty land. horsemouth is enjoying this a lot. she has a metal band as well windhand. (but is that wind like the air or wind like a watch, to quote a certain cartoon book).

horsemouth is enjoying the peace and quiet before the electrician comes round to change the fuse board and to get the smoke detectors back up and running. (the one outside horsemouth's door always detonates whenever anybody cooks - the ones upstairs should go off as well).

him and sten have had the first coffee for the day and there may be time to do a second. 

horsemouth is slightly at a loose end now the babysitting/ child transportation gig has ended (probably for the year). his plan is to get vaxxed (boostered) on monday and then to do a test and be off (cautiously) to his folks in the countryside. he was feeling the gringe but then he noticed a copy of to the devil a daughter (it would have been so much better with peter cushing rather than richard widmark). when he was a kid horsemouth had a making of book intended to teach children about film production.  

who knows maybe it had an effect on him? 

'98% of so-called ‘satanists’ are nothing but pathetic freaks, who get their kicks out of dancing naked in freezing churchyards'

later on another of the worlds beyond  series (allegedly from the archives of the society for psychical research). and then, a little bedtime reading, more of the white guard.  he could have gone for the origins of totalitarianism  instead (a how-to manual for would be demagogues). he is intrigued by the isolation/ loneliness/ solitude section - it kind of parallels the labour-work-action distinction from arendt's later the human condition. 

he's nearly done with his diary for the year. it might be an idea to get into keeping notebooks instead (he sometimes does this when he is on holiday). this saturday mike T is round to visit. there's a meeting of the communal endeavour to come (but horsemouth thinks it will be uneventful as it is in the run up to christmas) and there's the north shropshire by-election (the disgraced owen patersons constituency). 

next saturday the weeklong horsemouth on the golden glow festival commences with his first mix from 2015 and ends on sunday the 26th with his most recent mix from this year. 

roughly at the midpoint there will be the solstice. 

'will allegra stratton be having a leaving do? do bears shit in the woods?'

somebody has got to take the bullet (horsemouth supposes).

meanwhile horsemouth is feeling happy. he was worried about presenting in the end either his microphone or his internet connection was so fucked up it couldn't happen. horsemouth stomped off and everything necessary happened without him (phew). when horsemouth looked out at the crowd he knew they were home safe. 

it was a decent sized vote. horsemouth now thinks there is too little time left in the run up to christmas 

in other news horsemouth's friend has been evicted. and as you know horsemouth's other friend has crossed the rainbow bridge into the afterlife. 

horsemouth wrote a speech as well. (fuck it. secretly he's delighted).

it was good to see minty and jacqueline (horsemouth would like to point out that they only live a quarter of a mile away down the road). 

as soon as the meeting was over horsemouth got demob happy and started drinking. (but then he had to stop because he realised he was up early the next day). today some child portage and child minding to facilitate a gig. 

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

in fact horsemouth turns out not to be needed this afternoon and evening. (it's  therefore a quadruple demob). horsemouth may in fact be done for christmas.  

monday the booster jab. tuesday the departure to the wilderness. 

a busy day

comrade S was arguing that dense  is not just a welsh thing (how very very dare he - he's not welsh!).

last night the rivals of sherlock holmes - late victorian sleuthery. taken with sten and a glass of beer - windsor davis made an appearance as a flat-foot cop (but strangely without a welsh accent). 

today is a busy day. horsemouth goes to perform child portage duties this am (and possibly this evening as well). 

meanwhile across town there is an eviction sponsored by the communal endeavour. an eviction horsemouth? that's not very generous is it? the short life property comes with a built in eviction (that's how the communal endeavour get the property by promising faithfully to leave it when requested to do so by the owners). there are grim complicating factors (which horsemouth won't discuss) so horsemouth does hope it goes well in the sense of not as badly as it could go.

horsemouth doesn't see the alternative but more worryingly he doesn't see anything that can be done in mitigation - there is nobody to call who it would make a difference to call (and there should be). it is all now in the lap of the gods. 

jim bermingham, a former housemate of horsemouth's and london busking legend, has died. jim busked all over europe and made enough to live comfortably. his death horsemouth discovered a day late. he had lived, he had travelled he had busked. horsemouth once posted something on dulcimer player michael o'shea (another london busking legend and creator of a new musical instrument) and jim had replied that he knew him (and had in fact saved the mo chara (o'shea's new instrument) from a bonfire on a beach one time). paddy phoned him up to tell him and enza messaged him. paddy and horsemouth reminisced about the stoke newington  scene in the mid 80ies.

when jim came round to be interviewed for horsemouth's house he brought his resonator guitar (a national if horsemouth remembers correctly). paddy says he has a CD of jim's music (horsemouth remembers him doing a good version of fields of athenry). horsemouth has asked for a copy.  

cross the rainbow bridge jim and move towards the light. 

this evening horsemouth has to do a presentation (under potentially less than ideal conditions). it's a little stressful, horsemouth has been rehearsing. 

a year ago horsemouth was interested in the flux weddding and zefiro torna and he was writing well. but he'd already made the bad decision to leave london for the duration of the plague (history falls out from this). his plans for this year are basically the same - finish up as early as he can and be off. 

'the kid calls it right (most of the time)'

wait horsemouth has to go look out of the front door. hmm no rain and snow yet (it's just cold).

this morning door to  door child conveyancing services. last night a visit from the out of town senjor S (looking almost healthy after his brush with vitamin B12 deficiency). 

horsemouth must say he is shocked to discover that vitamin B12 deficiency is real - he always assumed it was bullshit dreamt up by doctors in an attempt to discourage people from going vegan. a dietary project fear if you like. comrade S is the second person horsemouth has met who has had it (so keep taking the marmite).

horsemouth is a lazy morally compromised lacto-vegetarian these days (so he's probably safe - maybe). 

comrade S was on good form (denouncing horsemouth as being 'not a proper hawkwind fan'  within ten minutes of getting in the front door). he reads the blog (there was a test) and has taken up listening to the hawkbinge podcast on horsemouth's recommendation, 'the kid calls it right (most of the time)' being S's opinion. S was a particular fan of fable of a failed race (which is also this is the age of the micro-man  on hawklords lest we forget).  horsemouth denounced it as a dirge (it was this that led to the accusation of insufficiently proper hawkwind fandom).

the latest discovery gila (popul vuh in folk mode). 

'are you really just going to sit around and wait for your pension?'  asked S. (see he has been paying attention).

S recommends that horsemouth covers space is deep (and probably has a free cartoon book with the CD). 

horsemouth found himself woken up early by difficult moments (ones in the future this time). frankly he is keen to get the year done (but he suspects there's more bollocks to be had before it is done). 

'how do you get around life-as-you-know-it being over'

 'what we call isolation in the political sphere, is called loneliness in the sphere of social intercourse. isolation and loneliness are not the same.' - hannah arendt, the origins of totalitarianism, p.625.

for hannah isolation was not being able to act together with other human beings (politically as it were), an isolation that could just as easily occur in work wheras  'loneliness concerns human life as a whole'. there was solitude as well - strangely where one may not feel lonely when there are no other people around.

'man in so far as he is homo faber tends to isolate himself with his work, that is to leave temporarily the world of politics.' 

if you remember this was the point against which richard sennett was trying to argue in his the craftsman. there's a similar point in the greeks where the artisans cannot take part in the governing of the city because they are too busy working. 

it popped out of the discussion of hannah arendt's the origins of totalitarianism that horsemouth listened to last night (and so horsemouth plans to do a little reading). it was a discussion pulled off course and away from this particular book by biography, by arendt's affair with her teacher heidegger, by heidegger's subsequent descent into fascism, by the quotability of the banality of evil, and probably by fred stein's photo of her (as perfect a picture of an intellectual as was ever taken). 

enthusiasm for arendt began again in 2016 (at least in terms of book sales we are told) as all round the world people (trump and brexit and modi etc.)faced up to popularism and adopted arendt's description of it as an alliance of the elite and the mob. 

(against popularism horsemouth proposes poplarism)

horsemouth also listened to programme (god bless the beeb) on john wyndham's the day of the triffids. this is a somewhat strange novel (british science fiction is always somewhat strange, the graft never seems to fully take). it is an apocalypse and a rebuilding. full of post-war anxiety about the shape of society.

'it must be, I thought, one of the race's most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that "it can't happen here" -- that one's own time and place is beyond cataclysm.'

just as the panel grapple with the strange silence that the pandemic lockdown caused being like the strange silence of blinded london,  we grapple with the anti-vaxxer/ anti-lockdown conspiraloons arguing that the isolation produced in society by the lockdown and mask mandates  is motivated entirely by the desire of the state for totalitarian control rather than for reasons of disease control. 

'how do you get around life-as-you-know-it being over'

to horsemouth they are another example of the elite and the mob - it suits those in the elite who want to return to a fully active capitalism (whatever the death toll) to have people on the street arguing for it. this alliance has not died off because brexit has been done but become a permanent fixture.  

and yet we are moving into the time of compulsory vaccination/ vaccination as a requirement to be allowed to work (look at greece and germany) - there are those in the elite to whom compulsion and the police look like the only tools in the box, the only solution to any problem.  

potentially there is, the other side of the pandemic (if indeed there is ever an end), a backlash against the scientists (they made us wear masks). 

last night pasta and pesto for dinner (red kidney beans, fried onions and peppers) and the evening's musicians of bremen tune on the banks of the susquehanna horsemouth and howard try to get all indian. a river song. 

also last night a documentary on COUM transmissions and the early industrial music people. horsemouth couldn't help noticing the gentrification (of both hull and hackney).

horsemouth continues speechifying in his head. he has a presentation to deliver on wednesday (assuming it happens). 

once again horsemouth's head will float down the river

why oh why oh why oh why...

is life never easy. 

muses horsemouth.

(he is live from the trenches of the latest debacle). 

the situation is stressful and horsemouth has taken a while to get his head right.

but just as horsemouth has got his head right another participant has let the system get ontop of his head (no dread no). 

horsemouth is trying to work out whether things can go ahead or whether they have to be postponed or whether indeed the best strategy would not in fact be to bow out and to let people get on with their drama without him.  

once again horsemouth's head will float down the river. 

he is reminded of the chair of another organisation who described the task as herding cats. horsemouth would wish to see less charismatic drama and more dull bureaucracy. 

oh well guess he finds out monday. or maybe he won't find out wednesday. 

horsemouth will go for a walk. he normally finds this helpful. 

-------

how dense (in the south wales meaning of the term - dense meaning stupid (by analogy with thick)) is horsemouth? for the last month he has been bemoaning facebook's failure to show him a note from a year ago in his memories at the same time he has been remembering that the facebook notes tool was closed down at the start of november last year. it has taken him a month to realise that facebook is not longer showing him a notes entry from a year ago because they don't exist.

ahem.

he blames it on stress. 

last night a bottle of beer and an underwhelming 80ies tv horror - from the annals of the journal of psychical research (allegedly). the theme music (and titles) were decent - the theme music by an ex-member of tears for fears. 

horsemouth listened to a talking politics podcast on the supply chain and demand crisis woes of capitalism (and thus in fairly short-order, the people) but none of it has gone in. he's waiting on the arrival of the hawkbinge podcast (but they might want to shuffle it nearer to christmas). 

 

recovering old notes (unearthing forgotten horrors)

a friend was just asking about recovering old notes from out of the maw of history (well facebook) - look horsemouth has just managed to see a note of his (from a day that is not today) for the first time in at least a year. (what's it called? the last post (hardcore will never die).) interesting. apparently there is a way of searching activities by date (who knew). 

horsemouth is back from a babysitting gig early doors and so has put the coffee on and started blogging.

a name popped out of conversation - steve goodman. now, once upon a time (a long time ago), horsemouth wrote theory and he wrote reviews, and he wrote a rather uncharitable review of steve's book sonic warfare, he was stretched a little thin (it was a double review) and was attempting (and failing) to assimilate a lot of deleuzian thought on music (and on theorising) in a hurry. horsemouth has always felt guilty about this because steve was friendly and helpful every time horsemouth met him. 

what was the consequence of this review? well steve went on to successful careers in music and academia. andrew mcgettigan (who horsemouth had taken a sideswipe at in the second part of the review) went on to a successful career in academia (and wrote excellently on university funding). 

so, other than a few bruised egos, no major harm done. 

so what got horsemouth's goat? well basically it was the end of the utopian phase of theorising inspired by rave and its descent into a dystopian register. horsemouth had been caught up in the early enthusiasms of this wave - erik davis's cross-fertilisation of deleuze's difference and repetition and african poly-rhythm being used to theorise breakbeats, thoughts on bass frequencies hailing the body directly inspired by barthes' the grain of the voice, and a  general enthusiasm for deleuze - mark fisher, nina power,  kodwo eshun, the CCRU.

to be fair everybody he met at the time was friendly and helpful. (except for mark fisher who horsemouth found distinctly grumpy). horsemouth was delighted to find a world where music was taken seriously. 

but by this point horsemouth was falling out of love with this early assemblage people had made to theorise rave, he thought it was theoretically weak and a poor response to both the original theorists deleuze, barthes etc. and to the collective experiences of the people  involved in the scene. but to be fair steve goodman was heading out of it also (but into turbulent flows and media ecologies and dystopian registers).

(of course the fact that something is a poor response is not necessarily a problem in deleuzian thinking. a response can be poor and yet still productive.)

later there was a similarly theoretically poor application of derrida's work as hauntology. 

horsemouth failed to respond to what was new in goodman's book (this he regrets) and he should have taken greater care with the tone of the review. 

it was a mis-step and the last thing he wrote for publication (publication). everything else he wrote for mute he is happy to stand by. the funding for mute was cut everybody had to focus their attentions on building contacts to ensure the magazine's survival. people got sucked back into the world of work and in 2008 the credit crisis came along and then the student struggles (and then in 2020 the pandemic came along). 

horsemouth transferred his attentions back to making music (musicians of bremen)  and to blogging (publication but not publication). he dropped out of connection with that world but writing that stuff was very good for him, it focused his reading and his writing in a way that blogging doesn't. 

yesterday was bandcamp friday (again). horsemouth has finished his coffee (wait let him check the pot - nope there's still some left - inspiration or at least this blogpost, will continue for a while longer). 

word seems to have popped on his laptop (which is an interesting moment). horsemouth guesses he can write everything in notepad, lots of things will be attached to emails and can be previewed, hell a lot of it actually exists on paper. wednesday horsemouth delivers a speech (he does hope it goes well). he has no idea what he will get up to over the weekend. yesterday a walk on the marshes with TG and then in the evening (pre-babysitting) the blood on satan's claw (from whence the tag line unearthing forgotten horrors).  

normal service is resumed

sorry people horsemouth hasn't been with you for a while because of broadband problems. hopefully this marks a return to service. he has been taking the opportunity to read bulgakov's the white guard. 

last night (well the night before last now) horsemouth was sandbagged. he'd just got ontop of the speechwriting thing when there was the phonecall. 

this is the blogpost horsemouth would have put up yesterday morning had not the broadband thing intervened. 

an old friend. about another old friend (who is not well). this friend is getting evicted (stressful - not what you want when you are ill). it is difficult and stressful to navigate getting yourself rehoused when you are well (never mind when you are sick).  er. and are being evicted by the communal endeavour (mind horsemouth's guilt).

special pleading (horsemouth's mitigation). 

after the second world war lots of council housing was built to house the working class. but in the 80ies the tories began to sell it off or get rid of it by bureaucratic means (sold to the council tenants themselves at knockdown prices or handed off to new management organisations). soon it  was all in profoundly short supply. furthermore rather than let out flats to tenants with rights (such as the right to be rehoused) the new bureaucratic management agencies would often prefer to lease then to tenants without rights - such rights as to be rehoused for example - through co-operatives and housing associations such as the communal endeavour. 

and so we end up in the situation of the communal endeavour evicting its tenants on behalf of a new bureaucratic management agency. 

why would the communal endeavour accept such an iniquitous deal? perhaps as the only way to get people housed (and that temporarily). 

it all has to go down to the wire. horsemouth feels so useless. 

understandably faced with this situation horsemouth has had a guilt seizure. there's this, and there's the presentation, and they are both on the same day.  and there's another friend in a hospice. 

this is where his blog post from yesterday morning would have ended.

yesterday horsemouth went to see his friend in the hospice. he felt paradoxically better for having done something (even if it is basically useless) because at least he had done something. he does miss travelling about the place (there was a fair amount of that with work).

whilst having a hunt around on his computer last night (as he was locked out of the internet) horsemouth found the first cut of the fall of the house of fitzgerald (featuring scenes that did not make it to the final cut). the final cut is indeed better. 

horsemouth's savings continue to appreciate (though not by much) because capitalism is in a cheerful-ish mood. horsemouth finds their (slight) increase reassuring because it counters (though only in part) the decrease caused by horsemouth being obliged to cover his living expenses without the assistance of work. that part is still nice to see (despite its implying that capitalism is feeling cheerful and optimistic).  

tonight maybe some babysitting (maybe not). and then it's the weekend. horsemouth is looking forward to christmas (not a sentence he would usually write).