horsemouth's guide to the seaside towns (my john fahey was a trickster - discuss)

recently, on john fahey (rather than on horsemouth's usual hangout american primitive guitar), there was a discussion of george henderson's book blind joe death's america. now horsemouth hasn't read this book (this is not strictly true, he has read as much as you can read for free). henderson is interested in what fahey wrote as well as what he played and in theory this should make for firmer ground when attempting to work out what fahey meant.

but fahey was a trickster and he had worked out a nice line of chat (or indeed writing - because fahey wrote extensive sleeve notes to his albums and academic essays) to enable him to do what he wanted to do - which was to play fingerpicking guitar. fahey knew enough to feed what academia wanted to hear back to academia and had enough bullshit to baffle most brains on the folk scene. fahey trained as a an anthropologist/ ethnomusicologist - probably carlos castaneda is his nearest rival.

life is a much broader church than horsemouth likes to imagine. horsemouth guesses that his fellow fahians are of disparate opinions, many would wish to believe that fahey has mysteriously and magically escaped all the problems with race and representation and the blues that come with the territory and with america and that thus his music can be enjoyed virtuously without all this baggage. 

horsemouth doubts this is true. that said he admires fahey's synthesis that enables him to escape or evade  the charges of inauthenticity that could be levelled at a white guy from the suburbs playing the blues in the tail end of the 60ies, but he doesn't believe the problems can be escaped because they are wider societal problems (the best that can be done is that they can be held at bay long enough for people to get on with doing what they want to do).

he does not take fahey's synthesis as a fully  worked out system but merely a way of living. 

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yesterday horsemouth went up to howard's early doors to assist with the decorating. at the end of it he felt properly battered (unaccustomed as he is to physical labour these days). they adjourned to the pub by the park - horsemouth had a pizza, howard some tagliatelle, horsemouth had two pints of beer, howard three. 

friday afternoon they are recording  - fingers crossed (horsemouth should have recovered by then). 

it's a bright sunny morning and the weatherman says it's going to hold for a few days. temperatures are rising. horsemouth has had his coffee. he has fed the cats. he is tucking into some cereal.