- the FT weekend for two weekends, and one copy of the observer new review.
- jodi dean, same as it ever was? nlr sidecar, 6th may 2022 on neofeudalism
films
- alice in wonderland (1966 jonathan miller and ravi shankar, and a film of them working on the music)
- steppenwolf
- the killers (siodmak)
- the blue gardenia (fritz lang)
- the short night of the glass dolls (aldo lado 1971)
- terror: infamy (series bbc2)
- the threat (kinji fukasaku 1966)
- le mura di malapaga ((1949 rené clément)
- dinner with andre
- puzzle (aka. l’uomo senza memoria 1974 giallo duccio tessari)
- h.p lovecraft horror podcasts (the case of charles dexter ward, the whisperer in darkness, the shadow over innsmouth)
- will be wild podcast (populism)
- FT podcast
- the hermit of treig
- first five episodes of blake's 7
- RKO series episode on the mccarthy witchhunts and val lewton and the film noirs.
- philip k. dick documentaries
- ingmar bergmann documentaries
- outlaw bookseller various vids, robert silverberg and philip k. dick's valis.
events
fourth anniversary of volume 3 celebration. the fall of the house of fitzgerald shown at the renaissance festival. lots of walks. john visits. walk in epping forest. althea mcnish exhibition. horsemouth's hi-fi dies. vangelis dies. triple negative release new download and cassette.
how bored was horsemouth yesterday? he mopped the kitchen floor and the downstairs hall that's how bored he was.
in the evening horsemouth watched a film noir - the blue gardenia by fritz lang. it being fritz lang there are nice shots and nice touches. the three women live in a bungalow together - they share the rent, they offer advice and support, the men (by comparison) are wisecracking, perfidious and out for themselves.
with the war women moved to the big cities in search of war work in the armaments factories, after the war they were displaced into telephonist and typing pool jobs. in one of the socially conscious RKO noirs, tender comrade by edward dmytryk , thegirls work in an airplane factory (rosie the riveter style). the women are seen working out that they could afford a better apartment if they pooled their rent. ginger rogers later appeared before the house unamerican activities committee saying that she had felt uncomfortable with the leftwing bias of the movie - this led to the blacklisting of the writer dalton trumbo.
the film is driven by a similar misogynist tension as in the gialli. that the women have a measure of economic independence and control over their sex lives (and some solidarity from other women) is seen as troubling. there is the worry about the breakdown of social norms and gender roles (expressed as a concern about the 'safety' of the women). unlike the gialli the solution here is not to murder the women.
today horsemouth goes for a coffee and to look at some art with ayesha (morning - the weather is looking better). he should get in a wander round with TG at some point. he's away to the cloud forest this evening.
wednesday afternoon he may be finishing off some recording with howard. about half of them horsemouth thinks are done excepting a few nips and tucks. the other half he thinks need additional recording, one track he thinks is un-saveable (wondrous love). whether they have time to do that is another matter. he's casting his thoughts about to see if there is anything they have recorded before that can be brought back.
wednesday evening he's off for dinner with his brother's family.
ok ok it's a bit of a grey morning out there but nonetheless it's a monday, the start of the week and the possibility of the realisation of its potentialities.
horsemouth types this wearing a t-shirt, shirt and jumper.
there is a bit in a recent performance video where horsemouth stares up into the skies, he's a bit discombobulated, he's watching a heron being chased by crows. his lips open and close. he waits for teh words to come. he is having a 'senior moment' - he cannot remember the word 'heron'. horsemouth's memory, he must concede this up front, is a bit fucked. but at least the arthritis is his hands seems to have calmed down a bit.
and at least he seems to have lived through the plague epidemic and, unlike philip k. dick, he has not been assailed by pink laser beams bearing cosmogenic information. similarly, unlike harry in herman hesse's steppenwolf, he has not become so possessed by rage that he thinks he is a wolf.
horsemouth has compiled his books, films, event list for may 2022 (no gigs this month). only two gialli (puzzle aka. l’uomo senza memoria duccio tessari 1974 and the short night of the glass dolls aldo lado 1971) and a couple of noirs (siodmak's the killers and one from japan and a french-italian co-production). likewise a fairly undistinguished booklist (no deep theoretical divings). there is still a couple of days before he publishes it here so he could surprise himself and get in something classy.
this week horsemouth is away to cat-sit, he goes round to his brother's for dinner, he pays the (extortionate) gas and electricity bills (and gets the contributions in from his housemates). it is a half-term howard thinks there is a day they can devote to mixing/ sorting out the tracks musicians of bremen have recorded so far.
over the weekend some of horsemouth's fellow co-operators from the communal endeavour were due to attend a zoom meeting on moving housing co-operatives towards net zero (insulation, solar panels, heat pumps), horsemouth does hope they attended and profited from the experience. he could have gone himself but he thinks it is important that the endeavour gets new blood.
next week the rent goes up (the thing horsemouth encouraged everybody to vote for).
we are about to enter flaming june (not that you'd know it from the weather outside).
here are some photos from the back garden of casa horsemouth of horsemouth (and howard who is behind the camera) celebrating four years of musicians of bremen volume three.
here we have horsemouth looking like a grumpy old bluesman but playing the main theme from irish traditional song sliabh na mban (that he recorded on volume three with howard and denise ishaque) and then a bit of his faux malian interpolation just to prove he can actually play it.
horsemouth would like to show you the video directly but it's too big for blogger so all he can do is give you a link to it on facebook and hope that works for you. if you listen carefully you can hear howard joining in. horsemouth is playing the washburn oscar schmidt resonator guitar in standard tuning. there were shocking events in the skies (it was a heron being chased by crows actually).
horsemouth had a plan to try and get some photos taken of them posing with the CD release of volume three on the steps (but in the end he forgot).
finally here is horsemouth with the laramie (hummingbird copy) guitar layed out dobro style. here horsemouth performs a new version of when the faun met alice the second track on that album. it has now been retitled the subdivision of the octave by modes of limited transposition and is played using a miniature vodka bottle as a slide (found item).
horsemouth - he's no oil painting.
horsemouth and howard sat out back and drank supermarket beer and ate a cheap pizza.
later horsemouth was off babysitting at an art gallery. there was some nice arte povera stuff on exhibit seemingly made by brazillians. horsemouth can't tell you much about it because he lacks the critical vocabulary (he knows fuck all about visual art). horsemouth wished he'd worn a jumper but a few brisk rounds of children's games soon warmed him up. later still more pizza.
today looks great so far. horsemouth has his coffee and may go out for a wander in a bit (and then a snooze and a sit around he guesses. next week.
horsemouth awakes with a slight headache and a blocked nose. (a little later the coffee appears to be doing good work and he'll get some paracetamol in).
later howard is coming round. horsemouth suspects he does not remember that it is the fourth anniversary of the release of volume three (horsemouth only remembered when he checked his diary). horsemouth thinks he will try to get some photos taken of them posing with the CD release of it on the steps.
horsemouth is giving volume three a re-listen starting with funeral music and moving on through sliabh na-mban and on to her hair like some glittering gold (which is sounding surprisingly decent).
horsemouth always regrets recording her hair... on the laramie rather than on the woodstock guitar. the woodstock's action (the height of the strings) had lifted making it a better guitar to record slide guitar pieces on (and practically useless for anything else) because you get less 'clunks' of the slide against the guitar neck. conversely the few bars in the song where he is fretting horsemouth would have had to use another guitar. horsemouth used the woodstock on funeral music. satan (your kingdom must come down) was recorded on howard's hohner with the buzzy 1st string (when it had the buzzy 1st string before it was set up again).
other than that it is a long time ago and horsemouth does not remember.
here horsemouth is showing you the CD design from volume three incorporating famous french werewolf the beast of gevaudin as re-drawn by howard.
at some point musicians of bremen will get round to putting out a sequel to volume three. to make this possible horsemouth will have to write some more material. the progress MoB are making can be heard on soundcloud. of the ten songs horsemouth and howard recorded in this campaign only three are originals (no name resonate, murder ballad and jai guru). he thinks all of them work (but that they require work).
volume three works because horsemouth had a lot of this material saved up from his solo work as horsemouthfolk prior to recording it. it follows horsemouth's interests - the blues, irish music, early music, french piano music, african music, american primitive guitar, drone/ indian music. volume four is much more of a pop album. horsemouth does good work on a number of pieces but only really pagodas is him.
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it's a beautiful morning outside. later (probably) howard.
'the stage is a place where the invisible can appear'
horsemouth heard the binmen come (hail the binmen). he's up late because he stayed up late watching once upon a time in hollywood which he enjoyed. it is 30 years and two days since the release of the (kate bush sampling) something good by the utah saints (and very good it is too).
in many ways horsemouth agrees with the filthy hippies who want to kill the movie stars (for showing them so much violence on tv and in the movies jokes tarrantino) - times were violent, a john waynism ruled, there was the draft for a war in vietnam. there is an underlying violence in the culture. the manson gang react to this and are a part of it.
earlier horsemouth had watched the scythe of the house unamerican activities committee cut through RKO pictures. the val lewton pictures, the film noirs had changed into social conscience pictures (they had really always been those), the powers-that-be get nervous and launch an anti-communist witch hunt. it rampages around destroying lives and careers until it blows itself out. the survivors are bitter and wary and guilty, they cannot believe that the all-clear has been sounded, they won't recognise the song the documentarists want them to sing and become unco-operative. silence serves them better.
'the stage is a place where the invisible can appear' from the empty space by peter brook.
horsemouth has slightly distorted the quote by truncating it as he has. brook means what is invisible in society, the invisible forces, the shape of things (but he could just as well mean the invisible people - the filthy hippies for example). he gives us merce cunningham, samuel beckett and jerzy grotowski (and he gives us julian beck and judith malina's the living theatre). there is (of course) my dinner with andre here - an over selling of what theatre (or movies for that matter) can achieve, but there is also the lumpenproletarian masses of el nost milan, the alienation effect of brecht - there is althusser's brief essay on all this, an essay that is not really about theatre at all but about the making of ideology (what is invisible) visible.
after people have paid their rent there is food poverty and there is energy poverty (but not actual poverty you understand, in order to get it ameliorated it can't be called that).
this is, of course, not a social relationship (the structural result of reduced workers' share of GDP) but a temporary thing caused by spikes in food and energy prices to which a sticking plaster can be applied by the state. we must all eat better for less and heat our homes less. this following story becomes more relevant (indeed you could stage it again).
brook in hamburg in 1946.
'I saw a crowd of children pushing excitedly into a nightclub door. I followed them. on stage was a bright blue sky. two seedy, spangled clowns sat on a painted cloud on their way to visit the queen of heaven, 'what shall we ask her for?' said one 'dinner,' said the other and the children screamed approval...'
here what is invisible is food and the children's need for it.
-----------------------------
saturday howard may be round. it is the anniversary of the release of volume three (horsemouth will have a think about how to make that visible). it looks like a nice day out there today. yesterday horsemouth alternated some reading (in the back garden) with some listening to horror podcasts (the case of charles dexter ward). he will probably do something like this today.
horsemouth is up and about having slept like a log. (he's just emptied out the compost bin from the kitchen into the big composter out front). hold on a second while he nips back into the kitchen to get a second cup of coffee.
there that's better. now he has it.
last night he watched the hermit of treigon the tv.having travelled round the world and out into the wilderness when young the hermit retires to a forest in the scottish highlands. he builds himself a log cabin, chops wood, writes, takes photographs. but he is getting old. eventually there's a film. he goes to the premiere in glasgow.
in the morning horsemouth wandered off round the olympic park with john. john (as a former lea valley parks operative) pointed out (as they passed through the boundary gate) that the irrigation scheme had never really worked for the lea valley side of it but was sufficient to keep the olympic park in luscious growth. a lot of the trees had been planted in the wrong place (but these were now dying back). the meadow flower plantings had been reasonably successful and kept their form (though some succession of species is to be expected).
after that they retreated home for john to pack and for horsemouth to cook - he did a chickpea and vegetable curry and rice (which john pronounced tasty). john was flying out of heathrow so horsemouth proposed he test out crossrail (aka. the elizabeth line - though horsemouth is not sure why as she didn't build it or pay for it).
horsemouth is now adjusting to as much solitude as the shared house affords. at the weekend the four years of volume three celebration and the birthday of harry everett smith. then we are into half term. horsemouth is off cat-sitting in the cloud forest. there's the end of month list.
it looks like a decent morning outside. he's a bit stuck for what to read next. john has an e-reader and had read silverberg's the isle of the dead recently and was working his way through michael dibdin's aurelio zen series.
'for the business elite that goes to davos the stars are no longer perfectly aligned...'
there they say outright that globalization is dead. (sailors on passing ships hear it shouted on the islands). but there's still global trade. it's still a world economy. with all those economies of scale. ever since the fall of the berlin wall the multinationals have not had to worry about geopolitics they could just concentrate on making money - and now that era is (partially) over.
at the time of the anti-globalization demonstrations horsemouth used to argue there was something worse than globalization (and here we are seeing it).
the mighty triple negative have something new out (lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth).
last night john went out to meet friends and returned somewhat late (after some jazz in biddles). horsemouth was anxious to sneak him into the building quietly (to minimise disruption to his fellow housemates).
elsewhere the will bewild podcast - the undermining of elections by officials in elected office. now, of course, horsemouth doesn't particularly believe in elections neither as measurements of the democratic will nor as direct expression of it. nonetheless this anti-state current on the right has horsemouth worried. it has mobilised people and established a base, the political effects of it will continue to be seen as it shifts the republican party away from the establishment and towards the mob.
horsemouth's plan is to retire to the hills.
yesterday himself and john went for a wander up into the hills of walthamstow. they called in at the wetlands centre and the william morris museum before getting the bus home. the stars of book-buying were not in alignment (john emerged from the salvation army with a copy of bound for glory by woody guthrie). horsemouth missed his opportunity to check out the famous walthamstow passivhaus -maybe another time.
today he does not know. perhaps a leisurely morning and then a slow issuance to the train and plane.
yesterday the deaths of bonnie and clyde (killed by the laws).
horsemouth is back from a meeting of the communal endeavour which went really well (he thinks). the candidate he expected to stand didn't, an unexpected candidate showed up. so it has all turned out for the best (he thinks). (a bit of an anti-climax really when compared to horsemouth's dire imaginings).
john has arrived from sunny porto for a brief visit. horsemouth went out for a walk. then he went out for a quick walk with TG. and then he had to dash back only to find john chatting with sten. after a while john departed to wander round tate modern with myk and meet up with other friends and horsemouth went off to his meeting.
today horsemouth does not know. he thinks the big walk has been scheduled for wednesday and the weather is supposed to be reliably rubbish for john's visit.
horsemouth has got out his copy of awriter's journal by a h.d. thoreau. he hasn't started reading it in any meaningful way yet. it contains a skoob books bookmark and a receipt from the ideas store for a book or video called family trees from december 2012 (horsemouth has no recollection of this - maybe it's not his and he just picked it up?).
we start the day with ralph towner on 12 string. it sounds detuned (maybe even prepared).
yesterday was sun ra's arrival day (the anniversary of his birth 22nd may 1914. his spirit stays with us until 30th may (the anniversary of his death in 1993) and then it is off again around the multiverse.
yesterday horsemouth took some books back to the book box. the weather was super beautiful. the masses were out and about (and they were beautiful). horsemouth is recovering from his post-beer gringe. he's preparing for the meeting of the communal endeavour this evening. tomorrow the elizabeth line opens (the route formerly known as crossrail) and john visits. at the weekend four years of volume three and the anniversary of the birth of harry everett smith.
thereafter we are in to the week of half term and musicians of bremen may be able to get on with some work. horsemouth will be away to the cloud forest to cat-sit. thereafter there are the fucking rent rises (prudent and necessary).
after years of faithful service horsemouth's 'home cinema' hi-fi (found on the street) has given up the ghost. horsemouth has confined it to a plastic bag and removed it from his shelving. it will be missed (until he gets a new one).
howard was round for beer and pizza yesterday on the front steps. they discussed music a little. next week is his half-term. the sun shone. horsemouth was due to go to a birthday party but he got side-tracked.
horsemouth is perhaps less cheerful than he should be based on this description. so far he seems to have evaded the hang-over. some paracetamol and water last night, some more this morning.
also on the downside (now that he remembers it) his speaker set-up for the CD player stopped working early doors. if he remembers correctly the plug is a complete pig to get to and may require him to empty a bookcase. (or two). horsemouth's room is a bit full (what with the guitars and the books). with a bit of luck it's just a fuse or something.
they were forced to listen to music on howard's phone and on horsemouth's laptop (while the batteries lasted)
ok enough moping and feeling guilty. it looks like another beautiful day outside.
monday. a meeting of the communal endeavour. probably to be taken in person. at the end of the week horsemouth is up in the cloud forest again
some thoughts on dinner with andre.
well andre should be very happy. he's had all these amazing experiences in the depths of the polish forests with acolytes of grotowsky, in the desert with a tibetan monk. but he's not very happy. things are difficult. we still have not found out why (or what form this unhappiness takes).
horsemouth has seen creativewriting taught, and while the teachers were good (francis spufford was one) not much was really going on beyond show and tell/ each one teach one. the students would workshop their existing work and feign interest in the work of others. it was interesting that this feigning was all it took to draw people out.
retirement suits some people and not others - horsemouth's dad always claimed to hate his job and so (seemingly) soon adjusted to just pottering round the garden, fixing cars and an endless round of DIY. his mum (who was a teacher and found a lot of validation in her work) found it more difficult.
montaigne is in many ways horsemouth's guide. montaigne found retirement difficult (rousseau also).
the problem horsemouth has with writing anything longform these days is sitting down and doing the reading and the writing to produce a concentrated text (rather than just blithering away like he is doing at the moment). there was a period where he was writing stuff for mute this he remembers fondly - it was less that they paid (they didn't pay very much) but that they'd asked, his opinion was being sought. this gave him permission to write (the writing was thus work because it was being paid for).
however when they stopped paying he stopped writing (this was a mistake).
there is a tension between work towards a goal and freely chosen activity but there is a tension within freely chosen activity too - that of its purposelessness. we are trained (by life and capitalism) to look for work (for activity with a purpose) the notion that activity might not have a purpose (that it might be 'just for fun') is distinctly worrying. it feels like a waste. like something we might have to pay for later.
there is of course nothing other than inertia preventing horsemouth for choosing a topic and sitting down to write once again. (or for that matter horsemouth picking up one of the guitars and making an effort to learn something).
of course horsemouth gets up in the morning to write this (this is his routine). bergman speaks of the importance of having a routine (bergman writes in the morning and goes for walks, at 3pm the housekeeper comes round and bergman starts watching movies).
the drug that enables horsemouth's writing is coffee (when he has finished writing he will have breakfast (a bowl of museli) and swap onto the tea).
the problem is what to do with the rest of the day. horsemouth breaks up the day with walking or perhaps a little shopping. the important thing is to get him off the computer (to stop him farting about on facebook) and onto his diary and the book he happens to be reading. the summer makes this easier - he will pause on his walk to read or he will sunbathe in the back garden. the world at one is quite important in that it breaks up the day (on saturday he misses it).
a walking diary
thursday wetlands cafe 5-6 miles
wednesday shopping aldi 4 miles
monday shopping asda 4 miles
friday (13th) walthamstow st. james' st. (book shopping oxfam etc.) 5 miles
thursday (12th) walk down canal to opposite the dome 5 miles
monday 9th walthamstow st. james' st. 5 miles
(any child minding 1.8 miles minimum)
there and back again by shanks's pony (when horsemouth wrote his appreciation of work he failed to mention the walking of at least 2 miles a day that it entailed)
when the clock clicks onto 6pm horsemouth is done and saved, the time is no longer work timeand horsemouth is free to enjoy it without feeling that he should be making good use of it (he cannot really waste it because it is free time).
'one night I was alone watching a documentary on bergman. he was talking about ghosts and sitting in his kitchen. exactly where I was sitting! I freaked out, and fled to a B&B...'
so says a woman film director who was staying in his house on faro (as haunted a spot as one could wish for).
last night horsemouth watched a little of my diner with andre. he will postpone discussing it until he has finished it. then the terror: infamy. then bed. in the day he finished off reading canal dreams and went for a brief walk in the rain..
burt lancaster waits for death. when the killers come for him he makes no attempt to run. horsemouth watched a documentary on don siegel (who remade the killers) and then he watched the robert siodmak original of the killers with burt.
in siodmak's version it is burt who is centre stage (despite being dead).
so why didn't he run?
'once I did something wrong'
good morning! good morning! horsemouth is up and about. (well ok he's made it as far as the kitchen and successfully made a cup of coffee.
'ministers have rejected a key recommendation from the grenfell tower public inquiry that all disabled tenants should be given a personal evacuation plan in the event of a fire...
the home office said it has decided it is not proportionate or practical to introduce the plan, citing problems such as the costs to landlords.'
horsemouth is reminded of the anarcho-punk song 'do they care?' ('do they care? (repeat many times) like fuck'). horsemouth will post a link to the grenfell tower inquiry podcast which is reliably blood boiling listening. we now have the pattern, the inquiry will recommend, the government will ignore, people will die next time (but money will have been saved(allegedly)).
vangelis (the man who soundtracked the future) has died. theres his stuff with demis roussos in aphrodite's child as well.
it's a grey morning (but yesterday turned out well - ok no horsemouth has checked the weather forecast, drizzle, rain etc. clearing up in the evening). horsemouth was reading iain banks' canal dreams in it he found (as a bookmark) a ticket to the english national opera production of peter grimes for 30th may 2009 (there are no other notes, comments or inter-leavings in the book that he can see). yesterday he walked up (with TG) to the cafe in the wetlands (probably 5-6 miles there and back). TG is keen to travel on further (up to epping forest if needs be).
horsemouth types very quickly (says his father approvingly) but not very accurately (says horsemouth's own internalised censor).
he has his cup of coffee. outside it is a grey morning (but horsemouth does not care because he has seen sunshine and it is good).
'it was only the beginning of may and the whole summer lay ahead'
so starts chekhov's the black monk. it starts hopefully (at least). later, in the same 10p pocket book, is peasants, servant loses his job in moscow and returns to his village with his family only to discover everyone is sunk in grim poverty and drunkenness when he gets there.
horsemouth's unfashionable targets for compassion no.1 - russian squaddies.
join the army. see your neighbours. drive around in antiquated vehicles being shot at by enemies with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of the very latest western technology. if you attempt to run away the chechen punishment battalions will do something grim to you (and where are you going to go? it is after all a police state). you are 21. you are 19. at some point you will shoot a civilian (because it is their fault you are here - or rather, them you can shoot with no comeback). you will then be captured and cctv footage of you shooting the civilian will be found. you will be put on trial as a war criminal.
last night horsemouth watched jean gabin dubbed (he presumes) into italian in le mura di malapaga (1949 rené clément). it is immediately post-war, italians in genoa live a hardscrabble existence in the ruins of antiquity, jean gabin (french murderer on the run) arrives and takes up with divorcee isa miranda (but the cops are closing in).
upon examining the two photos horsemouth has seen of the fall of the house of fitzgerald being shown at the renaissance festival horsemouth is interested to see that it appears to have been projected so that, for the audience, left and right were reversed (like so). this effectively recomposes the shots (which horsemouth finds most interesting).
the re-photography also alters the colours and the degree of focus and also enables horsemouth to see individual shots from the film. there is always more to see. horsemouth is not complaining he's delighted people got to see it.
under the screen the audience are visible (so horsemouth has the satisfaction of knowing that they are there). now he gets greedy and wants even more people to see it. at one point he had some momentum on this (but then it went).
a youngsster plays a late fahey tune springtime in azalea city (open G tuning horsemouth thinks).
yesterday horsemouth went for a walk. then he sat out in the back garden and read. today more of the same. tonight is bin night (when horsemouth puts out the recycling and the rubbish for the bin men).
the big advantage of working (for horsemouth) was that, while he did it, he couldn't think about other things.
and in addition to that there was the money. this could be used to pay his rent (and enable him to stay in the seaside towns and carry on working),
work, travelling to work, travelling between jobs, and travelling back from work, doing the paperwork, took up a good proportion of his day (monday to friday) and occupied his thoughts most wonderfully.
further, horsemouth, who did not posses a smartphone, was unable to check facebook, myspace etc. during his day. he was compelled to read (or make notes in his diary, or doodle etc.) the work required horsemouth to travel across the town and enabled him to visit many second hand bookshops and charity shops.
in the early days horsemouth would work weekends and evenings as well (it was better paid) but when they stopped paying that work better he stopped doing it (proportionately). he also got in additional work (sometimes over the summer holidays) with much wider travel. eventually he gave this up because it was too much trouble (this was probably a mistake but not such a bad mistake that horsemouth actually regrets it).
horsemouth found working and being paid very reassuring. it gave him a measure of how well he as doing. initially he worked everything he was offered but eventually he relaxed into it and stopped chasing work. he became more confident that they would pay him, that he would make enough money to live and that there would be enough work next year to re-employ him.
but it was the breaking up of horsemouth's day that was most useful. this meant he came back to issues afresh.
at the communal endeavour things proceed slowly (if indeed they are proceeding at all). indeed the may be being rolled back. they proceeded just as slowly before but it didn't seem that way because horsemouth's attention was diverted with other things. someday horsemouth will retire from it.
enza got the fall of the house of fitzgerald shown at the renaissance festival at electrowerkz (thanks enza). horsemouth now has photos of himself being shown on a screen (and presumably to an audience). howard has recorded another mixfor the golden glow (and very good it is too).
john will be over visiting soon (he is ahead of horsemouth in this 'retirement' lark). horsemouth will ask him how it is going. at the weekend probably a brief meet up with howard.
'the word is a small visible portion of a gigantic unseen formation' - peter brook, the empty space.
horsemouth is up. it is a bright snshine-y morning. the rest of the week is supposed to be good.
horsemouth is unsure what to do with the day (maybe a walk with TG).
horsemouth has sent a letter (he does hope it gets there in time).
he has finished reading hallucinating foucault which is not much about foucault but instead about a fantasy of demon lover (mad, bad and dangerous to know who in fact turns out to be gentle and kind and sensitive etc. etc.) horsemouth is glad to be reading again (never mind the quality).
having read the FT weekend section two weekends in a row (but a weekend behind) horsemouth now moves on to the observer review section. this feels slightly more omnivorous (tv series he will never watch, books he will never read, political situations that won't impinge on his existence). on the web horsemouth picks and chooses, on paper he will read practically anything.
he has the peter brook to read (and quite a bit of the observer to finish off - a feminist critique of coetzee's disgrace etc. which, darn it, he can't find to show you, ok no, here it is).
outside it is clouding over. horsemouth has the sneezes.
horsemouth types this from the alternative universe where philip k.dick is a genre science fiction writer unknown outside of SF fandom because blade runner was never made.
after the initial promise of the man in the high castle nothing seemed to go right for him and he went down a wormhole of drugs, divorce and paranoia that effectively stopped him from writing for many years. even before his religious conversion he had earned a reputation as being unreliable (and after conversion to the church of the utah saints he was no better). he became a chemtrails/ conspiracy theory nut. at his death his papers were dispersed to the wind. there was talk of making a tv series of man in a high castle but the script editors balked at his racism against german and japanese characters. it never happened, robert silverberg's dying inside was selected instead.
the non-SF novels (other than confessions of a crap artist) were never released. he is survived by a handful of paperbacks in the DAW imprint (usually with lurid covers featuring dinosaurs and spacecraft).
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horsemouth is reading hallucinating foucault by patricia duncker (a book he would often see in the second hand book shops). an english grad student goes in search of a french writer called paul michel (foucault's first two names) who corresponded with a philosopher called foucault. paul michel is an out gay man and a contrarian, very much as you would imagine foucault to be from his writings but younger.
so far not too much of foucault's philosophy/ies. this character paul michel delivers the eulogy for foucault, one lifted from la volonte de savoir.
'there are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks and perceive differently than one sees is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all.'
horsemouth spent the afternoon listening to miles davis' black beauty. so what would this music sound like shorn of teo macero's studio trickery? he also spent time reading the FT weekend section (stylish people save the world on the weekend)
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it's a grey morning but it's a monday (so horsemouth will have to make some efforts to start the week). there should be a new episode of the podcast will be wild - from an alternate universe where a sitting US president encouraged his followers to storm the capitol building.
at the moment the assumption is that this (all this insurrectionary bollocks) is all over - but in fact the trump supporters are just making the long march through the school boards and local politics. the republican party is being seized from the conservatives.
yesterday beautiful sunshine. humanity resumes its perpetual party. people wander around barely clothed. horsemouth finds himself walking on the shady part of the street.
horsemouth has a task (he is child-minding). first down to haggerston for the violin lesson (and associated food) then back from haggerston by the wonder of the 26 bus to hackney wick to GROW to handover the child to a friendly parent and to permit the child to play with other children. the bus turfs them off early and they are forced to rely on memory and bus maps to get them there. on their way to GROW horsemouth bumps into dave and claudia (they are out for a quick daytime beer having been swimming).
the social distancing seems to be at an end. the party is back on.
at GROW there is a bit of a wait. the sun shines. it is pleasant to be by the water. they do some drawing. then everyone arrives. mission discharged horsemouth scurries off quickly.
he returns home via the canal. on the canal boats people sunbathe and play acoustic guitars. it is a vision of paradise. back home horsemouth hides in the shade and has a beer and this is where the headache catches him. he spends the early part of the evening dosing himself with paracetamol and coffee and water in an attempt to drive it of.
horsemouth has been corresponding with sean who is enthusiastic about the prospects for irish unity given that the british have installed a border in the irish sea with respect to northern ireland in order to simultaneously comply with the brexit deal and also avoid having a land border on the island of ireland (or ireland as sean insists it should more properly be called). sean is hoping to get on with the cartoon work.
yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the release of church of hawkwind the dave brock/ harvey bainbridge synthesizer twiddling album - the kitchen table project where they decided they could do it themselves without adding a dedicated keyboard player.
soon a meeting of the communal endeavour, the 4th anniversary of the release of volume 3, horsemouth will decamp to the cloud forest to go cat-sitting for half term, the anniversary of a mixcloud mix (tunes chosen by horsemouth, mix assembled by howard).
horsemouth is sitting around on a sunday morning reading the FT weekend section from last weekend (that he recovered from someone's bin) and listening to volume 3.
her hair like some glittering gold (basically a cover of debussy's la fille au cheveux de lin on a slide guitar in open G) was recorded in a hurry on the wrong guitar. he regrets not putting in a repeat with fake monk chanting on let all mortal flesh keep silence. he always misses pete's double bass when he plays the devil live. serpent(S) and on the banks of the susquehanna are both enlivened by john clarkson's loan of the harmonium and the melodica (and howard's playing of them).
meanwhile the DUP and the tories seem to have a 'good cop/ bad cop' routine going - 'better you deal with me' say the tories to the EU 'rather than with my unreasonable friend'. the EU seem taken aback that anyone would sign a deal and not mean it/ plan to get out of it later.
horsemouth feels that he is trapped in a historical re-enactment society. having done the plague we are moving gradually in the direction of world war I and the great depression.
horsemouth has his coffee. today he's off for a spot of child-minding/ child transportation this morning (hopefully ending early afternoon).
yesterday he wandered up to walthamstow and bought peter brooks an empty space (a book about theatre) - oxfam £1.50.
horsemouth is trying to work through the giallos to try and remember which ones he has seen.
horsemouth is up and about (the day begins). the binmen have been and gone (hail the binmen).
last night horsemouth found puzzle (aka. l’uomo senza memoria a 1974 Italian giallo film directed by duccio tessari) online and watched it. he then listened to the fragments of fear giallo podcast about it.
the theme reminds horsemouth of bus stop by the hollies (as lifted by blue oyster cult). puzzle is an uncharacteristic giallo for its warm feel and its strong female protagonist (despite ostensibly being about a man and his loss of memory). of course there's still a chainsaw murder. it is set on or around april 23rd san giorgio's (st.george's day) in porte fino (which looks beautiful) - you can tell this because they encounter a folkloric bonfire at one point with the locals singing.
yesterday horsemouth went out for a long walk (something like 5 miles) with TG down to the thames opposite the dome via the canal system calling in at cody dock for an ice cream. TG admitted that he was reading again and produced a list of decent authors dostoyevsk (a nasty tale), maupassant (one about fake jewellery that horsemouth has read recently), chekhov.
either TG has excellent taste in literature or he has been researching horsemouth's tastes in literature. horsemouth needs to get reading again.
time passes and we get closer to the meeting of the communal endeavour when the lie of the land will become clearer and the top jobs will be allocated. really only the chair matters. once that is decided horsemouth can stop worrying.
sten's health is recovered so he is off working in the morning (and shooting guns).
'I often hear discourses that describe my thinking as utopian. and yet it generally corresponds to my way of living and not to an imaginary plan....and it is true that changing the world does not go without a certain utopia. however, I do not want to prescribe anything for anyone. I just offer the fruit of my experience to those who attempt to make their own path.' - luce irigary.
luce is now interested in meditation. in breath control and silence. in silence voluntarily chosen and silence imposed by society. faced by the general craziness of the world (poking grumpy bears with a stick are you sure that that is wise?) horsemouth and many others retreat from the world.
if horsemouth had a garden he would garden it. he must content himself with operating a compost bin and watching a tree grow, these are the 'facts on the ground' horsemouth installed earlier and he's glad he did because otherwise he would be looking out of the window every day at a complete fucking shit heap.
soon it will be a year since the arrival of sten's building waste to be stored 'temporarily' in the front garden. horsemouth is planning to present sten with a cake to celebrate this anniversary.
sadly for horsemouth the front garden is a building waste repository and the back garden is a storage area for dead bicycles and other botched projects. by dint of a great amount of threatening, cursing and even some physical labour horsemouth has managed to get the steps cleared at the front and an area on the decking at the back of the garden cleared as somewhere to sit and read.
eternal vigilance enables him to have a shelf in the fridge and freezer each on which he can store his food and a continuous campaign of tidying enables him to clear just enough space to prepare it on the worktops.
eternal vigilance keeps the corridor and roughly 50% of the living room floor clear of kipple, tools, paint tins and unicycles.
phew it is all such hard work taking disproportionate amounts of psychic energy and attention.
it's another beautiful day out there. horsemouth is dressed (jumper, t-shirt, jeans etc.) and the window is open about an inch at the top to allow in the fresh cold air. the sun is shining in a clear blue (if hazy) sky.
horsemouth's 'retirement' is going well - he's still within the money from his redundancy. yesterday was the anniversary of the last day's work horsemouth (ever?) did. if he has not made as much music as he would have liked it is still early days yet. he volunteers as a committee-man at the communal endeavour, he does a little child minding and cat sitting, and, of course, he drivels on on this blog and on facebook and hopes that people find it entertaining.
yesterday a kinji fukasaku film (the threat 1966) japanese gangsters on the run hold a family hostage to get the father to assist in another kidnapping. he hasn't started reading anything but he did pick up a copy of canal dreams from a book box. yesterday also the anniversary of the release of space ritual.
ok the post has been let us see what it is.
the post brings good news that horsemouth's financial affairs continue to be in order (thus reassuring him abut his putative retirement). today a walk (probably).
so here we are it's another morning. (rain at some point allegedly).
two years ago, in the teeth of the pandemic, horsemouth was staying home, even though the government advice had been downgraded to merely staying alert. he had discovered a tv series version of christ stopped at eboli (in italian). having read the book recently he could tell what was going on (which was good because he couldn't understand what as being said).
and now we have the robert lawson trio live from polyvalente in malaga (loving the hats gentlemen). it's the second of these (horsemouth thinks). some great loops there with the zither and the drums. even an appearance of a slide whistle in a sonny sharrock style. it was good (and it just keeps on getting better).
horsemouth finished reading the isle of the dead (robert silverberg) which, like a number of artistic productions (notably val lewton's movie with boris karloff), leans up against a the bocklin painting. the isle of the dead point of resolution and happening is juxtaposed with tokyo bay where the tide brings things in and the tide takes things away.
will he follow it up by reading the eye of the cat (another similarly structured revenger)? probably not.
he may start on the robbe-grillet or he may go off and trawl the book boxes from more science fiction.
it is of course now slightly less than two weeks until the next meeting of the communal endeavour. horsemouth therefore has to learn to temper his anxiety and adopt the only sane and sensible attitude - which is que sera, sera. hopefully things will flow easily, if they don't then fuck it we will all be taking the long way round.
yesterday a man arrived about the unicycle sten had been (temporarily) storing in the hallway. (fucking unstable things unicycles, prone to falling over). having made herculean efforts to clear the hallway (and the front room and the back garden) horsemouth was not best pleased by its appearance and had taken to referring to it as the fucking unicorn. the man (who was chatty and friendly) left with the fucking unicorn, horsemouth hopes that he was pleasant and that none of the coldness he feels for the fucking unicorn bled into the interaction (but he suspects it did).
it is, if horsemouth has correctly entered information in his dairy the one year anniversary of the last stroke of work that horsemouth did. horsemouth (being a lazy sod) plans to stretch out his inactivity for as long as possible.
ok that's a title lifted from steppenwolf (but it could be robbie basho)
elsewhere in mittel europa things are going less well.
'we will hold the reins of power in the world. our bitterest enemies are persons who love freedom. we need the young to keep us alive. they must become as us. they must think as we do. and those who rebel must be sacrificed.'
so goes the club motto of klub 99 in prague. the evil and the old gather together to be depraved, the young and beautiful (in this case barbara bach) are sacrificed to them in aldo lado's 1971 short night of the glass dolls. it is interesting to think that this was made only 3 years after the crushing of the prague spring. ingrid thulin slums it as the discarded lover of the hero.
horsemouth's reading of roger zelazny's isle of the dead whichproceeds well. yesterday a walk up to walthamstow (4-5 miles all told). the st.james street oxfam was shut but in other charity shops horsemouth found a small (and somewhat parched sounding) rainstick with a turtle motif and copy of alain robbe-grillet's jealousy in a calder books edition. (he has another robbe-grillet round here somewhere that john left). it was a pleasant walk up.
jealousy provides you with a plan of the house where the action takes place.
the rainstick makes a sound like rainfall (as the little pebbles within bounce off the cactus spines stuck through the casing in the form of a spiral) and this by sympathetic magic is supposed to attract rain.
on the way back horsemouth sat on a bench overlooking the road attempting to get some sounds out of it. (mind you it does make a good shaker also). he got a thumbs up from a passing cyclist. and chatted with a small dog that came over (called rajput interestingly enough).
the rainstick appears to emit dust when played (how magical is that) from out of the holes where a cactus spine used to be.
horsemouth is up and awake. it is another beautiful morning in the ghetto (in the ghetto)...
he is indebted to his diary. in which he wrote down the phrase the rediscovery of man (he thinks it was a book title).
sunday (slightly ahead of his schedule for the week) a walk with TG (no photos) and bookbox finds
roger zelazny - eye of the cat and isle of the dead in a double edition
horsemouth started on eye of the cat but it was dull and so on advice he turned his attention to isle of the dead (which was immediately much better). zelazny takes us to tokyo bay (an expanse of dirty polluted water and beaches) and explains that life is like tokyo bay, the tide brings things in, the tide takes things away. it's a good opening.
after an afternoons sunbathing/ reading/ listening to podcasts in the back garden horsemouth cooked and ate (fakemeat spaghetti bolognese). he watched the news. he played a little guitar out of a Gmaj.7 shape in a lomo style. he watched some vlogs from bookpilled and outlaw bookseller (fast forming a mutual appreciation society).
there was the usual sunday phonecall to his mum. they've done the plant and produce sale for the village hall. it was a beautiful day.
the podcast he listened to was will be wild - it's title taken from a tweet by (then) president trump inviting his supporters to the attempted insurrection of january 6th 2021. it's about how people in the government knew that this was coming but were prevented from doing anything to stop it. there's another episode today.
it's also about why people were there and it's about who was there and it's about what they will be doing next. trump (in a similar way to johnson with brexit) attached himself to a dissatisfaction with the way society was being run and even if the figurehead falls the people will simply switch their support to another disruptive candidate who offers then the same feeling of agency. the neoliberal argument that they should go home and stop messing with the smooth functioning of the state and the economy that is driving them down into poverty simply does not appeal.
one thing the pandemic and black lives matter showed was that people were prepared to risk death to have political agency.
people normally pass horsemouth's window going left to right (as on this page) the morning sun on their shoulders. two people just passed going right to left (backwards through the text) their eyes slightly shut, the sun on their faces.
horsemouth has not been out for a while (out to see the pretty dancers of the black eagle).
this week the one year anniversary of the last stroke of work (ever?) horsemouth did.
(sorry. horsemouth apologises he will stop being so hyper).
horsemouth is up. he has his cup of coffee (ok he's nearly finished his cup of coffee).
'the counter-revolution of neoliberalism has been a process of privatization, fragmentation and separation,.. today’s proletarians are caught up in a new kind of serfdom, dependent on networks and practices through which rents are extracted at every turn. when production is insufficiently profitable for accumulation, holders of capital seek returns elsewhere... neofeudalism speaks to that.' - jodi dean, same as it ever was?, nlr sidecar, 6th may 2022.
horsemouth has some questions pop-pickers.
is what is going on now (uber, amazon, task-monkey, increased rent seeking rather than production and profit) sufficiently bad that it is in fact a new thing?
and if it is a new thing is it something that resembles on old thing (generally agreed to be bad) feudalism?
horsemouth has retired from the workforce (or so he says). he has decided to return to the economic inactivity of his youth. if he were still economically active he would not benefit from the reduction in the lower rate of income tax from 20 to 19 percent (because he didn't tend to earn that much) but he would probably benefit from ending of national insurance on earnings below the lower tax limit. he would be a whole £300 richer. (small woo-hoo).
horsemouth's monkish existence (when he was working) was made possible by (comparatively) low rent and by a (comparatively) low cost of living. his monkish existence now similarly. both of these conditions are ending.
but all things are not sweet for the lower echelons of the rentier class. they too have acquired debts to purchase the assets which they charge you a rent to use (housing for example). these debts are becoming increasingly expensive to service. (probably leading to more rent rises)
finally horsemouth would like to ask that if we have to survive under neofeudalism (if that's what it is) could we please not make and be forced to listen to any more bad fake-folk music (aka. neofolk)? now horsemouth has no objection to fake folk music (the singer-songwriters etc.) but he likes it to be done well and he likes to know that his money is not going to feed fat fuck (ex-)nazis.
yesterday horsemouth went out to the powerscroft road book box (no joy). on his way up there he noticed a copy of the FT weekend in the trash, on his way back he snaffled it. later a video chat with pete, some book recommendations, he too had been up to powerscroft road (but had returned with a book). horsemouth is enjoying reading an actual newspaper. last night he watched yet a.n.other scandinoir detective serial. apparently there is a post-wire series coming about the further adventures of the baltimore police department (various officers opened up a side-hustle (so characteristic of new working patterns) of being gangsters and drug dealers).
lou and martin were playing at waterintobeer (he should have gone out and seen them but now he supposes he will have to catch up with them at another gig).
today another beautiful sunny day. the day before yesterday horsemouth washed many of his rugs (and sat out in the back garden and read). later the weekly phonecall with his mum (instituted at the start of the pandemic).
coronavirus in the UK seems to be bouncing about (friday 228 deaths up about 5% on the previous week but the other indicators heading down). horsemouth doesn't think it is over, new variants could arrive and start cutting through and of course the long-term health effects of covid will start to become more obvious. horsemouth tends to still use masks for public transport and visits to the supermarket but on the other hand he has sat indoors in pubs taking to coughing people. in many respects he doesn't mind the not meeting in doors (so much) restriction and we are heading into summer anyway.
the next george lansbury is not coming out of the labour party that much is pretty certain. except that lutfur did come out of the labour party but he couldn't stay on their ticket and so had to set up independently.
anecdotally, from people horsemouth used to know working in the voluntary and second sectors, lutfur ran a strong version of the pork barrel, you want funding? be on my ticket and get the vote in. but criminal charges were not brought and this was never proved in a court of law because it didn't need to be proved to get the result of the democratic election in tower hamlets annulled (such are the powers the state has to control local authorities).
because of this half measure lutfur, initially banned for five years, was free to run again.
the allegations of voter intimidation and electoral fraud were likewise not proved and the scrutiny under which the recent elections were conducted make the result seem more secure.
the real question is will the government find a means abrogate the result yet again. will they tell the people of tower hamlets that they can't have what they voted for for a second time.
of course rahman's second time in office may not be as radical as his first (he may 'halven-down') and even that wasn't particularly radical. his administration did the trick of claiming all new housing built in the borough as if it were going to the poor and impoverished when in fact it was all squarely aimed at incoming people of a much higher income bracket than the locals. mind you, everyone does that trick.
horsemouth suspects that the political strength of the bangladeshi community in tower hamlets will soon wane - as it is dispersed out of the borough by gentrification (sorry horsemouth will wash his mouth out with soap and water, development), as the segment that is organised in cultural associations etc. get older, as the young are sucked into the maelstrom of modern society, as they become as atomised and disempowered as their black and white neighbours.
but what does he know.
the great victory of the establishment in the last 14 years since the financial crisis is channel disaffection with neo-liberal policies and austerity and political powerlessness back into racism and the mainstream political parties. here those energies can be nullified and the austerity and powerlessness continued. and in that lies the seeds of the destruction of the current political process - people are being forced into an austerity that they cannot swallow by an incompetent ruling class and, to quote bob marley (sorry - horsemouth is a species of hippy) 'a hungry mob is an angry mob'.
brexit has been done (allegedly) and tory posh boys dancing round singing the praises of levelling up (and then saying they can't afford it) does not convince anybody.
once again the early stages of lockdown and the furlough reveal that government is capable of governing and actually doing things (who knew). that more is possible.
horsemouth grew up in the valleys of south wales (he went to lansbury park junior school near the lansbury park estate) in the time of labour's hegemony in south wales and a strong welsh rugby team. he has seen the socialist paradise. but people still wanted something different, something more.
more is possible.
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ok grey morning clearing. horsemouth probably needs some bread but first museli.
'the parent constellation of the bourgeoisie binds him with its spell'
so hesse writes of his poor manwolf (but couldn't it so easily be benjamin or lukacs or adorno)
and so horsemouth was being a bit previous. horsemouth has been reading steppenwolf to see if it has anything to tell him about his predicament (now that he is the right age for it).
'two souls, alas, dwell in my breast' - goethe/ faust
having loudly announced that the wolf never bothers him anymore what does horsemouth do (while out sunbathing in the back garden) but collapse into rage over an imaginary situation of manifest unreasonableness that has not yet (and may never) come to pass. only two weeks to wait to see if horsemouth's dire(wolf) prognostications will come true.
there are of course other irritants. only a little while ago horsemouth was enjoying a release of righteous rage over some inhouse infraction.
the important thing to realise is that they cannot be dealt with now. horsemouth will just have to wait and see. (ho hum).
steppenwolf (1974) the movie ends for poor harry in the psychedelic adventure (it's quite alice in wonderland-ish). mati klarwein is hired to paint the sets in the style of salvador dali. the film stock is fried. max von sydow does the best he can to maintain the interior life of the character against all the gubbins and dialogue a novel requires. charlie mariano does the soundtrack (horsemouth hasn't had any luck finding it).
good to see horsemouth's photo of enza getting an outing.
here he is showing you CATASTRO/fille's animated gif remix of it.
ok ok it was taken on her camera. horsemouth's contribution to the process was just to point and click. costume, makeup, props, hair - all enza (ok ok maybe some of the costume or props items came from CATASTRO/fille). the photo was taken during preparations for filmingthe fall of the house of fitzgerald which will also be getting a showing) saturday 14th may at the electrowerkz at the renaissance festival. (hmm it just passed 500 viewings - wicked)
some of enza's photography will be on show at this all-day festival together with the work of other photographers, plus there will be lots of bands and at least one other film.
the fall of the house of fitzgerald features the track malkin tower by musicians of bremen and horsemouth plays a version of darktown strutters' ball (an old jazz tune) as highrise strutters' ball. it also features lots of music by other bands. horsemouth had great fun with CATASTRO/fille making various sound effects and incidental musics. (hell he had a great time making the movie period).
today a beautiful day out. yesterday horsemouth voted and then did a run over to the supermarket.
today bandcamp friday and the local election results.
there once was a man, paul, called horsemouth. he went on two legs, wore clothes and was a human being. nevertheless he was really a donkey from a beachside donkey rides operation. he had learned a great deal of everything that people, with a fair mind, can, and he was a rather clever fellow. what he had not learned, however, was this; to feel content in himself and his own life. the cause of this apparently was that at the bottom of his heart he knew all the time (or thought that he knew) that he was not a man, but a donkey from beachside donkey rides, a mule in fact. clever men might argue the point whether he truly was a donkey, whether he had been changed, before birth perhaps, from a donkey into a human being, or had been given the soul of donkey though born as a human being.; or whether, on the other hand this belief that he was a donkey was no more than fancy or a disease of his...
horsemouth is rereading steppenwolf (it goes down very easy). he has a penguin copy (with the paul klee cover) in the stacks but what motivated him to read it was finding a copy in a local book box with a yellow cover featuring stills from a film version with max von sydow.
of course then, by the miracle of the internet and the generosity of the people, he could soon find the film itself online.
steppenwolf is a book of the type 'the humanisation of the misanthrope' and of the type 'found book' - the book being the treatise on the steppenwolf found by the landlady's son among the steppenwolf's papers (in the book). (this character is mainly supressed in the movie). in the film it is the tractate on the steppenwolf.
instead we stay with max as harry harrer/ the steppenwolf. (ok there's some fun/ dumb animation in a terry gilliam/ jan svankmeyer way of him and the wolf (by jaroslav bradac) , mati klarwein paints the magic theatre, charlie mariano does the music). they wander round basel (which looks beautiful). there's some cute and cuddly drug use. all such films labour under the sign of cabaret.
horsemouth, by way of comparison with the steppenwolf, is reasonably happy and cheerful. his life is a comfortable round of reading walking and farting about on the internet (the riches of which compensate for his material poverty). the fires of his being are dampening down. he is less irritable than he used to be. the world is full of bad evil things (war, pestilence, famine and death to name but four) but his life has entered a quiet peaceful mode.
but really it isn't material poverty. he has more clothes than he can wear, accumulated over the years from charity shops, more books than he can read, accumulated over the years from library sales and second-hand bookshops (and now book boxes). until recently it was possible to heat his room and eat decently for not very much money (this is now in the process of being changed (such is the wisdom of our rulers)).
but hermann hesse isn't thomas mann.
'this book, written when I was fifty years old, and dealing, as it does, with the problems of that age, often fell into the hands of very young readers.' says hesse in his author's note from 1961
horsemouth read it when he was young maybe he will find more of what he needs in it now he is older.
hesse sings a good song, he sings a song of the deep and the cosmic but it's mann who can go deep and take you there. in many ways steppenwolf is horsemouth's favourite book by hesse because it is less cosmic and more psychological than his usual offering. he was probably influenced by the schlock horror element of the werewolf theme (that and bob calvert's excellent rendering of it all in the hawkwind song - that was probably his point of entry).
the book itself bears marks of previous inhabitation. the cover is pretty battered. there's an accidental printing onto page fifty of a trees/ lotus flower design (on the page facing the treatise on the steppenwolf), a barcelona area network card used as a bookmark, a green post it note with the phone number of a casting director on page 128, various passages are marked in the margins with blue biro, pages 127-8 are marked with pencil (a quibble over the translation).
before making a start on steppenwolf (the movie) horsemouth watched Q-the winged serpent a new york (and chrysler building) set creature feature and he made progress reading steppenwolf.
today it's a bright beautiful morning. horsemouth needs to go and vote. (oh how his younger anarchist self would sap and snarl at such a suggestion!).
'it seems worth asking why someone might spend eight years creating an online world in novelistic detail, and why they might begin to live in it.' remarks a recent article on catfishing (online impersonation).
a mere eight years? horsemouth has been at it much longer than that.
ew. it's a bit grey out there. (allegedly there's a week of this shite before it cheers up).
horsemouth is up (having slept soundly).
yesterday horsemouth was feeling a bit low energy (he thinks he may have an ear infection). he went out with TG for a ramble but initially claimed he was only going to meet him on a park bench and not walk anywhere. there was a photo (and that seems to have been appreciated) of horsemouth sitting on a park bench - it possibly goes with the photo by denise of a young horsemouth lolling on a park bench in clissold park.
horsemouth is now well grey (from this low angle you can't see the bald bits). but he still looks quite sprightly. he is (surprisingly) quite well dressed (after a fashion).
to tell the truth horsemouth was feeling a little low energy the day before yesterday when he was up in epping forest with howard (only cheering up when alcohol was added).
last night horsemouth watched jonathan miller's 1966 production of alice in wonderland. the opening and ending quote are by william wordsworth from the ode on intimations of immortality from recollections of early childhood. in fact he watched it in reverse order. first he listened to ravi shankar's soundtrack, then he watched a video of jonathan miller working on the soundtrack with ravi shankar (god the stones on this posh young fellow, trying to tell ravi shankar his business!) and then he (or rather the search engine) found the full film on daily motion. the woman who has put it up collects films of alice.
howard has a song with a will you, won't you chorus (as used in the lobster quadrille). the lobster quadrille becomes a would not, could not chorus, then reverts to a will you, won't you (funny horsemouth was sure it changed to a won't you, will you at some point).
an early live gig by john fahey and robbie basho has surfaced (horsemouth will be posting a link to it soon).
today horsemouth does not know what he will do. (some reading he guesses). he has a dover thrift store edition of lewis carroll. at some point he could wander up to walthamstow to see if there are any books he wants to add to his collection (more bukowski maybe - it's a quick read). or wander round the local book boxes in search of more science fiction.
tomorrow council elections (mayor and councillors), friday is bandcanp friday. soon enough the 1 year anniversary of the last stroke of work that horsemouth ever did (hopefully). towards the end of the month the first post large meeting meeting of the communal endeavour, the anniversary of 4 years of volume three and of the birth of harry everett smith.
end of may/ start of june - more hiding out in the cloud forest.
oof. horsemouth is a little wiped out. busy day yesterday.
first the blogging (and all of the usual).
then a journey out to epping forest. a wait at the tube station. horsemouth had an espresso and a fried egg sandwich while he was waiting (delicious). he noted the movements of significant locals in his diary (erm. don't you think this might be a bit difficult to explain away horsemouth, don't you think it is in fact a little creepy. perhaps an effort to retain the moment in memory like joan didion).
eventually howard arrived and they went off to the woodland (via the high street which horsemouth noted had some good looking pubs and plenty of charity shops).
in the woods the traffic noise faded away and they were left with bird song, howard was particularly interested in finding a bathing pond dug by unemployed workers as apart of a government make-work scheme in the 1890ies. (they found it)
eventually (souls reconstituted by exposure to nature) they returned to the high street and managed to delay having a beer by visiting an oxfam. (horsemouth will let you into a secret - it was a good well stocked oxfam with cheap pre-internet prices). howard bought a travel guide to the US north east coast seaboard. horsemouth recommended some books he has on the region (well ok actually on nearby regions), you know the sort of thing thoreau's walden, a history on nantucket etc.(now all he has to do is find them in the stacks).
then the pub. the george and dragon looked a bit pricey but theblack lion looked nice and snug. outback they found a beer garden and settled down to drink a pint (timothy taylor's landlord). sadly (and with no discernable cause) howard started to suffer from hayfever/ allergy and so they were forced to curtail their drinking (despite doing a run out for anti-histamines) and make a dash for home.
there were photos (courtesy of howard) they have met with moderate approval.
on the walk back up from the tube horsemouth got a phonecall from minty and (calling in to get his guitar - he took the resonator) nipped round there for a jam. martin had been round earlier. minty and horsemouth set up in the garden and played through some of their old stuff (and some new stuff minty has been working on since with jacqueline).
soon enough they were played out and adjourned to the kitchen for a chat.
thence horsemouth returned home.
today it is a grey morning. the week starts on the wrong foot on a tuesday.
huzzah! horsemouth is up. the sun is shining it is a pretty fair morning.
it is a bank holiday monday (where the workforce (largely) get the monday off to compensate then for the remaining year of wage slavery).
tomorrow the anniversary of the opening of the live architecture exhibition down in poplar as part of the festival of britain.
yesterdayhorsemouth the childminder doing an average-ish job. today he's possibly going for a walk in epping forest with howard. there was a fair amount of walking involved in the childminding gig and it left horsemouth quite tired. howard is pretty fit and likely to want to do a huge wander. horsemouth is pretty unfit and would prefer a shorter wander ending in a pub. he is aware howard has to work tomorrow so will probably propose one and done.
yesterday was a beautiful day out there (today less so, sad to say). everybody in the least bit beautiful was out enjoying the sunshine (or so it seemed). he just went out in search of coffee (but - it being a sunday - everywhere was closed). horsemouth walked down to haggerston (then he got the 55 back up).
horsemouth has survived a night on the sofa (he slept like a log). he has not lost the small child he is supposed to be looking after. small child has slept well and eaten breakfast. no other details are necessary.
RIP judy henske (her of high flying bird fame) queen of the beatniks.
today some leisurely wandering around (over to playgrounds) and later a play visit (horsemouth's work will be over). it's a greyish day (looks like the weather doesn't get solidly decent until the week after next)).
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