strings in the earth and air (all I am asking you to do)

 'strings in the earth and air

make music sweet;

strings by the river where

the willows meet.

there's music along the river

for love wanders there,

pale flowers on his mantle,

dark leaves on his hair....'

following on from syd barrett with lyrics by james joyce (goldenhair) we have the incredible string band (well one of them) with lyrics by james joyce (string in the earth and air). 

horsemouth is up. it is a moderate-ish morning (it was a bit cooler than has been usual last night). horsemouth does not seem to have come down with the C-O-V-I-D yet. he's trying to stay out of the way of his housemates and keep the house well ventilated. 

ok he's had his first cup of coffee time to go get the second (and final) cup and then on to the business of the day. 

soon the midpoint of the calendar year (displaced 10 days from  the solstices) july 1st and july 2nd. 

before january 6th trump was told that the department of justice could not overturn the results of the election. his reply was most instructive.

'that is not what I am asking you to do. all I am asking you to do is just say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the republican congress.'

this was the coup's strategy. an attempt to change the head of the DoJ to someone more obliging failed. and so we have trump's coup strategy in full.

it is a viable strategy (and given the right circumstances - a complaisant head of the department of justice, a president with the will, a republican congress - it could yet succeed). 

trump's problem was that he was proposing something too radical for his republican party associates, he was not sufficiently trusted by them to have his hands firmly on the levers of power (or indeed teh steering wheel of his car). but the candidate who has this could yet come and the myth of the betrayal of donald trump by the establishment will help them. trump's supporters are fanning out through the republican party capturing it if not for trump then for whoever comes afterwards on that trajectory. 

trump himself is a deluded egomaniac but the people he represented are real, the people locked out of representation by the very design of US politics. the populist movements cannot take anyone anywhere it would be good to go but they have an essential truth in the dissatisfaction of the people with the lives available to them under a democratic and neo-liberal system.

it now looks like trump was not there at congress in person on the day because the secret service would not let him go. it is by no means certain that the democrats and non-amnesiac republicans can land charges on him but by revealing him as someone actually attempting the coup they restore his position as coup leader. trump moves from someone who abandoned his people to someone who was prevented by the deep state from being there with his people. 

now in a battle between trump and the establishment (the deep state if you will) horsemouth is firmly on the side of the deep state - the separation of powers, the decent democratic lineaments, all these horsemouth regards as set dressing but it is considerably better that the state has to observe them  than if it doesn't. 

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

horsemouth is not sure what he is up to today. 

yesterday he was mostly reading the FT (there's still a little left to go).  the trials of boris/ the trial of trump/ the coming economic depression/ iain sinclair touring the olympic site (text for free here)/ vladimir sorokin/ alexander crummell/ gardens in toronto - it's good to read an actual newspaper (and to read what you would not normally read). 

books, films, gigs, events june 2022 (a little early)

film

- blake's 7 (missing a chunk in the middle)

- the fog (john carpenter original)

- cornell woolrich season (the black angel, johnny o'clock, you'll never see me again (1972), the chase (1946))

- swamp water (1941), dana andrews in okeefenokee swamp set noir

- gialli (continued). death laid an egg, a tanta paura

- vanya on 42nd street (hail the superfluous men)

- stalker (tarkovsky) 

- will be wild and other podcasts on january 6th 2021

- grenfell tower fire inquiry podcast

- no hawkbinge but two podcasts on the blue oyster cult instead

- the time bandits (featuring napoleon)

- various 'worker and parasite' cartoons

- outlaw bookseller, bookpilled

- interview with victor atkins who painted the cover for miles davis' 'miles in the sky'

books

- a great unrecorded history (biography of e.m. forster) plus lionel trilling's appreciation of him

- the strange library (murakami)

- a life of napoleon (stendhal) 

- the sans culottes (albert soboul) started

- snow crash (neal stephenson) 

- FT weekend sections june 16-17th and 25-26th

- LRB, NLR blogs and any free articles

- the travels (marco polo)

gigs 

coldfire festival (community gig) - a band fronted by a girl in a hijab (with a girl in a hijab on drums) played killing in the name of  by rage against the machine then a band where two girls alternated each line covering material girl by madonna. 

- listened to the  webb david show online (a kind of techno dub) 

events

9 years since the first attempt at a musicians of bremen gig (howard got sick and had to  go home), 7 years since the first musicians of bremen duo gig, 2 years since the release of the humming, one year since the solo gig supporting haress in hereford for weirdshire. 

meeting of the communal endeavour, childmindings (various), fail to attend leigh folk festival, solstice, various weekend beers with howard, walks with TG, anniversary of the grenfell fire, hide out in the cloud forests of walthamstralia release of strangemouth's dog and bone (the video featuring enza).

documentary source (thoughts on the horsemouth media diary)

horsemouth is up early. his eyes are still a little unfocused. but he has his coffee (so we can begin). it's a grey morning (and not improving until this afternoon according to bbc weather).

last night the shadow strikes but in a lamont cranston urbane criminologist style rather  than a 'who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men'. 

horsemouth has compiled his books, films, gigs, events list for june 2022 (a little early). 

'the culture we choose to consume is more than just a sideshow; it’s an impression of our lives...' argues a recent guardian article, 

so what does horsemouth's watching and reading mean?

the first thing to say is to say that horsemouth has recognised and incorporated podcasts, made for youtube videos and zoom lectures (filed under films) and blogs (filed under books) into his books and films list. indeed he very seldom goes to the cinema anymore (it's just too expensive). his last visit was more than a year ago now (and even then it only occurred because his friend richard was showing the films).  

the second thing to say is that things that are digitally distributed have (because of convenience and as a result of the pandemic) come to replace things that are physically distributed (or visited). 

look at horsemouth right now, he has a CD player and loads of CDs but no functioning amplifier or speakers over which to play his music. he has DVDs but basically he never watches them any more (there's a player round here somewhere). the record decks are not set up, the mixer lacks a lead, his records gather dust, his cassettes are long gone. 

even while his amplifier was working he did not tell you about the music he listened to from his collection only about youtube videos he finds (new discoveries). when howard visits and horsemouth wants to play him what he had been listening to he either turns to this blog or to the my mix feature on youtube. 

horsemouth almost never buys new music online (from bandcamp etc.). he still prefers to buy physical CDs. 

the exception to this is books - the rise of book boxes and garden wall potlatches has meant that more books come from this source (look at horsemouth's recent re-reading of some old SF). conversely he has also gotten rid of some excess books to the book boxes. when he worked he was often in second hand bookshops, charity shops and outside browsing bargain bins during his work breaks (as a reward to himself for working). the pandemic has put paid to that (at least temporarily). 

but then the fact that people are putting out their books is a product of two things - increased digitalisation of entertainment and lifestyle magazines favouring de-cluttered looks. 

horsemouth does not have a kindle (or such like). he has read some books (particularly theory) in pdf or excerpts from them on google books but in general he prefers things printed out. 

his selections do not include much of his regular listening or reading. he does not include the 5.30am news briefing on radio 4 that he will listen to on i-player radio catch up as soon as he has finished blogging or the guardian newspaper website that it is his habit read immediately after that. he will then take a look at the NLR and LRB websites to see if there are any new blogs - these days he just notes this reading in general but formerly he would pull out, name the more important articles and discuss them.

the films he watches (and the music he listens to) are old mainly because they are available for free upon youtube, daily motion etc. (streaming sites), he doesn't torrent and download, he doesn't have netflix etc. (streaming services). he evinces a distrust of the contemporary.  

horsemouth forgets what he watches or reads quickly unless he makes an effort to keep it in front of him. hence the themes (gialli, cornell woolrich noirs, e.m. forster). for instance this month he forgot that he had watched stalker and it took compiling the list to remind him that he had done it. 

similarly horsemouth initially wrote down no gigs before realising he had seen some youth physically playing some music at the coldfire festival (horsemouth apologises young people he should have paid more attention to the names of your bands).  if he had gone to the leigh folk festival he would have endeavoured to provide you with a list of bands he'd seen. 

the last item on news briefing and the facebook memories feature both tend to guide horsemouth towards anniversaries. 

horsemouth has the collecting bug (to some extent). indeed it was once predicted (by a careers teacher) that he would become a librarian (this would have been a better use of his limited talents). 

ok horsemouth is going to pause it here and get more coffee. 

he has started reading the travels  of marco polo. (he should add it to his list).

today a wander round in the afternoon (when the weather has improved). now he will go up the road to see if a kindly neighbour has chucked out their copy of the FT weekend again (success!). 

horsemouth's history (the humming)

today it's 7 years since musicians of bremen's first duo gig (at a benefit for the E15 mums - thanks ayesha) and it's two years since the release of the humming by them. it's all good - horsemouth doesn't have any particular celebration planned. 

well it's another beautiful morning (here in the sunny south east).

horsemouth doesn't seem to be sick yet (which is good). he's bought a couple of boxes of paracetamol in case. wait a minute he will go get the rest of the coffee. 

he is currently recalculating. 

there that's good. as horsemouth often says the mornings (when he gets to drink coffee and write his blogs) are his favourite bit of the day. he's been at this blogging lark on blogger since june 2013 - a few posts a month copied over from his notes on facebook, but in fact it goes further back than that to 24th november 2006 when horsemouth was blogging on myspace. 

before that horsemouth kept a physical diary (but it was really more of an appointments book). the earliest physical diary he still retains goes back to 1992 (a houseman's peace diary). 

darn it he's just finished the coffee.

the posts from myspace still exist (they very kindly sent him a zip file full of them when they folded up their blogging tool). the facebook notes from previous years are more difficult to access (but not impossible). the physical diaries you can only look at by appointment with horsemouth himself. 

the early diaries are mostly for band stuff for bush house/ boom clan active roughly 1990 to 1995. horsemouth was volunteering at an anti-nuclear group and living in squats in hackney. a little later there's a big kerfuffle in his life and he changes to the lifestyle you may know him better for now, he's working at beachside donkey rides, he's living in the communal endeavour, he's embarking on the second act of his musical life as horsemouthfolk, first with goatboy (duncan tangy) and later with howard (as musicians of bremen). this has sustained him for the last 25 years or so. 

a year ago horsemouth gets made redundant (but the housing and the musical endeavours continue). 

 

horsemouth decisive in a crisis (it was a day much like today)

oof! it was one of those days. it was all going swimmingly until 2.30

and at 2.30, when he should have been off seeing the owl service in far off leigh-on-sea, it all went to shit.  

horsemouth is decisive in a crisis. yes. but that doesn't mean he is always right. but on the other hand when he thinks he's right er. he thinks he's right. 

ok now we wait to see if he develops covid. (he got coughed on rather a lot ). 

prior to 2.30 (as horsemouth remarks) it was all going swimmingly. he was sitting out in the sun watching various kids in rock bands play the kind of songs their parents would like, a band fronted by a girl in a hijab (with a girl in a hijab on drums) played killing in the name of  by rage against the machine (what is this taqwacore? isn't there already a C4 series about this?), after the gig she got an ice cream. there was a band where two girls alternated each line covered material girl. 

earlier he had been doing some child minding (of the type transport child to kids party). 

it was a day much like today. 

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

'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).' - horsemouth at a recent point in his existence. 

horsemouth should really be going through his music box picking out new tunes to (re-)learn. if the musicians of bremen volume three part two album is delayed then there is of course more tracks that could and should go on it. horsemouth should at least give himself more choice. 

the open-D6 slide guitar piece of the reverend gary davis's that ernie hawkins teaches would be a good one. similarly that picking pattern can be applied to many tunings. (horsemouth does not have many tunes that demonstrate fancy picking). similarly his attempts to learn the reverend gary davis's instrumental version of dark town strutter's ball foundered on his not knowing the tune but he's got some of the picking learnt  and he could do a variation perhaps. 

a while ago he learned bizet's agnus dei which was posthumously chopped out of the incidental music to alphonse daudet's play  l'arlésienne (the girl from arlés). it may be that albanian dictator enver hoxha adopted it as a military march during his reign. 

horsemouth has a whole box of tunes he could put the work into. 

look on the brightside - the front garden/ building waste repository is looking very beautiful and green

horsemouth has risen, 

he has dismantled the 'barricade' that is his curtains (they do a moderate job of keeping out the streetlights at night). he has gone into the kitchen, found the coffee jar, refilled it, filled the stovetop pot and made the coffee (which he is currently drinking). 

he has contemplated the bin (well a carrier bag attached to the handles of one of the kitchen units). it is perhaps, at the moment, overly full of other people's kack. he has decided not to empty it - he is feeling resentful of the division of tasks within the house, frankly he thinks some denizens are taking the fucking piss. 

whilst it was boiling he turned on his computer entered various passwords, opened up facebook and entered various passwords, opened up blogger ditto ditto and...

here we are typing away. we have escaped the 'meat' world and have access to the world of language. 

the front garden/ building waste repository is looking very beautiful and green - this is largely down to the composter horsemouth planted there, with the compost from it feeding the extravagant growth of a tree (this helps hide the worst of the building waste). these are very successful facts on the ground that horsemouth planted in his efforts to ensure a pleasant view out of his window first thing in the morning. 

horsemouth removed yet another surplus bin from the front garden (they have many bins that in fact cause their own waste problem as they are never used for the kind of waste that the binmen will take) and hid it in the back but its place (in the opposite of a stockpile) has been taken by some rather fetching pre-drilled shelving. 

a somewhat scraggy black and white tomcat has just passed horsemouth's window (it is one of the cat motorways). 

the habit of things being stored on the corridor floor seems to be re-asserting itself. 

horsemouth has cursed and eff'd and blinded (like he said frankly he thinks some denizens are taking the fucking piss). when he feels of a sunnier disposition he will try reason and negotiation.

maybe. or maybe he'll just try reframing it as not his problem and look upon the brightside or maybe he'll just kick it upstairs. 

look on the brightside horsemouth. your room is very pleasant and very comfortable. you have re-instated the stairs down to the downstairs front door (and so have an alternative method of access, egress available to you). the kitchen, bathroom, living room and back garden function (within certain parameters). 

yesterday horsemouth and howard met up in stratford  (kind of equidistant from their respective gaffs and a safe low transport hassle choice).  horsemouth walked over. howard arrived by bus. howard arrived  wanting to eat so they tried some indifferent mexican food (and a bottle of estrella each) before wandering off through the olympic park. eventually they settled in an entertainment zone opposite grow and drank pale  ale (there are photos). horsemouth is still mindful of covid and so wanted quiet (underutilised) restaurants and open air drinking. 

it has been suggested that there is no howard (that he is a figment of horsemouth's imagination). you can tell this isn't true by the carefully positioned pint of beer on howard's side of the table.

they discussed some communal endeavour things. things are going well, so well for example that horsemouth is contemplating the skies looking for hostile aircraft. 

and now it is time to do some expectation management. 

howard is knackered. in five weeks he flies off on his summer holidays. there is not enough time (and energy) to get the recordings for the next musicians of bremen project completed before he goes.  

so people we will have to wait to get the next instalment. 

musicians of bremen · Something On Your Mind

horsemouth has been proposing the incorporation of the material from the humming  on the CD version of it. the rest of it (and the download version) would be composed of the kind of tracks you can find demoed up on musicians of bremen's soundcloud page.  the incorporation of material from the humming  would enable horsemouth to have something similar to a volume three part two (effectively a horsemouth solo album with howard producing and guesting on it with a similar mix of the material horsemouth wants to cover with semi improvised material). 

obviously not all the tracks horsemouth has demoed up in three or so afternoons will make it onto the CD or the download. incorporating material from the humming (in particular malkin tower) and a remake of high rise strutter's ball will allow horsemouth to tie-in with the fall of the house of fitzgerald movie. 

at some stage horsemouth is going to have to re-learn how to record himself and get set up to do this. otherwise he's going to have to find someone else to record him. horsemouth has more straight ahead american primitive goals and he thinks howard will want to try a solo fingerpicked guitar singer-songwriter thing (his fingerpicking is getting very good and the songs are strong) as demoed up at the gig at waterintobeer. 

ok it's a beautiful morning out there and the house is (for now) nice and quiet. horsemouth has finished snowcrash and is enjoying reading the FT weekend (from last weekend). 

horsemouth and the public transportation (launch the scapepig)

it has been a year since musicians of bremen's gig  at the babar cafe in hereford supporting haress.

horsemouth thanks to sproatly and the weirdshire crew for the gig and thanks richard and stass (of wildhare) for putting him up. (he also thanks the tube and train staff who got him to hereford and the cab driver who got them back to richard's).

haress have an album out (and very good it is too).

musicians of bremen  do not have an album out (they have, however, accumulated a lot of demos on their soundcloud page). 

last night horsemouth watched allison kraus and robert plant play glastonbury (with lots of antique musical kit) and very good it was too. 

there have been some kvetching about how the rail strike affects people getting to the glastonbury festival but to horsemouth's recollection there is no train station at glastonbury (and what you would actually need is a train station at pilton several miles away). on the occasions that horsemouth went there he went there by car or by coach. 

vast swathes of the country are poorly served by public transport - beeching's axe and the invisible hand of the market did for many railway lines, railway stations and bus services that would have been useful to horsemouth as a kid, the barry-caerphilly line to the seaside for example, the station stop at pontrilas (up to hereford down to abergavenny), the line running up from there through the golden valley to hay-on-wye (book heaven), the line hereford to hay-on-wye (that kilvert makes use of in his diaries). 

when horsemouth's parents moved on his 16th birthday to the wilds of herefordshire horsemouth was not best pleased. he soon realised there was a bus into hereford to college at 7amish in the morning and a last bus out of hereford at 6.30pm. there goes my social life thought the young mule.  

the solution was to learn to drive a car. 

later on horsemouth solved many of these problems by moving to the city (where there was public transport). granted the infrastructure was decrepit, victorian and under-invested  (leading to the kings cross fire) but in the course of his lifetime it has got much better. now, because the government has taken against the mayor of london, they are cutting the funding to TFL (transport for london) and this is likely to lead to the cutting of bus routes and in particular bus routes useful to horsemouth and many of the poorer people of the east end (who live in the cheaper, because transport poorer, areas) . 

currently there are rail strikes and tube strikes. separately in the airline industry many staff were laid off during the pandemic and the airlines cannot currently run all the flights they might wish because of a shortage of baggage handlers etc. in the countryside the car is getting too expensive to drive (because oil pries are on the increase). 

the transport union remain some of the few unions with clout - because, despite recent progress in this area, much of the work of capitalism cannot be done remotely, the workers must be transported to work, and because the supply chain and just-in-time nowhere can be cut off from fresh supplies of anything for very long without shortages and disruption. 

currently the economy is profoundly skewed towards the interests of the bosses and the shareholders - vast profits are being generated from the wages that are being in real terms driven down. there is a 'cost of living crisis' due to inflation but we are told it cannot be resolved by paying the workers more, enough to live on for example, because that would be inflationary. no instead we must have more 'wage restraint' and more food banks. horsemouth contends that it can only be 'solved' by either reducing the profits taken by the bosses or abandoning the whole system of value  production.

as bob marley notes 'a hungry mob is an angry mob' - but most people aren't hungry yet, or cold (that will come this winter). at the moment  they are merely squeezed  and inconvenienced.  soon the tories will sacrifice the porker in chief, the scapepig. 'launch the scapepig!' but the tories don't have a readymade successor and critically they have not agreed one with the donors (who pay for the whole shit-show). starmer's de-fanged labour party waits in the wings together with ed davey and his 'at least we're not the tories'  party.  gawdelpus they are a sorry shower of shits.  

horsemouth expects that much of this anger will evade recuperation by the parliamentary puppet show. 

and so to the buses and trains. today is the first (full) day of the leigh folk festival. horsemouth will not be going. he is debating (with himself) whether sunday is really possible also. 

the public transportation must be defended. rail workers and bus workers must be defended. the workers' share of GDP must be defended (and indeed expanded). 

horsemouth also contends  that the problems of capitalism are unresolvable  and that the best it can do is stagger from crisis to crisis.

you'll never see me again

good morning! good morning!

well it's another beautiful day. 

well the recycling seems to be gone from out the front (but horsemouth does not remember hearing the bin lorries). 

'when I was very, very young, about four years old, my mother and my father took me to see a play, shakespeare’s hamlet. and when the ghost of the father appeared, I was so scared that they had to take me away...' 

so says dario argento - (and 'swear!' says the ghost and jacques derrida, and with him and a crowd of marxist apparitions). horsemouth should probably make use of his leisure to reread all this stuff and try and understand it properly this time.

later he listened to the webb david show (most excellent) - it's a kind of techno dub horsemouth opines. he found a copy of the FT weekend from last weekend, he has been reading this.

he watched cornell woolrich's you'll never see me again (1972) done as a TV movie - a new south couple  argue, the wife stomps off to her mum's, realises she's left her purse behind, hitchhikes... and vanishes. 

horsemouth is a bit deaf at the moment (he has a recurrent problem with wax in his ears). he enjoys listening to the tinnitus (cheaper than synthesizers). at some point it will clear up. now that he thinks about it it goes all the way back to childhood.  

peter oborne on boris (his former employer) as the billionaire's bitch. 

nadine dorries (culture secretary/ sharpest tool in the box) goes on tv and warns any rebel tories that the donors won't like it if they don't support boris,  in doing so she twitches back the curtain of patronage and the way the ruling class actually operates (ok ok it's more like she turns on the light in kitchen and we watch the cockroaches scatter). it's already interesting that she thinks this can be said in front of the children without doing any harm.

let us repeat the message in case you missed it - the party you elect takes its orders from elsewhere. 

peter oborne thinks there is an earlier form of conservatism that wasn't so bent (but he's deluding himself), he says that journalist boris was ethnically diverse and blah blah and that he doesn't recognise this rapacious power-grabbing panderer to bigotry we now have. which is a nice move rhetorically but doesn't say much for his judgement. the reality is that both the labour and the conservative parties have shown themselves porous to power and undemocratic influence. in fact that is the point of the conservative party. 

yesterday horsemouth was a little bored. he will try and entertain himself better today. he should be working on repertoire/ preparing for the next gig. as of today horsemouth is down to one gig a year (from the heady state of two gigs a year - weirdshire and waterintobeer). it is of course true that you can play endlessly and be seen by the same people over and over who, in a derridean twitch, aren't your audience (the people who need to be hearing you).  summoning the people who need to hear you, and who would like what you do if only they could hear it, is a difficult trick. ultimately horsemouth supposes it is down to luck and hard work - horsemouth does not have the recipe.  

musicians of bremen are stuck for time. faced with a choice between recording and playing gigs they opt to record. the action (as far as it is) is on their soundcloud pages. they hope to get somethings out to mark their two year hiatus.  

horsemouth is back from being useful. he likes to feel useful.

horsemouth is back from being useful. he likes to feel useful.

a walk. a spot of childminding. another walk. a meeting of the co-operative (quickly conducted). a walk. more childminding. parent arrives. a glass of campari. horsemouth walks back.

there is rather a lot of walking in this life. there was some time-killing in the midst of it all.  it was a beautiful sunny day. everybody was hanging out being beautiful. horsemouth rested in a shady garden and he lay out sunbathing in a park. 

he's enjoying listening to jacken elswyth's shruti box and banjo tune scene 6, after margaret barry from six static scenes (and very good it is too). 

in other tune news horsemouth was inspired to investigate how much is that doggie in the window which turns out to be a variation on the neapolitan folk tune called o mamma, mamma cara called carnival of venice upon which paganini wrote a number of variations. 

in australian schoolyards it is sung thus : "a doggy stole a sausage, cos he was underfed the butcher saw him do it, and now that doggy's dead and all the little doggies, were very sad that night they built for him a tombstone, and on it they did write..." – repeated, ad nauseam.

there was an owen hatherley article on crossrail that horsemouth read,  a transport planning friend remonstrated with horsemouth's pessimistic view of it all. of course,  horsemouth conceded it will massively relieve the central line (and this is good) but transport infrastructure planning doesn't happen in a vacuum it has social and economic effects (and similarly with cutting bus routes, looks like TFL are cutting bus routes round horsemouth's way).  overall the tendency of the changes and infrastructure works are to gentrify the city, rent levels rise when transport improves and this tends to drive the poor out of the city and into neighbouring cities and boroughs. 

today a cool rainy morning.('sunny intervals and a gentle breeze' claim the bbc).   

in the region of summer stars (it's not ideal but it is a plan)

good morning! good morning!

last night horsemouth was being anxious. 

it meant he couldn't focus on the two cornell woorich noirs he attempted to watch. he gave in and watched some of outlaw bookseller pootling around near bath. 

this morning he wakes late (after a little lie in). it's a beautiful day. he feels more relaxed. he has a plan (it's not ideal but it is a plan). 

when this bloody railstrike's over...

horsemouth will want to see about going to the leigh-on-sea folk festival. he thinks saturday is a no go but he thinks  sunday (a non-strike day) may be possible.

there are three possible routes to southend (one of which runs through leigh). two run through through barking. the others stop at stops a mile or so from leigh. the line to southend via leigh is supposed to be one of the ones with some service during the strike. on non-strike days the service may start later than usual (say 8 am) and be less frequent than usual

but it will probably work.  it should be ok - we will have to see if the RMT go straight back out for the monday (or leave it a while). 

now horsemouth supports the strikers (the working class should not pay for the crisis the bosses should pay for the crisis). 

of the exit, voice, loyalty schools of thought horsemouth is for exit - take advantage of the alienation of capitalist society to get as far away from it as possible. not literally you understand (horsemouth will not be moving to alaska or a cabin in the woods of wildest wales or scotland). loyalty is for your people who are prepared to identify with capitalism, social democracy, whatever the particular flavour of complaisance they prefer and fully engage with the system. voice is what the strikers are doing, registering a complaint against its operation, trying to ensure that the working class do not pay for the crisis. 

horsemouth applauds them. he does not know if they can win or not. currently he believes that they can. vast profits are made out of the railway network, vast salaries and bonuses paid to the management and the shareholders of all the different rail companies for every single task. let them pay for the crisis. 

of course the employer of last resort/ the guarantor of the capitalist system is actually the government, who are hoping to get  some thatcher versus the miners  fairydust out of the whole thing (to sprinkle on their turd of an adminstration).  oh look at them go, staunch defenders of democracy against union barons etc. etc. 

exodus (movement of jah people) the day of the solstice

good morning! good morning! 

it is the morning of the solstice (no horsemouth was not up at 4am to watch the sun rise). 

he did watch a little of the sun setting at stonehenge online (courtesy of the much reviled at the time (and since) english heritage).

some photos have emerged of horsemouth off on his summer holidays to sunny stonehenge  way back in the 80ies. he went in 86 (was it?). the police turned them back and  turfed them off to glastonbury.  it's good that people took photographs (because horsemouth has no fucking recollection of these events whatsoever). later there were other festivals, torpedo town for example. 

the hippies parked up at a village called hanging langford(?). horsemouth remembers dick and some subhumans types doing a long version of exodus by bob marley with lyrics about trying to get to the stones and the police saying it wouldn't happen (er. while making pig noises). but that was the night before we all got turned back.

(look all of this could be false memory syndrome). 

it is interesting that all this stuff has returned as folk horror (rather than the moral panic that it was at the time). he went to a number of these festivals with friends (pre-acid house) and then acid house arrived at treworgy, then, when he'd got his band together, after one bush house  gig he went to castle morton, marched against the new criminal justice act (and its criminalisation of squatters and ravers and old-school travellers). 

the suppression of the festivals and the travellers by the thatcher government just had the effect of spreading it out all over europe and beyond (well done forces of repressive intolerance).  . 

in the noughties he went to a couple of french teks (marigny may 1st 2005 with the toxic caterpillars and the one the may after in the south with ice on the fucking tents). there was an abortive attempt to get to czechtek (combining foreign travel, foreign languages and festival gawping - busted up by the cops). his last attempt at such things was a new year in barcelona - they failed to get to the festival site and ended up sleeping on a building site (at this point horsemouth declared himself too old for such jollys and retired).

six or so years ago he went to the winter solstice with john clarkson.  

people (horsemouth observes) like to be sociable. the young people want to party and dance all night and society should enable them to do this (or they will do it anyway). the world of mass movements and people making their own scuzzy fun  seems much more interesting to horsemouth than the world of consumer consumption that replaced it. 

looks like a beautiful day outside. yesterday horsemouth faffed about and went for a wander. later he watched a cornell woolrich noir (the chase 1946).  horsemouth prefers quieter fun these days. 

the great machine of the heavens will go into reverse

 good morning! good morning!

it's a beautiful day outside and horsemouth is writing this a little later than usual because he was doing some of his childminding lark this morning. in theory that's him covered (but he will keep an eye on his phone just in case). 

nonetheless here he is (and outside the sun is shining). 

tomorrow is the solstice (this year). the great machine of the heavens will go into reverse (at least the sun rising and sun setting parts of it). at night the stars will continue to wheel across the heavens and the planets will continue their erratic wanderings. in the daytime the sun will start to be lower in the sky again and the days will start to be shorter until the equinox in far off september.

by winter it will barely clear the rooftops and the back garden will be in permanent dank shade.

but all this is a long way off - through the best months of the year. 

horsemouth's hemisphere has been warming up and will continue to do so for at least another month (before gradually cooling off again). 

yesterday horsemouth went for a wander with TG. and then he finished off watching various gialli. he began reading neal stephenson's snow crash - an almost archaic cyberpunk novel that has recently been taken for a prediction of the future. he did his usual sunday phonecall to his mum. 

horsemouth has had some coffee (and a flapjack). now he contemplates second breakfast. he is unsure what to do with the day. tomorrow the solstice. wednesday a meeting of the communal endeavour. 

horsemouth is at home (domestic interiors)

here we see horsemouth at home. as you can judge he is a  big fan of wooden furniture and of books (books, CDs, guitars, records). it is quite reminiscent of the early work of tom hunter you might say - photos of the domestic interiors of squats, traveller vans and narrow boats - except not as well lit.  it is almost literally a man-cave. 

horsemouth himself is looking a bit dowdy in these photos (not to mention fat). the day had turned cold(ish) and horsemouth and howard had just retreated indoors from the front steps as it started to rain.  horsemouth likes to imagine that he is fashionably lean (but this is no longer the case). 

they are still on the estrella damm beers (that howard had brought) before they sank to drinking horsemouth's collection of supermarket beers. horsemouth had eaten earlier but, in his role as host,  rustled up a fakemeat sausage and pasta thing for howard (which, to be fair, howard pronounced most tasty). 

howard is frankly knackered - they are still working him to death and he has 5 weeks to go to the end of term.  in the morning he was in painting the corridors of his bit of school to enable the students to put on an exhibition of their artwork (horsemouth has to admit they're a talented bunch over at howard's school).

here's a near panorma (distorting the actual shape of horsemouth's room but giving you an idea of the book dispersal problem he faces).  horsemouth's room is square-ish with a window bay at the far end, you have to imagine you are standing in the far rHS corner and then bend the photo into a circle. 

from the homemade and assembled interiors of the doomed romantics of hackney it is but a short step to the conspicuous consumption of the interiors of giallo movies.

after horsemouth had wandered down with howard to the tube he watched part of the giallo e tanta paura (plot of fear) a giallo that plays with the conventions of the genre (while still being within the genre). this is the kind of thing the fragments of fear podcast gets enthusiastic about. 

today the weather is cooler (after the shortest of possible heatwaves).  it's the anniversary of the recording of the ankh of amon ra and the excellently titled battle at armageddon by alice coltrane. 

these posts tend to be too long. this is because horsemouth derives great pleasure from writing them (and doesn't want the often less enjoyable business of the day (or lack of it) to begin). but begin it must. 

special energies attend a polemical purpose

good morning! good morning!

horsemouth has made it to the weekend (now less of a challenge seeing as he no longer works).

it's official - 3 days in a row - baby it's a... HEATWAVE (mercifully this morning is cooler). and what we have here is a pale reflection of what people are going through in spain and the south of france (but tbh horsemouth was mostly hiding in doors anyway). 

he may see howard today (he may not). they are covered by wednesday's drinking and bike repair combo. 

special energies attend 

a polemical purpose

from a country that no longer exists

the industry is gone 

leaving only 

rust stains

and call-centre jobs...

horsemouth has been compiling up 'poetry' (ok ok modern blank verse) from his previous writings. 

last night the giallo death laid an egg (1968). 

the despicable italian post-war bourgeoisie are at it again (infidelity, use of prostitutes, decadent parties, snobbery, exploitation of the workers) and in this case they are even worse than usual because they own a factory farm. the workers have been fired and replaced by technology, a geneticist is on hand attempting to breed/mutate chickens without heads and wings (to save space). an ad man has arrived bearing designs of friendly chickens inserted into roles in human society. there is a chicken marketing board. someone is going to end up fed into the grinder and fed to the chickens (you can just tell).

the owl service have composed and recorded five new tracks, which present a contemporary exploration of traditional essex folk songs. they will be performing at the 30th annual leigh folk festival, in the fisherman’s chapel at 2.30pm on sunday 26th june. horsemouth does not know if he will make it (but he will probably try). 

horsemouth has washed his duvet and his sleeping bag (taking advantage of the summer heat to dry them thoroughly). this morning horsemouth will go for a quick wander round (and then see what the day has to offer). 

he did some litter picking on the marshes. (dutty humans).

musicians of bremen · No Name Resonate

for a while he was contemplating the use of the rainstick and the venusian death-rattle (a golf ball in a small pringles container) on no name resonate (to be renamed guitar piece (for pier marton)). he has been experimenting with adding john's thumb piano (on a sort of and-one rhythm and possibly more). 

in which the novelist intrudes on his own work to tell you what you are reading

here josh rosenthal, owner and manager of tompkins square records  is interviewed  by max reinhardt (long time uk scenester) from 21.30. not so much on american primitive per se but an interesting listen (b.j.cole, harvey mandel, bola sete, gwenifer raymond, michael chapman).

and here horsemouth discovers that bola sete (said bola set) in fact  means "seven ball". in snooker, which is fairly popular in brazil, the seven ball is the only black ball on the table (like the eight ball in pool). 

and here we have a tyrannosaurus rex song with steve 'peregrine' took's backing vocals turned up. 

today 32C (for mike over in texas it is 102F). horsemouth is washing his duvet (on a day like this it should dry quickly). 

'most of the book was written... in a concentrated rush... I have no doubt that it was benefited by the special energies that attend a polemical purpose.' - lionel trilling on e.m. forster (preface to the second edition).

horsemouth misses writing with a polemical purpose. one way to avoid having the novelist intrude on his own work (to tell you what you are reading) is by means of plot. one plot device e.m. forster uses is the sudden death. 

but horsemouth is also not writing a novel so he cannot use plot  (or indeed sudden death) to redistribute the forces. he slips between the day-to-day  (a commonplace book) and an essay like discussion of whatever seems important to him at the time. 

last night he watched 1947's johnny o'clock (a noir lifted from a story by cornell woolrich). like black angel it is set around the world of upscale entertainment (in this case a gambling club) and mobsters pretending to be civilised.  

he's just agreed to more coffee (and put the duvet out on the line). he needs to write an email summarising various things (to help him get his head clear). 

sweet black angel

so it's here 

the song and the video  of strange mouth's mighty dog and bone. horsemouth is impressed - excellent drumming, great keyboard playing (she said she'd got good musicians for it and she wasn't lying), horsemouth loves her guitar sound and riff. 

and the video too - lots of enza being stylish in a variety of frocks. 

horsemouth has been watching films made from the books of lesser known crime novelist cornell woolrich. so the leopard man (lewton/ tourneur) was one of his (under the the title the black alibi), as was the black angel (which horsemouth watched last night), a hitchcock  in fact), two truffauts, a fassbinder and even seven blood-stained orchids (1972) (novel rendezvous in black), an umberto lenzi giallo. horsemouth used to have an omnibus edition with three or four tales in it (certainly rear window and the excellently titled waltz into darkness)

in the black angel there's been a murder, a musical duo form to alibi their surveillance of a suspect (club owner peter lorre). peter lorre is a strange gangster, he goes to shostakovich concerts. 

yesterday the sun shone. horsemouth attended a meeting (on teams) to build a consortium of small housing co-ops to bid for government money to insulate their houses (and to get the actual work done of insulating them). there are a lot of questions at this stage. a lot of people are set up to run day to day they don't have much experience of running projects.  

later he went out to meet up with howard at the bike shop and thence to pub on the park for a summer pint (or two). the sun shone and horsemouth worried about getting sunburn on the back of his neck. on their way out they bumped into pat and little jo (who had previously claimed that howard did not exist and was a figment of horsemouth's imagination). 

tomorrow 32C (allegedly). 

saturday possibly howard. 

sunday an alice coltrane anniversary. 

next week the solstice, a management committee meeting and at the weekend the leigh folk festival

  

'it's about a dystopian california... which is... where I already live'

bookpilled has come face to face with the full horror of his situation. condemned to fund his existence (in a dystopian california) by running a youtube channel where he mooches round thrift stores and library sales buying unwanted SF books and is then forced to read them by some sort of evil randomiser program in his phone.

 'it's about a dystopian california... which is...  where I already live' (virtual light william gibson)

he doesn't even have shelves - he is condemned to stack them up above the fireplace (you see how to read that psychologically don't you). 

semiotic ghosts from the gernsback continuum appear at the lunch counter and shake their heads at him.  his clothes are in plastic storage boxes with sealed lids (to stop the nanobots creeping in and surveilling him -  a flea cleaning service gone rogue).  his only friend and ally is the outlaw bookseller in far off bath. 

or perhaps he's not trapped in a philip k. dick sci-fi novel? perhaps it's one of PKD's non-SF novels. 

maybe he's more like john fahey in oregon taking the rare classical records from the thrift store to the second hand record shop like a dutiful robot sorting through the kipple and the ruins attempting to rebuild the world of culture again. 

and meanwhile the outlaw bookseller (and swansea steve) seem to be retired and having a whale of a time. outlaw takes the train from bath to cardiff (so rich) and then up to castell coch and then further up the taff trail (the old railway lines) to where he used to live as a child half way between caerphilly and pontypridd. the industry is gone leaving only rust stains and so are the views as the vegetation has grown over everything. the houses are all done up and very nice but the roads are narrow (no fun when you are walking back into town) and there's no public transport. 

(there used to be a railway line between caerphilly and barry - that would have been handy).

horsemouth is impressed with outlaw bookseller and bookpilled they have parlayed their interest in SF into a kind of economic activity. horsemouth should get into the habit of reselling his books (he has rather a lot of them). 

meanwhile there's always uncle vanya on 42nd street frozen in time(s) - 42nd street/ new york as it was and then the superfluous men and women of tsarist russia living recognisable lives of quiet desperation. and there's a parallel being drawn between the theatre buffs and chekov's provincial bourgeoisie. julianna moore is just amazing as the too young wife of the magistrate, and then there's uncle vanya and the doctor eating out their souls in rural isolation in the absence of events and attempting to stay cheerful with the aid of vodka. 

horsemouth is a big fan of worker and parasite a cartoon series from the former eastern europe (from a country that no longer exists the description tells us) that briefly made its way onto US television during the writers strike on teh itchy and scratchy show. it has spawned a number of later tributes and parodies. clearly it was itself descended from tom and jerry. 

elsewhere we learn that 1.3 million call handlers were employed during the covid epidemic (that's a full 4% of the uk workforce). 

meanwhile in paris in the 1790ies there are the sans-culottes who are not yet the working class. (their moment is yet to come). 

today another beautiful day out. this afternoon horsemouth goes through the sunfried streets to attempt to meet howard.  he's not sure what he's up to for the rest of the day. 

blake's 7 or vanya on 42nd street (25 years)

horsemouth has watched the last episode of blake's 7 - they all die in slow motion in a welter of gunfire. (excepting avon - his death is not shown it is only heard). so perish all revolutionaries (even the reluctant ones). 

later horsemouth starts to watch uncle vanya on 42nd street -  a play within a play.

and  the play within a play is uncle vanya, the 'superfluous men' (and women) gather at a russian country house, time and futility hangs heavy, the doctor plants trees and makes great utopian claims for the effects of tree planting. (claims that resonate with our desperately ecological times) our nebbish thinks if he can only get the wife of the magistrate his life will not have been wasted (or at least the magical number of the last 25 years). but time is out of joint nothing they try and do will work, they must wait for other times and other people. 

25 years of social researches sings bob calvert. 25 years of work and 25 years of second hand book buying out of it for horsemouth. (and now he must disperse his collections). 25 years of accumulating schemes of work and hand-outs and budgets and committee papers, of filing them out of the way (and now they must face the judgement of the green  recycling bag). 

yesterday horsemouth went for a wander with TG down to the tescos at bromley by bow then back along the fragment of the greenway through the olympic park to home. it yielded some more photos of horsemouth in nature (considering horsemouth lives in a city it is comparatively green round his way). 

he went home to run his feet under the cold tap and had a snooze. there had been a plan to meet up with howard after he took his bike back in for repairs (but that didn't happen).  they may meet up next saturday (pre-solstice)  or they may not. 

horsemouth is into holiday season. 

four years ago he was planning to be off to cork. six years ago he was in porto. 

today a beautiful day outside already with temperatures rising up to 30C at the weekend (30C is only any use to horsemouth when he is at the beach). 

horsemouth theme (this strange book)

good morning. good morning.

today horsemouth is up with a slightly snotty nose and a sore throat. 

yesterday was not a successful day.

horsemouth was back from an abortive mission to meet up with howard at walthamstow queen's road station which horsemouth succeeded in losing despite having been there several times before (but coming from the opposite direction).

howard was (in any event) prevented from travelling by fucked up rail replacement buses and returned home defeated. there is a slight scheme to meet up later. 

it was glorious out there and everyone was looking awesome. but horsemouth ended up back home and self-medicating with a beer. part of the problem was being hungry (never attempt to make a decision when you are hungry). another part of the problem was not having an a-to-z or a smart phone. another part of the problem was not having any credit on his existing stupid phone  

horsemouth has failed to make the adjustment to summer yet (it is as good to be here as anywhere, there's no hurry, please stand in the fucking doorway like a dick it looks very stylish).

the mismatch between the glorious external conditions and horsemouth's mood caused him to become morose. it took him a while to shift it. 

on the upside someone mentioned mike ladd. horsemouth was very keen on welcome to the afterfuture and even keener on gun hill road (if that was possible). 

there was just a great era of alternative hip-hop. the early anticon mixtape is just one of the best things ever. 

any love for company flow?

earlier a slightly bored horsemouth (in search of distraction) had wandered up to the powerscroft road book box.  there he picked up a copy of murakami's the strange library. 

now this is a strange little tale but the physicality of the book itself is more reassuring, 

first on the cover itself is an outsized version of one of those little cardboard wallets that librarians used to stick library tickets into (before storing them in date order that they were due to return - if horsemouth has understood it properly). within the endpapers are a facsimile of that american notebook marbled design. the pages are (as if) stamped FILE COPY or RETURNED at various intervals, another page has a date of issue sheet printed on it (when formerly they were stuck in library books and stamped by the librarian  (so you could see how many times before the book had been loaned out). 

of course all these things have gone EPOS now (ok ok electronic point of sale - it's probably not called that but it is a very similar electronic stocktaking procedure). there is a library computer etc.  he could look up the precise terms online (but why bother). 

inside there are plenty of illustrations (murakami gives you their source). often from compendiums of similar items (keys, shoes, birds, feather, donuts). these are shown as the item is mentioned in the text. horsemouth will have to reread it to understand better what those do. 

horsemouth probably should try some other library related fiction to go with it (borges for example). 

he also picked up a translation of albert soboul's book the sans-culottees: the popular movement and revolutionary government 1793-1794. the theory is that current revolutionaries (in that they are neither the aristocracy nor the bourgeoisie) are descended from them. one idea here is that the historical record needs to be carefully read for the facts that don't fit with our current understanding, that the past contains possibilities that we have missed. 

eventually horsemouth got a handle on his unruly emotions. he settled down to watch blake's 7 (he now has just one episode to go). one of the great things about the 70ies was its pessimism, it is not the universe of star trek, the federation is an evil fascist entity, the whole thing is 1984 with space travel, our would be revolutionaries (or mere pirates) end up shot down (though perhaps not with the thoroughness of bonnie and clyde).  

tanith lee got in another episode. chris boucher was script editor. the series was re-commissioned  beyond its useful life, blake would only return if he could be definitively killed.

horsemouth should finish off the e.m. forster biography (which has been good). 

today probably a walk with TG and then a meet up with howard later (maybe). 

 

to see what he is thinking (revisited)

good morning! good morning!

horsemouth is awake and he has his coffee. last night 'the fog' on the TV (well after a little blake's 7 on the laptop). as usual with john carpenter the soundtrack is amazing. some of the shots were amazing too.

horsemouth is missing hawkbinge (their latest episode on church of hawkwind is overdue) and their however-many-year mission to listen through the entire hawkwind studio discography. the team is someone who knows their hawkwind and someone who has never heard them before (except for seeing them live twice). 

currently they are bogged down in the early 80ies (not the neophytes favourite decade and there's a lot of it to go).

 

as you can see here horsemouth is also heavily biased towards the 70ies. tyranosaurus rex, french film soundtracks about housing estates and space travel, san francisco psych folk, debussy, inner city unit, hawkwind in kitchen table electronica mode, nusrat fateh ali khan and michael brook... 

next friday, june 17th (from midnight to midnight pacific time), bandcamp are holding their third annual juneteenth fundraiser, where they donate 100% of their share of sales to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a racial justice organization with a long history of effectively enacting change through litigation, advocacy, and public education. 

so that would be a good day to buy something opines horsemouth (even if you don't make it as far as buying any musicians of bremen). 

saturday afternoon howard and horsemouth plan to meet up. 

seven years ago horsemouth was discovering (through his blogging) a potential new musicians of bremen  lyric (from the overlooked volume two). 

horsemouth supposes he doesn't do enough to bring the phrases he discovers in writing this blog into the lyrics of musicians. he agrees with jarvis cocker here, lyrics are basically the homework of songwriting, they alibi the song, they tend to get neglected, or done in a hurry. 

further, he suspects he doesn't do enough to extend his writing out beyond the blog format. 

yesterday horsemouth chucked out some papers (some from his time at beachside donkey rides, some from his time in the communal endeavour). if horsemouth is to get mobile he must lighten up. he must thin down his books.  he cannot really afford to pay for storage. he must chose between his guitars. 

yesterday he also found 3 picture frames (and brought them home). one displays a postcard howard got from india of a drawing of a leopard. another the map of the administrative regions of portugal that ze gave him. the third the photo that denise took of him up in clissold park sometime in the early 90ies.  he also picked some wildflowers and put them in water. he will identify them soon. 

as horsemouth writes he hopes to see what he is thinking.

'one may as well begin with...' (horsemouth's end)

good morning! good morning!

horsemouth is up and the sun is shining. (he admits it, he has his coffee). 

we are in the golden glow when the sunlight is softened and refracted by a longer than usual journey through the earth's atmosphere (there is a similar golden hour at sunset).  the people walk past horsemouth's window (it is a saturday so they are less likely to be on their way to work and there are no kids being towed off to school by their parents (so far)). 

horsemouth's room is cool and shady (but does decently for the light). it is mostly bookshelves (with some record and CD storage). horsemouth favours wood (and oak woodstain). he has a raised platform bed the better to permit storage of kipple underneath it (an unused coffee table, various rugs, a marching drum, a collection of cymbal stands). 

from horsemouth's angle the front garden does not look too bad (it is very green, a tree is growing enthusiastically (fuelled by the compost bin), the variegated leaves of some shrub or other have spread to cover all available ground surfaces). it is a verdant yellow and green paradise (as long as you ignore the carefully stacked building waste - indeed horsemouth has installed some kind of a blinker so that he cannot see it).

from the road it looks terrible (building waste, superfluous bins, bin bags the bin men have rejected etc.).

we roll towards the solstice. thereafter the dog days of summer. temperatures are warmer but the summer iz y-going out. 

yesterday  horsemouth got the train to highbury and then walked down to islington to visit his bank. he needed to reset his rent amount and to refuel a little. on his way back he raided the mighty flashback records - he picked up a copy of miles in the sky (ron carter/ tony williams) which he is listening to now and a copy of the espers album. 

the cover of miles in the sky was illustrated by victor atkins  in 1968. for this he received an illustrators award from the society of illustrators.

other than that he sat out in the back garden reading the e.m. forster biography (whence the 'one may as well begin with...' ). later he watched the news and then watched loads of blake's 7. 

his countryfile calendar (courtesy of his mum) shows unknown territory for the upcoming week. the week after there's a face-to-face mancom and then the leigh-on-sea folk festival. 

the railstrikes may make visiting the festival difficult. we shall see. horsemouth can't see any buses. it looks like the owl service are on on the sunday (which is not a railstrike day). 

today he does not know what he is up to. more of the same he guesses. 

how to 'value engineer' the deaths of 72 people (insulate britain)

 on channel 4: sunday 12th june, 10.30pm there's a dramatisation based on the transcripts from the grenfell tower fire inquiry 

aka. how to 'value engineer' the deaths of 72 people.

a disaster that had been coming since the lakanal house fire (2009), since the first time insulating cladding was placed on a building in the UK. 

it has to be said that the purpose of a lot of cladding was less to make the building warm and cosy but rather to improve the appearance of the buildings. the peculiarly british habit of having the rich and poor live cheek by jowl necessitated hiding the poor populations and the camouflaging of social housing. the disinclination of the rich to pay enough tax to ensure adequate maintenance of social housing, the tendency to view the poor as scroungers and social failures who didn't deserve the housing by the people employed to provide them with services, the rapid appreciation of the inner cities, all led to this outcome. 

here we see not a deliberate plan to incinerate 72 people but the abject failure of the state to frame adequate building regulations - a failure based in free market ideology that regulation held back capitalism from achieving better value. and so the deaths of 72 people were value engineered. 

but further, prior to grenfell the state's entire strategy was to elbow the poor out of the city and to gradually destroy social housing by creating a 'hostile environment' (to borrow a term from the immigration debate) to housing the poor. unfortunately the incineration of 72 people in grenfell was a bit too far ahead of the curve and all the people directly involved have suddenly found themselves in the wrong having previously been told they were in the right.

here we have gavin barwell, eric pickles, grant shapps, james brokenshire, seven housing ministers in eight years, eight housing ministers in ten. it is almost like they don't care. the blame becomes widely distributed and thinly spread. whether they will ever be charged and what with is still an open question. 

and what is this but boris's latest plan to require the selling off housing association property (that the state does not own) and thus more destruction of social housing. a policy that the pilot programme has demonstrated does not work and has been proposed two times before anyway. 

and really the blame goes beyond them to the people who voted for this shit time after time. 

of course this value engineering is not the great beautiful appliance of science that we might all hope for but a parsimonious skimming of social reproduction costs, an attempt to shave them to the minimum and indeed beyond that, to force such systems into collapse to permit the looting of the collapsed entity by a capitalism grown ambulance chasing and vampiric. 

at every stage of the process the value the working class need to survive is extracted and rises up into the skies where the rich live on olympus, while those who make the world with their labour struggle to find enough to live. 

interestingly what the social housing of britain probably needs next is a vast campaign of insulation (to enable people to adequately heat their homes over winter). indeed there is a campaign of civil disobedience by people demanding more insulation, judges and juries are disinclined to jail them for demanding the obvious o the government are engaged in changing the law to permit putting people in jail for demanding the obvious more easy. 

the grenfell tower inquiry podcast is probably a good place to start (it is reliably blood boiling). there should be a new one out today. the guardian will offer you a guide to how to fix the housing crisis but like the government they are fixated on making home ownership easier, increasing the supply of social housing (the single most effective measure that could be undertaken) is relegated to the sixth (and final) recommendation, a recommendation made by everyone we asked (as if it were going to be controversial, as if the guardian needed to apologise for making it). 

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

today horsemouth should probably go and re-arrange his finances. (it's a beautiful day outside). 

an autobiographical fantasy (horsemouth is happy with very little)

good morning! good morning!

'he tells me that I might write, could write, might be a writer...

of course I could write - not that anyone would read me, but that didn't signify.' - e.m. forster

huzzah the weather forecaster was predicting five days of decent weather (at a very pleasant 20C). but hmmn the news teams are predicting a rail strike for the saturday of the leigh-on-sea folk festival. anyway two weeks/ fourteen days er. it may fix itself er. maybe. 

horsemouth supports the rail-strike. he thinks that it is good that workers are attempting to get a pay rise to roll back the reduction in their wages in real terms that has been going on since 2008. 

beyond that there's the issue of the summer holidays and travel. 

horsemouth is about 1/3rd of the way into the e.m. forster biography, and he has written all the books he is famous for, so what happens next? 

in the regular rhythms of horsemouth's life tonight is bin-night (when the recycling (every week) and the rubbish  (every other week) must be put out) in preparation for the visit of the binmnen (hail the binmen!). tomorrow morning the bin-men visit, giant machinery clanks around above horsemouth's head and the rubbish is magicked away. 

the fantasy of the climate crisis is that technology will save us (with windmills and solar panels and heat pumps and things) and with no need to put on  a jumper (or shiver in winter) - this is a fantasy, it is actually a world where things will get harder for the working class (and for the vast majority of us) because we are too disorganised to mount a successful defence of our own interests. similarly the injustices between the global north and the global south will be exacerbated. horsemouth doesn't like to think about it. 

come on clever monkeys get your act together and sort it out. 

true horsemouth has been enthusiastic about the internet (is it not in fact orac from blakes 7?) - now his source of music and news,  and his main means of communication, and the means by which he conducts this autobiographical fantasy.  blake's 7 is from a time when computers were just beginning to become important and accessible, to become the thing they are now and there's avon - he's a hacker, but no-one calls him that. 

we are on to the part of the series written by science fiction writers - tanith lee for example does an episode with space aristocrats returning from beyond the grave. 

horsemouth thinks the little statue that himself and TG found in a tree facing the hollow ponds is in fact a guanyin (he should probably ask darsavini). 

boris is giving a speech in lancashire today. he is likely to  propose the extension of the right-to-buy discount scheme for social tenants to those in housing association properties, an idea first raised in the 2015 conservative manifesto and likely to make the housing crisis worse by further reducing the supply of affordable rented housing (and not getting any more built). he will be proposing lots of measures like this in the next few months essentially to distract attention from his current political woes. 

horsemouth is coming to the end of his redundancy/ pension taken in advance money (the pension taken in advance money now looks like a mistake but it doesn't actually become a mistake until a year or so shy of horsemouth being 67 - and in the pandemic there were no guarantees of horsemouth actually reaching this exalted age).

horsemouth's earning followed a classic 'sugarloaf' shape. horsemouth began work, worked out how to get more work, worked as much as he could (and made as much money as he could), got tired and bored, worked less, ended up making just enough to live (ended up topping up his pay out of his savings). and then the pandemic hit (and because the pandemic hit the redundancy hit - probably a year or two early).

his 'retirement' is ok so far (he's a bit bored). 

horsemouth is happy with very little (that is the secret he learned from his grandmother on his dad's side).  today he will go for a walk (and browse some of the book boxes again). he will probably cook a curry (he has lots of root vegetables he needs to hurry up and eat). 

'is the new world rising from the shambles of the old?'

'man is born free and is everywhere in chains'  jean-jacques rousseau.

there that should give people pause for thought right from the start. 

horsemouth would tend to agree with this (except he doesn't believe there is an antecedent free state that we are born into, he instead places freedom at the end of a long process called revolution (but enough of his fantasies)). 

'man is born free and is everywhere in chains, sheep are born woolly and everywhere are shorn' 

horsemouth (somewhat sarcastically) remarks. sheep are (of course) bred and formed for the purpose of giving wool just as modern humans are bred and formed for the purpose of paying taxes and working. there have been times (marx notes) when the ruling class have preferred sheep to their fellow humans (correctly regarding them as more profitable). we should not develop an over-inflated notion of our value to our rulers on the basis of a putative common humanity. 

irredentism and revanchism - these political terms seem to be somewhat confused - but the idea seems to be that there is some physical land that goes with our flock  and that we should seize it back (and maybe a bit more for revenge's sake). 

and then, to quote pink floyd, 'the lines on the map moved from side to side'. 

horsemouth is not interested in the imagined communities of states. he is not interested in their flags. he regards it as medieval set-dressing left over from an earlier production (in the states of the third world as it used to be called he supposes that it is colonial or anti-colonial set-dressing).  that kind of shit can only be contemplated when it is harmless. 

horsemouth is of the opinion that the workers of the world have no country. he is interested in how the value of peoples work is assigned and distributed and in how much say they have in their own lives. 

at a minimum he is interested in workers' share of GDP - how much of the value of workers' production  is allocated back to them to enable them to feed clothe and house themselves and to enable them to show up at the factory gates on monday morning able to work. horsemouth would be aiming for something close to 100%. 

horsemouth would be aiming for something like a free association of people who can decide for themselves how to divide up the work that must be done. 

'is the new world rising from the shambles of the old?' 

probably not. the new world is certainly there as a possibility within global capitalism. it is necessary to argue for a better world and to argue against the murderous bullshit of the old world.  

'if we can just join hands' 

over on facebook horsemouth has published a photo of himself demonstrating the wonders of nature but it is in fact a cut down version of an earlier photo (he's such a joker). yesterday he returned from walthamstow and went out for a wander with TG.  he tried to watch the remake of rabid but found it so bad as to be unwatchable. he retreated to blake's 7 - a guerrilla army, a terrorist cell. 

'today's pig - tomorrow's bacon' (on the to-be-hoped-for defenestration of the greased piglet)

essentially all's fair in love and war is a statement that reflects horsemouth's limited moral sense. (this has gotten him into trouble before). 

things are judged by their results. (what else would you judge them by). but this is not actually horsemouth's attitude (he is not very particular with how we get somewhere we say we want to go but he dislikes any unpleasantness dragging on for too long). 

the defenestration of the greased piglet has been delayed once again. behind its little blond lashes the piglet knows that one day it will be caught, wrestled to the carpet in the cabinet room  and then dragged kicking and squealing to the upper floors of downing street before being thrown out of the window and onto the cobbles and railings below. 

for a brief moment it will seem like it can fly. 

let's be frank theresa may was out within five months having comfortably seen off a vote of no confidence.

and this  is not a comfortable victory. 148 tory MPs voting against you when only 180 is needed to get you chucked. so what that nobody can stand openly against him for leader for a year! they will all be standing against him.

his position looks assailable and his authority looks fucked. there's a no-confidence vote in the house of commons coming (so why 148 rebel MPs are you now voting for him? what elastic principle would enable you to do that?) and then a vote to strengthen the ministerial code (that boris has just weakened and undermined). and then there are the by-elections. 

is there no end to the humiliation and torture? no it must go on. 

wait horsemouth must check that he hasn't resigned already. 

of course the beast is not called the greased piglet  for nothing but come october there will be a feel bad factor of epic proportions that will run all winter as the people shiver in their unheatable under capitalism homes. there will be the greatest collapse in living standards in living memory. the people will demand a sacrifice. 

what was horsemouth doing to arrive so late upon the scene? he was watching blake's 7.

there appears to be a gap in the memory banks. the actor playing blake departs to the RSC and 20 episodes later we have a younger blake-alike who wants to play  pirate.  josette simon gets added as a murderous panther girl (go non-racist casting/ hail the 70ies). they are still fighting the federation (but the federation has fallen).

horsemouth thinks by this point himself and his friends had abandoned it for punk and dungeons and dragons. (actually it was probably worse than that - it was probably prog). 

it's 9 years since the first attempt at a musicians of bremen gig. howard got sick and had to go home. horsemouth went on and did an unprepared solo show (because he's a trouper, a professional) including the simultaneous translation of the spanish lyrics of a la luna yo mi voy into english (oooo clever).   

soon their first actual gig (a benefit for the e15 mums - thanks ayesha). 

four years ago the barking folk festival. stick in the wheel,  the unthanks etc. 

today is tidy up day in the cloud forest. at some point (he is not sure when) he decamps back to the salt marshes. ok he's had his coffee - now it is time for breakfast. 

general horsemouth and the war in ukraine (all's fair in love and war part 2)

horsemouth is up. he has his coffee. 

... and he's discussing the war in ukraine (day 100 and something).

armchair general horsemouth is a peace at any price merchant. he likes to avoid conflict. he regards poking nuclear armed russian bears with sticks as a bad idea. he regards wars to promote democracy (that you then go on and lose) as a bad idea. if you wanted to concoct a media image to convince people not to rise up against injustice in the name of democracy (but to just sit there and take it) then the refugees besieging kabul airport would probably do it. that and the basket case that is iraq, or libya, or syria... 

he applauds the bravery of the people of ukraine for fighting the invader (but frankly he thinks they would be better off fleeing). flee now while pro-ukrainian sentiment is high (because, if it is anything like afghanistan, pretty soon people won't give a fuck).

at the moment the west is happy to arm the ukrainians to the teeth and to cheer them on (but not actually defend them). but will that still be the case if there is another trump in the white house?  and after the joys of letting poland and hungary into the EU will the EU be as keen to admit ukraine - isn't this just more faff and difficulty for more hinterland for the germans and french? wouldn't they rather stabilise the kleptocracies that are russia and belarus with more trade (more cheap gas and oil)? 

and if the war drags on will the world really be improved by collapsing russia (again)? 

russia is, in any event, probably doomed to fall as the oil and gas becomes worthless (mere carbon). or maybe not, maybe we are deluding ourselves that serious measures to stop global warming will ever really be taken, maybe they have just affixed a fashionable windmill to the great game. 

surely the end game for the EU (aka. france and germany) is to persuade ukraine to accept the loss of crimea, donbass etc. and admit the western rump of it (and to keep the russian oil and gas flowing to prevent the hit to germany's economy at a time of retrenchment).

meanwhile (back in the US of A) have you forgotten and forgiven january 6th yet? was that not an attempt by a sitting president to overturn the result of an election?  an attempted insurrection supported by many ex-service personnel and a significant proportion of the people. and these people all have the vote (the vote they believe can be stolen) in upcoming presidential elections. 

it all came pretty damn close and it could come again. 

meanwhile yesterday was the anniversary of the second day of recording of geechee recollections by marion brown in 1973, one of three albums dedicated to his home state of georgia. here's a cover version to be getting on with. 

it's a grey day without. yesterday horsemouth just sat and read and snoozed. he watched some blake's 7. the guerrilla group fights the evil federation. today he will go for a wander(perhaps he will identify sme plants using the collins guide) . tomorrow he is back to the salt marshes.