the ghosts come close

8 years ago (dear god) musicians of bremen played a halloween gig at cafe bohemia. horsemouth thinks it was the duo gig where they went on late (not the christmas gig with umpteen santa's that was an early musicians of bremen solo set technology demonstrator.. most of gertrude came to watch them (he thanks albino for putting them on) 

9 years ago he was beset by the kraken. (horsemouth had first met the kraken maybe 15 years before - it was an evil, beady eyed beast and a danger to shipping). 

samhain. the ghosts come  close

it was possibly all the tea that did it (and particularly that late cup of tea). horsemouth is suffering a rare bout of insomnia. 

he was just round suke's first for some music and then for a curry (with enza in attendance). the curry was great. he walked down and he walked home. 

when horsemouth got home there was a most filthy stench in the downstairs toilet (dumped festering animal product or failure of the u-bend?). after a few hours of tossing and turning he thought about waking up the protagonist to remonstrate and in fact went upstairs to do it. fortunately the angels of is better nature intervened and instead he doused the toilet in cleaner and gave it a wipe (hopefully that will be sufficient he will see in the morning). 

oh it is morning.

horsemouth has been assured that it is fox. for it to be fox someone must have left the back door open. it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that someone would do this - he'll brace the others later on today. . 

 two years ago the notes tool in facebook was ending (rescinded for being uneconomical). horsemouth has migrated that task (blow-by-blow account of his existence) over to blogger. hopefully there's enough here to entertain you.  

books, films, gigs, events october 2022

slightly early (podcasts, vlogs, blogs as and when)

books 

- h.p lovecraft season (at the mountains of madness, the case of charles dexter ward, the shadow over innsmouth etc.)

- paul bowles (two years at the straight)

- watchmen (first three or four episodes)

- sins of my father (lily dunn)

- antonio tabucchi (pereira maintains)

- jean-jacques rousseau (reveries of the solitary walker)

- anne truitt's diaries online and bookforum article

- FT weekend

- states of plague: reading albert camus in a pandemic by alice kaplan and laura marris (bookforum)

films

- la strega (boris karloff thriller series with ursula andress)

- loretta lynn documentary

- our mutual friend

- arkham publishing (h.p. lovecraft)

- various paul bowles documentaries

- dario argento's dracula (dull dull dull)

- MC mercury  interviewed by all city steve 

- various robert bresson interviews

-  an interview with gary stevenson 

gigs none

events

kim spicer memorial, mike visits, CCH conference. government falls, visits the geffrye (sorry that should be the museum of the home), a birthday party.

horsemouth has not been having much luck with technology lately

horsemouth just had a computer outage

(horsemouth has not been having much luck with technology lately)

normal service has been resumed.

today he goes to do some music and to chat with friends. we are back in GMT from DST (daylight saving time). (horsemouth initially got this the other way round and has amended it). he will probably construct the books read, films watched, podcasts listened to, blogs read, vlogs watched, gigs events etc. list. this serves him in place of a memory (which he no longer has). 

the neighbour was off to a dia dos muertos event in (was it broadway or columbia?) market. another friend might have gone to it. tomorrow night halloween.  

ok people it's nearly november. it's gas and electric time  

it's likely they'll want to increase it soon (because the government guarantee only lasts 6 months and they are looking 1 year ahead). horsemouth looks for the rebate from the government and then there's a discussion to be had on how to handle it - probably use it to pay for the increased cost of gas over winter. 

fortunately it has been mild (not to say unseasonably warm) so far. yesterday horsemouth was out on the front steps sunning himself. 

comedown (the years roll away in a georgian room)

horsemouth is back with you.  what follows after him drinking these days is what horsemouth woud have previously called a comedown. he gets anxious, he gets depressed, he gets miserable. silly old mule.

what a bring down (to quote cream). 

at some point in the cycle he will forswear the drink. he is not improved by it he says.  on the other hand he does enjoy the getting drunk of it. he is a nervous and shy creature - the drink lets him out of himself up onto the expansive  uplands. 

but then the next day remorse nibbles at his soul. he noticed a rise in his irrational fear of insects. 

horsemouth is better now (he is returned to his usual sunny pessimism). his stomach is grumbling healthily. the coffee has gone down well. sten woke him up clanking round the kitchen. horsemouth has made it to the weekend. tomorrow he is due to go round a friend's house and make some music (and then eat some dinner). he will check that it is still on in a bit. horsemouth will try not to drink like a fool. at horsemouth's age it is simply unwise to drink like this. 

thanks to mike heidt for the photo. in it horsemouth looks reasonably composed and sensible. maybe it is the surroundings that help (that georgian proportion and elegance). 

tonight the clocks will go back. horsemouth will return to rising at a decent (early) puritan hour in the morning. monday (actual halloween).  

ok time for the museli. 

did horsemouth tell the baby jesus gag? oh yes he did (jesus)

horsemouth is back from kim spicer's memorial. thanks lou for organising it thanks to fiona for buying him a beer (or two) when his card unexpectedly died.it was good to see everybody (in particular luke and kate and fiona people  who horsemouth hasn't seen in an age). horsemouth feels surprisingly good on it (despite telling the baby jesus gag - presumably the remorse will hit at some point). 

you didn't did you? oh yes I did.

he fell over on the way home. (but he picked himself up again quickly). in a bit a meeting. he walked there (and because his card had stopped working) he walked back - 3 miles (about an hour). he ate some chips and chili sauce from the dude at the end of columbia road (and said hi - he hasn't seen him in years). he had to have a sit down by hackney city farm.

as he walked down hackney was full of youth and beauty (and money - where does it all come from?). it was significantly emptier when he walked back. 

now to see if he gets ill.

he hopes he's on top of the stuff for the meeting at midday.  he has a few hours to straighten up. 

horsemouth has made it to the end of another week, he has forty pounds to his name in an envelope  to carry him through. (soon enough the gas and electric money should go out and come in). it will be strange to be operating in the world of cash again. 

 

horsemouth getting ahead of himself and counting his blessings

 it is late in the evening. horsemouth is starting this blog early (is it because he feels grumpy?). 

horsemouth read a little of anne truitt's diaries online. in particular yield the one she was writing in her 80ies. (it follows on from hs reading a bookforum article about her). success (as an artist) didn't come until her forties and then she moved to japan following her husband's diplomatic work. her diarising came later (journaling seems to be the preferred term at the minute). 

'truitt would record herself reading her handwritten journals aloud, revising as she spoke. this preliminary manuscript would then be further edited, first by truitt, then her editor. their reasoned, steady tone is in keeping with this process...'

the bookforum article makes something of her allowing the diaries of her murdered friend mary pinchot meyer to pass to the CIA when mary had wanted anne herself to secure them. earlier her friend had had an affair with john f. kennedy. 

it's later and horsemouth is reading rousseau's walk number one - except he doesn't seem to go anywhere he's just ruminating on his position in society, complaining about his lot. horsemouth sympathises (quite a bit actually). rousseau claims not to care any more. he does however take great care to avoid 'society'. he has his health. he has a flat where he and his wife live. they have work enough to feed them. he has time enough to go walking and to think and to revisit his interest in botany. so fuck all the haters  really. 

the book will be constructed from these writings after his death. most of the pieces are already polished (as if rousseau knew that they would be published). 

after lovecraft died (if indeed he did, if his spirit did not in fact just move to another vessel) it was his circle of friends (mostly like minded jobbing authors) who kept his work in print. they did this through arkham house publishers or by using the cthuhlu mythos for themselves,. keeping it alive for the generation it took for his work to find favour. 

horsemouth has few real problems. he has enough to live on (maybe - so it seems). the room is very comfortable. the things that give him anxiety or enrage him are the things he involves himself in by choice (mostly). he could always give them up or move away from them. he could, for example, just take more holidays. 

here we see him counting his blessings just in case any have gone missing. 

yesterday (by the time you read this) a pleasant walk with TG. in the afternoon some reading, some listening to the news and watching documentaries. horsemouth found the popul vuh soundtracked movie Sei Still, Wisse ICH BIN. 

doubtless more will occur to him in the morning. 

more has occurred. he has done a little re-editing of the above text and made a change of title. for horsemouth the more measured voice and sense of self that comes out of doing this is one of the benefits of blogging. 

horsemouth dreamt (but they are now refusing to come when recalled). outside it is grey and there is evidence that it has rained. horsemouth is nearly at the end of his coffee. the usual suspects prowl around the neighbourhood - walking their dogs, taking the kids to school, going to work. 

'growing older, I learn all the time' (walk 3)

'near him stood a little spinet on which he tried out a tune now and then' - bernardin de saint-pierre on visiting rousseau at a flat in rue platiere near the palais royal in 1772)

(the grey bar does not appear on the top of the page. horsemouth has to deploy another means of getting here.)

and here we are. it's another fine morning and once again horsemouth is blogging. he types this sitting up in bed wearing two jumpers. he has a mild headache (sten has come down with the flu it might be that or it might be horsemouth's habit of showering  last thing and drying in a hurry). he has been looking through rousseau's reveries of the solitary walker. rousseau is trying to pretend that he doesn't care, that he is fine with it all, that he is reconciled to his situation in life (is he fuck). 

in his old age rousseau has taken up botany again. he goes for long walks. he still writes (but pretends that it is just daydreams from the walks and not intended for publication). he lives simply and cheaply (bernardin de saint-pierre, quoted in the introduction) in a modern sort of minimalism. 

'two little beds with covers of blue and white striped cotton like the wall-hangings, a chest of drawers, a table and a few chairs were all his furniture... a canary sang in a cage hanging from the ceiling, sparrows came and ate breadcrumbs at his windows which opened onto the street, and on the window sill of the antechamber stood boxes and pots full of the sort of plants that nature is pleased to sow.'  

horsemouth does not live like this. he lives in an age of great material wealth (much of which can be found a few years later discarded on the street). he lives in a basement room lined with books in old wine crates and on bookshelves, he has all of rousseau's furniture (and more) just in his bedroom alone. he has a coffee table he cannot use stashed under the bed. 

he has no canary (he thinks keeping birds in cages is cruel) nor any other pets, he approves of the feeding of the sparrows and the collection of wild flowers. .

instead of a spinet horsemouth has innumerable guitars (a couple of keyboards, a banjolin, two record decks, a harmonium, a thumb piano, a rainstick etc.). 

a while ago horsemouth started making drawings of his furniture. 

today maybe a walk with TG (or maybe horsemouth will cry off citing the risk of disease). it looks like it will be a decent-ish enough day (when the sun clears the houses opposite). horsemouth still has quite a lot to read of his rescued copies of the FT weekend, there's the rousseau and then there's the lovecraft. last night he watched a little of dario argento's dracula (a very dull costume drama) only rutger hauer as an old and clumsy van helsing was of any interest. he was listening to the DJ cam - it comes from a very specific era in his life (there was some domesticity). 

if this is tuesday... ('my solitary walks, and the reveries which accompany them')

if this is tuesday (this must be belgium) is a cheerful caper movie. the theme tune for which was the basis for chura liya (the theme of  the first bollywood movie). 

episode two of our mutual friend done (it is of course a young anna friel as the snooty miss not kate beckinsale). the expected plot twist has been revealed. gaffer hexam (as a member of the uncouth and undeserving poor) has been killed off. the boffins are launched upon society. 

the week is structured round the drama of  bin-day (thursday evening bins put out/ friday morning bins collected). giant clanking machines. heroic binmen. the recycling is every week the festering rubbish is every two weeks. 

sten seems to have come down with an evil F-L-U (horsemouth is staying out of his way). he has tested for C-O-V-I-D but it does not seem to be that. meeanwhile horsemouth's friend TG has the C-O-V-I-D.

horsemouth has a social engagement thursday (he will test before he goes out to that), he has a social engagement sunday. 

yesterday the anniversary of the second walk from rousseau's reveries of the solitary walker. 

'having resolved to describe the habitual state of my soul, in the most unaccountable situation that ever mortal experienced, I can find no manner so simple and effectual, to execute this purpose, as to keep a faithful register of my solitary walks, and the reveries which accompany them...'

the walk did not end well. rousseau was run over by a great dane which dashed him off his feet. the subsequent fall  face first onto the cobble stones if it didn't break his jaw at least smashed up his face.

'my wife's cries when she saw me made me realize that I was in a worse state than I had thought.: my upper lip was split on the inside right up to the nose,; on the outside the skin had given it some protection and prevented it from coming completely apart. I had four teeth knocked in on my top jaw,...'

last night a meeting on zoom of the communal endeavour (an activity for which horsemouth is badly suited by virtue of being a grumpy old sod).

the next meeting will probably be a doozy. there  is important business to transact, circumstances are not favourable and this makes him anxious. horsemouth is busy detatching from his hopes and fears and turning it into a bureaucratic game. he will try to prepare before the meeting and make the clearest argument that he can that a housing co-op should attempt to rehouse its members. he will do his duty thereafter it is in the lap of the gods. 

today horsemouth will go a wandering. he will do a little laundry. these sorts of things. 

and so this is monday...

horsemouth is up and about (not so early but not too late). the sun is making valiant efforts to clear the houses opposite and shine down onto the street (but it is behind the clouds). 

today a meeting of the management committee. the anniversary of horsemouth's  the golden glow mix from this date in 2016. it's a bit overlong but it lays out the aesthetic regions that horsemouth is interested in - the john surman that he heard round ze's into hard time killing floor blues by skip james then washington phillips' lift him up, obray ramsay's cold rain and snow, jim pepper's witchi-tai-to, gabor szabo's take on three kingfishers...   

horsemouth is  trying to work out if he is ill. he's certainly getting the odd twinge of tooth-ache (he should go and get that sorted but he doth procrastinate). sore-ish throat, feeling a bit under-powered. he will test before he next has to go out to a social obligation. 

the C-O-V-I-D is certainly up and about (and there's the flu as well). 

in the evening (when he has done his revolutionary duty and can retire to bourgeois life) there's the second episode of our mutual friend - this one doesn't seem to be available online. 

we are heading towards halloween (all hallows eve) and the celtic quarter day of samhain.  tuesday a partial solar eclipse.

boris johnson (now strangely the man to get us out of this mess) has decided not to run (this time). that just leaves rishi sunak and penny mordaunt (we may have a coronation of king rishi by the end of the day or we may have another outbreak of party versus MPs on friday as the wider party try not to pick king rishi). in any event it's austerity whichever way you look and it won't work. 

horsemouth has various weekend copies of the FT to read - he's waiting for those to dry out.   

victor sjöström's dream (revisited) - no one now alive need ever die

in the dream there was a magazine with an article about musicians of bremen. no it wasn't an article it was a letter. there was also water on the desk (horsemouth was back at school and it was raining outside). horsemouth contributed to the lesson but he was mocked so he stopped. 

outside it is a grey morning with thunder and rain (like literally someone has turned all the colours down to grey). horsemouth is up earlyish having slept well. 

last night he spent time reading his blogposts from december and november 2021. 

they read surprisingly well - he was mostly back out at his parents in the wilds. he had arranged his six mixcloud mixes (the golden glow - the ones where he picked the tracks and howard arranged the mix) into a sort of festival order (3 of them dated from december - 12th, 18th, 24th and 3 from elsewhere in the years). he has lately been revisiting these. there are some pleasant surprises. 

this morning he re-read his bergman review victor sjöström's dream (an old man regrets). soon the supply of memories from two years ago will stop as the facebook notes tool ends - by november 10th 2020 horsemouth has fully converted to using blogspot as his diary. in doing this he makes much more of his soul available to posterity (assuming anyone is ever interested). writing (1s and 0s) have eaten almost all human existence - what is sacred and protected from it. this is why 'no one now alive need ever die' because we have all left lots of ourselves to posterity (possibly too much to be remembered). 

of course some people fade out while they are alive. a discretion the alienation of modern life made possible. 

in his reading horsemouth finds the following. 

'it is nice to feel useful... this is the feeling horsemouth has decided to give up' 

true horsemouth is still doing the co-op stuff but he is no longer doing the childminding stuff, he is no longer doing the work stuff, the music stuff has gone quiet. 

tonight. the regular phonecall from horsemouth's mum.

tomorrow - another grey day, followed by a zoom meeting (hopefully), followed by the second episode of our mutual friend. at some point horsemouth will listen to his october 24th version of the golden glow (he will share it again so you can listen to it too). 

he has begun reading h.p.lovecraft's the dunwich horror which turns out not to be about old (english) dunwich (sunken beneath the waves) at all but about the new england village of dunwich. it resembles deliverance in lots of ways - poverty, inbreeding, deformity. 

thursday the anniversary of the death of a friend. sunday music and a meal (very civilised)  and the clocks go back, monday halloween, tuesday november starts. we are edging on half way between the equinox and the winter solstice. we make the night journey through the dark quarter of the year.  

'you want nice capitalism? good luck with that...' (the call of cthuluminism)

so writes a friend.

oof. horsemouth has just received a how well your savings are doing letter (and the answer is they are not doing well at all). buy gold might be the answer etc. 

everything is subject to the rationality of the market. but the market is spooked by animal spirits, or, to be frank, it's more like call of cthulu - it is spooked by nightmares of creatures from a non-euclidean interstellar space.

those working in financial markets were the first affected, they were the most sensitive to the emanations. visions of giant pyramids filled their heads. giant pyramids of strange geometry collapsing. 

the UK is not the US. it cannot run permanent budget deficits because it is not printing the world's reserve currency. there is a very limited course of action that the markets (herinafter referred to as the old ones) will permit for a small and misbehaving country like the UK (and it's basically austerity). horsemouth of course welcomes our new overlords (they appear to us as lizards and gill-men because their true forms are too eldritch and disgusting).

but (of course) it has all basically been run by 'the markets' for all of horsemouth's life (the democratic politics out front is but a puppet show, albeit one with real consequences). there was a point, in his childhood where it was recommended he read the communist manifesto (aka. the necronomicon  of that mad arab al hazzared), horsemouth read it and, to his horror, he was convinced. 

lovecraft is (of course) the anti-melville. instead of a beautiful multi-racial proletariat made up of the nations of the world (like the crew of the peaquod) co-operating in joint purpose, the racist lovecraft sees mongrelised wharf trash, mulatto portuguese speakers from dunedin. 

a squirrel is burying nuts in the front garden (or maybe digging them up). 

of course six months ago (hell even one month ago) horsemouth's savings were doing well - they were doing super-well in fact, they were going up and horsemouth wasn't having to do any work for them to do so. he was enjoying the dues of the rentier.  he was riding on the coat-tails of capitalism into the promised land. 

it has been this way for a while. his savings make gains. the gains are wiped out. he always thinks he should have cashed out ahead of the crisis and then re-invested after it (but he's just not that sharp).

the state could tax the rich and use this to fund its ameliorative programs (there are actually possibilities within state socialism that would help people). it is just that it is not going to because the balance of forces is not there. some sectors of the working class will be able to defend themselves (for a while).

in any event it's not like horsemouth is rich and although he's on a somewhat restricted diet he's a way off starving. he may have to review his plan to escape the world of work (aka. exploitation) early that is all.  horsemouth is from a long line of don't bet the farm puritans. horsemouth loves the romance of development but he accepts that some capitalist eras are not favourable to it.

horsemouth is up late and has sat too long over typing this. it is the weekend (horsemouth has made it to the weekend). next week a management committee meeting at the weekend bst ends horsemouth goes round a friend's flat to play some music and have a meal. 

 

'to lose one prime minister might appear a misfortune...' (the black spot has been passed)

on the departure of liz truss in ignominy

look how soft- heated he is. he feels sorry for her. 

that's a harsh and brutal lesson in the opportunism of the financial markets, the british class system, and the utter perfidy of conservative MPs. his heartstrings have not been tugged so much since he saw michael gove alone in a dundee nightclub dancing to techno trying to talk to the youth half his age. 

nonetheless he is glad she's gone (though he would rather have found a less expensive way of doing it than crashing the fucking economy). 

and thus the schlud, the black spot, the runic parchment has been passed and the workers will now have to pay not just for the rises in food costs due to inflation, not just for a proportion of the increased energy costs, not just increased mortgage costs, but for the increased cost of servicing government debt as well. 

there is a way out of it - the debt could be inflated away berin hyperinflation style but this would be a raid on the savings of the workers and the pensioners etc. 

what is interesting is not just that the whole government policy has just fallen apart and with it the post-hoc rationalisations .of various commentators. it turns out that the government cannot just endlessly postpone the paying of debts (as many were arguing) or maybe it could have but it has just crashed that particular bus.

the track we are now on is one of austerity without mitigations, a class war over who gets to pay for the crisis. the interesting thing about this class war is just how far up the middle class this goes - anybody with a mortgage, anybody paying rent.

we may indeed get boris back - on the basis that it is not his fault he was doing his best. 

today a meeting (online) and then the weekend. looks grey outside (but then the sun did manage to shine yesterday).   

  

horsemouth's autumn booster (in honour of the departure of suella braverman)

horsemouth is up. in a little while he goes to get jabbed.  

it's a rainy grey and horrible day (horsemouth doubts the power of the sun to pierce the clouds and reach down a golden hand of hope to the people beneath). the morning exodus is on. 

last nights selection round casa horsemouth  looked particularly fine (in honour of the departure of suella braverman) 

1) alice coltrane - the ankh of amon-ra

2) steve 'peregrine' took - syd's wine

3) nusrat fateh ali khan (+ michael brook) - my love, my heart

4) ravi shankar - track 5 alice in wonderland soundtrack

5) weather report (+ ralph towner) -  the moors

horsemouth is glad to see suella braverman gone (she looked like a bad pony to him). but (of course) she will be back, not enough of liz truss's crew will suffer sufficient reputational damage to sink them in perpetuity (more's the pity). the tory party have just been rolled by the financial markets, scenting weakness the sharks closed in and ripped them to shreds, of course it will be the wider people who pay for this.

the message the people will derive from this is not to anger the all-powerful and all-knowing market, to elect governments approved of by the market and every once in a while to throw their most beautiful children into the volcano. 

the lesson they should take from it is that they have been played - the arrangement of the deck chairs on the SS titanic turns out not to have mattered at all and to have no bearing on anything. the rich get into the boats and float off. the middle classes loyally applaud them (and wait their turn patiently). the stock of lifeboats runs out. comprehension dawns on the faces of the passengers and sailors. the musicians play nearer my god to thee. 

in fact the ship of state will not sink (it will just sag lower in the water). the rat will become the unit of currency etc. sir keir will be elected ('they sir keir him here, they sir keir him here... he's a dedicated follower of fashion'). 

the real issue is the development of self-knowledge and identity among the workers (and the working class as a whole) as having an interest in getting paid so as not to pay for the crisis. ultimately the government will decide who pays for the crisis by bouncing the bill on the weakest class sitting at the table of society - the pensioners (the tory voters par excellence)  may already have been sorted out. 

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

horsemouth is back from being jabbed. he's knocked back two paracetamol and bought some junk food to keep him going. now he will see if his parents' dire prognostications are true (headaches, stiff arm, stiff neck). thanks again to the NHS, to the science of immunology and to the discipline of epidemiology.  thanks to anyone trying to reduce the death and damage that this rare irruption of nature into human society is causing. 

'no se puede robar a los muertos' (you can't rob the dead)

so, in order, a spanish translation of a line from the 1998 BBC production of our mutual friend plus the line as delivered in english.

'he had been living as if he were dead'  - a line from pereira maintains, by antonio tabucchi.

horsemouth has booked his autumn booster jab online. his parents tell him it the after effects really suck. nonetheless horsemouth is committed to surviving the apocalypse (he will survive.he will survive. hey-hey).

the production of our mutual friend  is a little heavy on the actors of the time and they are cast in type (kate beckinsale plays a stroppy young miss - yawn). horsemouth watched a little of the 1976 production - it was grittier and grimier (blood in the bottom of the boat). 

the men who make their living by pulling dead bodies out of the thames stop on the water for a chat. you can't rob the dead asserts one (jesse 'gaffer' hexam), because money belongs to this world not to the next. 

the mountains of dust were (in real life) out by mile end - now they have moved further out to just the other side of the lea river. nicodemus boffin (and his wife) cannot read so they hire a man to read to them - they are off, into the world of culture and books. they are mocked for their pretensions. they are mocked for their simplicity. 

today horsemouth is unsure what to do. it is a grey day. 

apology - a statement of contrition for an action (or a defence of one)

'is there an alternative (that the markets will tolerate)'  

ask  the news reporters.

this is of course the real immediate issue (seeing as the 'all-knowing ' market; has slapped down its own tory fanboys (and girl) for being ideological).

there are bad decisions (horsemouth has made a few of them) and then there are expensive bad decisions (horsemouth has not had the honour- or maybe he has but he doesn't realise it yet). 

here the markets are doing the work of a  'socialist' criticism of unfunded tax cuts for the rich. this time (at least) it will not stick. 

the country has effectively been mugged (in the way greece was mugged) for billions by the financial markets but because it suits our political direction (criticising tory stupidity) nobody is pointing this out. we will nonetheless be paying for it for a very long time to come. 

people are not making a criticism of letting financial markets decide the .direction of the country. the great british   people (in their lack of wisdom) elected this government (an earlier version of perhaps)  - what we are now being offered is a third round of austerity (it may be more than that, horsemouth has lost count). 

of course you can't run a 'prosperous' economy with lots of austerity because it produces too many poor people who are incapable of buying things beyond the bare necessities - what you (the runners of a smooth social democratic capitalist society) want are hordes of solvent consumers living their best life (even if this means whacking in subsidies, in-work benefits  and racking out credit). 

in a sovereign country terrible state debt can be dealt with by inflating it away - this raids the value tied up in people's wages and their savings (unless wages and interest rates rise), it makes people in real terms poorer, but what the hell, needs must right? there are sectors of the working class who can defend themselves against this onslaught, and there are sectors that can't. 

the tories have fucked with their electoral base - the people doing well enough to get by (or think they are doing well enough to get by and that this  makes them virtuous). people now face a long cold winter where they have to work harder to pay their mortgages or  lose their homes (and go back to square one in snakes and ladders). the tories face a wipe out at the polls and can only hope that it is going to get better, something is going to come along, or something else may happen. if the tory MPs mount a coup against liz truss (wednesday) they are mounting a coup against the tory party membership who chose her. 

zugswang - there are no good moves. 

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

horsemouth has finished off pereira maintains (an excellent wish fulfillment novel for liberals). it is fiction and yet the writers mentioned are real, pessoa crops up (and is accused of having 'strange friends' - the recent NLR article on him said as much). pereira does the right thing but he never has to commit to an ideology to do that right thing. it's a pleasant read but it doesn't have the depth of saramago because the moral dilemmas aren't real. . 

later he watched a little of the 1998 version of our mutual friend (london live 9pm) and then a little of the 76 version. it is the 76 version he remembers (blood in the bottom of the boat) - it has the necessary gruesomeness (but it also has a russian voice over that rather spoils things).  

today a bright cold morning. horsemouth doesn't know what to do with himself. he has written the start of a review of the housing conference. he has drunk his coffee. he has found his diary again (for a while he thought he'd left it behind). 

iterations of form (at the museum of the home)

11 years later (to the day) horsemouth visits the geffrye (sorry that should be the museum of the home). he had previously visited with his brother and his family and they had traveled backwards through the exhibits denying the development of form (horsemouth had just read ubik and this sat very well with him). 

this time he visited it with catastro/fille and enza. they did the modern stuff first (as if kind of an introduction to the idea) before travelling right back in time. at a certain point in the iteration of how rooms learn, in the endless wastes of history, catastro/fille broke and ran for the exit. it is kind of like the comic book here -a static shot of a space through time (that turns out to be a living room at some point in time), with anachronistic elements bleeding in from other times. it runs off the unity of place.

in between (and to either side of the timeline and the spiral) there was the garden (and in particular the herb garden) and the front square with its lawn and benches.

they next check in with each other on october 30th samhain. there will be music (from 3pm) and then food (but very little drink - that is the plan). 

later (as he wandered back) horsemouth bumped into john and sarah in london fields - the discussion (at least to horsemouth's recollection) was of lewontkin and stephen j. gould (and coetzee's writings on animals)- the ways in which inequality and hierarchy has permeated our understanding of nature and even biochemical processes (seen in terms of DNA 'the master molecule' providing 'instructions' which are then 'obeyed' by other molecules rather than as a 'mutual aid' of molecules with different properties producing a stable-ish system). our understanding of intelligence is similar - a top-down education and training rather than a networked exchange of knowledge. 

anyway here you see horsemouth living in his head (even while walking back). 

horsemouth is back from a housing conference which was two parts inspiring to one part depressing. the news is of course bad - the government want this, they are prepared to pay that (and the co-ops will have to fund the rest). meanwhile overhead and on the radio traveling up there the government is in crisis and the economy is affected. 

it was great to meet the people connected with the retrofit and the consortium bid (a pleasure to meet you all) and it was great to have people cooking for and feeding him and cleaning (thank you hotel staff). he should now sit down and begin to get on with the work. 

if the work goes correctly the buildings will learn - they will sprout new protective layers of insulation. eventually (further down the line beyond the government funding) they will sprout solar panels - all these measures will reduce the amount of energy necessary to heat the building (to the satisfaction of the people living in it) in winter or reduce the amount of carbon needed to generate that energy (is the theory). this energy is of course lost to the atmosphere (eventually) and so contributes to global warming as does the carbon generated in the production of that energy (becoming that much demonised molecule carbon dioxide).

of course there are lots of green measures that are in fact (on closer examination) less green. but we are up and moving ladies and gentlemen. 

'did you mean what you said?'

so said the voice phenomena child's voice last night. horsemouth woke up  immediately (the child was supposed to be in the room upstairs). 

obviously horsemouth's brain is parallel processing something. 

he's in a hotel (that never happens). at a conference (ditto). 

in a second he goes down to second breakfast (and to begin the day). 

ok he's got to go and be sociable and mingle and try and learn things.  

more trouble every day (horsemouth out of it until wednesday)

 good morning! good morning! 

horsemouth has had a day off from blogging caused by drunkenness and then (the inevitable) hangover. he did not do anything too bad (he doesn't think) but as usual he feels remorseful. 

he mostly retired to bed when he got home. at some point he got up and had a restorative wander round. in the book box near the tower .he found pereira maintains by antonio tabucchi (a novel set in lisbon in the 30ies by an italian - a kind of honourary portuguese book). yes there is a sepia photo of a tram on the front cover. the book goes along keenly.

in between he distracted himself by watching the news (more trouble every day) and a piece by the outlaw bookseller on colin wilson's attempt to write something for the cthulu mythos producing a carleon set shocker (in the style of arthur machen). 

later today horsemouth is off to a conference (that's him for the weekend). he will walk over (he's getting a lift up) maybe he's back early enough on sunday to go to a museum. the first few days of next week he's cat-sitting. he will try to dress respectably. 

last night his flatmates were clumping things about and tracking in shit from the back garden. horsemouth has had a quick mop round (he will now put his shoes back on and go and finish off the coffee). the binmen have been (hail the binmen). 

the current predicament

tragedy! it looks like the kettle has died. 

horsemouth dreamed of going to a festival up in the mountains. (in theory he's meeting friends tonight) and at the weekend he goes to a housing conference. 

last night he watched an interview with gary stevenson an ex-trader (with various bits of paper from LSE and oxford) which made a lot of sense of the current predicament. 'the plan is to make you  permanently poorer'  remarks gary (and he's not wrong). 

horsemouth's recent efforts in housing have probably just been fucked by recent and incoming interest rate rises (which were probably coming anyway but have been intensified by government ineptitude). gee thanks government. horsemouth is interested i the way that current government policy fucks the middle classes. he  is fortunate (himself) in that he collectively owns property (such is the nature of a co-op) or rather that he has low rent housing. the strategy of the rich is to buy assets (with their free money from the government) and to live off those by charging the poor rent to use them - this way the rich stay rich the poor stay poor. (so that's all right then). 

horsemouth realises he is a very vulgar marxist for liking this. 

the interviewer and gary spend a lot of time fiddling with their noses (don't do this dudes it makes you look like you are on drugs).

TG was just on the phone (they have their walk booked). 

how buildings learn (and how governments don't)

'wide salt marshes, desolate and unpeopled, kept neighbours off from innsmouth... on the landward side' - h.p. lovecraft, the shadow over innsmouth (repunctuated by horsemouth).

horsemouth has been reading the shadow over innsmouth which is an early example of the death of cities motif (hello detroit, hello 'inner city', hello 'racism', hello 'urban blight'), 

all bound together with early ecological concerns,

'... this was once a fertile and thickly-settled countryside. the change, it was said, came simultaneously with the innsmouth epidemic of 1846 and was thought by simple folk to have a dark connection with hidden forces of evil. actually it was caused by the unwise cutting of woodlands near the shore, which robbed the soil of its best protection and opened the way for waves of windblown sand.'

he has finished reading sins of my father: a daughter, a cult, a wild unravelling - take home message don't be a bad dad (don't join the raj neesh). 

good morning! good morning!

horsemouth is up. he used the alarm on his phone. he is waiting in for the electricians. 

he should explain that there is an electricity outage at his house affecting the upper floors, the kitchen and the boiler (the boiler is modern and  gas fueled and so requires electricity to run). the house was bought getting on for 20 years ago what it probably needs is double glazing (as was planned two years ago but the pandemic prevented) and probably a rewire. whilst it a looked very good when it was bought horsemouth suspects it was just a good painting and decorating job. for example the downstairs has laminate flooring which horsemouth suspects covers the original floorboards in their pretty much rotted condition. 

anyway the power tripping out is a not infrequent event. 

this moves us on to the problems with decarbonising (reducing the carbon produced by heating and lighting) victorian jerry-built housing. british houses are notoriously leaky and poorly insulated and getting to net zero emission with this kind of stock is going to be difficult (if not impossible). one problem is that (as how buildings learn points out) changes made can have unintended consequences - you make the house more draught-proof, it makes it harder for moisture to get out and you end up with damp problems (so you have to take ventilation measures to mitigate the damp and round we go again). 

horsemouth was interested to note that a friend in the czech republic was familiar with external insulation (insulation cladding the outside of the building) wheras in the uk it is still a rarity. but when you mention cladding that british ears prick up because what they do know is the effect of cladding the grenfell tower - essentially the british government had a perfectly workable and well respected set of building regulations and a testing regime for building products and destroyed it by means of privatisation and deregulation. 

and as a result 72 people died in a fire. (as people had died earlier at the lakanal house fire and where the coroner investigating those deaths that had been promised a change in the regulations. this never happened because they never got round to it given the prevailing direction of privatisation and deregulation). 

to be frank much of the retro-fitting of cladding to these social housing blocks was less about energy efficiency and more about hiding the presence of the poor in the middle of a prosperous west london neighbourhood by making the housing look more modern. 

in any event despite initial appearances the government guidance on what constitutes value for money in insulating social housing up to the EPC C standard appears to point away from exterior insulation. what the government want are quick wins (and for housing providers to pay for the bulk of the expensive measures to enable it to meet its treaty commitments). there is (of course) some government money to get it going. 

there is quite a bit of time available before these decarbonisation goals have to be reached, insulating the properties and reaching those goals(or if not getting close) will be a decades long journey. king charles' head will appear on the money, king charles will probably die, go do-lally or retire  before it is done. 

and here horsemouth sits in the sceptered isle (well on his bed actually) preparing for another round of deregulation, privatisation and (this time) decarbonisation. there are (of course) some contradictions here. 

---------

the electrician has been and gone (outside light with broken cover tripping the earth/ neutral). horsemouth waits to see if he'll get a call from TG. if not the gas safety check is due to occur today 12-3pm (this reminds horsemouth to turn the ignition for the cooker back on). ok the gas safety check dude  is here. that's it done for another year. 

it loos like another bright sunny autumnal day out (indian summer). 

where did it begin? (moon in eclipse)

'he cannot even be honest in his memoir' -  lily dunn on reading her father's journal. in sins of my father: a daughter, a cult, a wild unravelling.

it was the wild unravelling that caught horsemouth's attention, peeking out from under another larger book in the book box (powerscroft road). he has transferred his attentions to it after reading lovecraft's the rats in the walls (in volume 3 of the omnibus). 

it goes well with the auto/biographies theme (the ethics of life-writing). rather than father and son (gosse), we have father and daughter and the father has run away to join the bagwan... where did it begin? she asks herself. 

hers is a literary family - her father wrote science fiction under the name saul dunn and was a book salesman before becoming the writer and publisher of heavily illustrated new age texts, for a while he ran a publishing house publishing books by the likes of brian aldiss and harry harrison from the basement of the islington house he shared with his wife and kids. his wife was arguably the more successful author , the author of a noted biography of mary shelley (moon in eclipse). 

they were a gilded good-looking couple, but his good looks gave him plenty of opportunity to play away and was soon enough off to join the bagwan shree rajneesh. now the way the teachings of the bagwan are portrayed is as a DIY course in psychopathology ('I am responsible for my happiness. You are responsible for yours'). then there's the well-nigh gangsterism of the oregon adventure and then there are the multiple 'safeguarding failures' at the retreats. the whole thing is looked at from the view of the  people left behind. 

ok an electricity outage problem requires horsemouth's attention. later.

it is later. horsemouth has just blown out a walk with TG (and is regretting it). 

the book-box on the borderlands

'suppose a man does find it now and then useful to be two fold'  - joseph curwen in the case of charles dexter ward. 

h.p.lovecraft a racist for certain.

the documentary horsemouth watched tried to pretend that his short-lived marriage to a jewish woman and time in new york had humanised him (but horsemouth sees no evidence of that).

BUT take the case of charles dexter ward. possibly his best. other than the necromancy it is semi-autobiographical -  young man retires from life to a world of antiquarianism and self-publishing (lovecraft). the book necromancy to the list.  here he makes the key villain (joseph curwen) a slave owner and points out the existence of slavery in the north (providence, rhode island) in colonial times (and after). in doing this the book cannot help but argue slavery is a bad thing. (whatever lovecraft himself might have thought).

lovecraft is a kind of american trascendentalist (like emerson or thoreau) but his is a kind of bad transcendentalism - beyond the world of visible nature are spirits but sadly they are absolutely fucking evil. in at the mountains of madness (think the thing  crossed with scott of the antarctic's diary) the scale is altogether too cosmic for anything  human to intrude - we are but animals to be dissected for research purposes in such a world. ward  would work as a kind of southern gothic (bad things left over from slavery and colonialism and the murder and extirpation of native americans) except that it is set in the north (where people do not care to be reminded of such times).  

horsemouth is currently missing volume 2 of the omnibus but volume 3 has 'shadow over innsmouth', 'the dunwich horror' 'the whisperer in darkness' - all the classics. his source was the book-box on the borderlands just over the border in walthamstow on the way to the aldi - horsemouth always thought he could find another copy (having got rid of previous editions unread at his last remove). 

yesterday the drama of the mooseheads moved to a conclusion (after one of the neighbours complained about the smell of rotting meat). horsemouth is calling them  mooseheads for the sake of comedy. in any event the problem is on its way to solution. 

horsemouth (as you may have noticed) makes use of his power to be two fold. he does this not because he is honest but because he is dis-honest, rather than face his pains and sufferings he has tried to evade them by being two fold. willie nelson (in the documentary on loretta lynn) points out that by writing songs about painful things they strangely start to be less painful, he then quotes the stoic seneca. 

the sun shines in horsemouth's window (it has made it up over the houses opposite). yesterday it was pleasant and hot. horsemouth sat out on the front step reading and sunbathing and said hi to the neighbours as they went past. the solar gains are good this time of year. 

horsemouth coalminer's daughter (selling underconsumption)

yesterday was bandcamp friday (once again horsemouth had forgotten)

once again horsemouth recommended people purchase sproatley smith's great river wye suite named after the river that flows through horsemouth's home county of weirdshire (and to be fair some of wales too (the land of horsemouth's granny) through  powys and monmouthshire ). the water flows by where she moved to - on a  tributary  river the lugg. in the rolling leominster farmland.

the wye is in danger ladies and gentlemen they are poisoning it with excess chicken shit run off from giant chicken sheds, the environmental protection agencies cut to the bone. 

yesterday was also the birthday of judee sill (of whom you have heard horsemouth tell).

last night he watched a documentary on loretta lynn. he should probably watch  coal miner's daughter. there was a bit in the documentary when old loretta is being interviewed at her home when there's a knock at the door and her daughter arrives with a tour group of canadians (loretta has her own theme park built round her house)- the canadians pretty soon start singing coal miner's daughter at her (she compliments the guy who starts singing on his voice and helps the old lady who takes over out with the lyrics). the tour is abandoned the canadians back out the door with tears in their eyes well satisfied that they have met a star. 

horsemouth's gaff does not have a smart meter. (the company head (main fuse)  is of an old metal type with asbestos padding that would need replacing by whoever handles such things before the youngster the power company  sent round would be comfortable fitting a new meter - curiously the electrician who replaced their fuseboard seemed less bothered. 

anyway - this (horsemouth guesses) prevents horsemouth from taking part in a scheme his electricity company is running where you get paid twenty pounds a week to reduce the electricity you use between 4 and 7pm (peak demand time - when everybody gets home and cooks their tea). of course this, and differential pricing of the electricity depending on when/ where you use it are the advantages that smart meters bring (that and being able to identify expensive items to run and switching them off). 

poor people will thus be able to sell their underconsumption to richer people (ain't life wonderful) - in this way the resilience of the network to extreme events can continue to be cut to the bone and still give the appearance of adequate operation (until things go bad). 

friday horsemouth was in the meeting for people who want to access government money to insulate their social housing. horsemouth's main worry is that (suspicious creatures that they are) people will balk at the hoops they have to jump through to get the money (submitting anonymised energy bills for example). 

next week horsemouth goes to a conference for such things. he wants to enable people (himself indeed) to be able to keep the home warmer in winter - we're all getting older, horsemouth has no desire to return to the bad old days of cracking open the fireplace, burning skipped wood and coughing out his lungs all winter. 

there is some comedy in this. the housing that is the coldest and most difficult to heat cannot be helped under the scheme because the measures that would lift it up from an EPC E to an EPC C rating are too expensive and not considered value for money under this particular government scheme, examining the government value for money advice what they are prepared to pay for is the minimum and cheapest measures that lift the property up to an EPC C (but not beyond particularly), all the property that is already at EPC C (just above national average) cannot be helped under the scheme. 

furthermore it appears that this saved carbon can be sold to people who have not saved their carbon and used to generate loans to pay for the carbon saving works. again horsemouth remarks ain't life wonderful. 

today it is supposed to be sunny. horsemouth will hang his washing out on the line. he will read more of charles dexter ward. 

'as if the events of the world might become legible'

'I felt this mirroring all year as I translated the novel in quarantine, as if the events of the world might become legible, rising through the ink shadow of the page.' 

- laura marris from states of plague: reading albert camus in a pandemic by alice kaplan and laura marris.

horsemouth often returns to 2020. he thinks of it as the great reset but for many people worldwide and close to home it was work as usual (but with the added fact of death). for him it was,as he usually jokes, the apocalypse he would have chosen, the apocalypse of staying in and reading books. one of the book's he read was camus' the plague together with sontag's illness as metaphor.

by this point in the pandemic he had hit his stride with it - he posted the hanged man from the carnival of the end of the world tarot - the hanged man is upside down (deprived of contact with the ground and so deprived of the possibility of acting) but he is flying along being carried by an owl (so it's not all bad). in the tarot cards that horsemouth is familiar with it is not clear whether his hands are tied (though they look lie they might be), it is not clear whether circumstances have forced him into this role or whether it suits him to act so. 

maybe from where he is he can read the events of the world.

horsemouth has made it to friday. he has made it through the long and treacherous week. the (working) week (lest we forget). he read some documents. he plans to read some more and attend a meeting. yesterday a walk on the marshes - a model being photographed in the long grass, her dress alternately black then white. 

horsemouth ('a scholar and an antiquarian') has been reading the case of charles dexter ward by h.p.lovecraft. it is autobiographical in a way - the life of charles dexter ward in providence rhode island is strangely like the life of h.p. lovecraft in providence rhode island.

today horsemouth is unsure about. he thinks he has to do a weekly meeting.(he has borrowed ian's laptop once again to do it). thereafter he is free.  

.

horsemouth: enemy of enterprise, anti-growth, pantomime horse.

last night duncan appeared in horsemouth's dream (this morning actually) he was heading upstairs and paused to look down. 

what a terrible calumny. that people could be anti-growth. that they could be against the very thing that renders us all more prosperous (and some more prosperous than others). thus is general prosperity for the many produced out of the selfish desire for gain of the few (isn't that wonderful, look how wonderfully realistic it is, look how it effortlessly handles that contradiction, look at good come out of bad in the final reel like the silver lining on a cloud that makes getting soaked an aesthetic experience). 

horsemouth admits it freely. he is anti-growth. he has looked online but cannot find the anti-growth coalition (for he would join it if he could, pantomime horse though he is). he can only conclude that it is a secret society of wreckers aimed at increasing interest rates and so stopping people from owning their own homes (no wait wasn't that the actual effect of government policy). 

how can anyone be anti-growth? 

grow sounds terribly ecological but as our aged king points out if you grow the crop of poor people that will leave less space for those wonderful animals (and consequently less opportunities for hunting). 

malthus says horsemouth's father. bollocks replies horsemouth. 

in this the aged king is surprisingly prescient - the growth of the economy implies the destruction of nature, the rare earth metals for those computer chips and solar panels won't mine themselves, just as it implies a continuous action of primitive accumulation, the dispossession of native people from their lands, slum dwellers from their slums, peasants from their fields to make way for agri-business, 'local' populations to make way for air-bnb flats and pale ale joints. 

horsemouth is anti-growth (or so he says). capitalism must be ended or there will be ecological catastrophe. that there are limits to growth strikes horsemouth as a truism and as a plain objective fact. of course resources and goods can always be redefined, one man's rat is another's meal and so on. 

now horsemouth is not the smartest mule in the team and you should probably not take your prognostication from him. 

in which horsemouth regrets that ecological catastrophe is the most likely outcome. 

capitalism will reconfigure to a green capitalism and probably de-grow, that is living standards for the poor (for the vast majority of the earth's population) will decrease beyond bare survival for many millions possibly billions. the west will build walls to keep out the climate refugees. this is our future. and it is indeed our present. (gawdelpus).

look at us now. scrambling to insulate our houses before winter.  

of course the invocation of the holy spirit of capitalism (growth) by truss and kwarteng does not mean that it will manifest in these difficult times. in many ways western societies have lost the recipe and indeed cannot compete in attracting capital with that giant china bubble. mere production has been outsourced to china and to legacy cities at the edge of government consciousness - only the re-division of the world into warring blocks can help restructure capitalism into a form that permits western growth. 

and what we witness is this re-division of the world into warring blocks, the gas and wheat shocks from the loss of ukraine, the vast restructuring of supply chains (post financial crisis, post pandemic, post ukraine war). these are the symptoms of the change. the giant cold war with china to come. 

what horsemouth broadly thinks is that (sadly) capitalism will not collapse. that there will always be new commodities -the rat  for example, the insect burger, soylent green, that there will be some kind of green transition to solar panels and pedal power and not heating your home in winter. the poor are in many ways piloting this scheme already. 

the world is a giant game of pass the parcel and within the parcel is debt, the reckoning (the bill) for the speculative games of capitalism. there is no end to the game because the debt always needs to be paid but quite how much will need to be paid can never be made clear. 

the losses crystallize around us.

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

it's a beautiful sunshine-y morning out and horsemouth has sat too long over typing this. there's a piece to be written on recent stock market attempts to turn music into an asset class (and how this has been working out for them). soon horsemouth will be finding out how his savings are doing (they are heavily stock market implicated) - broadly horsemouth views it as the equivalent of hiding it under the mattress, as long as it is no worse than that he is happy (if it is better than that he is delighted). 

ok his stomach is grumbling and the coffee is finished - time for breafast.

crime story (at the mountains of madness)

horsemouth dreamt his drum and bass records were getting played. he distinctly remembers. he distinctly remembers looking down at them on the turntable (except they weren't going round because he could read the labels). such is the nature of technology in dreams. 

this probably follows on from horsemouth's discovery of a gunshot john peel session from 1991. he then watched a video (see another antiquated technology whose name has migrated onto later digital technologies) of MC mercury being interviewed in the back of a cab following the release of (essentially) a solo track by him under the gunshot name. mercury gets to tell the story of gunshot a leyton/ leytonstone/ walthamstow rap crew.  horsemouth thinks he saw them once (or maybe twice), once at the old city poly student union, once up in archway (does that make sense?). 

horsemouth bought crime story/ no sell out on 12" at the record shop on islington market on his way back from work one day and the rest (as they say) is history. he saw them with fundamental at city poly (at that point a duo) who he saw again at WOMAD one time who were great fun (and horsemouth loved the music). earlier there was overlord x later there was silver bullet - horsemouth's knowledge of UK  hip-hop is distinctly patchy (no hijack, no demon boyz), it wasn't until jungle/ drum and bass that he felt he understood a scene. 

horsemouth thinks he is being interviewed by all city steve who interviewed a friend of his a while ago (about the early UK graf and BMX scenes). 

how should horsemouth record this in his monthly list of his cultural activities? should he separate out the podcasts, radio shows, blogs and vlogs from his books and films? 

horsemouth is reading h.p.lovecraft's at the mountains of madness which is the missing link between edgar allen poe's  gordon arthur pym and the thing/ alien (arguably gordon arthur pym is an offshoot from rime of the ancient mariner). a few years ago he listened to an excellent series of podcasts which were (as if) the case of charles dexter ward (and other lovecraft tales) told as if by a modern investigative journalism podcast (and very good they were too). august derleth writes the introduction. 

at the mountains of madness  is another bookbox find (the one on the way to aldi) - he returned with about 10kgs of groceries (and retired to bed). 

friday horsemouth attends an online meeting. next week his american friend is back. next weekend he goes to a not-online conference. the week after the management committee meeting. 

horsemouth (unauthorised autobiographer)

'good things do not continue'  - paul bowles.

here he is (your boy horsemouth) live from the 4th of october. he (at least) is making some effort to continue. 

he is not yet sure if anything significant occurred on this date or anyone famous or musicianly was born or died on this date (he will find out later) the calendar system is pretty much a bodge anyway. he types this siting up in bed wearing a jumper and a fleece. 

horsemouth has his copy of two years by the straight  by paul bowles out (in truth he never put it away after the last time he read it). 

'an even more unpleasant prospect is having the british tv crew and animateurs arrive week after next to do that interview...'   remarks bowles on the 3rd of october 1987. the next year (10th oct) he is being advised to go to paris to be interviewed by french tv for the sake of his career. he has an unauthorised biographer over to stay with him (that is someone writing the story of his life who he does not wish to have writing the story of his life), the unauthorised biographer even puts on concerts of paul bowles music (but they are badly played). 

horsemouth used to own a book by jane bowles (the letters he thinks) but he never got round to reading it and so deposited it in a charity shop when he did the move up to h_____y six or so years ago. he thinks he has seen the british tv documentary - it has footage of paul bowles' music being played (perhaps from the concerts mentioned). bowles is  a slightly dull modren composer in the style of late satie, milhaud etc. 

horsemouth has been reading watchmen for the first time in a long time (and very good it is too). 

yesterday a wander down to leyton tube (via the estates round the back of the olympic park) about 7 or 8km all told.

yesterday was also the  anniversary of the filming of fall of the house of fitzgerald  in the teeth of the pandemic (and almost certainly against lockdown instructions). horsemouth tends to re-read the blogposts from that era rather a lot, not because he had anything wise to say about the pandemic but because (in retrospect) it was actually a period of great cultural productivity. (not that anyone has seen or heard any of it).

horsemouth enjoyed making fall...  enormously. he is sad not to be doing more of it (but them's the breaks).

there are of course two problems - the poor scholar's problem, how to stay fed and find time to study, and the poor artist's problem, how to make people aware of your great art. horsemouth has the solution to neither really. like many artists/ musicians he just likes making the stuff and doing the work he can't be bothered with the other side of it (which is of course a crucial failing). 

today horsemouth does not really know what he is up to. some wandering about he expects.   

'where does the crisis go next?' ( the hours of the day and how horsemouth fills them)

'where does the crisis go next?'  -FT 

so it's back. the crisis. the perma-crisis.the omnishambles. the one true crisis. the only true crisis in town.

the crisis of capitalism 

the crisis has many symptoms. the crisis has many (putative) causes. the crisis is a moving contradiction. an infection at the weakest link in the value chain. white bloodcells flood the site attempting to mop up risk and, bursting, release helicopter money and liquidity. overhead. a bestiary of macrophages. we live in fear of the cytokine storm of austerity.

the crisis. (last known sighting 2008) bubbles away hidden in brexit, in the arab spring, in trump voters, in the climate crisis (its unacknowledged step-child). time is running out. time is frozen. time has gone into reverse. is it deja vu we feel or sleep paralysis? has history ended or politics ended? 

can the crisis be evaded or avoided? can bad decisions be untaken? or not approved? can votes be recalled?

horsemouth's stomach is grumbling  and the coffee is nearly gone. he's wolfed down a bowl of museli and he's finishing off the last of the coffee. it is time to move on to other topics.

 the hours of the day and how horsemouth fills them

the morning. this is his favourite bit of the day. he gets to make sense (or at least re-arrange words, to redistribute meanings). he writes this. no he types this. not to produce a physical letter in ink on a physical page of paper (nothing is even printed out anymore) but to produce a change in a file that people will be able to access (if they know it is there, if they care). the metaphors migrate easily to hide the changes in literary production and the audiences who may (one day) read it. 

the evening is another easy bit of the day. the pressure to do is off. there is food to be cooked and eaten and there are films to be watched. ultimately there is recourse to sleep. if there is stuff to be done (meetings etc.) then that means (in theory) something is happening. sometimes there is TV,  TV news or even a film.

the afternoon is the difficult bit of the day. this is where horsemouth needs a task to fill in his time and feel useful. in the afternoon he often acquires a two-dwarf mood (grumpy and...).

the night. horsemouth sleeps pretty soundly. he does not recall his dreams for long upon waking. 

the activities

horsemouth has mentioned writing (not that it is writing you understand). he has failed to explain what it is he is writing and what, and who, is this writing for. 

he should probably mention walking. this is where he gets to think (and discuss with himself) but without being able to write anything down (or at least only in a very limited fashion in his notebook). beyond that there is shopping, mostly book shopping or actually in its modern incarnation hunting for books. horsemouth will often structure his walks round checking a book box (or garden walls) locally. at one time (more when horsemouth worked) it would have been a charity shop or a second hand book shop but he will often alibi longer walks with this (up to walthamstow say). 

yesterday (for example) he too the rare decision to walk west rather than walk east. 

his reading is largely dictated by what he finds (he is an omnivorous reader, a library cormorant), but sometimes he cannot generate the enthusiasm to read very much and has to return to tried and trusted favourites. 

playing guitar and singing (and learning songs or writing new ones) this he does much less than he should. similarly he has a number of other instruments round the house which he could learn to play/ learn to play better. horsemouth has let his music slide he needs to start putting effort back into it again (and to investigate new musical partnerships). 

listening to music this he does much less than he used to (the amplifier for his hi-fi is dead at the moment - his CDs look at him reproachfully). he has plenty of books to read (and plenty of CDs to listen to) but it does not always work for him. 

going and visiting friends - this (again) he does much less than he should. he was pretty solitary before the pandemic and the threat of death confirmed him in this. he tries to arrange regular walks with with friends (e.g. TG early in the week). he has a generalised plan to do more of this (before the pandemic kicks off again). 

going up the pub and getting drunk.  this is not a daily activity (or even a weekly one) but horsemouth enjoys it. 

going out to films, gigs, parties etc.  these are pretty rare (monthly activities if that). he has not been to see a film in a cinema in at least a year (and probably before that a decade). at some points he has watched loads of DVDs (from the library), now it is whatever he can find on youtube. he does not partake of TV series (in the main). this is (in any event) an evening activity. 

ok the time has come to finish this off, to post it up and to get on with the business of the day. 

that moment (the sudden collapse of confidence)

horsemouth supposes that the point with instantly everything is in ruins (once again) is that nothing has really changed.. the people are the same, the same sun still shines and rain is still wet, everything physical is exactly as it was but despite this billions (trillions) has been knocked off the value of peoples savings/ labour/ future activity. 

how can this be? if what is being measured is something objective how can the market get the value so completely wrong? (it is the same moment of disbelief that he had with the financial crisis. in that moment.).

the answer of the worshipers of the market is that it wasn't wrong but that it is becoming more accurate as events (brexit/ gas shortages caused by the war in ukraine/ crazed budgets by economic illiterates) happen. curiously no one seems to be pricing-in a tactical nuclear exchange yet. 

horsemouth's reply would be to ask why we are running the world on such a fragile operating system - one prone to the sudden collapse of confidence, one prone to such wild oscillations.  

'the lurch of what feels like dystopian science fiction (and or disaster film) into really existing actuality,'

it is of course these fluctuations that make speculation possible and rewarding and in this fashion enable a more efficient extraction of value from the people actually doing the work. (plus the appearance of mutability and flux hides the essential activity going on (this transfer of value). it is a magic trick with a slapstick hiding an underlying process. 

horsemouth is back from yet another party (what another one horsemouth? yes another one).the congregation sang nonsense songs and the children toasted marshmallows. horsemouth succeeded in drinking moderately and they fed him. it was good to see everyone again after such a long time. at a certain point he threw himself out of the door and wandered over to the bus station. his clothes still have a slight barbecue flavour. 

other than that horsemouth read science fiction (and most affecting it was too in a flowers for algernon kind of way) in the sunlight on the front steps. soon the book will be done. 

today a grey day. the regular phonecall with his mum in the evening.   

instantly everything is in ruins (once again) (the retreat from moscow)

 'there arises from a bad or unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind'  - francis bacon

sleep paralysis and the end of history

there are lots of games with time. (things are said to be stuck. things are said to be going backwards. things are said to be progressing keenly into the future. the characters are said to appear on the stage dressed in the costumes of the past. history is said to be over replaced by an era of universal social democratic beneficence)

'the lurch of what feels like dystopian science fiction (and or disaster film) into really existing actuality,'

wrote a friend of the covid crisis and the dragooning of the working class onto the death trains and off to the death factories while the middle class worked from home..

we have just had another lurch. 

the government had (of necessity, for perfectly reasonable reasons but woefully executed) racked up the debt during the covid crisis - and also realised it could not run another round of austerity to pay for it (because there has to be some economy on which to pay taxes). 

then the unfinished business in ukraine struck and all of a sudden there was a global gas shortage  - strangely the government elected not to pay for the ameliorating measures via windfall taxes on the energy companies (the sensible approach)  but by racking up more debt (and then, for ideological reasons they decided to bung in a few tax cuts for the ultra-rich while they were at it). 

the debt markets demurred and said they wouldn't be betting on this pony. and all of a sudden it all gets wonderfully more expensive. instantly everything is in ruins (once again). (it is like we were travelling in the time machine) because everything you see is made up of future earnings and debts to be paid at as yet unagreed interest rates . hard times produce their own demands for wage restraint and austerity (for penitential lent) but this may not be the feelgood party that capitalism likes but hey someone somewhere is making money out of it. 

what will happen? either a wonderfully executed pirouette or a death march into austerity and debt (the retreat from moscow). who knows things may be so bad that tory MPs elect to collapse their own government two years too early  and go to the polls and into political exile. (don't bet on it - parliamentary wages are good and the current chances of getting re-elected poor, they'll klingon). 

it is tempting to believe it is all deliberate (and that someone somewhere has a plan) but horsemouth doubts it. 

the weather is predicted to be a shocker for the weekend (but here it is sunny). a friend is off seeing other friends (this is good). there is a railstrike (hail the railway workers!). horsemouth stayed in last night (he was being good). he's due to go out tonight (being bad)). 

(p.s. horsemouth has been for a walk (it is sunny, autumnal and beautiful out there). his usual counter-clockwise route initially to the east. he has discovered he is interested in reading clarice lispector (because he has discovered that she is brazillian) after a quick stop to peruse his saved-from-a-dustbin copy of the FT.)