before and after folk music (the strike in philosophy/ thought as work)

'this was before folk music'  - john fahey interviewed on WHYY radio july 25th 1980.

horsemouth is listening to his golden glow mixes (ok he didn't do the mixes, howard did the mixes, horsemouth just selected the tracks). hopefully through the mix of jazz and folk you can  see where horsemouth is going. 

greek witches, one of those fucking terrifying ennio morricone giallo movie soundtracks with children singing, linda perhacs, pharoah sanders, popul vuh (soundtracking herzog's nosferatu)... amon duul (sandoz in the rain), robbie basho, 

horsemouth had great fun doing them but they are a substitute for him getting on with his guitar playing, playing gigs and recording. it's a shame that they are going. they are kind of perfect for long winter's evenings. apparently they will be stored somewhere they are just going to be delinked. 

today (as he types this). yesterday (when you read this – or perhaps further on) horsemouth went for a longish wander with TG. they went down to bow locks TESCOs and back through the wilds of stratford  (and westfield east). there was plenty of youth and beauty (but horsemouth was not contributing to it).

horsemouth admits to re-reading his blogs – briefly it looks like he has made some kind of literary achievement. 

the strike in philosophy/ thought as work

there is a lecturer's strike about to happen. this of course affects philosophy and non-philosophy lecturers. this kind of assumes that thought is work (if done by philosophers). but are they required not to think for the duration of the philosophy strike (in case they come up with a piece of philosophy that would be valuable to the institutions they work for while on strike)? that is the question. 

perhaps they may safely philosophise for other employers, and on projects as long as they ensure there is no leakage back that might in any way benefit their employers (this is difficult to achieve in our biographised/ social media age).

do they have to forgo reading, writing, blogging, stimulating  conversation etc. because their work is held to concern (mainly/ entirely) thought? 

a friend proposed that weed stimulated creativity and horsemouth opined that therefore striking philosophy lecturers would have to forgo that as well.  double injustice. 

what about the vaunted separation between philosophers (brain workers) and the rest of (ahem. mere tools). 

what about for other workers withdrawing their labour? (if their work is not about thought or is it that their work is  not held to involve thought). obviously almost all work involves some thought (all that is held to merely involve a skill or a trade for example). 

is this some kind of restatement of negri's  time for revolution? - on how the work day has exceeded its bounded limits and come to invade/ occupy facets of the workers life and skills beyond the workplace and the hours of work up until their human affect and communicative abilities.  now negri holds this gives the workers additional powers over their bosses - horsemouth holds that it shows the weakness of the workers that they cannot resist the bosses invasion of the daily (outside work) life. 

it is a far cry from althusser's (failed) view of philosophy as the class struggle in theory. is not the strike an attempt to provide a break in practice. 

before, during and after  68 people were turning on the philosophers of revolution, the philosophers (for their part - adorno, althusser, arendt) were horrified with the solutions the youth had come up with. ranciere accuses althusser of staging a retour a normal (a back to work) in theory, adorno calls the police to clear the lecture theatre, arendt (see her on violence) retreats into constitutionalism and checks and balances. there are philosophers who do well out of the student movement and the new left - marcuse for example, sartre, but how does their work look now? 

in opposite to the strike from work there is of course the work of the strike - the activities that the strike requires and the thoughts that come with that. 

there is a parallel with the enforced inactivity of the pandemic for philosophers (the stage when the pandemic happened independent of their thought and without their consent) and then the sudden flurry of on-line teaching activity supplanted direct face-to-face teaching. the pandemic also followed close on the heels of an earlier  lecturer's strike.  

horsemouth phones it in. he is not even working from home. he has become economically inactive and retired. he is free to think  but his thinking is not necessarily thought (because it is not sanctified by an institution - he is like the straw man  before his certification).