horsemouth (and the rest)

horsemouth is up. it's a brightish day.  the sun is not quite making it through the clouds and over the rooftops opposite. but it's making an effort that's the important thing. 

today horsemouth goes for lunch round enza's (catastro/FILLE may be in attendance). they will presumably have lunch and reminisce about the production of the fall of the house of fitzgerald (and maybe even re-watch it) and horsemouth will attempt to get catastro/FILLE's new tune (with guitar by his self truly) played. hopefully it will be greeted with ahs and oohs. 

certainly horsemouth himself greets it with ahs and oohs he thinks it's the best bit of work he's done for a few years (and possibly ever), he thinks its up there with amarach, noah and his part on lush 3.1.

while horsemouth is turning perfectly innocent slint style recordings into ECM jazz his old friends triple negative have been releasing more horror. there's a very limited (20 copies) 10" lathe cut album to be had - protected by a folded blueback poster with silkscreened glow in the dark red ink.

ok there are digital files you can just listen to... listening to the racket now. the archive vomits up another lesson in horror and loss. and yet... is that reconcilliation?....no....

horsemouth was just fighting some conflict around his head and found himself daydreaming about recommending mao's on contradiction and marx and engel's the communist manfesto to someone as an accurate guide to what is going on in the world today. certainly the manifesto.  

written by marx and engels in german in 1848 for the semi-clandestine communist league the manifesto was translated almost immediately into french, english, polish, russsian and danish. over the next 21 years it is translated and published in many countries each time with a new preface.

'...however much that state of things may have altered during the last twenty-five years, the general principles laid down in the manifesto are, on the whole, as correct today as ever. here and there, some detail might be improved. the practical application of the principles will depend, as the manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing...

but then, the manifesto has become a historical document which we have no longer any right to alter. ' 

- preface to the 1872 german edition. 

it is here that derrida comes, not to capital but to the spectre that is haunting europe, to the manifesto intended to mobilise  the workers and the communists in that 1848 moment of paris and milan and beyond

so where are we now? 

well things are, as usual, fucked (as they must be under capitalism). the industrial revolution and its spreading round the globe to make capitalism a global system has put capital's nemesis and evil-twin carbon dioxide into the air. the changes this will effect upon the people of the world and upon capitalism itself may well see the end of human life on earth, or varieties of ceasarism on a global scale, or (more likely) a bodged and oppressive green capitalism of de-growth and increasing poverty, climate refugees and war. 

meanwhile horsemouth is having a rare moment of cheerfulness. the tasks he has been pursuing for the last few years are nearly done. all that remains to be seen is if they can be hoiked over the goal line. 

the book boxes continue to be good to him - barry miles' ginsberg, a roald dahl book of ghost stories (aickman, benson,  le fanu, wharton), witchfinders (a book on matthew hopkins), a puffin edition of the giant under the snow by john gordon.