activate the rhythm (turn... emptiness outward)

 'the work is silent at the instant when it is left behind, and turns its emptiness outward'

so horsemouth is awake. he was awake (briefly) at 5am and full of beans but he decided it was more socially acceptable to go back to sleep). 

... and he seems to be toothache free. (touch wood). he thanks science, medicine, dentistry and the girl who most efficiently did his teeth. she turns out to have been right when horsemouth was most dubious - it was referred pain from the filling that fell out that horsemouth had not replaced. of course more bad news has been discovered in their investigations (but possibly that can wait). horsemouth resolves to get back on the bus of taking care of his teeth. 

look out the window. the sun seems to be shining in celebration. in a bit horsemouth will wander off in search of the shopping. 

perhaps not in this spirit horsemouth heads up today's missive with a quote from adorno (as quoted by edward said). we are concerned with the tendentious description of late style.  it is usually objected that it would be difficult for people to have a late style because they weren't necessarily aware they were about to die (beyond reasonable expectation). the late style is held to be a seeming  unfinishedness in the work itself, a failure to work through the relationship of all the elements, leaving them  if not as fragments then at least not fully integrated within the logic of the work. 

 'the work is silent at the instant when it is left behind, and turns its emptiness outward'  

 this is a gesture at the heart of all modern art. everything becomes a vast work of mourning (even when painted in dayglo colours and attended by clowns). it has been a long time since horsemouth has considered any of this material. he's not quite sure why he stopped.

he's about 52 pages off the end of the world that made new orleans (which has been great but in a depressing kind of way).  ultimately the city and its people survive if not prosper. slavery falls. civil rights (begin to) happen. the thing they make (jazz) goes on to conquer the world.