once again fahey week ends in failure as even horsemouth's friends deny all knowledge of the curmudgeonly one.
there's a cartoon. it shows a well-stocked second hand record shop. two men have reached for a paramount LP (surely some mistake?) at the same time, one has a guitar, the other has a beard and glasses.
to recap;
the one with the guitar
john fahey
john fahey was a confused teenager in takoma park near washington in the early 60ies. he was a big fan of the pre-war acoustic blues but he realised that as a young white guy (and one born in the washington suburbs) while he might be able to learn to play it he wasn't going to be able to sing it in any kind of a convincing fashion. his journey towards making art out of this predicament is his hero's journey.
he makes of this music instrumental music.
he becomes a record label owner. he has brief moments in the sun, but he doesn't become ry cooder soundtrack king, he remains a cult artist. he ends up divorced, in ill-health and homeless and living in oregon. but then he is taken up by the likes of sonic youth etc. and has a second wind. and then he dies.
'the guy with the beard and glasses'
harry everett smith
harry everett smith gets into the anthropology racket earlier than fahey (basically he's a beatnik). he's also an avant-guard film-maker. like fahey he gets into collecting the pre-war blues and hillbilly records. eventually he sells a selection of his collection to moses ash of folkways records and makes the anthology of modern american folk music out of it. this is the motherlode of the folk scene (and of that later americana style).
the america that between them they depict is uncanny and dark, it is not a sunny uplands.
harry everett smith eventually gets his honours (he is in new york, he is more closely tied to a film-maker's, artists, gallery support structure) but then he too dies.
old age does for them both.
fahey is the founder of a school. one of his major acolytes is robbie basho. today is the anniversary of basho's death and fahey's birth. basho stands in for all of fahey's acolytes who go forth to populate the world with fingerpicked guitar derived (in part) from the pre-war blues. basho dies young. he falls into obscurity.
this is why it is fitting that in the cartoon they should both be contending over a paramount album (an early record label that released lots of pre-war blues and hillbilly music on shellac 78s).
horsemouth was planning to give you a matsuo basho, robbie basho, steffen basho-junghans tale but he finds the cartoon more compelling.
fahey week 2023 ends.
horsemouth is laid low by the cold/ flu (or whatever the fuck it is). symptoms - cough, sore throat, slight fever, headache. ian has come down with it also. horsemouth has a vague hope it will clear up by the weekend.
‘poetry is the clear expression of mixed feelings,’ auden in a note to the double man.
oof horsemouth is cream-crackered. he has blocked nostrils. has been coughing a lot and thus has a sore throat. that said he thinks he is progressing through the symptoms (towards being well again). he has less of a headache than he has had on previous days.
yesterday he felt unenthusiastic about the internet and so spent a lot of time reading fishing in utopia - youngstermoves to sweden, marries, gets a shit job, he survives the whole of the social democratic era (culminating in the murder of olof palme). years later, now a journalist living in london, he goes back and looks at the changes neo-liberalism has wrought.
horsemouth always finds it an entertaining read. it's very good on the power of writing
similarly entertaining are the set-up chapters to lord macaulay's the history of england - here he tells you that the aristocracy and clergy of england are a doltish bunch (as if that is supposed to endear them to you).
tomorrow horsemouth will write about matsuo basho, robbie basho and steffen basho-junghans.
well horsemouth is feeling most sorry for himself. he has a cough and a cold. (he hasn't had a proper cough for a long time - bless you covid precautions).
this will obviously slow him down (and slow down his celebration of fahey week).
the celebration of basho day he already has written (mostly). so that just leaves today and tomorrow. he supposes he would urge you to do your own research and report back.
at the mid-point of fahey week horsemouth is calling a suspension.
he's a bit knackered after a poor night's sleep where he seemingly could not stay warm (despite a hot water bottle). he has woken up with a headache and a grumbling stomach. he is currently dosing himself with a second round of coffee in an attempt to shift it.
he dreamt of a garden that was mid-way between two international powers and wasn't supposed to be there but had just grown. as myk noted 'heating dream gardens is not sustainable'.
- the opening line of section V. of burnt norton, no.1 of the four quartets, t.s.eliot.
last night horsemouth spent some time writing the post for the final day of fahey week 2023 - for basho day (but obviously he can't use this for today's post).
so now he was to come up with and write (type) an unprepared fahey week 2023 post.
fortunately he became interested in the naming of the songs on john fahey's fare forward voyagers (soldier's choice) which are allegedly lifted from t.s. eliot's the four quartets. this resulted in him speed reading the four quartets last night and doing a little reading around the topic.
the first track on the record is called 'when the fire and the rose are one.' . this is the payoff line of the whole poem (from the final quartet - little gidding). well, modified from and the fire and the rose are one.
the final track on the album (taking up all of the second side) is fare forward voyagers - itself the payoff line from the third of the quartets the dry salvages.
this repeated and varied phrase drives this section of the poem itself forward,
'fare forward, travellers!...
fare forward, you who thin you are voyaging;..
fare forward,
O voyagers, O seamen...
to the payoff line
fare forward, voyagers.'
the second track on side onethus krishna on the battlefield is a paraphrase of a line in the poem (and the subtitle soldier's choice is a paraphrase of the situation). it is from the bhagavad gita.it is the night before the battle andkrisha and arjuna are discussing ethical and religious matters - arjuna has a choice to make, he is wondering if he should renounce war.
eliot was pulled between the demands of the war he was in (the blitz, the second world war) and his spiritual and religious feelings (as symbolised by the religious community at little gidding). his is arjuna's dilemma.
fahey originally dedicated the album to swami satchidananda,but then said he did it because he was in love with the swami's secretary shanthi norris. it's fahey at his most extended, at his most basho-like, in his cosmic sentimentalist phase.
horsemouth is delighted to have discovered the four quartets and found out more about little gidding. the story from the bhagavad gita he would have known from when he was a filthy hippie living in kentish town.
last night horsemouth cooked root vegetables (potato, sweet potato, parsnip), quorn and sweetcorn, so he suspects that is what he will be eating today. he needs to pluck up the courage to get to the dentists and book an appointment to get his fallen out filling sorted.
john and alice coltrane (after interstellar space day)
yesterday was the anniversary of 'interstellar space (john coltrane thins the band down to just him and rashied ali in 1967).
the 1967 recording of john, alice, rashied ali and jimmy garrison playing some of these tunes in a full band set-up (as stellar regions) surfaces decades later (1994). the song titles are by alice - stellar regions itself is an early version of venus from interstellar space (released 1974).
after john coltrane's death alice goes on to reformulate this music in a new way in her mixing and playing on the posthumous releases and in her playing on her own solo material.
the early piano stuff (backing john coltrane) he finds less impressive - but when she gets to mix his final recordings (cosmic music, infinity etc.) her voice within it becomes clearer and then, as band leader, she manages (together with pharoah sanders) to create a deeply soulful, and yet world music-y and cosmic music. she pushes the boundaries of the instruments she takes up - the harp, the wurlitzer organ, the synthesizer, (and the instruments she brings into her ensemble, the tambura, the oud), she pushes the boundaries of the music (turning gospel into bhajans and vice versa, forming a new variety of worship music).
once again there is a second act to this life.
later there's a slight john fahey/ alice coltrane crossover - they are both booked to play a birthday gig for swami satchidananda. fahey is hanging around that scene in the mountains of lake county, northern california. fahey's most expansive music comes from this period from fare forward voyagers (soldier's choice) from 1973. - he pushes his music out onto a wider canvas reworking many of his earlier themes. the titles all come from t.s.eliot's the four quartets.
'we’re all orientophiles' said fahey of the american primitive guitarists.
there are early fahey experiments with indian instrumentation (with al wilson for example), there is his lifting of ravi shankar's improvisation on a theme from pather panchali. there is (of course) a history to be written of the diffusion of indian musical ideas into american music.
when fahey subsequently worked with bigger ensembles (the john fahey orchestras) on after the ball, old fashioned love, of rivers and religion he did not blast off for outer space,the results are more of dive into early jazz.
yesterday (a brief) meeting of the communal endeavour. a chat with enza. a bag of chips on the way home.
tomorrow horsemouth continues the fahey week celebrations. at some point he's got to get in some thoughts about harry everett smith (and other rogue anthropologists).
'man perishes entire and leaves no trace except a spark of beauty, provided he can trap it.' - czesław miłosz in the land of ulro.
on the significance of fahey week 2023 (begins 22/02/23 ends 28/02/23).
on february 22nd fahey dies.
on february the 28th he is born again.(mind you on february the 28th his acolyte robbie basho dies)
for this week (of the year as microcosm of a life) fahey is under the ground and his work is not available to us as a living presence
in the ceremonial year. we must therefore celebrate him and his works.
fahey was a difficult grumpy old man for the last years of his life (and beset by health problems, homelessness). nonetheless he had a career renaissance (a second wind). in his 'career' as a musician (he would sometimes deny having one) he was incredibly lucky. you have heard of him and you can buy/ download/ stream his music. he got to leave the spark of his genius behind.
and finally there is young fahey in takoma park, maryland, the washington suburbs, digging himself out of suburban conformity and up into the light with the least likely implement possible - the country blues.
fahey is the founder of a style. the founder of a school. he is a guitarist, but a writer also, an anthropologist, and a custodian of the culture.
horsemouth was headache-y most of the day. it took a walk and cooking diner to clear it.
in the evening he watched john cassavetes' film gloria (tough old bird takes on the mob in a gloriously grimey 70ies NY). in some ways there are parallels with fahey, cassavetes creates a situation where he can make his own movies the way he wants to make them. to do this requires some dalliance with the studio system to make the money necessary to get it going (never really an option for fahey). but then the capital costs of recording an album can be so much lower than those of making a movie.
today is interstellar space day - the anniversary of the recording of interstellar space by john coltrane and rashied ali.
yesterday he helped minty and jacqueline move. he assisted with some of the bigger, heavier items (but on the whole he left them to minty's cousins). at minty's old place they had lots of assistance (daryl and sam) - and at the new place they were lent a trolley (which was a great help).
in general though he can't but help agree with minty's cousin paul that people just have too much stuff.
horsemouth likes physical labour - with a few concomitant mental problems (packing, loading, getting bulky items round doorways and into flats)- he feels it as an assertion of the total human being. horsemouth is certainly not as strong nor as supple as he once was, he has to let brains and repetition supplant his lost muscle power.
he has lost muscle mass this much is true.
all things considered he doesn't feel too bad.
in the evening he watched the news and the detectorists (now on to series 2).
tomorrow fahey week begins with the anniversary of the death of john fahey. on the 28th it will end with the anniversary of the death of robbie basho and the anniversary of fahey's birth.
in previous years horsemouth has flitted about through fahey's catalogue and joined the dots to other american primitive guitarists. this year he thinks he will make an appreciation of other musicians/ anthropologists/ poets/ writers working related fields - alice coltrane, harry everett smith, matsuo basho etc.
horsemouth is up early. later he has to assist a friend with a move. the tooth with the filling out is giving him some grief. he'd got used to having the filling in but now he is being ghosted by his dentist.
last night (well this morning) a strange dream - he had returned to university to finish off his degree and improve his grades (but once again it was the end of term and he hadn't done the work). he was also wandering round the ruins with josee. and they went for a walk.
yesterday he went round pete's to jam. they got some done (but not much). pete fed him (risotto - very nice). and they went for a walk. the get carter theme continues to sound good and broken bicycles is starting to happen. but it may already be replaced by un valse melodie - a famous swedish song and poem in a sort of jacques brel style (horsemouth always likes to get in a song in another language).
matsuo bashō's companion on the narrow road to the deep north is kawai sōgorō, otherwise known as a poet as sora, and, shaving his head, as the monk sōgo (meaning religiously enlightened). he was a neighbour who would help bashō gather wood and fetch water and 'share with me the hardships of the wandering journey'.
horsemouth is on his coffee. soon he will try a bowl of museli then he will knock for daryl who is also coming out to assist with the move. they're not on til 10.30.
this week in 1971 journey in satchidananda by alice coltrane was released and listed in billboard magazine.
' I have come a long was since I left my house in masushino,
determined to become 'a weather-exposed skeleton''.
- matsuo bashō, records of a weather-exposed skeleton.
in horsemouth's first encounter with this poem someone had attached it to a painting of the bones of a dead horse in a ruined farmhouse. (you can see why this would appeal to him)
horsemouth is back from a walk. horsemouth tried inviting howard out but he had to cry off due to art going well.
first he walked over to dalston junction. then he got the train down to new cross. (it reminded him of going to work). he remembered the police getting the sniffer dog over to him in the station hall (encouraged by his dreadlocks presumably).
and there on the platform he met anthony (who he hasn't seen in years since pre-pandemic days). thence they took the train to blackheath (the south side of the heath). this train had earlier been delayed by horses upon the track.
the crew began gathering opposite blackheath station. once they had assembled they headed off.
in their first iteration they didn't get very far - as far as the museum of neo-liberalism (by the side of the old A20 I sat down and wept). behind the museum a parade of modern shops due for demolition. a second hand book-shop (of the pile-'em-high variety) that horsemouth barred himself from visiting, an extensive charity shop.
further down the A20 (having crossing the quaggy, it turns out and recrossing it later), they walked up into kidbrooke (through miles of pebbledashed suburbs and landscaped new build) and then over the hills of oxleas wood, past dave courtney's house to plumstead common and then the dosa house (about 8 miles all told of the actual walk).
by the time they got to the dosa house horsemouth needed a beer.
then, gentle readers, they ate.
and delicious it was. behind horsemouth's head bollywood videos played. soon a pleasant mood of fullness and satiation developed.
glyn had to go off to a prior engagement. they then walked back to the crossrail station at woolwich and had a brief visit with deus lunus. the party broke up at whitechapel railway station with everyone going their own way.
horsemouth returned via the overground to dalston junction station and then (ahem) walked back.
there will be photos (but maybe not just yet).
today (hopefully) a rehearsal with pete. monday horsemouth helps with removals. wednesday a meeting of the communal endeavour (fahey week begins).
horsemouth is off for a walk (that at least is the plan) with darsavini, john cunningman, anthony, glyn.
where? somewhere dahn sarf. he's sent howard an email in case he wants to join. in a bit he will work out how to get there.
yesterday horsemouth was feeling underwhelmed.
fortunately he cheered up when he got round to cooking and eating dinner (the usual beans and pasta thing but still). he made the unfortunate discovery that some of his sweet potatoes had gone off already (ah well they can be fed to the compost heap).
he then watched vampira with david niven (not a film that has aged well).
in the day he read some of the NLR jan-feb 2020 (the pandemic is about to hit but no-one knows it is coming and everyone is busy with their political concerns). by the march-april NLR the north of italy and the UK will be in lockdown and agamben will be arguing against it.
horsemouth will be staying in for the duration of the pandemic (and be staying sat down). the working class (of course) will continue having to go to work and risk death. curiously the first stage of the lockdown horsemouth enjoys (it is the apocalypse he would have chosen - the one of staying in and reading books and going for walks once in a while).
he views the walk as part of a re-connection with his life from before the pandemic.
in the jan-feb edition of the NLR he finds susan watkins' britain's decade of crisis an able summary of the insanity of british politics up until that point. it takes us up to boris's election victory and the crazed get brexit done era. of course since then things have got much worse as the financial markets have bounced the bill for brexit (and the ukraine war and climate change etc.) back onto working people rather than onto the rich (surprise surprise).
the populist candidates have all been deposed, the leveling up will not happen, the tory opportunity to take the north has (largely) been lost, and we face austerity all round. the government are reduced to beating value out of 50 year olds who want to leave the workforce and live on their savings (how very very dare they).when the government stands up and argues that the main economic impediment to prosperity is that wages cannot be lowered sufficiently then we have to ask where we are.
anyway (as he said) horsemouth is off for a walk. he will try to produce a decentish account of it.
'I crossed the barrier gate of hakone on a rainy day.
all the mountains were deeply buried behind the clouds.'
- the records of a weather exposed skeleton, matsuo bashō.
outside it is a greyish cloudy day. horsemouth has the window open at the top to air his room (mind you he is wearing two jumpers).
on this journey (a 9 month journey made from august 1684 to the summer of 1685) bashō takes along a young man, chiri, as a friend/ as a kind of servant (he is the sancho panza of the expedition). the translation describes him, in, to horsemouth's ear, an infelicitous manner, as a friend indeed. horsemouth always hears this negatively as in the conjoined phrases.
'a friend in need is a friend indeed' and 'a friend in need (is a pest)'
it is the first of bashō's famous wanderings. bashō is already in his forties (he dies in his fifties). the copyist soryu (sorry horsemouth has failed to find the bar over the letter u letter) writing in the early summer of 1694 says;
'the only thing to be regretted is that the author of this book, great man that he is, has in recent years grown old and infirm with hoary frost upon his eyebrows.' - postscript to the narrow road to the deep north.
bashō alternates prose and poetry (which is interesting) and there are illustrations (in horsemouth's copy). here horsemouth has rendered the prose as if it were poetry. the alternation is interesting. horsemouth may try it himself.
horsemouth is used to historic japanese wanderings (at least in films) - zatoichi, shogun assassin, those ninja movies. later journeys will take bashō more time - for the narrow road to the deep north he was away for two and half years.
last night horsemouth watched the C4 news and later the night of the demon (jacques tourneur's classic). horsemouth is getting to the point where he can join in with the dialogue. arguably tourneur made even better films ringing the changes on film noir. horsemouth keeps an eye out for them.
er. today. horsemouth does not know. some more reading. some more walking about. it is due to be a little warmer all the way to the end of the month. yesterday he had planned to go get some oil and to check the cashpoint to see how his savings were doing but in the end he just went down to the estate shop.
a black and white cat has just padded past. the 'k' is still sticky on horsemouth's netbook keypad (try typing that with a sticky 'k').
so horsemouth did two things last night (ok no really he did three things).
first off he watched hereditary - spoiler alerts.
artist and family fall into the hands of crazed cultist nutters/ have been in their hands all their lives - carnage ensues. horsemouth doesn't know if he likes it. he generally just feels sorry for the people in these movies. once again it is a movie with mourning and the need to do the work of mourning at its heart, or at least a movie about the dangers of that work. (at least it should put people off the table-knocking).
the youngest daughter is not the right vessel for lord paimon (the cultist nutters' object).. she must be killed and gotten out of the way for the eldest boy to become the vessel.
spoilers end.
second off he was vaguely aware of the resignation of nicola sturgeon.
nicola sturgeon has gone down to defeat (so end all political lives). this horsemouth thinks is because the way towards independence is blocked by an intransigent westminster rather than trans rights issues - the 'using the next election as a referendum' strategy is risky, there may be an upcoming funding scandal. nicola has jumped ship.
it would be a brave SNP leader who can establish their authority and connection with the electorate quickly and deeply enough to risk the mortal leap of 'election as referendum'. the SNP will have to regroup and reform (and in a hurry).
beyond this the clear damage done by brexit undermines all retro-nationalist arguments (including the SNP one), but (conversely) the clear damage to greece/ portugal etc. undermines 'the EU/ globalisation is wonderful' argument (at least for some countries).
so what happens instead?
arguably we are heading towards a new labour government in the south and the 'independence short of independence' the scots can gain from this. horsemouth says that even with britain's wonderfully amplifying first-passed-the-post electoral system he doesn't see new labour winning a sufficient landslide majority to do what it likes without SNP assistance (but it is not impossible).
beneath the political arrangements of representative democracies are patterns of trade and the needs and wants of a globalised capitalist system. and yet there are gains to be made from reformism and the need to manage economic disparities within and between regions.
thirdly horsemouth received the phone call (family stuff).
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in the day he went for a few wanders and read the world shuffler by keith laumer (powerscroft road book box). today horsemouth has stuff he doesn't want to do (but that he should get on with).
with a dead sound on the final stroke of nine...'.
yesterday horsemouth walked over to dalston kingsland and got the train down to wapping to meet mike and mike in the pub (the turner's old star). the lads played pool and then they wandered off across the city (noting wrenish churches and sites of t.s. eliot poetry, london bridge, st.mary woolnoth (a hawksmoor)).
as the passed by st.katherine's docks horsemouth noted how it was used in the film version of dennis wheatley's to the devil a daughter.
the plan was to walk up to wc1 via that pub in ely place. they paused to avail themselves of the facilities (being old men) and have a swift half at the the wetherspoons next to the accursed share (or something similar) just past tower hill and then they completed the journey.
in the pub in ely place (ye olde mitre - down a narrow ginnel) they installed themselves in the snug and drank (moderately) and ate a toastie. (for once horsemouth was managing to drink sensibly). they were joined by a holidaying family from bude (young headmaster, wife, kids, friend who lived in london). horsemouth's party declared themselves the actors from the young ones grown aged (or it may have been the young headmaster's projection). they exchanged salutations and hopes for the collapse of the current government. soon enough the kids dragged the adults off home.
thence horsemouth's party sensibly headed off in search of a 38.
when horsemouth got back to hackney he was distressed to see that the chip shop was shut.
well after all that horsemouth's filling has fallen out.and in other news the news tends to be pretty bad. he has to wait until this evening to find out how bad the bad news is going to be. but in good news a friend is moving (so there's the opportunity for some manual labour).
today is the anniversary of the recording of stellar regions by john and alice coltrane, rashied ali and jimmy garrison.
yesterday (earlier) horsemouth had been out for a wander to sit in the sun and read the matsuo basho (and the translator's essay). he put the mop round the kitchen and brushed down the corridor. he read a little of de quincey's on murder considered as one of the fine arts on the train on the way down (seeing as he was heading to wapping).
horsemouth has been contemplating the puppet show. strangely horsemouth finds himself in the horse (of course) but also in the wizard (who was supposed to resemble howard (beard etc.) - but in fact probably looks more like horsemouth, horsemouth now thinks). horsemouth has been a wizard before (of course) but the hat was different. howard's hat does not match the wizard's hat. there is sound (but it's a bit quiet).
it's a misty morning out there.
so horsemouth has been having a busy social whirl.
first offyesterday a visit to the supermarket (aldi) and the aldi bookbox (not actually at aldi only merely nearby).
then a visit round to pete's to play some music (tom waits' broken bicycles that sort of thing).
then a visit down to minty's to pick up some books (narrow road to the deep north etc.) minty mentioned books and horsemouth was round like a shot. (horsemouth's efforts to slim down his library truly are doomed). expect some narrow road to the deep northery on this channel soon (the mekas is a bit of a disappointment) .
then a visit up to his brother's (for dinner) and finally the journey home. the train was strangely quiet. horsemouth was there early (he can't time journeys/ he has trained himself to be everywhere early).
today a strange start. horsemouth was expecting it still to be sunny (he had miscounted the days). he slept but averagely (he was not quite warm enough). it is a tricky balance for him between warm enough and too hot.
it is valentine's day (horsemouth will be keeping his head down). there are comparatively few examples of horsemouth delivering valentine's cards (they were all disasters).
later he may be out to see a friend who is over visiting (but he also wants to go and play guitar tomorrow so he will have to be careful). oops no - the guitar tomorrow just popped - so now horsemouth will have to be doubly careful.
yesterday horsemouth failed in his revolutionary duty (he did not go off and play guitar with catastro/FILLE. it did not happen because having been to the william morris museum with howard they fell to drinking in a variety of walthamstow hosteleries.
the next day horsemouth wake up sick and hungover. (howard messaged that he was fine). foolish horsemouth (and it was all going so well too). before this horsemouth and howard engaged in an impromptu puppetshow having found their sock-puppet avatars at some conversation platform or utopia station (or whatever such relational art installations are called these days).
it's a rare sighting of howard. he's on half-term for a week (and he's probably going in for some of that) and then he's back to the grind.
on the sunday evening horsemouth returned home and made some progress on reading the jonas mekas book (follower of fluxus, film-maker and poet) not to be confused with george maciunas (overlord of fluxus). all the acolytes of fluxus are here too, here's billie and george maciunas at their flux wedding (here is jonas mekas at that wedding dressed as a monk). here are john and yoko. here are various lithuanian farmers and artists (honourary members of fluxus).
he did his usual weekly phonecall to his mum. sadly the local fox has been at the chickens ad murdered all but two of them. such are the hazards of country life (here the many foxes just shit everywhere and tear open bin bags in search of chicken meat).
this evening horsemouth is going back up to walthamstow (well a bit further on really) to visit his brother. tuesday some friends are back in town. wednesday he goes to that belated practice with catastro/FILLE.
‘the only thing that matters in life is collecting one’s thoughts’ - italo svevo
svevo ived in charlton for a while (but mostly he lived in trieste). his 'new' book makes up an alternative biography, an alternative life.
nadine dorries will step down as an MP (that at least is some good news). she is disappointed in the conservative party. as she said it she made an effort to cover her mouth because her mouth had reached the decision ahead of her brain. to be fair its not her saying that, she's just channeling the omniscient gods-eye view of the mills and boon novel she thought she was in. she's surprised at what her mouth is saying, but there, it's said it now.
bye-bye (at the next election).
horsemouth has visited the allotment.
he has traipsed down to the sally army (the history of england - lord macauley.50p) and across to the top of the market (the will to knowledge, michel foucault,1.50). there was nothing of interest in the one book box he encountered. he spent the afternoon dozing and reading the foucault (before going for a wander over to the allotment).
maybe he should have started with the mekas (like he promised)
horsemouth is making good progress with the foucault. (funnily enough he has it in french somewhere and once made a good fist of translating the first few pages - mildred (whose parents were anglophiles and had named their children mildred and alfred) was most impressed).
he finds it strangely similar to the ranciere
'for a long time , the story goes, we supported a victorian regime, and we continue to be dominated by it even today...'
instead of a myth of sexual repression and silencing we have a proliferation of discourses aimed at controlling peoples' sexualities, but sexuality is not repressed so much as engendered and rendered more into discourse. conversely (it seems to the mule) the myriad aesthetic discourses (in ranciere's the aesthetic regime) aim at a silencing of art's true potential (but in fact engender it's potential).
the upcoming week is shaping up as follows - sunday afternoon catastro/FILLE and some guitar stuff, monday eve (his brother), tuesday (late aft.) the mikes (T and H). he's not clear what he is doing over this weekend (or next). he will check his email in a bit.
last night horsemouth dreamt, having watched a film where the improbably active sean connery gets the improbably dark and lovely catherine zeta-jones. it was a caper movie, and we all know that the caper will bring them together. but sean is playing an an old, cold and cautious man, he has his doubts.
the millenium bug based banking fraud is just a mcguffin (as they say) to bring them together. and so with the beautiful logic of films it does.
later that night (or possibly early next morning) horsemouth dreamt his own caper movie.
it was set in an old english village/ modern distribution depot. the object of his affections was grumpy to be up so early (as the alighted from the train). with horsemouth in knowledgeable guide mode they went off in search of coffee and breakfast. horsemouth then went off scouting but when he was returned was distressed to find the object of his affections snoozing in a corner.
later (or maybe she had become someone else by this point) she was wandering around hand in hand with a love rival. horsemouth pretended interest in the surroundings for a while and then claimed to have received a text about a domestic emergency.
and so to wakefulness.
yesterday horsemouth walked over via a poorly planned route (he ended up doubling back on himself at one point, arriving at a road he had already crossed). so it took slightly more than the allotted hour, all to save 1.60 in busfare he thought (as the buses thundered past and he trudged wearily on).
today more wandering about alibied by the task of buying second hand books/ visiting book boxes. he will almost certainly try the salvation army first (source of two recent guitar cases). he will wander out to check on the allotment (not that anything needs doing up there - just that he lies being there). at one point it had a solid gate, one approached through the forest, arrived at the forbidding door, opened it with the key and revealed the clear skies and geometrically laid out open spaces beyond (it was like something out of alice in wonderland).
he has brought jonas mekas' lettres de nulle part (letters from nowhere) to read (having found it in a book box on colenso road). .
'better than staying in all day' remarked the builder. (he was standing around in the cold at the time, chatting with his workmates in the van just outside horsemouth's window)
'is it?' mused horsemouth (to himself). 'is it really?'
horsemouth found work pretty painless overall. sometimes he would get overtired and stressed and lose perspective but overall he liked the predictable routine of it/ the variety of it. then, of course, covid came along and accelerated the demise of horsemouth's comfortable little corner. broadly horsemouth's work started of well-payed and plentiful and ended up poorly paid and sparse. it started off funding his saving and ended up providing him with just enough to pay the rent. now it is a hell-hole of casualisation and buying your own insurance. (horsemouth had several opportunities to jump ship early but failed to take them - he is a lazy thing).
eventually he took the redundancy cheque and the advance on his works pension (and his tiny works pension itself) and decided to attempt to do the very post-covid thing of retiring early. the pandemic taught him it was possible to survive on very little money. he is thus the source of all your economic woes (at least according to the government).
horsemouth does not stay in all day he goes for walks, he does the shopping, he checks on the local book-boxes. he reads, plays guitar (he should do more) and watches bad films and documentaries on youtube. he tells you about his cultural production and consumption here.
he will not therefore be needing the book or training of 5 tips for finding motivation at work.
the government (in turn) are having a brisk round of austerity and inflation to prove to horsemouth (and the rest of the shirkers) that it is not possible to survive on very little money and that they need to get back to work.
here is linda perhacs in her second wave with her new single. that's a nice vocal blend. chimacum rain is the one that does it for horsemouth (which to their credit they open with). parallelograms is pretty great too. he supposes the thing vaguely like it is tim buckley's lorca.
last night he watched the lighthouse (a documentary on himself and sten's domestic affairs and the condition of their habitation). he has taken to filling out reviews on goodreads (some bookish friends are on there). you know, broadly the sort of thing he would write here. he has no books to review for yesterday, flow my tears, the policeman said has gone up into the stacks.
today he goes to feed sacred cats. he will try to pick something interesting to read out of the stacks to take with him. it will take him a while to get set up when he gets there.
at the weekend howard is freed (half term) but whether he will have the energy to do anything is another matter. sunday horsemouth is back to catastro/FILLE's to work on turbulence. he should listen to it and begin to block it out.
hark! is that the first housing minister of spring?
rachel maclean MP appointed minister of state in the department for levelling up, housing and communities.
'in may 2022, during an interview on sky news, maclean suggested some people struggling with rising prices could consider working more hours or getting a better-paid job.' (wikipedia)
it is something of a joke in the housing sector that housing ministers never last long in post (49 days is - horsemouth believes - the record). and there are a lot of them because it is the ministry for leveling up, housing and communities (and several other things that michael gove is keen on).
it's a complicated picture. gove is still the boss man, the minister of state for housing and planning is still lucy frazer, lee rowley is still in there as parliamentary under-secretary of state for local government and building safety. (you see after grenfell building safety is important but they still can't make any real progress with it because the unsafe shit has been built already).
yesterday's book was flow my tears the policeman said (charity shop walthamstow. two squid, SF masterworks series). it's a classic PKD headfuck of a novel (reality not being reliable check, time being out of joint check, women being mentally ill check) and in the middle of it an intense discussion of the hazards of love (and the concomitant grief and mourning). horsemouth read it a long time ago and had largely forgotten it. .
while PKD is someone who loves and appreciates women he is no feminist - he sees women as dangerous, irrational creatures (but at least he sees them).. in general his male characters have their difficulties also, defects of perception and affect (they are also dangerous irrational creatures - but less so). often he gets you on their side by means of sympathy, making them nebbishes and working stiffs at the mercy of a technological world.
here our protagonist is a singer and a variety show host, the result of a government eugenics program, he is constantly described as 'magnetic' and persuasive. he's just not that sympathetic a character, but our entry to the book is his fall and king lear type wanderings. the policeman is the real sympathetic character here - a normal 'ordinary' person who is merely smart, hard working and principled - he is the mechanism of the second part of the drama. his grief is the real heart of the book.
and the grief is given musical form by dowland (lachrimae - tears).
horsemouth walked up, probably 5 miles there and back, through the valley of the agapemonites in the mist and fog. horsemouth has reconfigured his PKD bookpile to allow for his new purchase - there it has gone up into the stacks.
this morning he went for a quick wander (while the broadband connection was restoring itself) in the mist and fog and with the school run parents and kids.
tomorrow horsemouth is off sacred cat-sitting. he will be up in the cloud forest. the lamb track horsemouth first heard probably 25 years ago. it's nice and relentless (it's his favourite thing by them, the pseudo drum and bass they did, the thing for which they are famous, he just finds fussy, the vocals overly mannered).
horsemouth is making a number of belated discoveries.
the first one is that he is an old man of nearly 60. the photos show him this.
in truth horsemouth suffers from body dysmorphia - he had always assumed he was going to stay at about 30 forever. for a long time he has been positively celebratory about the (not quite imminent) arrival of his bus pass (and later on his state pension) - now he regards it with the warmth usually reserved for the sudden arrival of a tombstone.
that said, the ability to contemplate being able to afford stopping working deeply appeals to horsemouth.
the second unfortunate discovery he is making is that many people are ahead of him in this race to leave the planet, not just random celebrities or influential musicians but people he knows.
horsemouth finds every day in the sun genuinely delightful (despite its sadnesses). he can't understand wanting to check out early.and this is horsemouth saying this.(mad crazed difficult person that he is).
on the anthology of american folk music considered as a collage
last night horsemouth started pulling on a harry everett smith thread - it lead him tothe anthology of american folk music considered as a collage (smith's main strategy). and yet, as someone points out a recently releasedanthology of the b-sides to the anthology (less 3 songs that use no longer acceptable racial descriptions - if indeed they ever were) is just as affecting and spooky. and indeed how central is the anthology to the 60ies fol revival - bob dylan claims it as central, and four years later he claims it was not central, what are we to make of this collage?
anyway horsemouth thinks he will do more reading on this and engage with it more deeply during fahey week (22nd feb - 28th feb).
it's a misty day. horsemouth will probably go for a walk (possibly up to a second hand bookshop).
it's bright though (the triple suns of helliconia are out).
meanwhile horsemouth is sitting up in bed (wearing a t-shirt, a fleece, a jumper, trousers, socks and underwear) and typing this. in a bit he will consult his wordbank of stored wisdom (to see if any of it can be seamlessly mixed in).
nope nothing there.
at first horsemouth was worried that he was going to be in no internet hell. eventually service was restored. power cycle horsemouth believes it is called.
and so horsemouth is here.
yesterday he was round at suke's working on one of her tunes called turbulence, one inspired by that cosmic free jazz stuff, and a little bit of black sabbath (or is that jupiter bringer of jollity?). at some point it settles down into the going south vamp from third stone from the sun.
suke's inspiration was leon thomas's the creator has a master plan. (horsemouth dates this kind of jazz back to coltrane's a love supreme but it may go back earlier or in fact descend from sun ra).
santana for many years would lift a section of third stone for live (roughly round about gypsy queen by gabor szabo). third stone is one of the great all time journeying through outer space cosmic tracks.
horsemouth supposes the other two guitarists he'd have in this list have both played for pharoah sanders - sonny sharrock and tisziji muñoz.
across the road it looks like someone else is going for a loft extension (and thus further depriving horsemouth of sun in winter/ but not preventing himself and poor ian from being baked in summer).
horsemouth likes cities because more people can meet and interact and live their best lives. they can move around by means of public transport and bicycles (reducing transportation carbon emissions). trees can be planted to make the streets shadier in summer, there can be allotments and parks. because there is more money up and walking around it is possible for poorer artistic people to make a living - hence horsemouth is interested in increasing the number of members of the communal endeavour (poor artistic types who want to live in the city).
he would welcome loft extensions, basement extensions (hell any kind of extension) in endeavour property (he is in favour of 'garden-grubbing' and increasing the population density of the city), but the members in that house have to want it (and they may not).
in general the direction of travel within the co-op has been from larger shared houses (and communal living) towards two-bed shares (on the basis that these will be easier to manage with less conflict within them). this may (ultimately) be a mistaken view but at least it provides a direction that increases the number of members housed.
anyway it is a monday and a back to the tasks of the week type day. outside it is bright and sunny (horsemouth has already been for a walk).
your favourite horsemouth song? probably one of the early funny ones.
horsemouth has got some pens so he can make a note of stuff (so he has stuff to mind when he comes to type this in). he walked over to asda to do this (2 miles each way cf. aldi 3 miles all told). the result is that they are not his favourite V7 black pens but uniballs and in a variety of colours (still. they'll do). he's feeling happier already.
in a minute he'll try a wander up the book box. (done. no joy. - ok small yellow collapsible widgets bucket.)
horsemouth is also enjoying the little green diamonded rug he found on the way back from somewhere and stuck in the washing machine. he gave his other rugs a shake out. the rugs come out in winter (and go back into storage under the bed in summer.
today (later) he's off to see suke (5 miles all told). it is over a year since he last played a gig (the memories feature on facebook has just reminded him). er. he should get on and play more gigs.
'monday will start cold, with a widespread frost likely...' weatherwise there's sunshine (but there's also a cold snap peaking wednesday but lasting out to next monday).
here we have just passed 100 days of sunak (forgive horsemouth for the 120 days of sodom gag). does he have another 100 in him? probably the point of greatest danger comes after the may local elections - likely to be a bit of a drubbing for any tories that are willing to stand (and it may be difficult to get them to do even that).
'an essay in which the author confesses he is on the side of man (for lack of anything better)'
- essay title by czeslaw milosz (repunctuated in a horsemouth style)
'he was neglected by people who placed great value on meat, alcohol, comfortable houses, and luxurious cars, and tolerated words as if they were harmless hobbies'
- on the poet robinson jeffers from 'visions of san francisco bay' (by czeslaw milosz)
right now a friday night (and there's fuck all on telly). tomorrow horsemouth needs to get on with things. his teeth have at least stopped hurting (in any meaningful way).
saturday he has no real plans (a walk - you don't say). sunday probably some more music and a full moon and a talk with his mum on the phone.
horsemouth has written a little onthe significance of fahey week, which he must save until at least the 22nd of february, and a little on progress with the business plan of the communal endeavour, which he will publish as soon as the progress is defininite.
june 2019, parliament passed legislation committing the UK to becoming a net zero-carbon emitter by the year 2050. the requirement for all social housing to be EPC C by 2030 goes back to 2017. this presents a huge challenge for social landlords, not the least one of where is the money to come from.
horsemouth needs to get some pens so he can make a note of stuff, so he has stuff to mind when he comes to type this in.
last night he was strangely sleepless. a part of his soul had begun to talk and have a dialogue. now this is all very nice but really a dialogue needs to be had with another person.
the elijah mclaughlin is very good. the album is available to pre-order. horsemouth is of course reminded of space is deep by hawkwind. rather than the sundry modernists mentioned in elijah's press release.
a cat has just passed. horsemouth's stomach is grumbling. there's a need to get on.
the giant mechanical clanking bears of the bin men have just been (two whole bags of recycling and horsemouth will check soon if they've taken the rubbish or if that's next week). recycling takes are up since the council bought the new moebius designed lorries. every once in a while one will get up on its hind legs and roar.
sadly horsemouth has very nearly finished his coffee already.this morning he was dreaming about being involved in a coup attempt in pakistan (he was head of the airforce with some kind of a radio device). it took him a while to get comfortable last night.
he just had a bit of a play. rain and snow and katie cruel - neither of which he has successfully landed yet.
while horsemouth was up at aldi's yesterday punxsutawney phil (the famous groundhog) made his prognostication. six weeks more of winter it is.
just a day or two over two and a half years since the release of musicians of bremen volume four.
today is bandcamp friday - friday 3rd february (when musicians of bremen get to keep more of the money from the sale). so if you have any gaps in your musicians of bremen collection today would be a good time to fill them.
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a friend has decided against an air source heat pump and gone for an A rated combi-boiler instead. why should heating with electric be 3.5 times more expensive than heating with gas?
er. the way forward (we are being told) is air source heat pumps (but maybe not just yet). these are the magical 3 times more efficient than conventional electric water heaters giving you are decent chance of heating your water and house for the same money as gas. the first step is to insulate your house down to an annual heating usage of about 90kwh/m2/year (a good EPC C - they are probably there already tbh). you need an external box about the size of a fridge (sited about 1m away from the neighbours) and space for an internal water storage tank. if you are end of terrace you'll have more heat loss out of that wall and would probably need either external insulation or internal insulation on it
at the weekend maybe more guitar. soon enough it must be howard's half term.
so groundhog day (once we were sacred bears) imbolc - kind of the midway point between winter solstice and spring equinox (pulled a week or so out of place to align it with the start of the month) the point when one can allow ones-self some hope. if not quite out of the depths of winter at least up into the shallows
a sunny snap then a cold snap (says bbc weather). horsemouth seems to have gotten his psychic economy out of sync - he kind of feels like it's a monday (after it was the weekend on tuesday).
horsemouth is mercifully hangover free after his night out on the tiles with an old friend (quite how he is not sure). he has posted a picture that appears to show him dozing in a private members club while wearing a suit and leather shoes. dozing and reminiscing and drinking a glass of claret.
(of course this photo has been faked up in photoshop)
how much is the membership and are women allowed in? asked a friend.
membership is too much. women are admitted. there as a guest wearing my only pair of black shoes (second hand bought that day), a second hand blazer with a button missing (bought that day) and some work trousers. replied horsemouth.
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