horsemouth (live from his bedroom) emergency broadcast network

media diary: yesterday two documentaries on radio 4 (well on i-player) and some clips on youtube, some reading of hardt and negri commonwealth.

of the radio 4 documentaries the first is a visitor to the golden valley (up at the dorstone end). in the second the director of the movie about king crimson talks about record collecting, beat-mining and DJing. keb darge has tales to tell (as do malcolm mclaren, mr.scruff, DJ mark 45 king etc.). 

of course things have moved on since even evan eisenberg's the recording angel - the ability to copy records onto another medium at home (the reel-to-reel, the cassette tape, to digitally record it into the computer) make the record something  other. 

indeed the change in habits of listening to music created a demand for vinyl at a time when the CD was supposed to be replacing it, a demand for rare grooves etc. (horsemouth lived through the dancing madness of the late 80ies and early 90ies)

how horsemouth learned to DJ

horsemouth DJed (of course he did) - he DJed drum and bass with alex (dj apparition). he'd done a lot of practicing round graham's (when people did such things) and eventually he got himself a set of record decks and a mixer. he DJed at some of laura oldfield-ford's things (once an accelerating set of 80ies dance music upping the BPMs as he went along), a party at ayesha's, and (probably in a peak  moment) he DJed disco to a room full of italian women. 

how horsemouth learned to write

as a result of not being able to get willie mays autograph as a child (no one has a pencil) paul auster resolves always to have a pencil with him -  thus he becomes a writer (and true his manuscripts are actually hand written). with horsemouth it was when he was volunteering at the anti-nuclear group (in the late 80ies). they had a PC (john's PC) as a result he learned to type (word process) to write reports on how the world should follow the lead of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and de-nuclearise. (and he emailed and such like, used bulletin boards). 

thus horsemouth learned to type (and thus to write). he would read. he would type (badly). he would read what he had written. he would re-write it and drag paragraphs about so that the piece as a whole made better sense.

and this is what he is doing now.  

often he would get too close in his quotation of his sources and be accused of plagiarism or at least excessive reliance on them. for horsemouth there is a magic moment when, having done a lot of reading and making notes, strong sure independent sentences begin to crystallise out of the mixture. as auster notes it is very involving work (and horsemouth is happiest when he is doing it). 

horsemouth is not particularly good on his feet (as they say) - he has had to train himself to get better at presenting - but he does like to write about things, to try and present arguments clearly. he has tried to move more of his tasks in this direction. 

today at 4.30 the mobile phones will detonate.(as the government  tests an emergency broadcast system - presumably in preparation for a nuclear exchange with russia). 

actually horsemouth lies - your mobile phone ringing will trigger within you a post-hypnotic suggestion that you should purchase musicians of bremen recordings.