'... I will write in spite of everything, absolutely, it is my struggle for self-preservation'

 ' I have no time. general mobilization. K and P have been called up. now I receive the reward for living alone. but it is hardly a reward; living alone ends only with punishment. still. as a consequence, I am little affected by all the misery and am firmer in my resolve than ever. I shall have to spend my afternoons in the factory. I won't live at home, for elli and the two children are moving in with us. but I will write in spite of everything, absolutely, it is my struggle for self-preservation.'

kafka wakes up to the arriving horror of the first world war. 31st july 1914.

kilvert - nothing til lammas.

'in the forenoon I was at the quakers' meeting house in lombard street, and in the afternoon at st.paul's...'  - james boswell, 31st july 1763. 

the writers are busy writing. 

soon boswell's time in london (for this time) will be over.  until then he is a busy bee. 

the makers of iris  have run a switch on us - they have iris murdoch singing the lark in clear air at various points in her life (as kate winslett, as dame judi dench), and in particular when she was supposed to be giving a talk, one of the early signs of the onset of alzheimers, in fact, in real life, on that occasion,  she sang the silver swan (orlando gibbons). this is similar to the moment when julie christie sings through bushes and through briars  in john schlesinger's version of far from the madding crowd (that's not the song she sing sin the book, but it is better suited to the meaning of the film). 

like many irish tunes the lark in clear air is based on the marriage of an older tune the young taylor/ kitty nolan with new lyrics provided in belfast by sir samuel ferguson and a new arrangement. 

the jazz vinyl collecting hobby underwent a strange expansion during covid and now, as the claims of the economy reassert themselves, it is dying back. horsemouth is intrigued by people who have enough money to search out the first press of a record and the most recent audiophile edition also. he is intrigued that people would have a FOMO (fear of missing out) response to these and believe in some way that jazz records can be used as 'a store of value'. (sorry people, this is madness).

it does, however, fit in with his rereading of attali and thinking about the political economy of the music industry. 

summertime by j.m. coetzee continues to go well. the academic goes around interviewing the people who knew the poet  'john coetzee' (who is dead already) - they pretty much all thought he was a cold fish, and they pretty much all doubt that there is anything to find out by interviewing them. 

'what of his diaries? what of his letters? what of his notebooks? why so much emphasis on interviews?'

'... I have been through the letters and the diaries. what coetzee writes there cannot be trusted... in his letters he is making up a fiction of himself  for his correspondents; in his diaries he is doing much the same for his own eyes...' 

of course what kafka wanted preserved of his writing  (the most concentrated product of his labours) and what max brod preserved of him are wholly different. 

today a grey day and a journey into town (probably). the chicken coop still seems to be standing despite the absence of an electric fence to keep the sheep off. (maybe it was never necessary, maybe horsemouth's dad just liked having an electric fence).  

'when they didn't take pictures'

'I wonder how people used to remember when they didn't take pictures...' - chris marker (as quoted at the start of robert kramer's point of departure). 

howard has been to visit the moki cherry exhibit at the ICA. (myk also horsemouth believes). yes there are pictures (certainly from howard's visit). horsemouth is vicariously living off them.  

when they didn't take pictures? that is not so long ago. mobile phones it is only with their arrival that everything being filmed and recorded begins to happen. 

“before, you had people gentrifying neighbourhoods, now, with remote working, you can gentrify countries.” -  digital nomad working remotely in portugal

that said, look at the photo the observer chooses to illustrate the article with, it is beer o'clock at sunset on a terrace  in lisbon. it is the golden hour again. the world looks perfect.

someone has broken up the years since 2010 into nostalgia (for which horsemouth reads 'fallout of the 2008 financial crisis and austerity'), , 2016 (aka brexit) and plague (for which horsemouth reads 'plague').  'are we traumatised or what?' asks justagirl on twitter.

(p.s. covid is on the rise in the west country as people jam themselves down there, it is not 'over')

anyway horsemouth therefore goes to read the history of the last 15 years (and makes prognostication of the next 15 years) as,

austerity - brexit - plague - (climate crisis)

on this day in 1914 kafka is writing fragments.  

in 1870 kilvert is still on holiday in cornwall 'this morning we met two girls smartly dressed and driving cows to market with parasols up.' 

in 1763 boswell and johnson 'took a boat and sailed down the silver thames... we landed at the old swan and walked to billingsgate, where we took oars and moved smoothly along the river. we were entertained with the immense number and variety of ships that were lying at anchor. it was a pleasant day and when we got clear out into the country, we were charmed with the beautiful fields on each side of the river... when we got to greenwich... we walked about and had a good dinner.' 

this is how people remembered things when they didn't take pictures.

the coetzee (summertime) is going well. 'john coetzee' (our fictional character) has entered the university system - he will eventually become an academic and poet sufficiently noted to have researchers investigating his life after his death.  he (john coetzee) has achieved some of the immortality he was looking for (sadly the women in his life are not going to have much positive to say about him). 

we move towards lammas day. it's a bright sunshine-y morning, after yesterday's debacle of off/on rain he's unprepared to take a bet on the weather (it predicts rain this afternoon and over tonight).  

'thirteen years of tory rule...' (mysterious automata)

good morning! good morning!

'then, as now, UKania is at the fag-end of thirteen years of tory rule: the regime in place no less discredited, its economy flagging still more visibly... '

and now? we wait...

the new NLR is out. it features four articles originally published in italian in the journal il contemporaneo in 1963 covering books, films, politics etc. and featuring the usual suspects of the time peter wollen, raymond williams, eric hobsbawm and ralph miliband. there will doubtless be much to say on neo-realism and its influence on the new wave of british directors. (horsemouth would be shocked if there wasn't)

this is the sort of thing horsemouth likes. it enables him to demonstrate that he is at least aware of the existence of other countries, other cultures, other languages. 

otherwise horsemouth has been reading j.m.coetzee's summertime in which he gives a character called john coetzee an especially rough time. john coetzee is a cold, unfeeling, klutz - he takes a cousin  out for a drive and the car breaks down, an ex-girlfriend says he seems autistic and to regard people as mysterious automata,   he is a vegetarian in the midst of apartheid carnage (how futile is that?). 

an academic attempts to patch together 'john coetzee's life' into something usable.

vegetarianism often crops up in coetzee's other fiction and non-fiction. horsemouth has been a vegetarian for the best part of 40 years now. it never occurs to him to think about it.  

horsemouth started summertime without realising that it ends with the death (or at least the end of life care) of  john coetzee's father. (that may be a little tough). horsemouth had read it before but he didn't remember it, there's another coetzee round here somewhere he thinks. 

great. when horsemouth got up the sun was shining and he went around the house on a watering mission. now it is raining (though softly).  (and it has just rained again)

horsemouth has published his films, gigs, books, events list for july 2023 

a film in italian, a film in german, two expats talking (spain and mexico respectively), lampedusa on the sirens. 

on this day in 1914 kafka is still near berlin in a writer's colony of sorts. 

'made jottings on the trip in another notebook. began things that went wrong...'  

on this day in 1763 boswell is writing letters to shore up his 'future' - 

'I have touched every man on the proper key, and yet have used no deceit.'

the kilvert doesn't seem to be to hand (has horsemouth left it somewhere? he's found it). 

when horsemouth went to post this the first time the internet went down. he then succeeded in turning off the wi-fi and it took him a while to get it restarted. he thanks the guy in stockport on the phone line. he felt a real sense of panic as he contemplated how difficult it would be to live out here without the internet.

far away is close at hand (scenes from provincial life)

some friends are going out exploring barnes and mortlake (the lands of doctor dee) horsemouth wishes them good hunting exploring the infinite city of the utopians. . 

meanwhile horsemouth is out in the countryside for the duration. yesterday (a sunny day in the end) a visit to the village (shopping, prescriptions) and the garage (newspapers). his father's death notice was in the local newspaper complete with the photo taken by horsemouth's estranged cousin. 

in his head he's hearing nimrod a lot. he thinks his campaign to desensitise himself to it is succeeding. 

his brother and family visited.  his brother's eldest had success to celebrate, the young have their lives to lead. they were somewhat delayed in their coming over, the young man had forgotten that he had to move out of the university halls of residence so there was some frantic packing to be done and they arrived in a jam-packed car.  some of this is now stored in the conservatory, some in the garage. 

to compound things it was also a flying ant day of epic proportions. just before his brother and family left they all headed down to the abbey. 

after midnight on christmas eve (when no trains were running) dave and geoff (two brothers) would set out on a graffiti mission. their most famous one was far away is close at hand in images of elsewhere on the siding wall as you approached paddington.  the first part is lifted from a robert graves poem.  

it was later lifted (again) by musicians of bremen for their sorrows of tomorrow.

of course horsemouth has not made the best use of the city during his times in it. he tends to skulk close to home (wherever that may be), what drove him off and round the city was work. horsemouth looks forward to his travel card at 60 (tinged with regret that he is in fact ageing and getting older admittedly) and re-discovering the city, going on more excursions etc. 

horsemouth has submitted the electricity and gas readings for the gaff. 

he has begun reading summertime (subtitled like a french novel scenes from provincial life) by j.m. coetzee again. he now knows he has read it before but initially he had no recollection of it. it begins with what are (ostensibly) excerpts from notebooks (1972-75) and ends with notebooks: undated fragments (whether these are j.m. coetzee's real notebooks or not horsemouth couldn't tell you).  these notebooks are (within the novel) from the lightly fictionalised central character john coetzee. later chapters are people being interviewed about their memories of him.

at the moment horsemouth has the boswell diary, a kafka diary and the kilvert diary that he could have recourse to for material using the 'on this day in 1914' formula. 

in july1914 kafka has been in berlin, by the 28th he was staying with friends (in marienlyst by the look of it) but, from his diary entries, he found it uncongenial.

'despairing first impression of the barrenness, the miserable house, the bad food with neither fruit nor vegetables, the quarrels between W, and H. decided to leave the next day. gave notice. stayed nevertheless...' 

here the sun shone as it made it's way over the hill opposite. now it is lost in clouds. a gentle rain falls. in a bit breakfast and then a walk horsemouth thinks. soon the end of the month books read etc. list.  normal service is being resumed. 

 

‘I just exist then later I try to remember and write some of it down’

said bukowski

horsemouth is up. so far he has thought about his dad's death but he hasn't cried yet (which is a first). 

the electric fence  round the chicken coop presents a problem, horsemouth has lost the spike that goes into the ground as the earth - he has probably buried it beneath the sods he cut to bury the bottom of the fence to stop the chickens tunnelling their way out - as a result there is no 'ground' above which the batteries can charge the cable so that it delivers an electric shock when touched. the shock is a reasonably mild one and is mainly there to discourage the sheep from rubbing up against the fence and knocking it over (or the rabbits from tunnelling under it). the main purpose of the fence is to stop the chickens wandering off and falling prey to the local fox (and to stop the local fox from getting in). 

the solution is probably just to buy another one or maybe it was never actually needed, it was just another 'project' for his father. 

yesterday a visit from an aunt and uncle - the uncle was a steelworker at one point, his aunt was a nurse. they spent a lot of time talking and than a little time lopping branches off the tree near the old greenhouse. the trees have grown up so much they have cut of the light to it. the main worry is that they will blow about in strong wings and smash a pane of glass. there are a couple of dead trees that will probably need to be taken down. 

today his brother and the family are over (sometime about midday).  his brother's eldest has just graduated (there are photos). it's a grey day (ok the clouds may part at some point). thereafter it is a run out towards the cremation/ the memorial service. horsemouth has been listening to nimrod again and trying to work out another piece of music to go with the service, he listened through to the starts of the other enigma variations but none of them really suited.  maybe he should ask his auntie jan.

his aunt and uncle suggested bridge over troubled water (a sometime favourite of his father) but horsemouth just thinks it is too emotional. it is very 70ies - it is very of its time. 

the milkman has been and horsemouth has put the bottles over in the fridge in the garage.  in a bit he will go out and water the tomato and cucumber plants in the main greenhouse (the one visible out of his window/ the one that still gets the sunlight). 

soon enough meter readings from horsemouth's london gaff. at some stage horsemouth will have to have a chat about the bills.  

ok the sun has broken through. horsemouth will go and get some more coffee and water the tomatoes. 

nimrod and the rubaiyat

today a bright clear morning. his mum is off feeding the chickens. horsemouth was up late (7.20am woo-hoo) after getting up briefly at 6am and deciding to go back to bed (this is progress). he snoozed a little yesterday afternoon too. his mum and himself had been for a walk up on the common (to the fussell bench and back). 

in the evening horsemouth and his mum watched the sixth commandment - the exceptionally bad ben has been caught befriending then poisoning old folks in an attempt to rob them of their inheritances. he has been found guilty and sent to jail.  he only gets convicted of the first murder not of the second. his sidekick gets off (but is that the sort of thing you would care to have on your conscience?). so justice (of a sort) has been done.

his mum and himself have been watching it throughout, even though it is grim. possibly because it is unflinching they have found it therapeutic. 

he listened to nimrod again. the celebrant has agreed to do the service. horsemouth has recovered dad's copy of the fitzgerald translation of the rubaiyat of omar khayyam from the driver's side car door pocket of the truck. horsemouth had remarked on it being there. it does not contain the poem horsemouth wanted - that was a mash up by mr.social control of various lines from the rubaiyat  and on ilkley more baht' at. horsemouth will endeavour to find it. but there is probably something there already in the rubiayat that contains his father's essential attitude. 

horsemouth's folks are not believers. they are secular humanists, rationalists of the dawkins, hitchens, variety. we therefore will have to do without the rest in peace and rise in glory  and hymns (though they could of course sing some if they wanted). 

today his brother's eldest graduates from university. his mum's sister and her husband come to visit. horsemouth goes to have a look at re-installing the electric fence  round the chicken coop. 

yesterday a visit to the village store, a hardware shop where they bought an incineration bin, and the forge garage.  at some point they will have to risk a trip to tesco to stock up on food. 

that music as prophecy is elusive

 '25 years. 25 years. 25 years of social researches' - hawklords, 25 years. 

horsemouth cast his eyes over eric drott's  rereading jacques attali's bruits (2015, critical inquiry).  drott is the author of  music and the elusive revolution: cultural politics and political culture in france, 1968–1981. 

arguably it is in the new musicology that attali has had his largest effect and drott, associate professor of music theory at the university of texas at austin, has done a great job in situating the writing of the book  at that particular post-68 moment in french politics and in tracking where the work has gone.

bruits was first published in 1977 in french by the french universities press (PUF). it was translated into english by brian massumi (with a foreward and afterwards by frederic jameson and susan mcclary respectively) as noise: the political economy of music (university of minnesota press, 1985). in 2001 a rewritten and re-edited edition was published in french.

it was this last edition (and the differences with earlier editions) that formed the basis of horsemouth's review on metamute - lost in translation (9 September 2004). 

it is attali's claim of music as prophecy and in particular economic prophecy that drives it forward. and all this through an era where digital recording, production, distribution and consumption has  changed what music is. drott is much more attentive to the political and theoretical situation of bruits than horsemouth was, he has found material horsemouth did not find. that said horsemouth was working with a limited wordcount and timing constraints - the tread he was mainly pulling on was that of adorno. attali had read adorno's philosophy of modern music (it says so in the bibliography in the 1977 edition of bruits) and horsemouth read attali's  repetition as the destructive repetition of adorno. he is much more attentive to attali's text and its theoretical bases (giraud, baudrillard, information theory, autogestion) than horsemouth. 

this leads drott to a better and more detailed reading of bruits 2.0 (as the drott of the time describes it) and how it reflects/ heralds and serves changes in both french poltics and music/ the political economy of music/ the wider political economy as a whole.

horsemouth went on to investigate improvisation (the important fourth stage of attali's schema and a key musical practice) via the work of derek bailey in his article first cut is the deepest  and he did it through the work of adorno (as reflected by ben watson).  

horsemouth is up early once again (curse it). his brother has gone back to london. tomorrow his aunt and uncle visit. thursday his brother, wife and kids visit (thereafter they are off to porto on holiday). they will be covering september mostly (to permit horsemouth to get off on holiday). 

horsemouth has been hearing cream's sunshine of your love over the tune of eric clapton's wonderful tonight (does that even work?). he wonders if anyone can explain this for him. kate bushes running up that hill has also featured heavily. his brother has suggested elgar's nimrod for their father's memorial service - horsemouth will have to listen to it lots to toughen himself up for it. 

a cloudy day

here a cloudy day. it is raining. horsemouth is glad he got everybody out for a walk in the sun yesterday. 

well ok it looks like it might dry up in the afternoon.  (tomorrow decent, wednesday thursday rubbish)

they walked down to the abbey. they took the dog. at some point the dog wandered off and horsemouth went in search of it. he met the guy from up on the common (the one with two dogs one called brock). the guy had arrived too late for the art exhibit that had gone along with the choir school at the abbey over the week (he had missed it by one day). 

horsemouth did not trust himself to go down and listen to the music (byrd, gibbons etc.) - music moves the emotions around (which can be dangerous for someone in horsemouth's state). horsemouth spent a little time phoning around his dad's friends to make sure that they knew that his dad had passed. he emailed a friend of dad's from his youth who now lives in canada. 

horsemouth's brother seems to have taken charge of the sorting out of his dad's business affairs (which is good). 

with music such a potent force horsemouth wants to be careful with it in the service - his brother has suggested something from elgar's the enigma variations, this is nice and dry and may well do the job. horsemouth's dad liked classical music (particularly the more tuneful end of it that could be whistled while working).  with the arrival of hi-fi in the 70ies he took to blasting it very loud (until the neighbours complained). he was an early adopter of richer sounds. 

horsemouth is still making his way slowly through the mad executioners a german crimi crime drama set in a london where everyone speaks german.  he watched a daniel lewis philby, burgess, maclean thing with his brother and his mum.

this evening horsemouth misses a meeting of the communal endeavour. he suspects it will not be being held in adam's garden as proposed (the weather looks a bit 50/50 for it).  he has written something on decarbonisation he will send this in. 

 

a soft and gentle rain falls through the sunlight (playing for time)

horsemouth is looking across at the chickenwire himself and his brother put up. it ruins a perfectly good fence he now realises. (well actually a lot of the uprights are a bit rotted and could probably do with being replaced). 

a soft and gentle rain falls through the sunlight. today a brighter and drier day (says the bbc weather). today the spanish elections. spain speaks  (of madrid rather than valencia as horsemouth has said) has gone to hide in portugal. 

last night a good heart to heart with his brother. this horsemouth spent on bemoaning the strange inconsistency of medical provision - some of it so good as to be almost miraculous, some of it so bad as to be almost sadistic. horsemouth's brother was of the opinion that they were always playing for time with an 81 year old man with stage 4 cancer. 

we move into a strange new world. the quality of the grief changes as the quality of sunlight through clouds. horsemouth still hears noises in the house he thinks may be his dad (but they cannot be him because his dad is dead).  

(sorry horsemouth is fascinated by possibly the smallest rabbit he has ever seen scampering about the other side of the chicken coop). 

earlier a chat with howard (via the magic of zoom).  conversely both the TVs seem to have stopped working. 

soon enough winter (which can be harsh out here, there can be a distinct shortage of daylight). the south is not just more prosperous (opined horsemouth to his brother) but sunnier too. this to horsemouth's way of thinking is a virtue (but it may become not so as time passes). 

bookpilled/ thrift-a-life is loving it in mexico. he's found the hotel where he is staying has a book stash and is having a burrow. 

on 'being in a beautiful place makes life better'

so thrift-a-life/ bookpilled has escaped the united states of america for the estatos unidos mexicanos.  'being in a beautiful place makes life better' he opines from the rooftop communal area of his colonia (seemingly surrounded with razor wire). he's at the end of his third month of being elsewhere and he is taking stock/ getting reflective. it is heartening to see his escape from the rat race going so well. 

horsemouth is up early (but at a more decent time - closer to 7am (respectable) than 5.30 am (a bit weird unless for work)). he's just watched daisy the dog (a sort of collie thing, 14 years old) do a patrol of the property. he is looking across at the chickenwire himself and his brother put up  (the better to keep the chickens in) - so far no escapes.

today is a rainy grey day (yup pretty much solid black clouds all today and grey ones tomorrow says bbc weather). in a bit the watering of the tomatoes and cucumbers in the greenhouse (the plants outside in the plant pots may not need it). it is a beautiful place where his parents live and they have made it more beautiful still. 

yesterday horsemouth did a zoom meeting regarding decarbonisation of the social housing stock. he is keen to get things moving forward into the actual work and out of the negotiating the consortium agreement  doldrums it has become becalmed in. hopefully they are there. 

for horsemouth it is important to get back to the work and to do the useful things. he is feeling grief at his father's death. this is a prosaic and yet profound thing in the landscape beneath the surface of daily life there is an organisation of sickness and death. the country is an ageing country and the proportion of this increases.  last night his brother cooked dinner - some kind of shepherd's pie (with a vegetarian version for horsemouth) and most tasty it was.  his brother and his wife go back to the world sunday morning. horsemouth will have to miss the management committee meeting monday (he may try and write something for it, that would be a useful task). 

today zoom beers with howard maybe. 

everything is going to be alright (maybe)

horsemouth has news (but he's not prepared to tell it yet he doesn't think).  horsemouth is moving down kübler-ross straße. 

he's up early once again (he has got into a dreadful habit of getting up too early and will have to re-educate himself into taking a lie in). 

horsemouth must get on and write his blog. here it is 7am. the rabbits have finished scampering about the lawn and the mice in the garden. (horsemouth saw a rat in the garden - this is less good). 

the month is that of the ace of hares (at least according to the countryfile calendar). a few days ago horsemouth found a mixie rabbit behind the garage. when he went back it was dead and he chucked it in the hedge. he has a jay feather from the jay couple that visit the bird feeder and the bird bath. bbc weather says rain (possible thunderstorms) in the golden valley. horsemouth has some chicken wire he should be putting up (the better to confine the chickens).  it is not quite a mackerel sky. 

just some cursory blogging

just some cursory blogging. 

horsemouth is up early. yesterday was not the day he was expecting. as usual everything has suddenly happened. today the things begin for the next stage.  

there may be more to say later. 

soon the phonecalls and the deliveries. 

it's the anniversary of the release of everything is going to be alright. 

'the shutter clicks – but before and after, there’s a whole story to tell...'

 jane birkin is gone from the world (this is a tragedy).

'the shutter clicks – but before and after, there’s a whole story to tell...' remarks agnes varda's daughter. 

there is a film by agnes varda of jane birkin on mubi. and macron mourns (fuck him). horsemouth does not partake in the iconoclastic element of french culture - he is prepared to deal with cinema du papa, the nouvelle vague all together, he doesn't need a year zero but he does need some elementary political hygene.  

horsemouth can play you one track from the al karpenter album (this one with triple negative). 'at the end of our concert at cafe oto, we all played together.' remarks mattin. (horsemouth saw and enjoyed). 

last night horsemouth watched some sub smiley's people rambling with damian lewis, the night before he watched some elizabethan costume drama. it is good to find stuff on the telly to watch together (even if the stuff isn't particularly good). 

on his own he watched the mad executioners (1963) a german crimi drama which from its secret court start to its thameside hanging beneath tower bridge rocked. 

9 years ago and horsemouth and glyn were out and about in lower clapton being interviewed by a friend of django chan-reeves. they were moaning on about gentrification (as it was formerly known) aka. 'the housing crisis' (as it is currently known). 

horsemouth took them down to 'the blue house' (site of squatter punk gigs when he first came to hackney - 'god told me to do it' definitely, 'antisect' possibly etc.) and now a national trust building. 

sadly the actual footage has vanished into the aether. and since then (of course) things have got much worse.

yesterday catching escaped chickens. later today a campaign of fencing (caging) mostly to keep the fox out (ok ok to keep the chickens in so they can't be so easily snaffled by the fox).  horsemouth has embarked on something at scale (he does hope this was the right thing to do). 

 it is monday morning and the world clicks back into motion.

horsemouth live from sunday morning (260 years ago today)

'he advised me to keep a journal of my life, fair and undisguised. he said it would be a very good exercise, and would yield me infinite satisfaction when the ideas were faded from my remembrance.' - james boswell's london journal, 16th july 1763 (so 260 years ago today!). 

boswell's is a london journal so horsemouth (out here in the green) has been more likely to read kilvert's journal (mostly about clyro which is just up the road near hay). 

as horsemouth has mentioned before his human handler has been publishing horsemouth's reviews of various books on good reads as if they were his own. lately he has been going back to the historic blogs and copy-pasting these reviews together.

don't encourage him by reading them! 

in the world of decarbonisation things have gone quiet (at least over the weekend). it looks like the development  is done and committed to (now all that remains is to do the actual development). horsemouth has won the argument (twenty years too late for it to do any good but never mind).

broadly horsemouth has wanted for a long time  to increase the number of people housed permanently (or in communal endeavour owned accommodation) because it enables the commune to get more money in when it has a rent rise and so it gives the commune greater financial stability against the slings and arrows of outrageous capitalism.  

for the decarbonisation he should do more of the reading. if there is to be a shift in roles (as is proposed) horsemouth needs to understand that new role better - it is a more responsible role (and thus a more potentially dangerous role). 

now horsemouth et al. could add some flats in blocks to the decarbonisation pile (of houses and flats in houses) - but at some point the lease-owners of the blocks are going to want to do their own decarbonisation works and will bill the leaseholders (in this case horsemouth et al.) in their buildings (and disproportionately probably - councils (who built the blocks originally) and housing management organisations have  a distressing habit of rinsing leaseholders for the lion's share of the cost of any repairs required). 

these properties may though be useful if the consortium have to get the numbers back up but horsemouth wonders about the wisdom of paying twice to insulate these flats  (even if the works are limited, even if the government is paying for half of these works). in fact if the works  that can be done are limited that might be an advantage - additional numbers at not much expense. 

anyway - he's floated it, he's identified the properties, there will be a time to have the chat. 

today rain at some point then fine in the afternoon/ evening.  his mum has just gone into town. his dad is sleeping. 

more stalker-ish conditions (shoorah shoorah lag ja gale)

the sun shines nearly horizontally (it has just made it up over the hill opposite). giant clouds are blown about the skies. a soft and gentle rain falls. soon the sun will have risen up to the level of the clouds and a grey day will commence.

more stalker-ish conditions. but until that another olafur elaisson experiment in the valley.

horsemouth is up. so is his dad. horsemouth is unconvinced by his mum's 'upness'. 

tomorrow is the anniversary of the death of edmond de goncourt at champrosay (wikipedia says draveil) in 1896. he kept writing his journal until within 13 days of his death. 

so the bernie tormé version was a cover? (live and learn) shoorah! shoorah!

horsemouth watched a mark kermode documentary on the making of blade runner - there were some great clips - PKD decrying the philistinism of the american public and coming out with some quality  paranoiaballs. brian aldiss filmed in his garden vouching for this nutter. 

horsemouth can see two varieties of woodpecker from his window. he has his coffee. 

there's a tribute night to lata mangeshkar as part of the proms this year. here (well you'll have to go to youtube) horsemouth shares with you a lata vocal performance of  lag ja gale (great clip this - very bollywood but also very moody at the same time because it's in black and white). 

what's the fucking point

as merv says it is six years and one month since the grenfell fire  but still no charges.

meanwhile insulation made by kingspan, the firm that provided some of the combustible foam on the tower, was discovered last week on the adair and hazelwood towers, a few hundred metres from grenfell. this is despite the fact that In 2021 the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) announced a ban on use of the firm’s products in borough projects.

residents of the council-owned towers have been enduring a £7m recladding project to install non-combustible panels after fire risk assessments in 2018 identified “potential concerns with the cladding system”. 

so, to recap,  even though it was banned by the council it was still installed by the contractors.

so what's the fucking point.

enter recession

in mexico book-pilled is still having a whale of a time - here he is reviewing ubik and the midwich cuckoos (and some other book that horsemouth has never heard of), books in english he has managed to source while in mexico (or has been able to bring with him). 

'the OECD predicted that britain would enter recession next year (2023), and said it had the second worst outlook among the G20 nations, just above russia, which is currently the target of all-out financial war.'  

- from the seductions of declinism by william davies, LRB in 2022. 

horsemouth succeeded in reading some of this article (before the paywall came down). he was inspired to read it by a podcast on the LRB.  

broadly the grim catastrophe that is the uk economy post brexit will follow its own particular path. 

right at the end of the podcast (about the 51 minute mark) there is a brief discussion of the pandemic (which appears to have vanished from the historical record - except as an additional burden on the national debt, the kind of burden that can no longer be attempted they say). 

now to horsemouth the pandemic was very instructive. the state stepped up, ordered people about and splashed the cash - demonstrating that the state is capable of acting (contrary to what we have been told that these things are better left to the markets). similarly with the financial crisis of 2008.

what has happened after these events is a retour a normal where it is argued that we couldn't afford to splash the cash and that state debt will have to be paid down. now of course you can either pay down debt or service the debt or refuse to pay it. refusing to pay it is a bit of a high risk strategy (look at what happened to greece for merely suggesting this possibility) but merely servicing it is a perfectly valid strategy even within the regime of capitalism. 

it is just one that neither of the major political parties seems even prepared to offer us. 

as horsemouth has previously argued he is not interested in the culture wars but merely workers' share of GDP. 

there also follows from brexit, pandemic and inflation an attempt to drive down real wages by having lower than inflation wage rises (effectively wage cuts) for the vast majority of the population. in fact only the top 10% have seen their wages rise in real terms (and this is because they get to set them). 

here both major parties are united in agreeing that this is the way it must be. 

horsemouth can't see the point in another lost decade or two or more of austerity but what does he know he's just a pleb. as our panel of two note; 

'it's certainly fatal for the legitimation of capitalism... and in particular it is fatal for the legitimation  of the labour market...'

personally as a result of the pandemic horsemouth is glad to be retiring from the world of work and stepping back into personal life where if they want him to work for less money they can piss off. for the youth he recommends revolt, rebellion and trade union membership (where available).  for himself he recommends thriftiness and hobbies. 

'...all that comes to pass on the fertile earth...'

'we know... all that comes to pass

on the fertile earth, we know it all.'  - the sirens in fagles 1990 translation of the odyssey 

horsemouth, your faithful correspondent, is here. the dog has come to visit. the dog has gone in to see dad- horsemouth has decamped to the conservatory (the better to be on-hand)

today is the anniversary of horsemouth's gaff (the one in the wen) getting its energy performance certificate. it got an EPC rating of D (which is average-ish for the type of house it is - a victorian terraced house). horsemouth's gaff is typical of the houses where he lives and is of a solid wall construction, this leaves no space in the middle of the wall (a cavity wall) to be filled with insulation (cavity wall insulation). instead insulation has either to be fitted to the outside of the house - exterior insulation, or fitted to the inside walls of the house (interior insulation). 

the government has made promises internationally about achieving 'net zero' by 2050 and has placed requirements on public housing bodies to insulate their properties by 2030/2035 up to an EPC C standard. there is a small amount of government money available to help with this that housing co-ops etc. may compete for. 

mind you at the same time gove (the housing minister) has also handed back £1.5 billion to the treasury because he sees no real chance of spending it on building more housing. he is full of schemes (but he wants the wherewithal to do them gone). 

at the moment things are not clear on how to progress the insulation of the properties. things have got more complicated (once again) or perhaps simpler.  what is clear is that it must be done (probably). 

now exterior insulation cannot be fitted to houses in conservation zones (likewise solar panels) because it would spoil the 'look' of them. the people living in those houses must (perforce) deal with the reduction of their living space of having interior insulation fitted (and the inconvenience of having it fitted, of having to move their possessions around). but hey they get to live in a conservation zone and enjoy all that historic architecture without modern 'carbuncles'. 

further horsemouth has discovered that a few of the co-op owned flats in ex-local authority blocks are EPC D and Es and so require further insulation. (he had mistakenly assumed that they would be Cs). with these it is quite likely that the owners of the building will come up with some kind of scheme to insulate them by the deadlines required (and probably rinse the leaseholders for the bulk of the cost of it). anyway there's probably  no sense in duplicating  the work (or of doing work that has to be ripped out later/ the co-op will be billed for anyway). 

the sirens are strange beasts - once they were half-woman/ half-bird, currently they are thought of as mermaids (half-woman/ half-fish). they perhaps sing a song about being daughters of calliope (beautiful voice).  they offer a way back into something that the sailors (and wily odysseus) must avoid. a youngster reviews lampedusa's the professor and the siren. 

last night horsemouth saw an illustration by sophie grandval shared in an illustration group. he realised that she had illustrated the cover of his copy of richard jefferies' the pageant of summer - a tomato plant is seen at night surrounded by dandelions and butterflies. he listened to dj storm and digital play tunes and reminisce. 

today more of the same (alternating rain and shine). once again a beautiful morning that is likely to cloud over. 

dark mountain (smashed vases repaired with gold)

so they call themselves doomers (actually the call themselves doomsters which isn't half a s good).

and paul kingsnorth (of whom you may have heard) has published a manifesto called dark mountain. he at least has some style. 

generally they think what horsemouth thinks - that capitalism is doomed. (actually no he doesn't think that - he thinks that capitalism will survive every crisis it's just the people that won't).  

horsemouth  is worried about this because he is about to argue for the taking on of debt (and why would you do that if capitalism is doomed?/ why wouldn't you do it?). 

jem bendell has retreated to indonesia - he has moved from deep adaptation (something can be done about climate crisis but it will have to be big and deep) to climate crisis will cause the collapse of western society, capitalism etc. (because nothing has been done  - that's just a given - we are doomed and all that remains is to plan for the after). 

their after is the same-old same-old grow your own food, establish a new currency etc. government and capitalism will crumble from above (and crumble quickly) while we will rise up from below. it is kind of rerun of survivors (again) - people are taking refuge in the tasks they like to do from the full horror of the situation. (things which, to be fair, is one of the things they point out that people tend to do). 

they show us pictures of smashed vases that have been repaired with gold. 

where horsemouth thinks they are right is that the eco-modernism of technology based solutions to climate change will not work. that net zero  will not work - that it will inevitably be partial, too late and too slow (given the countervailing need of capitalism to turn a profit). and that the focus on CO2 levels catches only part of the problem. they cite economist william stanley jevons and the  jevons paradox - that more efficient forms of  technology do not supplant earlier forms but are added to them, that increases in energy production efficiency leads to more, not less, consumption. 

so what about horsemouth's own efforts at net zero? well he'll have to see.

rain (and a little bit of shine)

horsemouth is back in the green. his brother came and picked him up from the station and filled him in on events since his departure. later that evening there was a meeting of the communal endeavour over zoom. (horsemouth thinks it went well in that he got what he wanted/ he thinks the endeavour got what it needed). 

horsemouth's brother has departed back to the wen in search of work (of the 'going into the office ' kind). out of the window it was a sunny morning but now it has gone grey. bbc weather shows a solid diet of rain (and a little bit of shine) temperatures bumping around 20C for the next two weeks(!). in short  it looks like the rest of july will suck (forward to august). 

bookpilled is away living the life in mexico city. his alter-ego thrift-a-life is still producing reseller content but, let's be honest about this, isn't it less compelling now that it is no longer his major gig?  will he become a move to mexico and learn spanish guy, or will he keep on travelling? time will tell. 

horsemouth will do breakfast. then he will go for a wander. then his mum will drive off to the garage to get the paper. the big structuring event of the day is dinner. after dinner there may be something to watch on tv or horsemouth will busy himself with reading or farting about on the internet. on the train back horsemouth mostly read communal endeavour stuff to prepare for the meeting. 

the great leap forward revisited

horsemouth remembers his friend  dave 'mr. social control' denouncing the slam poetry end of performance poetry as 'happy-clappy'. 

horsemouth thinks he's right.  'form deforms' as witold gombrowicz puts it.

there is a depth to the best poetry that affirmation and annunciation cannot give you. I think it is just there in the distance between the poet's act of writing and the individual's reading or the audience's hearing.

but horsemouth thinks that even writing for performance, for an audience already closes down or weakens the effect that writing for an imagined solitary reader in communion with the text can bring.

the weight of words that are designed to be read out loud and those that are intended to be read in silence by solitary readers is different. many of the poets that we are used to reading gave live performances of their work true but poetry has become something that is read in silence and not performed. 

back in the days ranting poets (aka. spoken word), much as comedians, singer songwriters  and music hall acts, would pad the bills of comedy nights, open mics and cabaret nights. 

but then came hip-hop. practices of talk-over went mainstream. it took a while before everyone could do it (but that happened).  

at his/her/their best kae/ kate tempest can really do it and opens up an interesting space between MCing (an improvisatory art of spoken word) and (er. 'actual poetry') poetry. this is a fleeting moment between the two genres however and I doubt there will be many people who can follow them (horsemouth has checked the pronouns) into that space to any good effect. 

krs-one claimed to be a philosopher and to write poetry but his main innovation was to be able to freestyle - to just make it up off the top of his head. 

kae's book (for example - and this is where they will ultimately go, into books, plays and TV) didn't do it for horsemouth because it was written in that breathless 'how to' manual mode that all books are now written in -  chopped together from social media posts, copy-pasted in word processing software.

horsemouth would include my own 'writing' in that condemnation - he is for instance currently copying this (a response to a social media post) into a blog post (and fine-tuning it as he goes along). 

it all begins (horsemouth tends to think) with the call and response of sermons and the extension of that into a dialogic negotiation of the material with the audience. this is a heresy brought into music, song and dance over the western view of through composed music, set lyrics, formal dances - and it is an incredibly fruitful heresy.

what horsemouth is interested in doing is complicating the story of improvisation - shifting it from magical goodness and fountain of creativity to strategy of late capitalism. there is no money to train the workers in the new software, they must teach themselves etc. it is the great reset/ the great leap forward revisited.

here we are having this discussion on social media (instead of getting on with writing our albums). social media we will all entertain each other for free. 

of course there is an adornoian pessimistic cast to horsemouth's thoughts - but horsemouth, in himself, is a cosmic sentimentalist, he is distinctly happy clappy. 

today horsemouth journeys back to the green. (hopefully there will be a lift waiting for him at the other end)

20 years later. (how did we get here? letting the days go by..)

so it's a grey cool sunday morning (rain in the morning (probably), brightening up in the afternoon). last night/ this morning a pleasant dream - horsemouth pulled! (the filthy old goat). it seemed to be his mute era writing endeavours that got him noticed. (oh yeah. he saw tim in the dream as well). 

a while ago (broadly from 2004 to 2010) horsemouth wrote a number of pieces for mute  magazine on music related matters, the theories of jacques attali, the improv of derek bailey,  web 2.0 (now called social media),  the political significance of the undead to the living, participatory art,  jacques rancière's aesthetics, steve mcqueen's movies,  and newer theories in the aesthetics of music. 

there is a journey here. 

the problem with it was that while horsemouth can write you a nice sentence and produce something that looks like it makes sense he has no real deep insights to give you. he can do you a nice tour of the issue, a nice line in fidelity to adorno (and a strange retro enthusiasm for the school of  althusser) but he can't take you deep. 

anyway, here we are 20 years later. (how did we get here? letting the days go by..)

the theories of jacques attali (that music is the herald of new forms of the economy) are wheeled out whenever academics want to 'capture' student's enthusiasm for music. that attali ends up seeing improvisational music as the place where music (and thus the economy) is going is a bit unfortunate because nobody really wants to listen to it (nor can they make sense of what prediction means for the economy). attali has to some extent recanted/ recalculated in a new edition of bruits (in the light of subsequent events) but nobody knows this because the book is in french. (so much for academia).

there is an adornoian way of reading  improv (perhaps more a way of letting it speak) that ben watson tells us he uses in his book on derek bailey (noted improv guitarist), whether this admixture of negative dialectics (letting it speak for itself) and aesthetic theory (the baleful effect of modernity) is really what watson is doing is another matter. horsemouth notes the incredible productivity of improv and expects to see it (like a virus) decimate and restructure the economy. 

and indeed that's what it does via social media just as attali imagines us all getting to do the improv so we are all here (when left to our own devices) engaging in some kind of cultural production and appreciation/ some kind of monetised approximation to it.  I saw the best minds of my generation... destroyed by smartphones jokes/ echoes kate (now kae) tempest.

this (of course) had horrendous implications for the political economy of music the subtitle of attli's book in english translation. 

there were the bad old wild west years of napster and mp3 and free music (more free music than you can listen to) but soon enough there were the sunny and curated uplands of spotify and streaming. there are days of miracle and wonder and corporate control (if not corporate profits).  the musical commodity was utterly reconfigured and (to follow attali) it is the herald of changes in the wider economy. 

here's horsemouth - he's pacing and he's gone hyper and he's imagining lecturing this bullshit like it's still important (anyway...)

so zombies. zombies R us. the working stiffs and the consuming stiffs wandering round shopping malls and now the new digital uplands of social media. 

horsemouth gets distracted and led out onto the field of relational art (where the audience is the artwork). he wants to think about what this new (more democratic) era of musical and artistic production means (where we all get to do it/ at least be a part of it). but he's on the adorno side of this argument (it's a bad thing) rather than the hardt and negri side of this argument (it's a good thing).  the review of steve mcqueen's hunger and claire bishop's participation are (horsemouth supposes) case-studies of the kind of losses this can cause. 

as is his review of steve goodman's sonic warfare. but this is the end of this era. horsemouth is exhausted and disgusted. in 2008 the financial crash comes and from about 2010 onwards austerity has fed into the scene where horsemouth is. the students become militant once again, there is a leftist moment in greece, in spain, in the arab spring, and no-one is much interested in speculations about the annunciatory potential of music. 

everything goes down to defeat and reaction and digital platforms (brexit, populism, netflix etc.) and in 2020 there's the pandemic. 

now the pandemic is interesting as a reset in the way in which capitalism, education, and music operate - more working from home etc. but it's not a profound or thorough change (though it will certainly have effects). 

horsemouth thanks the people at mute for giving him the opportunity to write  and to think about these issues (and all the other people who encouraged him) - it set him off on an interesting journey.

saturday horsemouth went out for pizza and beers with howard.  but the pizza pub was shut (private party). howard and horsemouth ended up in the big (and somewhat under-utilised) pub on the corner. they had three pints (but did pause after the first and go get a falafel wrap - most tasty).  they played a little before they went out and listened to some music. horsemouth then went home to wait for the hang over. he took the paracetamol, snoozed, got up, attempted to watch a movie and then went to bed and read. 

friday horsemouth missed triple negative play (he got the dates wrong). sorry dudes, catch up soon. 

reading provence in walthamstow

'it is more an idea than a place. you will find this out quite soon.' 

- local informant in lawrence durrell's ceasar's vast ghost: aspects of provence 

reading provence in walthamstow

'all the secret histories make it clear 

ceasar was once happy here.' 

it's a strange book (full of strange events and strange opinions). durrell was a strange man after all.

horsemouth did his meeting then he went for a wander through the forest and along the motorway to south woodford/ redbridge (to take a peek in the oxfam there). a girl lay out reading and sunbathing in the middle of a huge circular field (some giant hidden artefact from the age of industry). later he read in the backgarden. the cats calmed down their importuning and lay about in the shade. he went over to the allotment and did some watering (stunning beauty). he watched the movie drive (beautiful to look at).

by the countryfile calendar it is the ace of hares. our fine mad beast is shown in close up. (as a side note horsemouth notes the semi-recovery of the wild rabbit population near his parents). 

above pharoah sanders live in nice - first 4 tracks july 8th 1971 thereafter the 18th. there are recordings available from gigs held july 20th to 22nd in antibes in 1968 (horsemouth will give those a listen).  thereafter on the 21st another consortium meeting and on the 23rd the elections in spain likely to lead to a right wing coalition of vox and the partido popular.  

today a plan to go over and visit howard (and eat pizza) but the bbc weather is predicting thunderstorms.  sunday last day in the stow. monday travel back to herefordshire and when he gets there another meeting on zoom. 

up at the cloud forest. cats greeted.

wow horsemouth just had a beautiful reconciliation dream. he felt a tentative arm around his waist and they were off (walking and talking). she was of course heavily covered up (giant kenny sized parka and a facemask of some description). he can't tell you anything about the surroundings (it was a tactile dream). 

it was both great (and very depressing) to have this dream after so many years. already it is starting to be unclear which side of him she was. he thinks to the left so her hand reached round to the right but he seemed to remember his hand (that was touching her) being the right hand. 

maybe it's a 'sides of the brain' thing. 

anyway dreams and memories are not made to bear much examination.

'the sun determines everything that grows, while water becomes an all important symbol...' (from ceasar's vast ghost by lawrence durrell which he has brought with him)

yesterday horsemouth travelled. his brother took him to the railway station. he got a ticket and a train to newport. when the london train arrived it was half the size it is usually so people were wedged in like sardines. at every station people were advised to get off and take the next train, proximity (funnelling) effects meant that the times before the next london train became shorter and shorter. taking the train company up on their kind offer would have meant clambering over the other people to get to the door.

at horsemouth's gaff the living room and back garden were fucked as usual. work goes on in both of the houses on either side. horsemouth could not get comfortable. he waited until evening and headed off up to the cloud forest. there he got the laptop on and watched the last episode of the gallows pole on the tv on iplayer. then he climbed up the ladder to bed.

horsemouth is up. he has had some coffee (a little still remains). he is up in the cloud forest (the cats have been greeted and fed). 

the sun is rising over the forest. later a meeting. there the position of the communal endeavour may be shifting within the consortium. they may be required to take a more leading role. 

the problem with the day is what to do with the morning. (horsemouth will work that out in a bit).

horsemouth is back from a wander over to the sally army and then through the backstreets and ginnels (very continental). he saw the neighbour on wood street (hi). the advantage of being out early is that he is back early. he saw a book about the queen of romania (but he wasn't tempted enough to spend).

looks like pincher MP survives (until the election). 

some women singers (and kerfuffles in the tory party)

horsemouth has been asked to recommend some women singers - what do you reckon? 

alice coltrane (the devotional music), karen dalton, judee sill, anne briggs, alison o'donnell and clodagh simonds(mellow candle), lankum (radie peat), belinda kempster and fran foote, lena platonos, linda perhacs, le mystere des voix bulgares, trio bulgarka, chaba fadela, chaba zahouania, the women of wassoulou (oumou sangaré in particular), norma waterson, fontella bass, om kalsoum, fiaruz, ofra haza, nicolette (no government), gribouille, vi subversa (poison girls), lucille bogan, whoever sings with leven signs.

chiwonisu and stella chiweshe obviously. emmylou harris for her backing vocals. 

and (perhaps controversially) katy red.

who has he missed? 

in general horsemouth doesn't do 'oh what a pretty voice you have'  singers. joni mitchell is the name that is missing. 

later today he travels back to the wen. the meeting he was due to go to has been cancelled (this means it will have to be rescheduled to a different date necessitating a further journey).

meanwhile interesting kerfuffles in the tory party

currently 42 tory MPs have announced they will leave parliament at the next poll (rather than subject themselves to the judgement of the electorate). this is on top of the 16 who left when may called the 2017 election and the 41 who left before the 2019 poll

and then there's chris pincher MP - could he be the fifth by-election?(mwa-ah-ah-ah)

out of roughly 350 tory MPs that's nearly 100 gone. that's a bit of a culling (that's beyond decimation). they are heading for a massacre at the polls and opposition, after that there will be no trough to stick their noses in, no patronage, no honours lists and elevations to the lords for a decade. it is almost like £82k a year was not enough money to compensate them for the pain, suffering and emotional distress. to quote one.

'there must be more to life than this. I suppose I suppose I am disillusioned...' 

the hope, of course, is that the tory party splits, into populists and the deadly dull. given the nature of british politics all they have to do is wait for starmer to fuck it up. 

'demon dogs drive man to murder'

'demon dogs drive man to murder' so reads the text on the painting when translated from american sign language fingerspelling. it is by hippie and later new york and lower east side artist martin wong. (possibly in collaboration with nuyorican poet miguel piñero). 

"everything I paint is within four blocks of where I live and the people are the people I know and see all the time."

this fits in to some extent with horsemouth's current journals/ autobiography theme. it reads like one of harry everrett smith's condensed song stories but is in fact a reference to the serial killer son of sam. 

'to keep a diary is to attempt a difficult literary form. its effectiveness is likely to derive from a special bend of honesty and appetite for life which gives the power to record everyday happenings while magically freeing them from banality and triviality' - preface, by william plomer to the diary of the reverend francis kilvert. 

of course a diary is perhaps kept for one reason and read for another. it is perhaps not intended for publication when written. horsemouth, for example,  keeps a physical diary but he just writes appointments and commonplaces in it. sometimes he does a quick sketch or doodle.even on this blog horsemouth doesn't tell you everything that is going on. 

of course a painting is intended to be shown (but it may not be painted for that reason).

but then this is true of all books - the author writes it for their reasons and a readership reads it for theirs. there is the debate as to how much books are a perfected self-expression, communicating what the author wishes them to say, and how much they are an assemblage of cultural artefacts and ideology made by the reader in the act of reading and discussing them.

horsemouth likes  these kind of games and is happy to play them. it strikes him that he does not tend to read slowly enough that the books he is reading become choral, that they start to say more than the author intended them to say. horsemouth tends to read for plot, just as he watches movies without taking note of the shots that compose them.

‘to deprive the bourgeoisie not of its art, but of the concept of its art, this is the precondition of a revolutionary argument’  says  pierre macherey in his theories of literary production (at least in the english translation).

some diaries/ journals are composed by the author with an eye to publication. some are written assuming that the author's thoughts will be lost in the sea of time. some are written to this pseudo-form of publication that the internet provides in his hope that they may eventually find a readership and lead people to his music.

'last year there came to my notice a collection of 22 old notebooks, variously shaped and bound. they contained the diary, begun 1st january 1870, of the rev. francis kilvert... the diary was closely written in a sloping, angular hand, and proved so interesting that it was decided to prepare it for publication... in the prose of the diary we feel that experience is concentrated, and the diarist seems to be aware that it has an importance all of its own.' - introduction to volume one, william plomer. 

horsemouth has a guitar with him in the wilds (the hohner tuned standard) but he isn't playing it much. 

last night he watched a series of clips on american guitarist tommy bolin. bolin was a cut above the average guitarist playing in his own adventurous heavy rock/ jazz ensembles, as a journeyman guitarist in more straight ahead heavy rock groups (the james gang, deep purple), and as a jazz-rock sideman (on billy cobham's spectrum). his family and friends hoped that the posthumous release of his album would allow people to truly see what he wanted to play but still he had learnt from his time as journeyman in straight ahead rock groups to play what people wanted to hear (at least some of the time).

today a bright sunny day. horsemouth goes to a meeting. there is transport allegedly. later his brother comes over and horsemouth hands over to him so that he can attend some meetings in the seaside towns (the great wen etc.). 

above (allegedly) is the tune being played on the hurdy-gurdy by the ghost children in lost hearts.

the missed anniversaries (of literary production)

it's 8 am (nearly). horsemouth is awake and has even thrown the ball for the dog and done a patrol round the outside of the house. his dad is up (horsemouth has made him a cup of tea and himself a cup of coffee). 

after yesterday's journeying into town horsemouth expects a quiet day. (whether he will get it is another matter). 

yesterday evening he was reminded of nabihah iqbal (the artist formerly known as throwing shade) by her album being listed as one of the releases of the year so far by the quietus  magazine. (lankum, brìghde chaimbeul, philip jeck, shirley collins, richard skelton - it's a decent selection.) he went back to listen to her excellent show on robbie basho. now basho was not the solitary that they make him out to be but it's a great show nonetheless with great songs by him (death song, moving up a ways etc.). she recorded a track with stick in the wheel (which his friends liked). 

earlier he had picked peas. they are past their best his dad avers. horsemouth will try to get everything remaining of a decent size today (and then they will sling it in the freezer against future famines). 

the missed anniversaries (of literary production)

it is something like the 16th anniversary of horsemouth joining the dreaded face book. of course now horsemouth has moved over to 'writing' every day on blogger - the facebook notes tool having been discontinued in october 2020. we have just passed his tenth anniversary of his writing on blogger.

further back there was his 'blogging' on myspace (starting sometime in november 2006 and ending with the great myspace blog dieback of 2013). horsemouth has his myspace blogs somewhere (they zipped them up and emailed  them to him after the demise/ restructuring of the site - that was nice of them).

he's watching some small woodpeckers raid the bird-feeder. it's a cool, cloudy morning. he read a little of terry eagleton's introduction to pierre macherey's theory of literary production.  

that 'a person who has no diary is in a false position in the face of a diary' (an untrammelled expression of 'free speech' )

'29 IX 11     goethe’s diaries: a person who has no diary is in a false position in the face of a diary. when, for example, he reads in goethe’s diaries “11 I 1797     busy at home all day with various arrangements” it seems to him as if he himself had never done so little in a day...'

horsemouth has lifted this quote before (from franz kafka's diaries). as you know he's a big fan of diaries, journals, autobiographies etc.

horsemouth read it the other way "busy at home all day with various arrangements” just read like some empty flummery (which arrangements? what were you up to goethe? nothing, that's what). 

the diary makes it look like you have been busy when really you have just been sitting around. it causes you to look for the material to fill it -  in this case with goethe's flummery. later kafka is off with max brod to italy. then he's meeting with alfred kubin. then he's mentioning learning to swim. 

after kafka's death max brod will gather all this material up and, despite having been left strict instructions to burn it, save it for posterity, ensuring that progressively more and more of it is published. mining kakfa's notebooks for aphorisms.

but it is a distraction from the true nature of kafka's real work. we wish to humanise him with biographical accretions.  here we can even see kafka's handwriting (like the holy relic it is). 

iris murdoch hand writes her manuscripts - a worrying thing for the publisher because only one copy can exist. she cites the ability to move back and fore between the pages as the major advantage of doing it this way, that and the ability to make changes and corrections. 

at the end of the interview she is tempted out onto the thin ice of discussing derrida, structuralism and deconstruction, 'linguistic determinism' as she sees it. she does a great job of marshalling the arguments but it is a piece of heavy lifting (not always assisted by the interviewer who wants to be entertaining and yet has asked her this). 

more moki and don cherry material has surfaced. a friend went to a gig at the ICA connected to the exhibit (and some of the banners were present and correct). 

over at the leigh folk festival there is a scandal about a band having been 'cancelled' - first invited to play and then 'disinvited' by one of the stages. 

it is probably worth stressing the conditional and last minute nature of these decision with the list of bands playing only published close to the actual festival leaving little time to make a decision. it is a volunteer run festival, they can invite (or disinvite) who they like. nobody is obliged to go (unless you live in leigh). if people wish to boycott the leigh folk festival on account of this they are free to do so. 

to horsemouth art has different duties to politics but nonetheless there is, or can be, a distribution between the two. some bands are 'political', some are not. to horsemouth the political claims made for music act to the detriment of the power of the music itself, and yet the power of music itself to make a change is unclear, and the nature of the change offered is unclear. to communicate effectively  the message must be kept simple and clear. there is a requirement on people engaged in collaborative endeavours not to be a loose canon and involve fellow creatives in distracting rows about issues that are off-topic. there is a necessary degree of collaboration. 

it can be objected that this is self-censorship of a sort and not an untrammelled expression of 'free speech' (and so it is). 

look how horsemouth puts 'free speech' within quotation marks - almost like he doesn't believe it really exists. 

today a scan. wednesday a meeting about a scan. thursday back to the wen. friday a meeting about collaboration. 

'I hear you are giving up all your bad company. but I beg I may not be included in the number.'

a poke in the eye (for being so sly)

typical of the british. a ritual greeting for the first of the month has turned into a punch up. (when will we learn to drink our beer slowly).

meanwhile a friend is in the centre of paris (directing operations for the international conspiracy of ruthless cosmopolitans no doubt). another is trapped under a heat dome in texas (a.k.a. the cursed earth). 

in 'good news' the heat dome seems to be moving away north. 

horsemouth's reading has not progressed. tomorrow a scan and wednesday a meeting (thereafter horsemouth returns to the seaside towns, but briefly). he has found someone who is reading philosophers - like out loud and recording the results on youtube. it's not the best sound quality (and his taste in thinkers is not always horsemouth's taste) but there you go. claude hates travelling, he hates travel writing, his interest is the tiny amount of time that you are 'in the field' (talking to the people you need to talk to), or so he claims. 

yesterday they were singing byrd down at the abbey (horsemouth had forgotten and failed to go). he goes down to open up this morning. it's a beautiful morning. 

in boswell land what are they doing? 

the young boswell is meeting and greeting. he meets lord eglinton for the first time in a week,

 'I hear you are giving up all your bad company. but I beg I may not be included in the number.' 

pinch punch first of the month (a capharnaum of miscellany)

on june 30th 1925 professor tinker and a former yale classmate of his, the US consul general to the newly founded republic of ireland charles hathaway, were invited to tea at malahide castle just outside dublin, with james boswell talbot and his wife, the heirs of the biographer james boswell.

professor talbot's book - the letters of james boswell (1924) had been published and a letter of his in the times in search of more of boswell's papers had yielded an anonymous tip off indicating the talbots and malahide castle. 

professor talbot was rebuffed in his attempts to buy the papers by a suspicious family (boswell was something of a rake and the papers revealed that). one colonel isham eventually succeeds and in 1937 while making a personal search of the castle finds more papers. in 1940 while the castle is being cleared out to create room for wartime food storage yet more papers are discovered. later, on the death of lord talbot, still more papers were discovered. 

as christopher morley puts it in his preface,

'to a relic-destroying and apartment-living generation these repeated discoveries may seem beyond belief. yet they happened. malahide is an ancient moated castle with stone turrets and battlements; and in such a sprawling structure there are always innumerable garrets, cellars, cupboards, ancient chests, and similar depositories for any plunder that one wants to put out of sight.'

further papers of boswell's were found in further castles - professor claude colleer abbot finds 1600 letters manuscripts and documents from johnson, boswell and their friends in fettercairn house near aberdeen. a capharnaum of miscellany as christopher morley puts it. 

one snowy and silent night professor abbot is working alone on boswell's papers at fettercairn house when a strange stately tune (like rameau) begins to be heard. a french musical box has chosen to come alive once more. it sings and then is silent. 

and thus we know (from boswell's london journal 1762 to 1763) that on 1st july 1763 johnson, boswell and goldsmith ate and drank at the mitre pub on fleet street. 

and thus it is saved from annihilation's waste. 

horsemouth's dad claims the horsemouth himself gave him the book. (horsemouth discovered it while he was doing some re-shelving). horsemouth has no memory of this. he did however use a quotation from the 16th july 1793 once ('he advised me to keep a journal...'). horsemouth has been tempted to read it by diana athill's praise for boswell.

yesterday horsemouth opened up the abbey. he was not needed to close it up as there was some kind of musical event going on. he does not know if he is required to open it up again this morning but he will go down anyway (it is a pleasant walk). yesterday his dad was out picking fruit and indeed used the exercise bike. horsemouth had a plan to go out and do some scything but instead stayed in and re-arranged the conservatory (including doing the re-shelving).