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.