'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.