'... 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).