'I can't write anymore. I've come up against the last boundary, before which I shall in all likelihood again sit down for years...' - franz kafka, diaries, 30th november 1914.
horsemouth has started writing his review of 2023.
today he will publish his films watched, books read etc. list for november 2023. he has been re-reading his own diary entries for the year. he has (as usual) told you about his musical and cultural endeavours first. but there is more to life than this.
it was 'a year of changes'- what was his 2023 about?
the first part of the year he thought it was a rerun of his retirement year (the one after his redundancy year). more 'do as you please...'
but from 5th may he was back at his mum's - dealing with his dad's diagnosis, treatment, death, cremation , putting effort into supporting his parents through this. in this he has failed, no one beats death, however he tried.
for a while the whole of his writing exercise looked pointless. and yet here he is back at it. and he was back at it almost immediately because he enjoys it, he finds it a great solace even though he does not use it to discuss anything very important.
the homestead has featured much less than it would have in a normal year (because he has not been there for 6 to 7 months of the year so consequently he gives less of a fuck about it).
and the communal endeavour?
horsemouth has tried to get the decarbonisation of the communal endeavour going but it has been at least delayed by events. this is less decarbonisation than mere insulation - thus lowering people's gas bills (until the cost goes up again) and thus reducing the amount of gas burned.
at some point the cost of gas will have gone up so much that people will be clamouring for air-source heat pumps and er. no that is unlikely to happen. that is what would be required for full decarbonisation.
the government target is an all EPC C communal endeavour by 2030 (because that's what the government claim they will be requiring by 2030). horsemouth is venal as fuck - he just wants to be warmer in winter and COP28 be buggered.
he did at least get the communal endeavour to borrow money and to purchase more property. all this is in process, it will house more people. and it will help stabilise the communal endeavour by enabling it to raise more money when it has a rent rise (thus enabling lower rent rises individually). quite where the communal endeavour's finances will stabilise it is a bit difficult to predict accurately in advance but horsemouth expects to see it next year.
this will determine how much money they have to chuck at decarbonising the communal endeavour each year (now that it looks like they will have to pay most of it themselves COP28 be buggered and the consortium having broken down).
last night beautiful magical moonlight. this morning rainy and grey.
'horsemouth just lost his temper again. he does so wish he didn't do that... he needs to learn to disinvest more...'
horsemouth found this post way back in october as a draft (probably later used) and has copied this chunk of it (because, sad to relate, it is still his state). he went out to offer to help and was told he shouldn't talk. he therefore stomped off in a righteous snit (returning only later to do the thing he was going to propose doing when his interlocutor was not around).
horsemouth looks forward to getting back to london for a bit. he spent much of september (3rd to the 24th) in london but didn't get much done during his visit. he will have spent 11 weeks up here on this cycle by the time it comes to go back.
horsemouth back in the great wen (but when?)
he's back on the 10th december (december - the last of the 'embers') for a week. (so in slightly less than two weeks). there's the lankum gig (with howard) on the 13th (john fromporto has just seen them up in guimaraes) and horsemouth will want to see various other people and do some book-shopping. he's looking forward to seeing people (he's getting a bit frustrated up in the hills).
there's an art exhibit he'd like to see. the michael werner gallery, london is presenting don van vliet's (captain beefheart's) paintings. it opened 22nd november and is on until 17th february.
he had a zoom chat with john (fromporto) in the afternoon (post snit) and is now slowly returning to normal. (whatever normal is).
thereafter (if things remain as they are currently planned) horsemouth returns to the countryside for the run up to christmas and new year. his brother (and his family) are over for christmas and then there is a chance joe (his brother's eldest) will be up in january (which would be good) but almost certainly not in the first week of 2024.
january 1st 2024 is a monday (such are the fruits of mathematics). this should help make the pattern of the year clearer.
horsmouth will now start writing his review of 2023.
it was a year of changes.
from 5th may he has basically been back at his mum's - dealing with his dad's diagnosis and treatment, dealing with his dad's death (july 19th) and cremation (august 19th), dealing with his mum's dog dying, putting effort into supporting his mum through all this. trying to keep the show on the road.
before that it was a year with only one gig by horsemouth - at max's book launch 18th april (from whence the photo at the top of this blog) thanks to max for booking him, everyone who listened and enza for taking some photos p.s. thanks to the beat-boxing dude too.
you know horsemouth had forgotten almost entirely about it such has been the nature of the year.
horsemouth did no recording (that he can recall right now). the stuff that he had worked on the year before (2022 see soundcloud) did not get finished and did not come out. he did no golden glow mixes. conversely howard released nothing in 2022 or 2023 that has remained available (if you downloaded it then you have it, if you didn't you missed your chance).
bandcamp has changed hands (and that may turn out to be significant).
he worked on some tunes of peter's and some tunes with CATASTRO/fille before may but has not managed anything thereafter. he played a few times, adam's bar-b-cue (saturday 24th june), jacqueline's birthday, perhaps up the park (who knows).
he went to see comparatively few gigs by other musicians this year.the owl service, united bible studies, belinda kempster and fran morter at the leigh folk festival stands out as a highlight (sunday 25th june), triple negative (11th january - triple negative, officine, angusraze at cafe OTO) also, mike's visit and their joint visit to the national liberal club also (though not a gig) , as it stands he plans to see lankum (13th december) and he guesses that will be his lot for the year. (that may well be it).
he tried to get the decarbonisation going but was defeated, or at least delayed, by events. he did at least get the communal endeavour to borrow money and to purchase more property. as usual everything takes much longer than you think it will and turns out much less well than you think it will. ho hum. anyway we should have a firm steer on all this by halfway through next year (and then on to the next bag of pox).
we are assured that everything is fine and has been dealt with according to the rules of parliament (but clearly the truth has not been told, nothing has been dealt with and what is on offer instead is a round of bullying).
but surely a folk archive should be full of folk? (objected myk). to which horsemouth replied;
'ustad sultan khan, zakir hussain, steffen basho-junghans, pharoah sanders, william henderson, the women who played tanpura (sometimes there's more than one) are not named but could be jane chaudhuri or lynn taussig or loveleena labroo (if it's lynn taussig she could be related (perhaps) to harry taussig (sometime american primitive guitarist, and tarot card designer) or michael taussig (anthropologist))'.
it's here! (nothing is possible by triple negative - incarnated as a limited edition book and cassette)
to be clear horsemouth only owns one copy out of the 100 printed (not the three shown). he recommends you rapidly buy up all the others because it's absolutely fucking great.
it is all exceptionally beautiful (but too small). (no snickering at the back there gombrowicz! you too benjamin!). that spine is never going to last and in any case the illustrations want to be laid out flat (and not confined by the gutter). horsemouth misses the point and declares that it needs to be an art exhibit with these illustrations full scale (or bigger) and upon the walls.
it gives one of benedict erofeev's vodka shortage 'cocktail' mixtures side by side with a baudrillard quote reproving people for reading artaud (cioran, beckett) and discussions of utopia.
once again horsemouth (dreadful combinateur that he is) misses the point.
the point is not to produce an object that fits into the world as it is but to make an object that criticises the world from a distance.
and yet this (admittedly) fine object has one cardinal virtue - it is out there and available to the masses (or the cognoscenti, or whoever). horsemouth will be recommending it to you on the upcoming bandcamp friday.
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today the anniversary of the death of matsuo basho 1694 (at least according to edmond de goncourt). horsemouth hassles his housemates into providing meter readings.
'... that the dead deserved more life and equal recognition for their lives. ' - judith butler,the compass of mourning, LRB 19th october 2023.
it is the twelfth anniversary of the death of indian sarangi player and classical vocalist ustad sultan khan. who you will remember playing with pharoah sanders in yesterday's clip. sultan khan worked in the indian film industry too and was a member of tabla beat science with bill laswell and zakir hussain.
it is also the 70ieth anniversary of the birth of steffen basho-junghans (robbie basho's biggest fan and disciple and fan of japanese poet matsuo basho). on the 1st of december we have the anniversary of the death of steffen basho-junghans.
horsemouth was doing various muddy things today. he does hope he's done them well enough. towards the end of the daylight he went down with his mum to lock up the abbey. that's the end of their stint on unlocking/ locking up the abbey until february.
'the ninth city will endure forever' they say about new delhi. (but can it survive climate change.
the world gathers this week in dubai for the start of the latest round of climate talks COP 28 - horsemouth is pessimistic.
the week begins and horsemouth has tasks. horsemouth has two more weeks up in sunny herefordshire then he is back to london for a week. and then he is back to herefordshire for the run to christmas.
and that's about as far as horsemouth has plans ahead.
'what a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.'
and yet we die and then all of that is gone.
horsemouth's brother has made no progress with either practicalities or christ stopped at eboli (which is a pity because they are both very good books). horsemouth has finished high rise so now he has to find a new book to read. there are plenty of books in the house but few are to his taste. he has read a few pages of the xavier de maistre.
horsemouth is intrigued by the woman who played tanpura (tamboura) at the percussion maestros of north and south india 18th may1996 gig at masonic auditorium, SF, CA, with pharoah sanders (reeds), william henderson (harmonium), zakir hussain (tabla) and ustad sultan khan (sarangi).
more on ustad sultan khan tomorrow.
fazal qureshi (kanjira, tabla) is listed on the gig but never seems to be in shot in these clips (perhaps he played another night/ another set).
the woman who played tanpura is not named but by detective work horsemouth thinks she could be jane chaudhuri or lynn taussig both of whom have played tanpura on a swapan chaudhuri recording (or played other indian instruments either with pharoah sanders) or it could be or loveleena labroo who has played tanpura with ustad sultan khan). horsemouth guesses there is a whole san francisco/ berkeley indian music scene descending from ali akbar khan.
he wondered if lynn taussig would be related to harry taussig (sometime american primitive guitarist, and tarot card designer) or michael taussig.
what does decarbonisation mean?
it means more pylons because it means a vast expansion of the electricity grid. in the uk the problem is that the site of production (the north sea - offshore wind) is far from the site of consumption (the prosperous and populated south).
'in june, the national audit office found that a shortage of installation technicians was impeding the government’s introduction of smart meters, which was supposed to have been completed in 2019.'
will we (the UK) get to net zero by 2050? horsemouth's sources are doubtful.
horsemouth does not have to go down to the abbey this morning (it being a sunday they are having some kind of a service). he will go down to lock it up this afternoon (just in case). his mum went down to lock it up yesterday afternoon together with sally his brother's wife.
'utter despair, impossible to pull myself together; only when I have become satisfied with my suffering can I stop.' - kafka, diaries, 25th november 1914.
thoughtfully max brod gives us no more than this (or maybe there is no more than this).
horsemouth just spent some time reading (and copying into his physical diary) bits of quotes from kafka's diaries (in so far as kafka wrote them and max brod gave them to us). on the relevant dates he is finished out until the 31st of december.
writing in further quotes from kafka will have to wait until he gets a diary for 2024 (remember he already has a diary for 2027 - it is one from 2021).
it is (the saturday 25th november) mishima day - the anniversary of yukio mishima's attempted coup d'etat and death. horsemouth had a copy of his trilogy but he returned it to the bookboxes because he thought he was moving and couldn't face moving it (and a ton of other books).
on the whole horsemouth is fairly cheerful in himself. tomorrow the abbey rota ends. horsemouth has forgotten to go most mornings and had to be reminded. such is the strength of his morning ritual. (just to be extra confusing he types most of this in the day before).
horsemouth has realised that the dates do not add up on his blogging timetable and he is going to have to reconstruct it. he has been blogging on blogger since june 2013 (that reminds him he should do an update on his musical history june 2013 to june 2023). he began by blogging way before this on my space (november 2006 he thinks) and latter mixed it with blogging on facebook.
it soon became a daily enterprise (because he enjoys it).
remind horsemouth that at ten to four he's got to go down and close up the abbey. in a way he would like that time to move forward so that he could go and be useful. (he's just gone and been useful though whether it will be hailed as such remains to be seen). ok he's done the abbey (it is now the evening). now you have to remind him that he needs to go do it in the morning.
there is consternation round a particular date but before that date there must be an x-ray and if the x-ray cannot be taken in time before that date then that date will have to move. so horsemouth hopes there may be no consternation. if there is to be consternation horsemouth is determined to get what he wants.
he's up. it's a frosty morning. frosty and clear up into the skies (and thus cold). looks like horsemouth is up here for the next two weeks then back to london for a week (to see lankum play and meet up with friends). his brother, wife and both kids are here now having gone shopping in abergavenny yesterday. they are off to a gardening centre today to pick a shrub/ tree to go on the spot where they will scatter dad's ashes. it's not the most propitious time of year to be planting things etc. (we are rolling up on minimum daylight). but soon we will be climbing up the long dark tunnel into spring.
'for most of horsemouth's friends if you don't use the term SF you are just a rube of some sort. speculative fiction means you are pretentious (and don't want to admit you have been reading mere SF) and similarly if you should be caught drivelling on about 'third stream' or whatever it is called.'
horsemouth is listening to calibre play - it's good (it's like LTJ bukem very smart).
later tonight his brother (and his brother's family) arrive. (ok ok the youngest doesn't arrive until tomorrow). at some point this weekend (saturday probably)they will scatter horsemouth's father's ashes. they will probably scatter them into a hole and plant a tree/ shrub on top of them. dad was into growing things that makes sense to horsemouth.
horsemouth and his mum think they have selected a spot. if it's acceptable to everyone horsemouth will get on with digging there tomorrow.
he would have done it today but he had a headache most of today. he put the world at one on at one and attempted to snooze. he followed it up with a discussion of orwell. he puts the headache down to the bottle of beer he had after the two zoom meetings on wednesday. (mind you he enjoyed the bottle of beer).
he was listening to 'whistling' robbie basho (from songs of the great mystery: the lost vanguard sessions) and now he's listening to john coltrane from july 1965 live in paris (actually the bit he is listening to now is from the juan les pins jazz festival, antibes, july 27, 1965).
a day in the life (of lemuria) - the naturalist haeckel posited lemuria (a giant supercontinent) as a land bridge to explain the existence of lemurs on both sides of the pacific. it is the morning and horsemouth's brother's family are here (mostly). horsemouth has retreated to a bedroom with a cup of coffee.
cleverly has owned up (and to some extent apologised) for calling north stockton a shithole. he now claims he wasn't calling north stockton a shithole but its MP a shithole (horsemouth fails to see how this is that much better).
nightfall diaries - the third in a series of reflective evening posts
'as interest rates rise, funding for a lot of marginally profitable companies is drying up... corporate “zombies” are wandering the markets, looking for the cheap credit they used to feast on.' - FT, unhedged podcast, 21st november 2023. there are great phrases in this podcast (such as 'cascading defaults' - not a good thing, no. hmm).
one welcome thing is that local housing allowance is up (so people can get more help with their rent) - previously, the government had frozen the LHA rate since april 2020 squeezing people on benefits out of the private rented market and onto the street. now this will happen more slowly for a while, well actually no because more poor people will be paying more tax.
on the other hand no-one can seemingly hear the home secretary talk (and certainly not when he calls north stockton a shithole). cleverly (is as cleverly does) for it is he, denies doing it and presumably would apologise if he had done (and so won't be apologising). he doesn't seem to be on camera doing it and the sound quality on the scene is poor. EVP maybe. maybe this is the kind of thing the tories would say and thus we are imagining it.
Q. did the home secretary really say that north stockton was a shithole?
horsemouth needs to discuss high rise more - he thought of a parallel with michael hanneke's the seventh continent - bourge family order big blowout meal and then commit mass suicide - just in the sheer disgusting excess of broken furniture and spoiled food.
there is a kind of technological determinism at work, that if the high rise produced delinquency among the poor and working class families surely it should do the same for the middle classes, for the stockbrokers and for the dentists. seldom will you be introduced to more professionals - there is another joke in there about the social stratifications of the english class system being reflected onto the floors of the tower block.
'in a sense these people were the vanguard of a well-to-do and well-educated proletariat of the future, boxed up in their expensive apartments with their elegant furniture and intelligent sensibilities...'
of course there arguments come back into being as the rich (or at least the well-to-do) start to live in high rises again.
the film of high rise (novel 1975 film 2015) ends with a thatcher quote but this is itself a kind of homage to the end quote on malcolm bradbury's the history man (novel 1975 tv series 1981) this has our ostensible leftist lecturer howard kirk voting conservative in the next general election. horsemouth's parents howled with delight at this proof of his hypocrisy (and of the inevitable foundering of all leftist dreams on the rocks of economic reality and sociobiology).
horsemouth always connected howard kirk with richard wilder, documentary film-maker and 'socal climber' of the post-apocalyptic high rise. there are comparisons to be made here with terry nation's survivors (tv series 1975) in which society collapses but everyone remains frightfully decent (except for the hoi-polloi).
there are connections to be made to themroc (film 1973)also.
ballard is interested in what lies beneath the decent lineaments of bourgeois existence and bourgeois consciousness but he doesn't think it is pretty and liberating (ok it might be liberating). in this he shares an interest in limit experiences. everything must be reduced to ruins to reveal the psychological states beneath.
nightfall diaries - the first of a series of reflective evening posts
well it is neither the first nor entirely original as a title (it is lifted from asimovvia outlaw bookseller).
horsemouth has been enjoying a midsummer night's dream - well the middle bit after they become lost in the forest (lord knows what the rest of it will be like). it's the peter hall (1968) version. the helen mirren. diana rigg, david warner, michael jayston version with a young (and surprisingly gorgeous) judi dench as titania. ian richardson makes a great oberon.
ok horsemouth is enjoying the play within the play - it is engagingly homespun.
horsemouth imagines it filmed by pasolini (titania and oberon have already appeared in a pasolini - haven't they? yes. in his the canterbury tales).
'... from toronto, robbie took a bus to new york and spent three days and nights, sleepless, looking for a place to stay. finally, he was rescued by a fraction of french painters who traded him bed for board. robbie worked the basket houses in the village until he was fired for being non-commercial. at the same time he fell in with allain ribback who was working with paramusic. a short and perhaps unjust description of the idea behind the music is: a group of nonprofessional musicians intensively play together until they achieve a music which is expressive of the group as a whole. robbie did some work with allain and the black lotus - hymn to fugen was recorded during this period...'
today two zoom meetings and a phonecall. remind horsemouth to get out for a walk before he does the meetings.
sir patrick vallance the government’s then chief scientific adviser at the covid inquiry.
'number 10 chaos as usual. on friday, the two-metre rule meeting made it abundantly clear that no one in number 10 or the cabinet office had really read or taken time to understand the science advice on two metres. quite extraordinary.'
you see horsemouth gets doubling times (he thinks) - that's as near to an objective fact as you can get in a crisis - if on monday x amount of people are being hospitalized and then on friday 2x amount of people are being hospitalized you have a 4 day doubling time (somebody please tell him he's got that right). it can reasonably be expected that by tuesday it will have doubled again (and so on until it hits peak).
in comparison the scientific basis of the 2m rule horsemouth would require more convincing. if there's an infectious airborne disease doing the rounds then obviously getting people further apart will help - why 2m suddenly makes it safe horsemouth has no idea.
'horsemouth has taken to writing these posts not on the morning of the day but in the afternoon/evening of the day before. he will then add a little (largely based on his watching and reading) on the morning of the day.'
during this week horsemouth and his mum are on abbey duty. in the morning horsemouth went down to open up the abbey in the morning. his mum went down to close it up in the evening. and so on.
in the day they got on with clearing out the greenhouse. (this was not without it's disagreements to put it mildly). there's a second greenhouse (horsemouth thinks they will leave it a bit before making a start on that one).
on the tuesday his mum is off into town.
'for a long time everyone in that society knew that nothing really worked anymore, (and) there was nothing they could do about it.'
of course there are distinct parallels between the russians 30 years ago and us now- and as adam curtis points out with sunak and co we are back with the austeriteers (and here's cameron! all it needs is george osborne and we've got the set!). there is something ballardian in the distance of his vision.
'in a sense these people were the vanguard of a well-to-do and well-educated proletariat of the future boxed up in these expensive apartments with their elegant furniture and intelligent sensibilities...'
the birds sidle into the hedge like cheap spivs up to no good. they ae waiting their turn on the bird feeder. there they wait like an advent calendar each one surrounded by its own peculiar darkness. the jay is too big for the bird feeder. emptied out of plants and tools the greenhouse is like an illustration in a catalogue.
after the second world war the US tried to re-install the government of chiang-kai shek . there was an ongoing civil war with the chinese communist party (the CCP) which the CCP win in 1949. it is, of course, a vastly complicated era, far away from a european narrative of the second world war as a war against fascism. what had gone on before, what went on during, and what happened after in the middle east and the far east are hard to reconcile with what we take to be history. j.g. ballard's childhood experiences of a japanese internment camp outside shanghai seem impossible. horsemouth always thought it was singapore (this is how little he knows).
j.g. is forced into the role of sinologist and then futurologist predicting what a resurgent china will be like (remember this is 1985).
horsemouth has taken to writing these posts not on the morning of the day but in the afternoon/evening of the day before. he will then add a little (largely based on his watching and reading) on the morning of the day.
he's been reading a little of j.g. ballard's high rise (and watching a little of a rather dull ICA interview with him). at one point ballard gets accused of living a respectable life like magritte, which he choses to misinterpret as being him being accused of being respectable (which is an altogether different thing).
during this week horsemouth and his mum are on abbey duty (he will be off down the abbey in about half an hour - he does hope he has the right keys) and at the end of the week horsemouth's brother and family visit. wednesday horsemouth has to do a zoom meeting on decarbonisation, friday the anniversary of horsemouth beginning blogging on my space, saturday a kafka diary entry from 1914 to be getting on with.
the night before last horsemouth watched the satan bug (a thriller featuring germ warfare based on a novel by alistair maclean).
'I am not particularly prosperous nor particularly happy - who is? but I do not go about in paris with a halo of ghosts and tears.' - ernest dowson in a letter to samuel smith, replying to a description of him in a letter by marmaduke langdale, 20th november 1895.
dowson is down on his luck in paris (but at least he has enough money to survive from his translation work).
'number 10 chaos as usual. on friday, the two-metre rule meeting made it abundantly clear that no one in number 10 or the cabinet office had really read or taken time to understand the science advice on two metres. quite extraordinary.'
- sir patrick vallance, the government’s then chief scientific adviser.
it's a big week in the covid inquiry. the scientific advisors are up - they are unlikely to be fans of boris's bipolar way of working.
horsemouth is just back from a quick walk up the road. they were ringing the bells at the abbey but horsemouth headed off the other way and up dick's pitch. soon (monday) horsemouth and his mum are on unlocking/ locking up the abbey duty. today horsemouth walked up hill until it turned into mud and then turned around and came back not wanting to get mud on his decent trousers.
monday also an ernest dowson quote from a letter written 20th november 1895 (which horsemouth wrote down in his diary).
this weekend it is the turn of list making (in the saturday supplement). both rely upon the supposed benefits for memory and cognition of physically writing things down (rather than the typing away at a machine that horsemouth largely does these days). he just opened his diary - next to nothing (physically) written down in it (but then the pens are acting up again).
horsemouth needs to write things down (or type them in) otherwise he forgets almost immediately.
once upon a time horsemouth (with one of his deaf students) encountered a lecturer who was most taken by ideas around the mental benefits of physically writing things down and thought that the deaf student should be writing things down for themselves rather than employing a notetaker like horsemouth to do it for them. sadly this meant that in the lectures the student became more focused on writing down their own notes rather than focusing on the interpreters to pick up the contents of the lecture (thus annoying the interpreters).
for a while the lecturer aggressively attempted to reinvent the way deaf students were supported. eventually the lecturer had a conversation with the student where they felt sufficiently affirmed and valued in order to drop it (horsemouth suspects this was the real issue all along) and everyone heaved a sigh of relief.
for everybody it was an object lesson in the sacred art of dealing with conflict. it is not that the lecturer was wrong about the benefits of physically writing notes it is just that their model of the student was a hearing student rather than a sign-language using deaf student.
the government had a different problem with supporting the deaf (in work, in education, in medical or legal situations) and that problem was that while it wanted it done (as indicative of a society that valued all people) it also didn't want to pay for it particularly. eventually (post 2008 horsemouth believes) the government called for a race to the bottom on the fees charged for deaf support (the lowest bid had to be selected). the sector continues because interpreters and other support workers are still needed to integrate deaf people into the largely hearing institutions that surround them.
what the government is really looking for is a speech-to-text device/ better hearing aids etc. that would if not render the deaf hearing at least render the costs of supporting them more predictable.
in a few minutes a zoom call with howard. (don't get horsemouth started on the changes in the support for the deaf during the pandemic. many interpreters hated delivering the service via zoom and had grave doubts about its efficacy).
thereafter horsemouth does not know because he no longer works in the sector.
zoom call over horsemouth is slightly drunk - two bottles of beer.
excuse him. he's just seen some sheep go by the window. (the sheep are back this will annoy his mum).
radio 3's composer of the week have been following alice coltrane up into the translinear light.the show as a whole is thin on analysis - what cinematic orchestra got from alice coltrane was the sample lifted from the album with carlos santana, not inspiration from journey in satchidananda. her collaborations with carlos santana, mcCoy tyner, charlie haden, joe henderson don't get a mention (and nor does the one with roland kirk which horsemouth hadn't heard about).
6 years ago horsemouth was off with howard to watch the alice's ashram choir perform.
here we have alice in a near big band set up recorded live at carnegie hall, february 21, 1971. pharoah sanders, archie shepp (ts,ss,perc), alice herself (p, harp), jimmy garrison, cecil mcbee (b), ed blackwell, clifford jarvis (d), kumar kramer (harmonium), tulsi (tamboura). great double bass solos.
there was also the live at the berkeley community theater, 23rd july 1972. charlie haden (b), ben riley (d), alice herself (harp, organ, p), aashish khan (sarod), pranesh khan (tabla), bobby w. (tamboura, perc.).
15:18 friday listening to weird ass books #5: the complete stories of j.g.ballard
'in this episode of weird ass books..'
the reviewerbought the book at the start of the covid pandemic (good timing right?). 58 stories from across ballard's career. that's a nice bookshelf behind him. yeah it would be a bit intense to read them all at once but that would be a good thing right?
here's the cover of a ballard short story collection horsemouth found in a photo from an article by an artist about being trapped in athens for the pandemic.
meanwhile there was a huge peace in palestine march and football hooligans were 'defending' the cenotaph having been encouraged in this by a rogue tory politician. (kind of like kingdom come comes to town). fortunately outlaw managed to make it back to bath without encountering anything too dystopian.
'now that everything had returned to normal, he was surprised that there had been no obvious beginning, no point beyond which their lives had moved into a clearly more sinister dimension,'
horsemouth thinks there's a falling off with ballard - the last few are just not as good. there's a point where reality (or the collective fantasy) just outstrips him. horsemouth started reading a little of high rise.
just as well horsemouth didn't lower the house electricity and gas direct debit because it's going up again in january. it looks like they should have just enough money to cover the bill through to april - when it drops down to the summer usage.
after yesterday's bright autumn sunshine it is rainy and grey today.
darn it! just missed william hope hodgson's birthday. cosmic horror novelist, photographer, body builder, sailor. horsemouth had a quick look at timothy s. murphy's book on him (whence the title of this post) making use of (somewhat tangentially it must be admitted) ernst bloch's the principle of hope.
'last december a senior civil servant made a formal submission to lee rowley, then the building safety minister, urging him to approve a nationwide programme to investigate the safety of ageing social housing blocks built with LPS concrete. (and also RAAC in schools)
this would be building safety minister lee 'do nothing' rowley. who when confronted with this report asked if the option 'to do nothing' could be added.
horsemouth repeats this story just in case anyone is interested in it.
elsewhere interesting developments. at the moment any brit spending 90 days in france or spain cannot then return there (or anywhere else in the EU) for a further 90 days unless they have citizenship or residencia or some such. obviously this rather cramps the expats' style. the french senate has this week approved a bill amendment granting automatic long-stay visa rights to british second-home owners in france 'without the need for any formalities' and the spanish are discussing something similar.
to benefit horsemouth and his friends (who just want to eke out their remaining years in the sunshine somewhere cheap rather than buy property) they would have to get rid of that property requirement (and extend it to portugal). portugal seems to be going the other way - people have got sick of the tax incentives for digital nomads and the golden visa schemes driving up rental and property prices and ended them.
'the tory party (an anagram of troy remember) has fallen upon itself - the bravermans can’t dethrone sunak, but sunak can’t get his deal passed either. the wreckers and the moles have yelled their defiance and then scuttled off. could it be that we will have a treaty with rwanda and still not have the issue sorted? this is looking entirely possible...'
horsemouth wrote the above paragraph about the brexiteeers and theresa may and a hard brexit but of course it all still applies because the tories have got into the habit of feuding.
myk pointed out to horsemouth that radio 3 have made john and alice coltrane their composer(s) of the week - horsemouth will have to go back and revisit the earlier episodes. here's yesterdays - right on that moment of the transition to alice coltrane's work. let's see if there's another one today on alice coltrane's post jazz work (for the ashram etc.). it's a little thin on analysis.
so a beautiful sky. horsemouth is up early to make the most of the daylight (only about 8 hours at this time of year)
today (and yesterday) world galaxy day(s) - 52nd anniversary of it being recorded in NY.
'transport costs are keeping five million people (8% of the UK population) below the poverty line...
... the social market foundation (SMF)... found that out of a total of 13 million individuals in poverty today, relieving them of these costs would lift five million (8% of the british population) above the poverty line...'
horsemouth has lived in a city so his transport options were way better than most. still it was a sizeable part of his work expense - here's how he gamed it. of course what people really need is cheap or near free rapid mass transit.
1) avoiding zone 1 (the expensive centre of town zone) - for zone 1 get the bus in or out of zone 1, for any other zone go round the outside, or get the train/ tube round to the closest zone 2 station and walk in. ('round the outside, round the outside').
2) walk nearly everywhere within about 1 hour of home. if it's for pleasure then walk. walk between bookings in the day if there's time. (horsemouth would have got a bicycle but he is scared of cycling in a city).
3) the train map and the AtoZ are your friends. the transport area journey planner (or google maps) will route you through the centre. it will show you buses for tube or train stations you can walk to. they are both are useful tools for planning walking trips though, mostly because they give you estimated walking times.
all this is back from when horsemouth had a job and had to get up early for. because he had a clever scheme to save himself money by avoiding zone 1 he ended up getting up at 5.45am to start work at 9am. he ended up on the overground to the end of the line (and then getting another train on to funky kingston).
back when boris was prime minister. back before covid.
this morning he has woken up late. he has his coffee. it is supposed to be rainy and shit weather today but clearing tomorrow.
'there aren't any memories to see or share today, but we'll let you know when you have some to look back on...'
gee thanks facebook. could be true. there could have been a day when horsemouth didn't use facebook in the last 15 years.
horsemouth was out of sorts most of yesterday. it begins at breakfast. it lasts through until dinner time.
it is a rainy grey day and makes everything slippery (so not the best day for cleaning the gutters). as usual a mixture of guilt and resentment get to him. he brushes up some leaves. he goes for two walks. he worries that he's getting fat.
in the evening he watched a little of basquiat (1996).
'this is the true voice of the gutter.' horsemouth is sorry to say he laughed. it's an engaging tale where beautiful people make art (so what is not to like). as a child basquiat's mother takes him to see guernica and has a vision of him wearing a golden crown. and then there's old new york, the drugs and the women.
in a bit he will check the guardian to see how the civil war in the tory party is going. (that will cheer him up).
will it cause civil war in the tory party? horsemouth does hope so. go on my beauties!
'right wing tories have met after rishi sunak sacked suella braverman as home secretary, with one MP publishing a formal letter of no confidence in the prime minister.'
in other news the UK is set to have its seventh housing minister in under two years
(and the just departed rachel maclean was the 15th since 2010).
horsemouth will now pretend to be sad that the assorted tory intellects haven't had the time to devote themselves to becoming familiar with their brief..
'while rents have soared in recent years, local housing allowance rates, which determine housing benefit levels, have been frozen since 2020.
in june, analysis by the institute for fiscal studies think-tank found just 5% of new private rental properties advertised on zoopla were covered by local housing allowance rates, the lowest level on record...'
these were 'wildly inadequate a decade prior to 2020 too' a friend notes (in case anyone thinks government stinginess is a recent problem as people are driven to top up their rents driving them further down into poverty). .
horsemouth used to have a copy of pavane (good book, awesome cover), he thinks he read the prototype grain kings in new worlds that and weihnachtsabend (or possibly some brian aldiss/ harry harrison thing). he has a a copy of the furies (keith roberts' first novel) somewhere.
horsemouth's friend worries about roberts being discovered by the folk horror lot (it would most likely feature in the pages of hellebore.)
three years ago the fall of the house of fitzgerald was posted up on youtube. horsemouth pronounces himself delighted with it (not that it couldn't be better but at least he got it done and out and people may view the result). 2020 may have been a peak year for horsemouth's creativity. sadly since then he has failed to keep up the pressure.
horsemouth awaits the release of the triple negative book. he has retuned his guitar to standard and attempted some singing. next week horsemouth and his mum are down on the abbey rota (opening and closing the abbey) at the weekend his brother and his family are up visiting. yesterday a blind buying failure (most annoying). mum went off to visit a friend and deliver some eggs (that was a good thing). horsemouth sat around and fumed.
'the owl of minerva flies at dusk and armies clash by night' - horsemouth, yesterday's blog title.
this is of course assembled from two quotations (or near quotations).
‘the owl of minerva spreads its wings only with the coming of the dusk.’ from hegel's the preface to the philosophy of right, followed by,
'and we are here as on a darkling plain
swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
where ignorant armies clash by night' from matthew arnold'sdover beach.
for hegel what was really going on in an era only becomes obvious as that era ends, for arnold the world (for all its promise) is a dangerous place (in this, one of the most anthologised poems). it seems to horsemouth there are two types of darkness here.
so the braverman coup attempt is over (for now). in which braverman seizes operational control of the police. never mind soon enough the tories will have the new laws to do it for real.
here we are with vashti bunyan's rosehip november. horsemouth also listened to some of linda perhacs talking about how she came to write her music.
horsemouth begins the week with the memory of recording a guitar part for CATASTRO/fille. he listened to the (un)finished result a while ago - it still sounds good. all horsemouth was trying to do in his playing was pull out the tune that was there already on top on the verse, find something similar for the chorus and put some pleasantly creepy ECMish bits round it. ideally he would like to finish this off but he may just have to be happy with the demo track.
this morning there is rain through sunshine. his mum is just back from feeding the chickens. in a bit breakfast and then some shopping.
it's a misty and grey morning. it may even be raining too. (it is raining). horsemouth is reading alan bennett's writing home (but the intellectual bits on kafka and erving goffman you understand). bennett is, as a brit, resistant to that continental nonsense.
horsemouth watched some post-demo 'wandering round westminster trying to pick a fight' footage (so far so saturday night out in a small town). it looked scary horsemouth was glad not to be there (in manchester it looked even worse).
it's just a lurch to the right (let's do the timewarp again)
the way it seems to horsemouth is that the home secretary suella braverman called the right-wing mobs onto the street because she (and the prime minister rishi sunak) couldn't get the police to ban the palestine ceasefire march like they wanted them to - the police stood up to them because they don't have the political authority to do that yet (or not yet anyway).
the (ex) hooligans promptly disgraced themselves by running around like it was match day.
the blame will attach to suella braverman and she will probably be gone from the government soon (if not by the time horsemouth types this).
braverman is preparing the ground for a 'lurch to the right' leadership campaign when the tory party loses the next election. she is just positioning herself, trying to be the change she wants to see.
the interesting thing is that dominic cummings would probably advise them to do the rightward lurch.
there is a distinct separation between the political elite of the uk and the streets/ the people - given the multilayered checks and balances of the full political system (the electoral system, parliament, lords, judiciary, army, police, civil service, quangos, hedge-funds, industry, finance, the media etc, etc,) it would be a miracle if there was a direct connection (and if there was it would be unlikely to last long).
the question is can the xenophobic right-wing populist vote break through using the current electoral system (in the current media climate) or can it only do this given a referendum? sunak (you see horsemouth almost typed starmer) is economically quite right wing but wants to be seen as a centrist safe pair of hands - he is planning for tory re-election in about 6 years time on a platform of 'a safe pair of hands from the centre'.
horsemouth doubts the city is prepared to tolerate an outbreak of trussanomics without punishing the whole population again. but of course a resumption of parliamentary business as usual will not automatically help the people of the regions , the inequalities and injustices that fuel the attempt to get populism onto the political agenda will continue.
sun off to the south east on the horizon (low on the horizon). it was a red sky in the morning (it's cold).
inside the central heating has been on (this is good).
horsemouth listened to an interview with dominic cummings from the states. once again dominic was right (the way he tells it anyway). horsemouth had forgotten that dominic spent time in russia when it was collapsing.
since he's been gone there have been an unusual number of by-elections triggered by misconduct. 19 in this parliament alone. soon it will be that there isn't time to run the by-election before the general election and we had just better learn to put up with our bent MP.
matt's time in mexico is up. he's back to san diego to see his family (and then probably off to asia). he debates spinning the travelogue stuff off onto a separate channel (because less people are interested in it).
the thrifting stuff it is difficult to add to, he cannot be thrifting and travelling (but it is his main earner), the bookpilled and travelogue stuff he makes less on (they are essentially hobbies). anyway good luck. (ah there's a new bookpilled horsemouth hasn't seen).
meanwhile outlaw bookseller has been out and about (in search of manuscripts from the late, great, and very grumpy, keith roberts).
5 years ago horsemouth was playing the mighty water into beer/ acoustic anarchy (thanks to martin for inviting him). there's a photo - thanks zoe (but there are no recordings).
horsemouth is a little uninspired he will go and get a coffee. today possibly zoom beers with howard.
ok down to 2C tomorrow night so it is getting colder. that's probably the end of the tomatoes.
horsemouth is working his way through alan bennett's thoughts on franz kafka as you can see there are rather a lot. he's doing this by working through the references to franz kafka listed in the index of bennett's writing home.
of course bennett's big problem is a tendency to see kafka as a comedy of manners - this is very english, but this means he cannot see kafka as anything else. at least kafka made it across the english channel, he did this (bennett speculates) because there is something in him that draws a response and gains the recognition of a british audience.
there is of course not just the article kafka at las vegas, or the play kafka's dick, there is also a film ofthe insurance man (1986). (here horsemouth has found it on the IMDB).bennett devotes an entire chapter to the filming of this (in bradford and liverpool as opposed to prague).
the filming of a work is inherently more comic than the writing of it because life itself intervenes and the shadow of it falls. bennett has concerns about the traitor sign hung round the neck of a man himself hanging from a lampost (a mere detail in the shot). he asks for the shot to be retaken without the placard but just as they come to do it the hanged man starts to have a heart attack and is taken away to hospital. bennett never gets his reshoot.
kafka at las vegas bennett describes as a paralipomena of all his researches that went towards writing kafka's dick and the insurance man but that could not go in to them, all the jokes and dialogue that could not be used. and kafka at las vegas is already comic - what is kafka supposed to do in las vegas? (answer; be a stand up comedian).
we have met a paralipomena before, at the end of theodor adorno's aesthetic theory, in that case assembled by gretel adorno (theodor's widow) and rolf tiedermann out of the off-cuts and leavings.
there's a lot of love for kafka on this scene - see adorno's notes on kafka (a text described as having a 'lustrous obscurity' in the german by stanley corngold). this is possibly because they are mostly germans and kafka writes in german (unlike schulz say who writes in polish), because german is also one of the state languages of the austro-hungarian empire. .it is unlikely that alan bennett will find much to like in lustrous obscurity - such a thing is not a virtue that a text can possess, it is literally incomprehensible, perhaps best rendered as a mixed blessing.
today more reading. a walk. saturday zoom beers with howard (maybe).
horsemouth has clicked a link and a lot of his shady history has been returned to him. (oh dear. oh well). it just means he will have to be very good from now on.
he's a little headachey. one bottle of beer last night. he's had his coffee, he's had a paracetamol, it's starting to shift. what also helps (aha) is that he has remembered what he was going to write about - alan bennett on kafka (no don't laugh).
in bennett's writing home there are 22 references to kafka, one of which is an entire chapter (kafka at las vegas - probably written for the LRB, yup 23 july 1987). it all begins in a most bennettian manner from his diaries (20th december 1983, new york);
'I am reading a book on kafka. it is a library book and someone has marked a passage in the margin with a long, wavering line. I pay the passage special attention without finding it particularly rewarding. as I turn the page the line moves. it is a long dark hair.'
'commentators on kafka tend to enlist him. heller enlists him, holds him up to the rest of the literature class as a good example. how he would have squirmed! canetti does the same, annexes kafka to his own stringency.'
bennett has his own views (of course).
in a little bit horsemouth will go downstairs to do his share of the washing up (and drying) from breakfast. light rains and gentle breezes this morning (as usual the best weather goes before horsemouth gets out of the door). it is raining now as horsemouth tries to work out what to do for the day.
'the celestial sound that controls the whole universe' - swami satchidananda at woodstock, 7.10-7.20pm august 15th 1969 (just after richie havens).
it is journey in satchidananda day - the anniversary of the recording of four out of the five tracks on journey in satchidananda up at the coltrane family home in dix hills, long island (near the town of huntington).
wikipedia says the following;
satcitananda (sanskrit: सच्चिदानन्द, IAST: saccidānanda; also sat-cit-ananda or sacchidānanda) is an epithet and description for the subjective experience of the ultimate unchanging reality, called brahman, in certain branches of hindu philosophy, especially vedanta. it represents "existence, consciousness, and bliss" or "truth, consciousness, bliss".
horsemouth has found some great footage of the coltrane home, john, alice, michelle and john junior. four out of the five tracks on journey in satchidananda were recorded there, but also cosmic music, monastic trio, huntington ashram monastery, ptah el daoud, and two tracks on universal consciousness.
horsemouth doesn't have journey in satchidananda here with him but he does have the luaka bop ecstatic music, huntington ashram monastery and the title track from journey on the astral meditations compilation. he will endeavour to listen to it again today.
today a rainy grey morning (claring later allegedly). horsemouth did not sleep so well last night (too much coffee probably). horsemouth has dropped off some eggs for his mum at a neighbours and picked up some nasturtium fruit from a plant on the way back. this afternoon a journey (horsemouth is slightly anxious about getting back before darkness falls).
once again horsemouth (that cartoon character) fails to blow up parliament and the king on the state opening of parliament. he would in fact be following in the footsteps of a previous attempt by guy fawkes - blowing up the house of lords while the king is speaking to them (and the commoners allowed in). or he would be if he were going to do it.
alas, he knows nothing about explosives and he doesn't fancy going to jail. he is merely attempting to be witty. he is wearing some kind of a historical costume to demonstrate his harmlessness.
the king will announce the business of the government for its remaining year before the next general election. this is their last chance to bribe the electorate with its own money/ talk the kind of trash that racists and bigots want to hear/ give the gas and oil companies licenses to pump more carbon into the air/ have some tax cuts for their rich mates.
there's a whole bundle of ceremonial around this (but horsemouth disdains to read about it). this is precisely this kind of bollocks that guy fawkes was trying to prevent.
of course it was the explorer freya stark who visited the valley of the assassins thus returning to us with wisdom's alternative to war. but relax tyrants horsemouth is a shandy drinking lightweight who is not about to kill anybody.
of course if it were to happen horsemouth would condemn it as terrorism. (of course he would) and say how it was playing into the hands of the fascists and authoritarians. as the old crass joke has it you can't bomb a social relationship. ideally what horsemouth would like to see is the legitimacy fall from that ceremony and people simply ignore it - it's a bunch of old men gathered in a room, so what.
here the sun is up and horsemouth is about to go and get his second cup of coffee. the sun races through the treeline up into the woods on the hill above the house. it looks like a pretty good day (off and on).
elsewhere he is reading erling kagge's silence in the age of noise - another explorer kagge is a big fan of silence. silence is difficult to talk about, to write about, it requires careful not speech, careful not writing, it requires space to be left for it. the book was a quid from upstairs at the charity shop in hereford - it seems more correct for horsemouth's mood.
the news from the world continues to be terrible. horsemouth wonders what the payback will be for killing thousands of children in palestine.
the sun a giant fireball ascends into the heavens. we have just passed the first of the golden hours. sunrise 0715 sunny intervals and a gentle breeze.
horsemouth has written some other words but he is saving them for the state opening of parliament and the anniversary of journey in satchidananda day.
therefore he has nothing to say but what is not in his head yet.
horsemouth put up a link to dennis morris's photos - he turns out to have been an important figure in punk - photographing bob marley as a schoolboy, photographing the sex pistols, designing the first PIL album cover. his post on werner herzog got more likes (and his post on a freeview showing of john schlesinger's terminus got more likes still).
to the islands with ingmar in a car horsemouth blogged three years ago (based on a dream).
'a point here the concept of mixing was, to most people, absolutely alien.'
greg wilson appears on the tube in 1983 and demonstrates mixing between two record decks. the crowd are utterly bemused. this is not what music is. he's not playing it himself they are just records. where are the guitars? where are the keyboards? this isn't a performance he's just playing records! why would we watch that?
horsemouth has the guitar tuned up in open G minor. this is robbie basho's 'blue' tuning (dgbflatgbflatd), sometimes taking it up to an openG tuning (dgdgbd - dogged gibbered). soon he will return it to standard tuning and start practicing songs again.
basho also tended to use an open Cm (cgcgceflat horsemouth guesses).
that tuning the d string down to a bflat is really quite important. horsemouth does not tend to raise the pitches of strings when he retunes guitars away from standard. the note on strings tuned higher than usual should decay faster than it would otherwise have done (and conversely sustain longer for strings tuned down).
so the tory MP found guilty of a racially aggravated public order offence will relinquish the conservative whip until his appeal (when it comes) is ruled on - very nicely delayed. and as we know with the overcrowded court system that can stretch out a very long time. and during this time he is still voting in parliament. because this was a fine and not a custodial sentence horsemouth thinks he doesn't face automatic deselection. (trebles all round!)
horsemouth gives the following example from the benches opposite - back in 2021 horsemouth was considering the conviction of claudia webbe MP and the likelihood of her being recalled and losing her position as an MP. as of now she is still an MP because despite losing her appeal the sentence was reduced to below the level that would trigger a recall petition. she has not been allowed to come back as a labour MP and still sits as an independent since then.
she lost the party whip in september 2020 - and so has had an additional three years on an MP's salary (£82k a year) and will almost certainly have most of a fourth.
3 years or 30 years what does it matter?
3 years ago horsemouth found a copy of the 1992 NLR (new left review) it discusses a great crisis in the world economy (and here we are again). of course the overheatings and seizing up of the great machine of trade is small beer when compared to climate crisis. indeed the disruptions of the climate crisis may be so great that moving towards net zero will be revealed as a comforting dream. we tend to view the ecological pessimism of UTOPIA as a mcguffin - something designed to move on the plot - but increasingly it looks like it is a real and accurate description of the future and net zero as a mere 'rearranging of the deck chairs on the titanic'.
the decarbonisation of social housing is still a thing. it could still happen. there could still be government money for it (or perhaps different pots of moneys). there may still be a way through that does not involve the benighted paupers of the communal endeavour paying for it all. regardless of its effects upon the climate crisis it would just be useful to the members to have their heating bills reduced.
it is november. one of the embers.the photograph for the month in the countryfile calendar is a very scalped and pushed over tree from near beachy head. (the ace of trees in the countryfile calendar tarot? or the fool in a tree tarot? december's photo seems to be the nine of swans.)
no zoom beers with howard as yet and none this evening he was up at docklands and by the time horsemouth has eaten he would be knackered. a few fireworks in the distance.
it is the morning of the 5th. it looks like a nice day out there. no kafka until the 12th. wednesday - the 8th - journey in satchidananda day. horsemouth is kind of stuck for a title for this blog post.
do we think getting found guilty of a racially aggravated public order offence is enough to get you bounced as an MP these days? (parliament isn't even back in until the 7th). he has a fair amount of previous too.
horsemouth has bought a 2024 dore abbey calendar (from the abbey). whodathunk it - retail therapy in the green fields.
the triple negative book will not be arriving until mid-november say his sources. horsemouth is looking forward to it. (horsemouth has said that before but it bears repeating)
another thing he has said before is that one advantage of being out of the seaside towns at the minute is that he will be missing bonfire night (which he guesses will mainly be celebrated tonight).
a year ago horsemouth was reading lovecraft's the haunter of the dark (strange goings on in a disused church in providence rhode island). he picked up a 2021 diary from the colenso road book box - it won't match the days of the week and the date until 2027 but horsemouth is determined to keep it and use it that year.
6th november 2021 horsemouth had become interested in recall petitions and getting MPs slung out of parliament.
yesterday a glorious autumn day, a meeting on zoom. and then run up to tescos to buy his mum a small mobile phone (for in case the car breaks down or suchlike). horsemouth thanks the young man who sold them the phone and was very attentive.
mcCoy tyner and alice coltrane. elvin jones and ron carter. gary bartz and wayne shorter. three tracks feature alice coltrane. there's that fake national geographic cover. the mcCoy tyner solos horsemouth finds too noodly for his tastes but the rest of it really rocks.
today rainy and grey on an epic scale. nothing today horsemouth thinks. maybe zoom beers with howard.
'because I had slept very little during the night, did not work anymore, partly too because I was afraid to spoil a fair passage I had written yesterday. since august, the fourth day on which I have written nothing...' - franz kafka, diary, 3rd november 1914.
'only one regret. I hate to leave while there is so much going on.' - luis bunuel, my last breath, final paragraph.
horsemouth types this on the afternoon/ evening of the 2nd november (but it will be the 3rd when you read it).
horsemouth may have to find something to read. he is finding listening to the covid inquiry and the news (mostly israel/ palestine) depressing. the xavier de maistre (a journey around my room) has very small text - this makes the slim volume very stylish, but also difficult to read late at night.
horsemouth has made the mistake of not going out for a walk in the break between the rains (or a slip-slide in the mud more like) this would have lifted his mood. he noticed a 2024 dore abbey calendar for sale in the abbey (he may have to go out and buy one).
the triple negative book will not be arriving until mid-november say his sources. horsemouth is looking forward to it.
one advantage of being out of london at the minute is that he will be missing bonfire night (and the month of firework detonations before and after). bigot that he is horsemouth will gladly have fireworks for diwali but not to celebrate the failure to blow up parliament and the king (which as an added bonus would also have prevented/ delayed the union of england and scotland).
he listened to '... an hourlong manipulation of sounds, noises and voices taken albums originally released by the cook and folkways record labels...' by matmos from the NTS/ folkways day. it's enjoyable but sound is just sound beyond a certain level of digital reconfiguring. this he finds more impressive because it involves a turntablist remanipulation of locked groove samples.
nice footage of john coltrane at the house up in dix hills in the clip at the top of the page (horsemouth went on to listen to a love supreme after this). there's some nice footage of alice coltrane (appearing here as 'mrs. coltrane'), michelle coltrane and john junior.
last night horsemouth read a little of explorer erling kagge's silence - in the age of noise. (like werner herzog he is a great walker).
it's the morning of the 3rd. horsemouth is up and golden sunshine is blasting in the window. last night there was a facebook outage (lots of running around and swearing).
at some point (ok midday) there will be a post-bid consortium meeting. there may be new stuff on the table (or there may not). remind horsemouth to remind his mother (in case she wants to cart him off shopping or something). today decent weather (mostly).
wait! boris johnson has talked about an orgy of narcissism?
boris johnson?
boris johnson is a one-man orgy of narcissism!
more covid inquiry stuff.
as usual the british press are too busy with settling previous scores (brexit and barney castle) to deal with the material in front of them. surely there is more we can learn from the government's response to covid than 'oh miss he swore!'.
the main strategy seems to be throw dominic cummings and matt handcock under the bus (this is mainly because they are so widely disliked).
with matt handcock it is entirely fair and justified.
dominic cummings (on the other hand) is just a small highly efficient teams bore. he's not that clever. he's not that special. the fact that he took the british political class to the cleaners is an expression of the weakness of the british political class, of their failure to understand the public.
anyone who looks at a million votes for UKIP only getting them one MP can see that parliamentary representation is broken.
and this reveals an essential tragic truth about the uk - the political class can get away with having no understanding of the people they rule over because the political system as a whole insulates the ruling class from any need to understand the people. the people don't have enough power for them to matter (most of the time).
horsemouth is however happy to see that the political class cannot learn. it means they will get rinsed again.
it comes to something when the saviour of the nation is held to be the institutional inertia of its civil service.
'and finally the drowned world by ballard...'
matt (bookpilled/ thrift-a-life) is still down mexico way (looks like). well done matt. well escaped dude. he's funding his long holiday through patreon etc. (reviewing SF novels, giving advice on clothing reselling). he's often a smart, perceptive reader and critic (not always but often enough) and his life journey (LA - san diego- mexico/ stand up comic- worker in a writing mill - youtube blogger) is interesting.
however he will persist in using the term 'sci-fi'.
now there are many of horsemouth's friends who don't like the term sci-fi. sci-fi just sounds rinky-dink and cutesy and a bit streamlined and 1950ies (like the fins on a corvette). it's not as bad as gernsback's original scientifiction (but nearly).
for most of horsemouth's friends if you don't use the term SF you are just a rube of some sort. speculative fiction means you are pretentious (and don't want to admit you have been reading mere SF) and similarly if you should be caught drivelling on about 'third stream' or whatever it is called.
meanwhile...
well it's a rainy morning. (and more rain to come). last night horsemouth started on xavier de miastre's a journey around my room. xavier (under house arrest) zeroes in on the microcosm.
'yesterday, after a long time, made a great deal of progress; today again virtually nothing; the two weeks since my holiday have been almost a complete loss - I see the task and the way to do it, I simply have to push past small obstacles but cannot do it...' - franz kafka, diary, 1st november 1914.
montreal writer mavis gallant described the motivation for writing as 'a jolt that unbolts the door between perception and imagination' in the preface to her collected stories. here it is dramatised at the start of her memory and invention.
'once, it must have been around 1992, when I happened to be working all day, everyday, on a story set in the paris of 1953, I was stunned and bewildered to step outside and discover the shape of cars, the casual clothing, and clean facades of the nineteen nineties.
the shock - a true shock because it brought me to a standstill - lasted no more than a couple of seconds. had it gone on I might have believed that part of my mind had been severed and sent adrift. as it was I accepted it as a fragment of the power if memory to influence time.'
of course this is the danger of this time of year (it is samhain when horsemouth is writing this) but by the time you read this we will be safely into november (one of the embers remember) and kafka's quote about the work of writing will come more into connection.
horsemouth has had the belated realisation that the two halves of the year are not equal.
jan-feb-march has 90 days, april-may-june has 91 but july-august-sept and oct-nov-dec both have 92 days, so 181 days in the first half of the year, 184 in the second. (standard year rather than a leap year). a leap year is slightly more even. if the year were taken starting with april that would be more even still for a standard year (and exactly equal for a leap year).
in the day he went for a walk on the common and then watched some of the UK covid 19 inquiry livestream.'useless fuckpigs... morons... cunts' - said dominic cummings of some of his colleagues (or ok he'd called them that in whatsApp messages). just in case anyone thought we were dealing with a plandemic.
bonus points for the person with the persistent cough (this is kind of the point of it/ a measure of how far we have come).
they have got dominic in and punished him for his bad language. they have punished him for his temerity for attempting to replace the original plan (nothing can be done. let it rip. stack up the bodies) with a better one ('build our way out of it' or some such bollocks). of course everything would have gone more smoothly if he'd just known his place.
horsemouth tends to argue dominic deserves a medal for covid (and then to be taken out and shot for brexit).
friday a meeting of the consortium (now that the consortium is over) and another kafka quote.
