as usual after the rehearsal horsemouth drank too much. (he's pretty much always happy to have another) and, as usual, the next day he's feeling a bit guilty.
he's gone to look old don't you think (particularly when drunk)
the shirt is new (how can you tell? it's been ironed). horsemouth bought it on the way over when he noticed his t-shirt was stained.
there was some football going on (but horsemouth and howard disdained it and it looked fairly dull to be honest).
so how did the rehearsal go?
well howard sang a lot of his new stuff (but fairly carefully because his voice is exhausted from his teaching work). after a while horsemouth wrestled the guitar away from him (a very nice fender jumbo acoustic) and ran through eyepennies. howard then sang a backing vocal on it. they recorded it on howard's phone and it sounded pretty good (so that's probably one for the set right there). they had some discussion about the set/ set list.
horsemouth then re-tuned the guitar dadgad and tried his 'anne briggs done by joy division' version of go your way (my love) which went well. horsemouth had some spare filigree f'or it and howard tried out some stuff on the dulcimer to go with it. then they embarked on explorations of the tuning.
today a greyish day. possible rain in the morning. horsemouth will have museli for breakfast (there's no other food in the house that doesn't require cooking) and then try to get on with some reading.
today a meet up with howard. (perhaps yes, or perhaps no, he's complaining of a sore throat).
if they do get to make music then go your way (my love) is definitely on the cards. horsemouth has the laramie tuned up dadgad ready to go and has a plan. eyepennies (by sparklehorse) horsemouth is keen to try out. a slow dance (a waltz into darkness). howard has several tunes and then of course they have all the stuff from volume four that they never got around to playing live.
yesterday (in the evening of which horsemouth is writing this) horsemouth mostly spent being anxious. he's got a walk booked in for monday (TG) and (perhaps) howard on the saturday, minty is away off to wales and enza is off away somewhere.
horsemouth was watching deluge (1933) an early end of the world movie. he cooked - potatoes and a fakemeatball and tomato sauce sort of thing. he mopped up the kitchen floor and out into the corridor.
horsemouth wakes up with a slight headache and a blocked nose. it is a beautiful morning outside. he has his coffee.
'what's the difference? we need a big change not a little change...' say the crew of muslim women at the foodbank but the independent candidate is soon mired in a comments he made about domestic violence scandal. 'the mess goes on' the election is no solution to the issues. it's like the election is going on over here and what is going on with the people is going on elsewhere - the two are not connected. the people are not achieving representation, the election is solving nothing. (at least the woman who ODed and came back is a happy bunny).
it's nice to see reform get a hard tackle in the media but frankly horsemouth just wants them to split the rightwing vote. there's a problem later with their likely underrepresentation when the election is done - the election makes them visible to each other and unifies them. this he sees as a real problem.
horsemouth is up. he has the window open but he is wearing a jumper. it's very sunny but with a nip on the air.
it is the fourth anniversary of the release of musicians of bremen's the humming
- a three track ep made up of tracks from the 2019/2020 recording sessions. as far as horsemouth can remember himself and howard became frustrated with the song recording process and decided to attempt some more improvised things.
the humming itself derives from the commons project at the tate gallery, especially anna and hannah catherine jones for the session they put together. the backing was originally recorded on a phone in the tate modern, a group of people humming in unison by howard. horsemouth went, that sounds good.
technically yes but the musical commodity is still hemmed round with copyright restrictions.
for example here musicians of bremen make the tracks available to stream for free (go on click the link!) but if you want to download them that will cost you. the tracks are currently not available on physical CD. the humming itself may become available of physical CD if they do a second run of the CD with the tracks currently available on the download or streaming version of the album volume four (to which it has been added).
if anybody were to copy these tracks and sell them without musicians of bremen's permission then the bremenites could (in theory) sue. but horsemouth thinks they would be more likely to be grateful for the publicity.
horsemouth has published (over on facebook) his books, films, gigs, events list for june 2024. he will continue to add to it until the end of the month and then publish it here. it's by no means a complete list (but it is quite exhausting).
he is thinking of extending the gigs category to be gigs and musical purchases.
horsemouth thought the scheme to reopen pontrilas railway station was dead! but it has come back as golden valley parkway! it would certainly be useful for the mule
at 3pm this afternoon horsemouth has a zoom call about retrofit. in the morning he will wander up asda (the supermarket in the fields - 3 miles all told also). he has sent in the gas and electricity readings, he will let more people know he is back and around. (no point visiting h______ and skulking around in splendid isolation). saturday a meet up with howard.
yesterday he went for a walk round the book-boxes and a walk up the supermarket (3 miles all told). he sat out in the park in the sun and finished off esther leslie's biography of walter benjamin.
'a new diary, really only because I have been reading the old ones...' - franz kafka, diaries, 27th june 1920.'
'every epoch dreams its successor.' - walter benjamin (in a line unpopular with adorno).
after his visit to dr. goldsmith in canonbury house in islington yesterday 1763 (to drink tea and to chat) tonight boswell goes by water south of the river in vauxhall. but he is in a gloomy mood and eventually hitches a ride back into town on the back of a hackney carriage (this cheers him up enormously).
horsemouth is back in the wen. he got off the train to that mediterranean evening heat. the multiethnic population of london rushed around being beautiful (humanity you are beautiful - this is his usual banal thought when he returns).
aaron bastani (novara media) is in 'chi' (chichester - horsemouth has never been). it is a prosperous town but the locals are fucked off with the tories (their natural party), the youth want to vote reform (jaysus - even the youth of 'mixed heritage').
this morning a cool cloudy morning. it has been 30C by all accounts. right now a coffee and a blog, in a bit a shower (for horsemouth). a very pleasant few days of 23C.
good morning! good morning! it was hot and sunny when horsemouth woke up but now the cloud has boiled up and it has gone darker and cooler.
from here on in horsemouth presents an almost completely written last night blogpost.
'benjamin told scholem that there where places where he could earn a minimum of money and places where he could exist on a minimal amount, but the two did not coincide.' - esther leslie, walter benjamin, p.137.
it is tempting to identify oneself with benjamin here, in the struggle to make ends meet.
here is benjamin the unworldly academic cast out into the world as a refugee, still trying to live and work as an academic while darkness gathers (visible to all) around him. he makes the mistake, he is too committed to european culture, he does not flee to israel, and eventually this kills him.
he could have got lucky, adorno, horkheimer, hannah arendt, even kracauer, got lucky and ended up in the united states. but luck was not with him.
nonetheless he managed to make it work for a number of years. he leaves germany for the last time march 17th 1933. he dies at port bou in spain 25th or 26th september 1940. probably a suicide in police custody, they had caught him and planned to deport him back across the border to france where he would probably be interned again and then deported to nazi germany.
he decided not to give them the satisfaction.
on the struggle to make ends meet and the best laid plans of mice..
horsemouth had managed to work a nice corner in the seaside towns for the best part of 25 years - he was in a housing co-op (so low rent and low living expenses) and there, in the seaside towns, he could find enough work (supporting deaf students) to make enough of a living to survive. sadly, being a lazy sod, he neglected to install a series of second strings on his bow, so when the angel of death and redundancy swooped that was his lot.
there was about a year's worth of redundancy (long since spent) and there's a small works pension (beer money as they used to say).
there had been an earlier plan (in the event of redundancy or work just getting too annoying) to decamp to portugal to eke out his (pre-)pension years (no work probably but even cheaper rent). but then brexit put paid to that. eight years ago the night before last he was raving it up in porto for san joao - he had a beautiful vision of european unity... and then when they woke up in the morning brexit had happened.
will horsemouth ever forgive the brexiteers? will he fuck.
horsemouth is in the afterlife of this life trying to stretch it out to his actual pension ('will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty-four.' er. no they won't (not any more). but they will when he's 67. he just has to stretch it all out until then (he thinks). he thinks it may be do-able.
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horsemouth became interested in the phrase darkness gathered. he found instead a 'darkness gathers'.
wait! let horsemouth get a second cup of coffee and he will see if he has any more for you this morning.
this evening horsemouth returns to the wen. tomorrow (being back among you) he will begin to circulate and mingle. it is his last day in the countryside under tory rule when he returns again the head of starmerite liberty will have been placed on the body of tory tyranny (oh how happy we will be). he has a bet on with his mum - a fiver on the heads of the two tory MPs of herefordshire. he thinks he's going to lose (both are going to get back in), but there's a chance one of them will fall (so horsemouth breaks even).
the first wholly written in the morning blogpost in a while.
the michael o'shea documentary from RTE is available as a podcast. there's a download also.
it's a beautiful day out there. horsemouth was up to move the milk delivery over to the fridge in the garage and to water the garden and in the potting shed.
last night a meeting of the communal endeavour (painless). horsemouth regretted not being in the seaside towns with his friends). he followed it up with a bottle of beer while watching videos on the tories filleting themselves on the rocks of the election. (sample headline - is this the tory death spiral? this morning he feel good).
horsemouth supposes that we are looking at the last tory scandal for at least a while.
he has his coffee. wait a second he will nip downstairs and get another cup.
tomorrow his brother, his brother's wife, eldest son and eldest son's girlfriend are up visiting. horsemouth will probably take the opportunity to nip back to the seaside towns for a 10 days or so. he needs to get in his vote (on the fourth) probably a vote for labour and for diane abbott (just to piss off keir starmer).
as a result of boundary changes intended to render the size of constituencies more equal horsemouth's constituency is now hackney north. similarly horsemouth must remember to take photo ID with him to the polling station. now as the gallagher index tells us the real sources of under and over representation in uk elections are low voter registration and third party effects due to the first past the post system (the tories are about to witness the full horror of this at the hands of reform) rather than uneven constituency sizes and voter fraud.
there is next to no voter fraud (especially of the type 'personation') and really all the measures to discourage it are really just attempts to discourage voting itself.
it is not that horsemouth is a big fan of diane abbott but that he doesn't yet know if her seat is safe given her recent fuck ups - when he is sure he will revert to his usual habit of voting green because it's a safe labour seat and while he wants the tories out of government what he really wants to see are green policies.
'benjamin continued to cultivate unpredictable alliances. in december 1930 he sent a letter and a copy of the baroque book to the authoritarian theorist carl schmitt, for he had used schmitt's political theologyto expound the doctrine of sovereignty in the seventeenth century.'
- esther leslie, walter benjamin, critical lives.
'9am two hours of writing without eating, washing, or analyzing emails... the aim is not to get involved in domestic activity...
9pm I keep out of restaurants. I've taken the view that eating with other people is a waste of time...
10pmI don't have a TV... so I listen to music...' - colm tóibín, telegraph magazine, 22nd june 2024.
horsemouth will deal with these in no particular order
he too keeps out of restaurants (but that's because he can't afford to eat in them). horsemouth doesn't have a TV in his room (in either herefordshire or london) this much is true - but he does have a laptop (which in many ways is much the same thing). and this he tends to type on while on the bed.
he often watches the news with his mum because he can't face watching tv dramas. he finds them 'insubstantial' as colm puts it of the tv news.
like colm (and this may be the only point where their lifestyles interconnect) he tends to fall asleep if he reads on the sofa. see the bourgeois lives of the rich and famous coincide with yours in the humble and mundane, isn't that miraculous.
a few days ago horsemouth actually listened to a radio show on the radio (while sitting out front in the sun) this is practically unheard of. to tell you the truth he wasn't sure radios even still worked. interestingly (in terms of listening to music) neither does horsemouth have record decks nor even a CD player anymore (he could at a pinch listen to CDs on his laptop - yes it is that old).
one thing he listened to online was an RTE documentary on vagabond percussionist michael o'shea (horsemouth will put up a link to the archived version when it becomes available)
benjamin was greatly exercised by radio, as 1931s reflections on radio shows. horsemouth pulled the esther leslie quote because he has always wondered about the connection between benjamin and schmitt. (via schmitt we get to agamben but also to the other side of that weimar politics).
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and this brings him to the election.
in the election horsemouth expects to see victory for a dull starmerite labour, near destruction for the conservative party and the rise of reform - but horsemouth only expects that rise to be produce a less than double figures number of reform MPs (annoying though they are). the barriers to entry of a first past the post system are vast and reform's real work is to split the right wing vote (it is the next election horsemouth worries about).
a friend is reporting that she will be voting on principle in this election rather than tactically voting lib dem where she is to get the incumbent tory out. horsemouth sees it - people want a more wholesome way to exercise their democratic rights than to vote for the lesser of two evils. they don't want to be made complicit in any of the horrors to follow.
would horsemouth recommend a 'tactical' vote for reform to get out the tories? no he would not.
would he recommend a tactical vote for the tories to keep out reform? er. maybe.
he wants the conservatives crushed and exiled into the wilderness - and on the other side of this he does not want them destroyed so thoroughly that they are not a thorn in the side of reform. he wants reform and the conservatives to contend with and annihilate each other rather than one to emerge the victor. he wants that right wing vote to stay split.
once labour has a functioning majority the size of the majority is irrelevant. in fact a larger majority may serve to weaken the power of those on the the left. horsemouth wholly supports the opportunity of creating alternatives to the left of labour providing they can really get in (once again the first past the post system effectively prevents new parties from entering parliament).
novara media has interviewed two disgruntled tories recently peter oborne and peter hitchens and horsemouth finds what they have to say very interesting.
it remains to be seen, after the election. how useless labour think they can get away with being - they cannot afford to lead the country back into austerity (but they have no real mandate to do anything else).
here it is a grey morning in the valley. (strangely - the weather is predicting 24C when the sun shines).
horsemouth is back from great malvern having watched alula down at carnival records.
but first to get there (and to get back successfully)
to do this horsemouth had to wrangle the great herefordshire transport system.
first off he had to get to pontrilas - but fortunately his mum was taking some letters down to nearby ewyas harold to be posted. having helped with this horsemouth wandered off down the road towards pontrilas. (it was a sunny beautiful day so this was no major loss)
but at pontrilas there were roadworks and the bus stop had been closed. at the second bus stop horsemouth discovered that it had been moved to the bus stop outside the saw mill (about half a mile up the main road) and off horsemouth trotted along the motorway, cars whizzing past his ear a grande vitesse (because sad to relate there was no pavement).
at the sawmill a wait (and a chat with a local young man who had had a collapsed lung - he believed as a result of vaping). then the bus to hereford bus garage (45 mins or so) and then a quick walk over to the station. the train over to great malvern (30 mins or so).
and at the notoriously hilly great malvern horsemouth made his first mistake and (failing to find any maps of the neighbourhood at the station or on the local bus stops) turned the wrong way out of the railway station and headed off downhill (it made sense to him that civilisation would be downhill). he encountered what looked like civilisation but, upon asking, was told that wasn't it. some ladies (care workers) he asked showed him on their phone - but horsemouth headed off the wrong way. about a mile later he had worked out that he had gone wrong and asked again and came into possession of the crucial bit of information (that it was up hill).
and so up the hill it was.
with the aid of two locals (thank you). horsemouth was eventually on the right track and found church street. he was looking for 83 (carnival records). he saw the sign for it (it was down a back alley). alula down were setting up in a small courtyard, he went and said hi and then killed a little time sitting in the churchyard opposite (in the shade) drinking orange juice.
(would it not just be easier to get a smart phone horsemouth?)
before the gig he bought their latest lathe cut 10" (as seen above on sonido polifonico). he should have taken the opportunity to pick up more of their stuff on CD also. as well you know horsemouth's decks are no longer set up. he hasn't played a record in years (matter of fact he has barely played a CD in the last few years).
so the gig was mostly the material from the 10" and a song from the earlier st.michael's leyline themed CD apparently many of sites on the leyline are uphill so horsemouth shouldn't feel so bad.
- the nailmaker's lament (so not a collective subject uttering lament but an individual nailmaker).
- the derby ram is a tale of a prodigious magical beast.
at the gig the instrumentation was double bass, uke, violin, voices, foot operated shruti box, some kind of sampling keyboard (mostly loaded with birdsong apparently). there was a decent crowd. great gig. horsemouth really likes what they do.
anyway after the brief gig. horsemouth said his goodbyes and scooted off to the railway station. there he jumped almost immediately on a train and arrived back in hereford to discover that he had missed the 1620 bus out by about 10 minutes. this meant he had to wait for the last bus out at 1820 (saturdays). he walked across town to the oxfam but the third volume of ltc rolt's autobiography had vanished into the stacks and so he wandered back.
he hid in the pub next to the wetherspoons (hogarth's similar but with music) and nursed a pint. the following songs were played teenage kicks, a-ha (take me on), barbie girl, zombie nation, hey jude, common people (pulp).
and then to the bus to pontrilas (together will some initially rowdy but later sleepy dudes who had been in the pub earlier) and lift from his mum back to the homestead.
tonight at 6pm on RTE lyric fmRTE lyric fm a show in honour of michael o'shea (inventor of the mo' chara). horsemouth does not know if it will be archived anywhere (if it is he'll put up a link to it).
if horsemouth were truly keen he'd be off to milton keynes to see stick in the wheel who are appearing today as part of a celebration of the astronomical alignment of one of the roads. .
'the horsemouth folk archive is a place for horsemouth to archive all his drivel following the great wreck that was the 2013 myspace blog dieback. he will begin with what he has and add more as he finds it...
horsemouth would like to make it clear that he is NOT the famous reggae drummer leroy 'horsemouth' wallace but rather an unsuccessful folk guitarist eking out a meager existence on the edges of the seaside towns. playing occasionally, blogging regularly, rehearsing infrequently...
if you like what he does please let him know - if not please leave him be.'
but of course it all predates this because horsemouth had already been blogging on myspace since _________ (towards the end of 2006 he thinks). this means that in 2026 there will be a 20ieth anniversary of horsemouth's commencing blogging.
of course what he does under the name of horsemouthhas changed over these years.
in the meantime soon it will be the 20ieth anniversary of horsemouth's first publication in mute.
if you wait long enough all the anniversaries will roll around.
horsemouth was grumpy most of yesterday but he thinks there's a way through the morning to the thing he wants to do in the afternoon - to go see alula down play in great malvern and then successfully return to the homestead. he thinks it's a runner (failing that he can always high-tail it back to the wen a little early via birmingham new street or worcester).
the hereford to london euston via birmingham route is cheaper (trainline claims £34!! but national rail thinks £68.30 for two singles) than the via newport route (£96.40) (as was the via worcester route £72.60). of course there a bewildering array of offers (especially if you include buses) but horsemouth is just into the rock up and go, come back at any time (within a month) fares.
horsemouth is creeping up (day by day) on the condition of being old (if not an OAP). he does have a pension (of about £64/ month - aka. beer money) and soon enough he will have a buspass (and probably a senior citizens railcard). horsemouth is looking forward to this. though he is genuinely shocked to find himself old (who would have thought that could happen).
oof it's a beautiful morning in the valley. (horsemouth has his coffee and has done the watering). he is charging the phone so that he has a timepiece. he wants/ needs to be off earlyish but he's trying not to worry about it or run any catastrophising scenarios (he's failing).
a lost 1990 album by nusrat fateh ali khan has been discovered in the real world records archives and will be released under title chain of light in september. horsemouth is delighted
'the idea of life and afterlife in works of art should be regarded with an entirely unmetaphorical objectivity.' - walter benjamin, the task of the translator.
horsemouth has been sitting out in the sun reading illuminations (the essay above and hannah arendt's marvellous introduction). he also went for a walkdown by the abbey and out along the path towards the almshouses then turning up into the wood on the hill as a result of the closure of that particular footpath. er. and then when he got back, he snoozed for a bit.
over on the facebookery doubters of the transition (the low carbon future one) among horsemouth's friends. horsemouth thinks the doomsters are wrong - capitalism (or whatever the current socio-political- economico setup is) will not collapse, instead it will intensify and get worse. but above all it will beat more value out of the workers even as global temperatures rise and we are all slowly cooked. to some extent horsemouth thinks the famines and millions of climate refugees have already started.
horsemouth thinks the technology works and he thinks the world can move rapidly to a net zero future, it's just that it won't because that future is not as profitable for the rich as the oil pumping present. instead we will get a series on half-measures and 'one-step-forward-two-steps-back' dances.
of course these technologies are polluting (rare-earth metals for semiconductors, and lithium for batteries etc. etc.) and (at least at their outset) carbon intensive. it is just that they are not CO2 and CH4 emitting to the same extent as the oil and gas they will replace over their lifetime.
the only advantage over a net-zero future over a keep pumping the oil future is that we won't all be slowly cooked (but the world will still undergo massive disruption and millions will still die).
ultimately the workers will pay for this (because ultimately the workers pay for everything).
elsewhere a mix of hindu devotional music from howard from 2020.
it's a beautiful bluesky morning in the valley. last night the summer solstice sunset streamed from the stones (with ambient music). at some stage horsemouth went for a wander to check on the progress of the local susnset only to discover the hedgehog up near where his father's ashes are buried (he takes this as some symbol of reconnection).
'in certain latitudes there comes a span of time, approaching and following the summer solstice, some weeks in all, when the twilight's turn long and blue...' - joan didion, blue nights.
well it is the day of the solstice (or it will be when you read this). english heritage are livestreaming sunset on the night of the 20th and sunrise on the morning of the 21st (at some ungodly hour).
there's been some kind of extinction rebellion climate action at the stones. horsemouth thinks it is basically harmless - it's no good the stones being there (or indeed underwater) if humanity (the clever monkeys who set them up in alignment) are extinct. horsemouth is not into leaving some grand central terminus for future travellers in interplanetary craft.
perhaps the shakespeare he needs is a midsummer night's dream.
horsemouth's album for today (and tomorrow as it goes) is marion brown's november cotton flower recorded june 21st-22nd, 1979 at sound ideas studios, new york city. the latin influenced tracks he finds filler but sweet earth flying and november cotton flower he thinks are amazing. with sweet earth flying the piano of the original is replaced with guitar (and it sounds good).
horsemouth will go out in a bit and see if the recycling bin has been emptied. he has had his first cup of coffee. it's a greyish, coolish morning but that is no impediment to it getting decently warm later on (20ish). he has watered the garden and in the potting shed.
'forget everything. open the windows. clear the room. the wind blows through it. you see only its emptiness, you search in every corner and don't find yourself.' - franz kafka, diaries, 19th june 1916.
'in the appreciation of a work of art, or an artform, consideration of the receiver never proves fruitful... no poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.'
- walter benjamin, the task of the translator. first published in 1923, collected in illuminations.
benjamin begins in typical shocking style.
there's a (consolation) theory (you know the type - every cloud has a silver lining uttered by someone with an umbrella while you do not). it is that the tories time in exile (after their upcoming horrendous defeat) will make the tories come to their (tory) senses and move to the centre ground of politics once again. listening to the assembled spin doctors horsemouth is reminded of pm dawn and their hit reality (used to be a friend of mine).
daniel finkelstein -the upside of it, ultimately, more and more people begin to get the point of why they lost the election and so the party gradually returns to sanity in those circumstances and so there is an advantage in that...
polly mackenize - well unless of course it doesn't.
daniel finkelstein - that's true.
on the other hand the tories may forge more right into reform territory (lurching in a farage-ist direction). this is how horsemouth thinks it will go (gawdelpus).
horsemouth was against brexit but, to be fair, it has destroyed the conservative party.
esther leslie's benjamin biography is going well. benjamin has read (and met) ernst bloch and read georg lukacs and he's met kracauer and adorno. like kafka he suffers from a domineering father. he writes a descriptive analysis of german decline on a scroll but he himself is well insulated by wealth from the utter collapse of germany round him (until he isn't).
the thickness of the paper confuses horsemouth (it's a classy edition) - he keeps on thinking there must be another page that he is missing.
so far a greyish morning (but it may clear up later). today egg delivery and taking the recycling bin down the drive. p.s. horsemouth saw a hedgehog this morning.
'horsemouth never quite knows what to do with long and sunny days. it's one week to the solstice and thereafter the machinery of the heavens goes into reverse (summer iz y goin' out as a friend once put it) and yet we will still be in the bright quarter of the year for another seven and a half weeks, not until 15 weeks will we be back at the equinox...'
- horsemouth from ten years ago, draft of blogpost 14th june 2014.
here we see horsemouth bargaining with the heavens.
the rest of the post (and there was rather a lot of it) was about foucault and education. it followed on from horsemouth's readings around althusser, foucault and rancière.
rancière was recently in the NLR sidecar writing a eulogy for his recently deceased publisher eric hazan. horsemouth presumes that the book hazan 'authored' out of rancière mentioned in the article was the politics of aesthetics (a discussion with gabriel rockhill that became rancière's breakout book). but he could easily be wrong. it has been a long time since he read this stuff and he's not up to speed. he has rancière's on the shores of politics with him here. the last time he read it was in porto about 8 years ago (a good choice seeing as it is very keen on sailors and on the sea).
esther leslie's book on benjamin goes well the task of the translator is getting written (it is the collection illuminations). his kid has stopped being ill and is coining words - bildschwein image pig for wild pig wildschwein. they are poor (for the bourgeois) but his wife buys him small paul klee paintings - angelus novus and introducing the miracle (vorführung des wunders).
here it is a beautiful morning (that said it has just gone grey for the day according to bbc weather). upstart crows are mobbing a couple of buzzards disrupting their attempts to rise up on a thermal. last night an owl (undetermined type) and a brightish moon. horsemouth has taken the milk across to the fridge in the garage and horsemouth has watered the garden (remind him to water the plants in the greenhouse).
later today TESCOs and later taking the bin down to the bottom of the drive. he has his coffee.
tomorrow a meeting on zoom about record keeping for retrofit. thursday the solstice.
'an index of possibilities yet to be realized - and an instrument towards their realization - once we all begin to truly live' - esther leslie ends walter benjamin (critical lives).
so what did horsemouth get up to on sunday? (the guardian does this)
well he got up, coffee blah blah, he did some gardening stuff blah blah and then he went for a walk over to the old trout inn (no longer a pub), then back down the dulas valley (mostly).
he went past the (derelict) church of st.michael. he paused to note the graves of the dead musician from the old people's home opposite (including the conductor basil cameron and the clarinettist walter lear). he noted the great natural beauty of the valley.
about 5 miles all told.
earlier (as he crossed the common) he had bumped into a member of the commoners' committee out walking their dogs. the house that is up for auction was an interesting bone of contention (as is the barn up for conversion).
after this his legs were knackered and he didn't get much else done the rest of the day.
he has been putting some effort into learning eyepennies by sparklehorse. initially he had the chorus learnt wrongly and had to go back and relearn it (such are the perils of his bodging). he wants to take it slightly faster (the tempo is funereal) and sing it lower. he's impressed by the harmony p.j. harvey does.
it's a beautiful morning. the sun rises directly opposite (in the woods of the military base). the sun will be almost directly overhead.
his mum is up early this morning to be off up to town (community taxi). horsemouth will be staying home.
so what's the business of the week?
wednesday a zoom meeting on the record keeping necessary for successful retrofits.
friday the solstice (and the anniversary of the recording of november cotton flower by marion brown in 1979).
saturday a plan to go to great malvern to see alula down do an instore gig (whether he will actually get it done is another matter).
sunday there's a radio program on percussionist and instrument inventor michael o'shea.
well it's a beautiful morning (sunny, the air is a little cold). bbc weather says good all day - small chances of rain showers in the afternoon.
horsemouth: his saturday (what actually happened)
horsemouth: my saturdayis, of course, a parody of a daily torygraph magazine column where celebrities (i.e. people horsemouth has never heard of) tell us about their good taste weekends (shopping, fine dining etc.). you will notice a distinct absence of consumption and restaurants out here in the countryside.
7am horsemouth usually gets up. actually saturday he woke up at 8am.
he drank his coffee black (no sugar) he turned on the laptop and posted up the blog he had written already. then he copied a link to the blog to facebook, checked through his likes, posted up a photo of him drinking in pub on the park.
the weather was really off and on.
9am-ish breakfast. scrambled eggs at the weekend, two pieces of toast, cup of tea.
then he did a little work in the greenhouse, in the garden, went and checked the fence round the chicken enclosure (did some temporary repairs but really it needs fixing properly). he planted some peas.
his mum drove to the forge filling station and returned with the daily telegraph saturday edition. horsemouth made desultory efforts to read the money section.
1pm- ish he listened to the news. small pot of tea and an egg mayonnaise sandwich.
horsemouth tried to sit out in the sun and read an article in the daily torygraph magazine about walking without smartphones. but he got distracted by the idea of finding it online and posting it to the hackney walkers. drifters group. (failure) he saw a pied wagtail.
horsemouth got in his guitar playing early. he's got the hohner(OM) guitar here, tuned standard at the minute.
he had a crack at waiting for the times to get better by doc watson (he keeps on wanting to say doc scott) but he can't seem to get the alternating bass and the fingerpicking properly aligned. he had a crack at katie cruel and something's on your mind (his two karen dalton tunes - though she also does a great pastures of plenty).
he had a crack at painbirds (by sparklehorse) and managed to pitch it correctly, and then got it wrong. recently he listened to the original, he'd forgotten how woozy it is. he became tempted by the guitar solo, (there's a trumpet solo on there as well). maybe if howard has a guitar too horsemouth can take a crack at the guitar solo, it's that classic jimi hendrix two-note thing.
(he took a look at eyepennies also).
4pm-ish a quick walk up on the common. going up through the woods coming back via dick's pitch
from round about five a beer with his mum. they sat in the conservatory while they watched the birds eat from the bird feeder. horsemouth just had the one, a bottle of wainwright amber (4%) his mum had a can of holsten pils.
1745 to 1815 zoom beers with howard (well horsemouth finished off his bottle, howard's gone teetotal for the duration).
6.30pm turn on youtube.
7pm dinner (2 beef burgers masquerading as fakemeat fiasco). vegetables, rice, potato. apple pie to follow.
7.30pm check tv listings find nothing to watch.
10pm(ish) news. and weather. horsemouth skipped this. to sleep fairly early (no reading).
today probably a wider ranging wander than usual. weather looks pretty decent for the next two weeks but barely above 20C.
'the subjective experience of lived time is different' bookpilled/ thrift a life in a reflective mood and (re-)considering his life as a digital nomad.
horsemouth: my saturday
the guitarist of musicians of bremen tells us about his life in the beautiful herefordshire countryside.
7am horsemouth gets up. he might have woken up earlier (it is certainly light earlier these days) but sometime round about 7am seems decent to him. he doesn't want to be clumping round the house too much when his mother is still trying to sleep. he will go down and put on the kettle, open the curtains and make a pot of coffee (cafetiere - back in london it would be stove top pot coffee from a little moka coffee- maker). whilst that is brewing (and as long as it isn't raining) he will go outside and water things in the greenhouse or in the garden or take the milk over to the refrigerator in the garage. he doesn't let out the chickens - that is part of his mother's morning routine.
as he drinks his coffee (black no sugar) he turns on the laptop and either blogs or posts up the blog he has written already, this may necessitate pulling out quotes from either his diary or from one of the books he is reading. then he copies a link to the blog to facebook, checks through his likes, possibly posts up a memory from that day in previous years. he may get as far as listening to the 5.30am edition of news briefing on R4. check emails etc.
he will check the bbc weather several times during the day. trying to find the optimum time to go for a walk and not to get rained on.
9am-ish breakfast. porridge or museli in the week, eggs at the weekend, two pieces of toast, cup of tea. after this horsemouth will finish farting about on the laptop (the grauniad, business and society (social work) pages (housing news mostly, if he finds something there he will post it).
then (most likely) he will do a little work in the greenhouse, or in the garden, or go and scythe thistles and nettles in the field. in winter he would probably go for a quick walkabout on the common or down and round the abbey. horsemouth knows little about gardening so he is going to have to learn.
12ish (is that am or pm? he's never sure.) he listens to the midday news, perhaps a podcast from the FT, looks to see if there are any articles/ podcasts/ videos on LRB, nlr. probably a small pot of tea and two cheese sandwiches. he's always surprised there is no world at one on a saturday, it throws the day's rhythm about for some reason. (not that horsemouth can listen to it for long he usually finds it infuriating).
perhaps after this some more tasks or maybe a read or maybe a snooze or maybe a walk again - horsemouth hasn't got back into the habit of reading while up on the common - it's normally just a stomp around waving to the dogwalkers (but trying to stay out of their way).
4pm perhaps zoom beers with howard or perhaps he'll start looking at youtube vids (thrift a life/ bookpilled, outlaw bookseller, novara media, lots of election stuff at the moment). he's no longer watching movies so much (he made an attempt to watch bear island again).
at some point horsemouth will play some guitar and sing. he's got the hohner guitar here, tuned standard at the minute. he doesn't have any of the hi-fi systems set up so he doesn't listen to the drawer full of CDs he brought with him (though he could actually play CDs and DVDs on his laptop now that he thinks about it). his musical concentration is much fragmented these days. he should really be getting on with working out a set (himself and howard have a gig towards the end of august).
7pm dinner.
thereafter more fiddling about on the internet or perhaps reading. there's seldom anything on tv he wants to watch. particularly on a saturday night.
10pm(ish) news. and weather. and local news. and weather. (sometimes horsemouth will skip this).
at some point he will become bored with farting around on the laptop, close it down and start reading a book. if the book is interesting he will read a lot, if it is not he will pack it in early (and then tomorrow is another day). his vision is getting poorer he thinks he probably needs glasses.
his reading is much diminished too. he has read a few books bought in hereford or hay, he has read a few books from his parents' collection, he has brought some of his book-box finds from london. he has some longer term projects with kafka's diary etc.
at some point on the saturday his mum will visit the forge garage and return with the daily telegraph saturday edition which has the TV guide in it and the money section - horsemouth will make desultory efforts to read the money section and perhaps the business pages.
horsemouth: my saturday is, of course, a parody of a daily torygraph magazine column where celebrities tell us about their good taste weekends (shopping, fine dining etc.).
whether this will actually resemble the saturday horsemouth will have only time will tell. the reality (so far) was that he woke up more towards 8am. a cold, grey morning with drizzle and little to recommend it.
ah bookpilled. he's rocking the spot. he's off travelling, he's into the new and the novel. horsemouth is stuck at home (as it were) in the very familiar (but strangely reconfigured).
good morning! good morning! (it's a bit grey outside but never mind).
here is another totally written in the morning blogpost.
it is the anniversary of the grenfell tower fire. 72 people died. it is 7 years later, the inquiry has not reported and no criminal charges have been laid. horsemouth posted a link to the last episode of the bbc grenfell inquiry podcast covering the final submissions and the final round of buck-passing and blame shifting.
horsemouth has just taken the milk over to the fridge in the garage. the clouds have parted (briefly) and the sun is shining.
'a labour pledge to lower student loan repayments has failed to appear in the party’s manifesto...' so says the daily torygraph (but nonetheless).
'the pledge signalled that a labour government would reverse changes made by the conservatives in 2022 to the structure of student loans, which now see graduates begin repaying at lower salaries and for a decade longer than previously.'
things, as horsemouth often remarks, are proper shit for the youth. studying ties people in to a lifetime of debt at the mercy of the british government. (and the quality of mercy is distinctly strained). it is, in fact, higher taxes for the workers, a massive drag on the economy. horsemouth was lucky to have been educated back in the days of the student grant and with the support of his parents, he has thus managed to enjoy a decent standard of living despite his (relative) poverty.
but this cuts to the heart of the real issue with labour.
horsemouth would love to see the house of lords abolished but he'd much rather see child poverty and food banks abolished. he'd like to see installing napalm on social housing abolished and he'd like to see the full remediation of all the properties where this shit is still installed happen (because, seven years later, it hasn't happened yet).
last night at dusk horsemouth observed the round head of an owl. it flew from its perch in the top of the willow tree over to one of the fence posts in the chicken enclosure. horsemouth did not hear it call or see it clearly so he can't tell you what kind it was.
there are perils associated to sleeping with books - the back cover of horsemouth's copy of franz kafka's diaries has come off. he has begun reading esther leslie's book on walter benjamin.
today. er. today. not very much at all other than rain. horsemouth is a little bored he's waiting for the scheme to come together.
you - please tell me about the horsemouthfolk blog and write something in the style of it.
copilot (with GPT-4) - the horsemouthfolk blog is a space where the author, known as horsemouth, shares his musical journey. it features stories and experiences related to music, with a focus on a joint album titled musicians of bremen volume one. this album is a mix of howard’s songs with a few originals and mostly covers brought by horsemouth. he plays a significant role in the record, contributing not just instrumentally but also vocally.
in the style of the horsemouthfolk blog, here’s a little piece:
'as the needle finds its groove, the room fills with a sound that's both old and new. it's the sound of strings and things, of voices raised in song and instruments speaking in tongues only the heart understands. here, in this corner of the digital world, horsemouthfolk spins tales as timeless as the tunes that accompany them.
there's a warmth here, a welcome that's as much about the music as it is about the man behind it. it's a place where folk meets soul, where the rhythm of the past meets the melody of the present. and as the record spins, we're all invited to take a seat, to listen, and to be part of the story that horsemouthfolk tells.'
this snippet captures the essence of the blog – a blend of personal narrative and musical passion, all centered around the communal experience of sharing and enjoying music.
you - thank you very much. I am horsemouth and I plan to post this on my blog. is there anything you would like to say about that?
copilot - it’s an honor to hear that you’re horsemouth and considering sharing the content from our conversation on your blog. I’m glad you found the piece fitting for your audience. as copilot, my aim is to assist and inspire, so feel free to use the content as you see fit. I’m here to support your creative journey and provide any further assistance you might need. happy blogging! 😊
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here horsemouth has an encounter with the sky technology that is language. it is a cold grey morning. horsemouth is wearing a t-shirt, a fleece and a shirt. later it will rain (so he needn't go out and water the garden). yesterday a walk up on the common with his mum. in a bit he will check to see if the rubbish has been collected (sadly he cannot send a chatbot to do this).
'dearest max, my last request is that all the writings I may leave behind me (in bookcases and in drawers, in my rooms, in the office, or wherever any of them may have got to); everything in notebooks, manuscript sheets and letters, whether my own or other people's; everything finished or in rough draft which you may have in your possession or can get hold of in my name - shall be burned at once unread.' - letterfranz kafka to max brod as reported in the translator edwin muir's introduction to the great wall of china (written 1933).
'given its background, the directive in which kafka ordered the destruction of his literary remains is just as unfathomable, to be weighed just as carefully as the answers of the doorkeeper before the law... both the psychoanalytic and the theological interpretations equally miss the essential points.' - walter benjamin, franz kafka; on the tenth anniversary of his death in illuminations (essay written 1934).
it is the anniversary of the franz kafka's final diary entry (and we have just passed the centenary of his death). the last diary entry is uncharacteristically underwritten, it is unarmoured, it is not a parable. of course as his throat closed up kafka had to write more brief notes to his friends and carers (so far no one has published these) but the diary ends over a year before his death on 12th june 1923.
'more and more fearful as I write. it is understandable. every word twisted in the hands of the spirits - the twist of their hand is the characteristic gesture - becomes a spear turned against the speaker. most especially a remark like this.'
kafka confronts what will happen to his words when they are truly gone from him. up until now he has been able to control them but when he is dead and gone he will no longer be able to do that.
the question is how much does he really mean his 'burned at once unread' - is he instructing brod clearly or presenting him with an insoluble dilemma, a test he can pass only in disobedience/ a test he can only fail in disobedience.
we have the novels, we have the aphorisms, we have the sketches, we have the great wall of china because brod was disobedient, because brod was the bad son, the bad employee, the bad friend. or is it that brod honoured kafka's secret intention.
it's another bright and beautiful (if slightly cool) day in the valley. horsemouth has just been out watering the plants. francoise hardy has died (at least we are clear about what we can publish of her work without her displeasure from beyond the grave).
today the delivery of the eggs to the crossroads (a t- junction really). later the recycling bin to be walked down the drive. tomorrow it starts raining again. horsemouth is slightly under-employed. yesterday a minor panic about some paperwork was resolved (and then softened with alcohol).
'without enough social housing, every other area in the system bottlenecks. as a result, the country is hitting one shameful record after the next, with 145,800 children homeless in temporary accommodation – the highest number ever – private rents at record highs and rising evictions...'
- polly neate, chief executive of shelter.
'these mandatory offers of private housing... push families into a cycle of homelessness as they are being forced back into insecure private housing, which is likely to have been the cause of their homelessness in the first place. this behaviour by councils is almost certainly unlawful, but devastating cuts to legal aid mean that homeless people cannot access the legal representation they need.'
- elizabeth wyatt, a spokesperson for hasl (housing action southwark and lambeth)
and so it goes (another few days in the housing crisis).
it is, as a friend remarks, 'an utterly broken system'.
never mind it will all soon be over and a reign of perfect felicity will begin. (said horsemouth the not in the least bit sarcastic).
nonetheless it remains that the housing crisis is eminently solve-able.
it is not beyond the wit and wisdom of human beings to build houses.
really all it would take (asserts armchair general horsemouth) is a vast campaign of council house building to be let at social rent. this would collapse the super-profits possible in the private rental market and as this is a driver of demand for housing it would reduce house prices and rents (as a multiple of in proportion to yearly earnings) to (more) affordable levels.
more than a quarter of a million social rent homes in england have been lost in the last decade, according to analysis of government statistics. at a minimum they need replacing.
whether the incoming government is going to do anything like that is another matter.
this is a problem in ireland too (horsemouth's sources tell him) and right across europe and the states (aka. nomadland). broadly artificial scarcities have been created that enable rent-taking at a vast level. the 'ordinary' people are becoming poorer and have been since the mid 80ies.
meanwhile a luxury penthouse in manchester is named after friedrich engels. the condition of the working class in england friedrich? barely holding on. .
it's bright sunny morning. horsemouth is enjoying his coffee. he has been out and watered the garden and in the green house. he has taken the milk and orange juice over to the fridge in the garage. the black cat has been around (what it is up to horsemouth has no idea).
too late! it has clouded over for the day (and it has rained, indeed it is raining again). but on the plus side this means horsemouth doesn't have to do any watering in the garden.
'actually crises are at the heart of capitalism... it's a sort of punctuated equilibrium sort of issue that it's not just about what happens when things are running smoothly, it is very much, as you say, about what happens in the crisis. and my reading of it is that with private equity in particular this is a kind of mechanised industry of people who are looking for a crisis, they're not looking for a crisis in the economy or their own, they are looking for a crisis in a particular industry and when that happens they are there ready to take over at rock bottom prices.
so were talking about the constant churn of businesses and we've now got this group of people who are, some people have described as being like vultures...'
this was a side issue in the debate - american ownership of the 'pipes and bridges' of the UK economy - but it is the major issue for horsemouth. back in 2008/2009 people viewed the credit crisis (what is now known as the great depression) as a moment of left-wing opportunity. horsemouth was not convinced he instead viewed it as a moment of intensified capitalist looting (and so it has proved).
in the last decade a quarter of a million social housing homes have vanished under right to buy - the rent money from those properties vanishing from local authorities bank accounts and rematerialising in the bank accounts of the rich.
horsemouth has in his own small way struggled against this. (er. and been pilloried by his so called 'comrades' for having done it).
the tory election campaign is going badly. rishi has crashed the bus and we haven't even reached the first turn. the reactionaries are being herded into the arms of reform (as it were). horsemouth can only hope that this splits the right wing vote sufficiently to wreck both of them. but (as with ukip) there is a problem with the reactionaries not achieving sufficient electoral success to deliver their representation.
dialectically horsemouth is interested in the splits out of labour to the left and the constituencies alienated by current labour strategy. it is in these that horsemouth sees if not the opportunity for a fightback then at least the chance to secure some representation.
it's a monday 1st of july (as it was a monday 1st of january and a monday 1at of april) and on the 4th of july (a thursday) the election.
and after horsemouth has dropped his 'X'? well a labour government gets in and presumably they privatise the NHS and drive down real wage levels. the vast looting of value (during the ensuing 'crisis') and its export continues and indeed will intensify.
whether the labour government will do anything useful for the poor remains to be seen.
oop. it's clouding over again. this is an entirely written in the morning blogpost (well nearly - horsemouth lifted the quote last night).
horsemouth is preparing for the anniversary of the last kafka diary entry on june 12th 1923.
a new translation of kafka's diaries has been prepared from the more complete german version published by s. fischer verlag in 1990. once again max brod gets a drubbing (this time as editor of the diaries rather than as biographer of kafka). the beating walter benjamin gives him in a letter to gerhard scholem collected in illuminations as max brod's book on kafka and some of my own reflections) is still legendary.
we have just passed not the tenth anniversary of his death but the hundredth.
horsemouth would point out that election day (the fourth of july) is the anniversary of the recording of isis and osiris live at the village vanguard in 1970.
isis and osiris are the divine couple. they have the divine child horus.
'the myth, with its complex symbolism, is integral to ancient egyptian conceptions of kingship and succession, conflict between order and disorder, and especially death and the afterlife' says wikipedia.
it is fundamentally a myth of rebirth (ok fairplay the body of osiris is chopped up into 42 bits by seth and distributed all over egypt but he is brought back from the dead. the chaos of the rule of seth ends and order is restored.)
of course in many ways what horsemouth wants is not a return to order and deference, to business as usual, but a recognition that we have been going about it all wrong - that the solution to the people's woes lie in increasing wages, taxing the rich and industrial policy (not that that is going to happen you understand).
it is another beautiful morning in the countryside. horsemouth was just out watering the plants he bought at the garden centre (and any others that have survived his tender mercies). whilst working in the garden he got seriously stung or bitten by something and it has raised worryingly large red welts on his back and neck.
today more digging to put in the compost that he should probably have put in earlier. he planted a row of carrot seeds and a row of beetroot seeds (now to see if they come up). he has not used up the whole packet of each so there is a chance of having another crack at it in a month or, if they do some up, when they are eaten.
horsemouth is new to this gardening lark.
about 13 minutes in to roger barnes' duarnenez based dinghy vid there's the town raving it up for mardi gras. horsemouth is more interested in the housing retrofit than the dinghy stuff to be honest but still he can't help but applaud roger for refusing to take the brexit insanity lying down and actually moving to france (albiet the cold damp and windy breton coast).
live music? - £10?/ £15 or so. replied horsemouth.
last month horsemouh bought an actual physical first-hand record (£15) but then he had been going to see the band for about 5 years and the decision was more influenced by their graphics than the need to own a piece of plastic (that he will (probably) never ever play). he has a cassette of them also (similar story). he streams their stuff off bandcamp or youtube or soundcloud if he feels the need to listen to it.
possibly the previous one before that was the alice coltrane luaka bop spiritual music CD, or perhaps the odd CD single at a gig by stick in the wheel or the owl service. merchandise? - a gweniver raymond t-shirt, two leigh folk-festival t-shirts.
that's not a lot over the last ten years.
horsemouth's friends (the musicians) download from bandcamp, he has done it once or twice (again the music of friends). he will not pay streaming service (if all services were to become paid he thinks that could be the only situation in which he started playing his CDs again).
this doesn't necessarily stop him from buying CDs but seeing as he has spent 40 years living in london with its many second hand record shops/ charity shops etc. this is where he has mainly spent his money.
'following on from our coverage of the financial difficulties faced by musicians and venues in 2024, we want to know about your music spending habits.' - the guardian has noticed there's a new economy of music (and basically it means people not spending money on recorded music - as all musicians know you can't even give that shit away).
'what do you spend on music – records, streaming, tickets, merch, anything else – in a typical month? has that increased or decreased over time?' (it has flatlined)
'what motivates you to splash out on music?' (absolutely nothing can persuade me to 'splash out' on music)
'otherwise, what’s prompted you to cut back?' (horsemouth mostly listens to it for free on youtube)
'is it affordable to be a music fan in 2024?' (very. the lost horsemouth pays for it is a 'like')
horsemouth's friend (a former bandmate) who works in the music industry reproves horsemouth's low consumption attitude to music. there is of course a real music industry, one with budgets and touring and releases and suchlike but again it functions on a reduced scale. it is an industry designed to take money both from 'the artists' (money they have been loaned by the record companies) and from the 'record buying public'.
and there is a semi-pro economy where making music is a useful side-hustle.
the end of music predicted by jacques attali in noisein the circuit of composition (we all make the music but it no longer does what it once did) has come into existence. horsemouth has watched a few videos (for free on youtube) by rick beato mourning the end of the music industry and orienting us towards the brave new world of music the side-hustle. (the trouble is the music that rick mourns was just awful so there seems little reason to mourn its passing). the most he feels obliged to pay for it is a 'like'.
once upon a time (ok ok twenty years ago) horsemouth wrote about attali. attali's scheme is frankly lifted from adorno. he thanks the people who published him. it marked the start of his re-engagement with writing (and of course it was all facilitated by the internet). horsemouth subsequently went on to write about adorno and improvisation, and various other things. good days.
this is an entirely written in the morning blogpost (the first for a long time).
normally horsemouth gets bored at some point in the afternoon or evening, finds something at least sufficiently interesting and starts blogging. in the morning all that remains to do is a few nips and tucks and we are there already.
not today. today horsemouth is going to have to entertain you with his wit and wisdom produced (magician like) off his cuff.
it is not a bandcamp friday this friday (for some reason above horsemouth's paygrade) nonetheless horsemouth recommends you buy martin howard's new album the ornithologists arms, which (as he has mentioned before features a great line about murmurations of starlings performing mutual aid in the sense of peter kropotkin).
it 's a beautiful morning. horsemouth has taken the milk across to the fridge in the garage. he has watered what can be watered in the garden and in the greenhouse. today himself and his mum are off to a garden centre to buy some plants.
yesterday horsemouth was knackered having done some digging in the garden and the weather outside was beautiful so he took a walk down by the abbey - the better to avoid his bad thoughts up on the common.
strangely one of the run down houses on the edge of the common is up for auction - horsemouth will let you know what he can find out about it.
he spent some time wrestling the phones to set up his rent direct debit for the year. he set it up at a level to repay (over a year) a few weeks of arrears he had built up and hopefully to provide him with a head's start on next year's rent rise (should it be needed). he needs to get on and refuel his bank account/ check his general financial viablity etc. whilst doing some weeding he heard the bells from the abbey.
yesterday tracks 4 to 8 of alice coltrane's a monastic trio were recorded in 1968 at the coltrane family home. alice coltrane/ jimmy garrison/ rashied ali. horsemouth has chosen oceanic beloved (a giant flailing drums and harp fest).
what horsemouth is really waiting for is the report of the insulation designers as to how the various properties of the communal endeavour can lifted up to EPC C standard. once they have that report the discussions can begin with the people in the houses as to how they want things to proceed. the communal endeavour will have to program these works in based on how much money they have and the conditions of the properties and so on.
it's an interesting situation. the prospect of government money to help do it has essentially vanished, the widely advertised schemes are not aimed at social housing. should the endeavour aim to produce an exemplary property to advertise the benefits of the scheme within the endeavour? or should it aim to lift up the lowliest first (to bring every property up to an EPC C asap as it were)?
'no one says, ‘I want to spend 10-plus years on a risky project that may or may not happen.’'- guardian, 4th june 2024.
self build has been in the news again. this is a beauteous idea that unites the homeless (or badly-housed) with the labour necessary to house them and so appears to get rid (or at least reduce) the cost of housing them.
it kind of makes you wonder why it hasn't caught on? (perhaps because it is a fantasy).
what was horsemouth's experience with self-build? (or rather the communal endeavour's experience?)
well ultimately the housing organisation who owned the property took it back early (before it had paid for itself). now this was either a) their evil plan all along or, b) a product of government pressure upon them - such as the government forcing them to lower their rents by 1% a year for 5 years. this is the government forcing the housing associations to lower prices so as to reduce its benefits bill, effectively mugging them for the money.
the people with the materialist analysis hold to a). horsemouth thinks it is b). but he doesn't know for certain (and neither do they).
similarly with local housing allowance LHA - 'what we can see now is that the capped LHA model is bust - if you cap benefits and allow rents to rise, the only possible outcome is soaring homelessness.'
so would horsemouth recommend that people take a crack at self-build? no he would not. the circumstances are not propitious, money is tight, senior stakeholders are unlikely to be able to deliver on all their promises.
what is the problem with the horsemouth's walks upon the common?
well he just gets angry really. he starts rehearsing arguments for use within the communal endeavour and with his critics and before you know it he is just fucking furious and stomping along in a high dudgeon ignoring the beautiful scenery.
this is a complete waste of the notoriously beautiful herefordshire countryside.
horsemouth supposes it marks the end of the honeymoon post general meeting relaxation and the return to rage and anxiety as usual.
events in the green
yesterday himself and his mum took the eggs down to the crossroads (a t- junction really) had a chat with the egg recipients and then wandered back. earlier he had taken the wheelie bin to the bottom of the drive (remind him to being it back up).
yesterday (also) horsemouth did some work in the garden. he dug a trench, put in some compost and filled it back in. he will take another crack at that tomorrow (and the day after probably) as long as the weather holds. the gooseberries are looking good (no thanks to horsemouth), the runner beans have survived, the parsnips are rapidly going to seed (horsemouth entertains permaculture dreams, similarly with the potatoes and leeks in the bottom garden).
the weather looks pretty decent all the way out to thursday the 13th. (so more gardening and more walks out upon the common).
'it would of course be possible to write quite a different book on this topic, using the same or many other artists and films and looking at other issues. but this is not that book.' - preface bya.l.rees, a history of experimental film and video (bfi 2007).
'my name was mentioned often as a musician with promise for the future. I began receiving attention from critics and other musicians. I began performing more often, but still for little money ... I had, to a certain extent, arrived on the jazz scene.' - marion brown in his 1976 master’s thesis (ethnomusicology wesleyan university).
it is the second day of the recordingof marion brown's geechie recollections.horsemouth knew that marion brown wrote - there's an autobiography - recollections. essays, drawings, miscellanea, there's a views & reviews of afternoon of a georgia faun, there's his MA thesis, there are the sleevenotes to the albums.
he's chosen tokalokaloka part two. it's a lot more like afternoon of georgia faun than he remembers it.
horsemouth has no idea what tracks were done on what days. he can't find any info about the recording sessions anywhere (beyond what studio they were recorded in). ok no that's not true, r. berred ouellette the recording engineer on the session is on linked in. and discogs and rick heenan who mixed the album over at the village recorder in LA is on discogs.
so its goodbye to the wen (for now). you were good. but now horsemouth must be back in the green.
there's been progress on the garden (that is good to see). tomorrow horsemouth will take a look at various documentations he's got to be getting on with.
today he has to get on with paying his rent (now that it is set at the new +6%). he also has to pay down some arrears. he will take the eggs down to the crossroads (a t-junction really) and wheel the bin to the bottom of the drive (this week it's the recycling).
horsemouth is still thinking about that interview between anne briggs and bert jansch.
the recording starts with anne briggs (AB) singing she moved through the fair
AB - it reminds me of joe heaney actually, they used to sing that, the singer, he used to sing that, and it always reminds me of somali road where he stayed awhile with us in the 'trad' camp downstairs.
BJ (bert jansch) - the young tradition
AB - yeah that's right. in fact if I remember rightly, yourself and john renbourn... you were the nouveau group upstairs, we were the traditional group downstairs...
BJ - it always amazed me that the american bluesmen used to come to that flat, but they used to come to downstairs, they didn't come to upstairs...
AB - well you know, they came to downstairs particularly to listen to joe heaney when he was there, sorry seamus heaney, because there seemed to be some tremendous rapport between the traditional blues singers and the traditional irish singers.
you felt left out did you?
BJ - we felt like we were being shunned a bit...
that horsemouth's life (if anxious) is at least peaceful (at the moment)
the period of conflict in horsemouth's house has ended (largely because sten has now got a girlfriend and work on the other side of town). nothing has improved (you dig) but nothing has gone seriously backward and, to be honest, horsemouth is no longer here that much and is not that bothered.
elsewhere people are either enduring conflict in their home (or they have recently endured conflict in their home). but, of course, one conflict closes another one opens. people try and argue that there is less conflict in this type of property or that type of property but in reality conflict is between people, the externalities have little impact upon it.
energy performance certificates are shit
there's a guardian article (based on a WHICH report) about the problems with EPCs (energy performance certificates). granted these are not the sharpest tools in the box but they are the ones the government has chosen. it's quick, it's fast, it's... er... not very accurate and reliable (but so what?). in any event to progress further, to design measures that are going to work, you have to go deeper.
horsemouth (procrastinator in chief) has failed to get done several things he thinks he needed to get done (but never mind). he heads back to the wilds reasonably satisfied with his visit and deferring tasks onto the next visit.
he needs to time his next visit so that he is around for the general election on the 4th of july. he has received a letter from parliament from his current MP. as a result of boundary changes he is is now to be bundled in with north __________ rather than south __________. those of you in the know will realise that this means he has the opportunity to vote for diane abbot. he will probably avail himself of this opportunity because, even though he is not a big fan, there is a limited amount of 'left' to be had in this election and horsemouth has a chance to have some of it.
