four days (four nights)

'four days will quickly steep themselves in night

four nights will quickly dream away the time

and then the moon, like to a silver bow

new bent in heaven, shall behold the night...'

- shakespeare, a midsummer night's dream.

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).