'dearest max, my last request: everything I leave behind me... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others), sketches, and so on, to be burned unread' - franz kafka.
it is kafka's deathday
indeed today is the centenary of franz kafka's death. it is to be followed by kafka month until his (re)birth on 3rd july.
'kafka's last lover, dora diamant (later, dymant-lask), also ignored his wishes, secretly keeping 20 notebooks and 35 letters. these were confiscated by the gestapo in 1933, but scholars continue to search for them.'
yes myk was saying. horsemouth hadn't heard of her or of them. myk was saying she ended up living in bethnal green.
bert jansch and anne briggs discuss the good old days
they are in a slightly false position they have been brought together to play 'their' songs but they never really played them together. the crucial moment is that bert starts playing anne briggs' songs - thereby importing the english traditional repertoire into the repertoire of the 'blues' musicians (the british fans of old american blues guitarists). when davy graham returns from morocco with dadgad tuning it can all begin. (this may be a revisionist history).
anne briggs (AB) and bert jansch (BJ) discuss their time in the house in somali road.
AB- ... but, in a way, I mean, it was good times and it was a great sort of musical establishment, ah, but from the point of view of me working with you it was a bad thing in a way because it seems to sort of separate us and from that point on I don't think we really did any more work together did we?
BJ -no we didn't
AB - though we were actually living just one up above the other instead of across town... when we lived across town from each other there was no actual hassle to travel and play but we just ceased to do that... and the other thing was the input from all the other musicians around I thought it's very distracting...
good old days eh? no regrets
horsemouth has been working on go your way my love. he thinks he has found a way of doing it that doesn't involve sorting out the pesky fingerpicking (great though it is). his broad strategy is to play it as if it were being played by joy division and had been arranged by martin hannett.
horsemouth is leaning towards howard's interpretation of the lyrics, that the singer is angry (as well as sad) because the lover has gone away. he is backed up in this by anne saying that she 'wasn't seeing enough of someone' when she wrote it.
a book-box find
john campbell: rediscovery of an arts and crafts architect (alan powers,alan crawford, ronald leask, the prince of wales's institute for architecture)
of particular interest to horsemouth were his planned modifications to the shepherdess walk holy trinity boys' and girls' club in hoxton in 1944. in the end this project was not completed. 'the intended youth club had been bombed to destruction...'
horsemouth guesses this would be near (if not the site of) the shepherdess walk mosaics.
other interesting buildings campbell designed were 3 houses at chapel point, mevagissey in cornwall (near st. austell) and very good they look too. and a house subsequently lived in by dirk bogarde.
it is horsemouth's last day in the seaside towns for a bit. tomorrow he's back off to the green.
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