'biography as autobiography' (a fine day)

another entirely written in the morning blogpost 

‘there is always something left over, something that doesn’t add up' - thomas heise

'he used dashes, commas, semi-colons, colons and full stops almost indiscriminately...' - david souden on the punctuation of the honourable john byng. 

this evening a zoom meeting for the communal endeavour. mid-day-ish a zoom meeting with inside housing  on the likely outcome (for housing) of a new labour government (that being a labour government that is new rather than government by new labour). 

this evening an orchestral version of the works of nick drake. 

thursday evening more industrial ambient dub techno whatever to be had from dave webb/ webb dave / wave debb. horsemouth will be out bell-ringing (probably) so will have to listen to it later. 

horsemouth was looking at a list of books he bought ten years ago. 

he could certainly do now with a bluffer's guide to hannah arendt (the portable hannah arendt), the norton critical edition of alice in wonderland he still probably has, enemies of promise (cyril connolly) he still has, the david hendry noise- a human history of sound and listening he does not remember seeing. it's the kind of book he would buy (a book to help with an earlier project) and just file away in the hope that one day he would return to it. 

hannah (like thomas heise later) is engaged on some kind of diagnosis of german society (at least in her first work rahel varnhagen sometimes described as 'biography as autobiography'). from there horsemouth journeyed on to a discussion of hannah arendt's own archives. there's a chance he's just shoved the book in a corner (he has a specific corner in mind).  

here, with the books he has, horsemouth has mostly been reading anna pavord's landskipping: painters, ploughmen and places, and, inspired by a reference in it  to byng's 16th june 1781 visit to tintern abbey, byng's tours: the journals of the hon. john byng 1781-1792 edited by david souden.