'I hear you are giving up all your bad company (but I beg I may not be included in their number)'

ok horsemouth is back from an exceptionally stinky wander down the greenway (aka. sewerbank prior to 1990) with TG.

the walk - the homestead to becton alps, roughly 6.1 miles, two and a quarter hours (possibly a little longer because they got lost trying to find the entrance to it in fish island, the continuance round pudding mill lane, and stopped for a tea at one point.

in the foothills of the becton alps horsemouth pleaded tiredness rather than ascend it and they got the bus back to stratford and were thence off about their separate businesses on the overground. 

the title quote (repunctuated) from lord eglinton to boswell on this day in 1763. 

as they walked along they talked. there was a discussion about jazz musicians who adopted islam; 

the list he would probably give (off the top of his head) would be; 

• yusef lateef, (born william emanuel huddleston) multi-instrumentalist, composer, and a prominent figure among the ahmadiyya community. 
• art blakey also known as abdullah ibn buhaina after he converted to islam for a short time in the late 1940s.
• ok maybe not pharoah sanders (he may not have fully converted but he was certainly mining the concepts tauhid etc.).
• ahmad jamal - born to baptist parents, jamal became interested in islam and islamic culture in detroit, where there was a sizeable muslim community in the 1940s and 1950s. 

of course there are loads more. 

in the folk music world  there were various sufis - richard and linda thompson, cat stevens (yusuf islam), in the rock world pete townsend,  and, in the american primitive guitar world, robbie basho.

horsemouth usually goes on about alice coltrane who became a hindu, carlos santana and john mclaughlin, but there was a period where john fahey was showing an interest.

er. and then there are the scientologists... (incredible string band, chick corea etc.)

horsemouth remembers the nicky skopelitis album from the time. it was the kind of thing he was very into - kind of worldy but rocky too. horsemouth has a big block of these CDs recorded on axiom (hail bill laswell) kind of in the island livery. he's hearing parallels with can in the arrangement (and no it's not just the presence of jaki liebezeit on a few tracks). 

after his walk horsemouth basically slouched round the house enjoying the pleasant sensation of virtuous inactivity. today he has no plans. the election campaign crawls to a close. tomorrow kafka is born.