books, films, gigs, events november 2024

books 

- practicalities (marguerite duras) and some discussion of her writing 'summer 1980' 

- a woman's battles and transformations (edward louis) 

- a writer's journal ( h.d. thoreau - part)

- love's work (gillian rose) and so on to rahel varnhagen (as written about by hannah arendt). 

- kilvert diary, edmond de goncourt, kafka diary (day by day)

-  the midnight disease (alice w. flaherty part)

-  the diary of the reverend william poole, the: perpetual curate of the parish of hentland & hoarwithy

- art forum article on mario merz, art review interview hans haacke with liam gillick

- lrb and nlr  

films

-  controlled weirdness interview noted scenester miss pink. and on the deptford free festival 

- roger barnes tells us more about retrofitting his house in a small french fishing village and about making 'bosun's repairs'

- andy edwards, bookpilled, outlaw bookseller, novara media, FT podcasts

-  the FT discusses music and productivity and population density (housing)

-  shetland (series 9)

- john berger's ways of seeing paraphrased in olivia laing's documentary

- das singende, klingende bäumchen (1957)

-  gillian rose  interviewed by andy o'mahony for RTE, j.m. bernstein interviewed about gillian rose, presentation on gillian by anna rowlands. 

- werner herzog 'on walking and writing'

-  a podcast about crowds with novara media and dan hancox

- a tv drama about the agapemonites in the series  'victorian scandals' (which ran for 7 episodes in 1976)

- argento season (again), four flies on grey velvet and the bird with the crystal plumage

- how cults work on nxivm

gigs none 

events 

'a most iniquitous will...'

'a letter from my mother from college green, worcester - maria kilvert's house, where they are staying... my mother sent a rough sketch  of the will which mr.hooper read over hastily to them... a most iniquitous will, not a shilling was left to any of the francis kilverts, the old grudge and malice against uncle francis for writing bishop hurd's life ruling strong in death.' 

kilvert's diary, 30th november 1870.

quite why writing a biography of bishop hurd ('one of george III's favourite bishops') should have counted so hard against our kilvert's uncle francis remains a bit of a mystery. 

all kilvert's dad was left was some rose bushes. his mother some furs and laces. 

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yesterday a meeting on the common with chris. horsemouth slept ok but did suffer from an ache in one of his legs (he's not sure why). 

today horsemouth is up at a reasonable hour. 

tomorrow kilvert will travel to worcester to take part in the funeral service. 

things found in houses

'I see in the illustrated london news that miss kilvert of worcester had just given £300 to the clock and bells of the cathedral.'

so, on this day in 1870, frank kilvert's brother perch tells him of their aunt's death and bequest. this will cause much consternation in the kilvert family and begins an adventure that will last out until december 3rd, as the kilverts gather in worcester to attend her funeral and hear her will read. 

kilvert will travel up to worcester on december 1st and return to hay on his 30th birthday on the 3rd. 

as kilvert's editor william plomer notes in his introduction;

'one of the finest achievements in this part of the diary is his vivid account of the events following the death of maria kilvert at worcester... if it were a chapter in a novel on the same level that novel would be a masterpiece. there are crowd scenes, seascapes (?), conversation pieces, and a burlesque sermon equally well managed...' 

===================================================

horsemouth has finished reading practicalities (until next time).

there are a couple of pages about things found in houses, particularly the house in paris. the caracao - a woman's loose under blouse - jammed into the back a drawer and lost behind it for centuries in an antique chest of drawers. the round stones the portuguese workmen dug up in the basement. michel leiris thought they were part of some oil or wine press (possibly from the abbaye de st. laurent). some tortoise shell hairpins and a nit comb at the back of a cupboard. 

it's not that there aren't bad sentences. it's just that there are lots of good sentences 

'one day I thought that it had happened - that I'd never write again... suddenly I started to cry. it was clear to me... I'd probably never write anything anymore. it was all over. I really believed it, and can still remember the terrible grief I felt...' 

'the ladies talk on the terrace overlooking the sea until dusk, when it starts to get cool.'

horsemouth always forgets that he lent his copy of practicalities to howard and horsemouth is shocked to see the notes howard  made in it  every time he opens it.

<---------------'start with this' (underlined) 

points to the line 'the ladies talk on the terrace overlooking the sea until dusk, when it starts to get cool.' 

a paragraph on writing (as if it were improvisation) is marked in the margin, a question 'where do characters derive from?'. 

duras shows us an apocalypse. and it is an apocalypse in line with the demographic transition model. the birth rate falls, society ends.  

'it will be the greatest disaster ever. at first it will only be below the surface. a slight fall in the population. people won't work anymore. there'll be massive immigration to ensure that things get done. and then no one will know what to do. perhaps everyone will just wait for the population to dwindle away. they'd sleep all the time. the death of the last man would pass unnoticed...' 

yay last night a tv drama about the agapemonites (talking pictures freeview 82) in the series  victorian scandals (which ran for 7 episodes in 1976) . beloved starring shirley cain, tom criddle & peter egan.

there's been a frost overnight, in a bit horsemouth will go down the drive to retrieve the bins. he thinks he has to forgo the bell-ringing tonight (he thinks the cough has still got him).  

what a difference a day makes...

so what if the petition for a new general election gets more than 9.7 million votes? (the amount of votes  labour received at the last election). 

at that point more people will have 'voted' not-labour than voted for labour in the last election. 

but this amount is already less than the combined vote for the conservatives and reform (6.8 and 4.1 million respectively - people who we could reasonably expect not to want a labour government).  so shouldn't the petition have to have more votes than 10.9 million if it is to claim the situation has changed? 

the slight-of-hand here is that a vote in a yes-no referendum is not the same as a vote in a general election with many parties standing. third party effects rapidly lead to parties winning seats with less than 50% of the vote in that constituency. 

parliamentary logic is determined by seats won and all the other parties put together do not have as many seats as labour (411).

what this petition does expose is the insanity of the first past the post system of election and yet that is the basis on which governments are elected and it cannot be wished otherwise it must be constitutionally changed to be otherwise. (now there's a mighty can of worms). 

alternatively we could have a revolution (says horsemouth entirely straight faced). 

labour have proved themselves stunningly politically inept in their modern incarnation (so presumably they are going to get themselves tangled up in a crisis of legitimacy when they don't need to).  

the stomu yamash'ta is a recommendation andy edwards makes about 25 minutes into his video - he's conducting an experiment to find out what would happen if we actually listened to music live on his channel (similar to the review shows). instantly grumpy andy is replaced by musical enthusiast andy (this is a considerable improvement and may be worth the risk of demonetising his channel). 

 

far from the madding crowd (a vagabond)

above a mix by dave webb from his most recent new river studios show.

'he who practices art is a vagabond, a nomadic survivor who will never find a home among people who have become settled.'  — adorno and horkheimer.

at least that's what art forum claims in its article on mario merz. 

horsemouth listened to a podcast about crowds with novara media and dan hancox largely based on the work of premier crowd theorist gustav le bon. horsemouth had not realised that le bon was an eyewitness to the paris commune of 1871 - this may mean re-reading him soon.  dan seems to be more of an elias canetti man (crowds are good, well if not good at least very human) but he doesn't seem to say so (which horsemouth finds strange). 

a package has arrived 

(but not the package you understand). 

if it arrives horsemouth will let you know. 

the bid for the warm homes social housing fund wave 3 has gone in (woop woop). 

soon (well, march if it's anything like last time) the communal endeavour should hear if it has been successful. win or lose horsemouth thanks 'the team' for putting the bid together. he will now cross his fingers and keep them crossed. if there have been any fuck ups it is too late to correct them now.

if it is successful it will enable the communal endeavour to insulate its houses (and flats in houses) up  to an energy performance certificate C standard (for this is the level that the government's measures are targeted at rather than 90 kwh/m2/year heating requirement target that wave 2 was aimed at). of course lowering this target will enable the government to use its money more effectively to produce more EPC Cs but it does mean that when completed and the measures are fitted the houses won't be as warm as they were initially planned to be (but hey ho). 

horsemouth himself is far from the madding crowd (but that doesn't mean they don't still drive him mad). 

keeping a journal of time and the sea

 'after luncheon went to see annie powell and found dwarf harriet morgan going to read to her... 

on to the lower house where they had been killing a pig and the blood was streaming down the steep fold to the road... 

I had a literary talk with lewis williams, about byron, scott, wordsworth, pope, robert montgomery, clare etc. till greenway knocked at the door to ask him to come and help carry the pig indoors.' - kilvert's diary, 25th november 1870

'I could have gone on after summer 1980. just doing that. keeping a journal of time and the sea - of the rain, the tides, the wind, the rough wind that blows away beach umbrellas... but summer 80  remains the only journal I have ever kept...'  - marguerite duras, practicalities, p.5.

horsemouth was intrigued duras united with journals. duras resistant to journals. only some of the writing is available in english it would seem. 

it seems churlish and negatory to describe this all as autofiction. to close it off. 

it is 18 years since horsemouth started blogging on my_space. 

'this book helped us pass the time....'

'a wild and rainy night and the rain poured all day so that the clyro court party could not shoot and played battledore and shuttlecock in the hall. gentlemen and ladies.' 

kilvert at a guess.  yes kilver 24th november 1870. another entry tomorrow and then a break until the 28th and the bredwardine bridge flood story. 

horsemouth's brother has returned two of horsemouth's favourite books to him.  

they are practicalities by margueritte duras and christ stopped at eboli by carlo levi. these are both books written by people in lonely circumstances - levi in exile, duras over winter. judging by the bookmark horsemouth's brother only read the first few pieces in practicalities. 

'this book helped us pass the time. from the beginning of autumn to the end of winter...' 

but the bookmark is from a church in east ham. it is more likely that howard or horsemouth put it in the book (more likely horsemouth), it is possible (whisper it) that horsemouth's brother has returned it to him unread. 

the book begins in italics with a description of how it was written before the named chapters begin. and yet this untitled introduction makes it onto the contents  page as 

This book helped us pass the time      1, 

the rest of the chapter titles are not in italics.

practicalities - this is a very influential book for horsemouth. 

look at what he is doing now. it is a rainy day, he has reached for some books on the bedside table, he has pulled out a plum (the duras), in it he finds his method and his object, to write about some topic as it comes into his head, to edit it and then to publish it (in the modern delusion), such that 'none of the pieces deals with a topic exhaustively'.

it differs from duras in that the words are not spoken or sounded. they are not transcribed  they are merely typed in. whole sections are seldom edited out (though they may be copied and pasted to another location in the post as a whole, or saved for a later post).  

two years ago horsemouth was reading Édouard Louis' a woman's battles and transformations.  a book he had found in the 'on-the-way-to-aldi' bookbox in a nice slim  hardback edition. 

you see horsemouth has moved this last paragraph from near the start of the piece (from before when he knew he would be writing about practicalities) to the end (when he has decided that the post will mainly be about welcoming back his copy of practicalities). nonetheless he doesn't want to waste his researches on what he was reading way back when. 

'when you're writing, a kind of instinct comes into play. what you are going to write is already out there in the darkness. it's as if writing were something outside you, in a tangle of tenses; between writing and having written, having written and having to go on writing...' (the black block, p.25)

it was this tangle of tenses, one horsemouth often gets himself into, that made him realise that what duras and jerome beaujour are doing here, and what horsemouth does when he blogs, have  similarities.

today a rainy day.  

herzog starts walking

on this day 50 years ago werner herzog started walking from munich to paris and to film historian lotte eisner, who was then near death in hospital. 

'I said that this must not be, not at this time, german cinema could not do without her now, we would not permit her death... 

I set off…in full faith, believing that she would stay alive if I came on foot...'

it will take him from saturday 23rd november until 14th december. there's a diary of his journey of walking in ice.

'walking on foot brings you down to the very stark, naked core of existence. we travel too much in airplanes and cars. it’s an existential quality that we are losing. it’s almost like a credo of religion that we should walk.' -  herzog, film comment interview 1979.

here horsemouth starts his blogpost early. 

horsemouth's brother has just been. this was a perfect opportunity for horsemouth to get away up to the wen but no  it was not to be horsemouth came down almost immediately with a filthy cough and cold and reviewed most of it from bed. 

it's the evening of the day before. horsemouth is listening to the dave webb show while he types this. it will be in dave webb's archive soon. 

and it is the morning. horsemouth has a shocking cough. it is raining (as it will do for the next two days). he has been out to feed the chickens. 

a fairly alarming autobiography (people die, love fails, bad philosophy is taught)

here we have gillian rose  interviewed by andy o'mahony for RTE  in her hands that's the hardback edition of love's work. (horsemouth used to own a similar copy). 

but it is the painting the artist's home at lyngby by  carl holsøe that graces the cover in its penguin modern classics paperback edition that horsemouth now owns. 

this perfect domestic interior makes the book look much more calm  and tasteful than it is (it is in fact a fairly alarming autobiography - people die, love fails, bad philosophy is taught). the RTE radio interview recaps most of this. 

horsemouth would like to reconstruct his perfect domestic interior (lots of wood, lots of books). he was thinking about how to bring back more shelving (him and his hand trolley), but maybe that's not the right way to think about doing it.

dj shadow (midnight in a perfect world) has been heading out on tour. he's finally back up at the number of gigs per year he had in 2020 but travel costs have gone up and he ends up giving most of the money to the travel industry. the venues are still suffering, bumping along. 

das singende, klingende bäumchen

'complete futility. sunday. a more than ordinary sleepless night...' - kafka, diaries, 21st november 1915.

an entirely written in the morning blogpost

any scenes you remember from your childhood that are difficult to integrate into the whole?

probably das singende, klingende bäumchen (1957). man becomes bear and is persecuted by vicious dwarf. princess is returned to him (but it's no good he's a bear and she's still the class enemy). in some ways it's like solaris. solaris for young people. 

there's the goldfish (with the max ernst europe after the rain  cliff face behind it). 

today horsemouth continues his recovery. 

pluto in aquarius (rebel bass)

ok so horsemouth is beginning to come back round from his cough and cold (though he may have the actual symptoms for a long time). horsemouth has weak lungs it tends to take him a while to clear things.

horsemouth has been remarkably disease free since he stopped work. 

still. a change is as good as a rest (so they say). horsemouth is grateful towards his returning good health.  

a friend has suggested that we are moving (back as it happens) into pluto in aquarius. i.e. into twenty years of change. (pluto is the new). horsemouth's friend suggests that the same astrological phenomena can be observed at the time of the french revolution (and  wordwide in the period 1778 to 1798).  

but this is all very good  because the revolutionary forces can do with all the help they can get. 

why didn't this help come with the US election? because pluto fell back into capricorn. 

today horsemouth will be continuing to recover his forces. it's a beautiful if snowy day outside. 

so how is our patient today?

horsemouth must admit that good lord cough and cold's reputation as a vanquisher of foes is deserved.

nonetheless horsemouth pronounces himself beginning to be on the mend. 

outside if not technically snow then the very least sleet. 

he'll write more when he is feeling better.

ok later. 

-------------------------------------------

it is later. he's going to add his kafka quote from this day in 1915. 

'days passed in futility. power wasting away in waiting, and, in spite of all of this idleness, throbbing, gnawing pains in my head...

self-pity, because it is cold, because of everything...' 

 

a shocker of a cough and cold

 horsemouth is up in the wen from monday afternoon until friday morning. is anybody about? 

the weather looks like 

monday tuesday rain, 

wednesday, thursday sun

he's got a walk booked for tuesday morning and  wednesday afternoon, possibly food with howard thursday eve.

at the moment he has a shocker of a cough and cold and would rather just retreat to bed (but he needs to get away because he needs to get a holiday in).

tragedy! horsemouth has come down with a shocking cough and cold and so will not be making it up to the wen today.

he'll have to see if facebook will accept him posting this.

he has a meeting this evening on zoom 

horsemouth doesn't fancy it much

'the trees blazed with the diamonds of melting hoar frost. the wet village roads shone like silver below, and the market folk thronged past the vicarage and school. a railway engine shot up a bright white jet of steam over the bank from hay station, the oaks were still tawny green and glittering with diamond dews, hay church in a tender haze beyond the gleaming of the broad river reach and rapids above the steeple pool. how indescribable, that lovely variegated scene. a rook shot up out of the valley and towered above the silver mist into the bright blue sky over the golden oaks, rising against the dark blue mountains still patched and ribbed with snow.' - kilvert's diary, 17th november 1870. 

after this description of beautiful nature 'old sackville related his reminiscences of a badger-baiting at clifford court that he had been at when a young man.' 

it's not that kilvert is a great descriptive writer (he's not) but it is embedded in the web and weft of his life and sometimes he looks up or around him and sees it and tells you about it.

horsemouth types this around midday on saturday. 

he's waiting for the washing machine delivery. 

he's been out to brush some leaves off the drive - the ambulance had difficulty getting up the drive a few weeks ago because of the piles of slippery wet autumn leaves. he's expecting a phonecall sometime around half one (and then he's expecting to redirect the van from the village hall where the postcode marker is).  

he's been attempting to clear trip hazards out of the way in the kitchen (but nothing can disguise the fact that the old machine will have to be lifted out and the new one lifted in - and washing machines are fucking heavy).  horsemouth doesn't fancy it much. 

so it's done the old washing machine has been lifted out and the new one put in where the dishwasher used to be (the dishwasher is now out in the garage but horsemouth and his brother may move it back to where the washing machine used to be tomorrow. dishwashers are lighter than washing machines/ they'll see how they feel). 

horsemouth then celebrated (perhaps prematurely). he's having some zoom beers with howard. (there are photos). 

later horsemouth has eaten dinner and is contemplating sobering up. 

him and his mum watch shetland (an old series). 

out in the sea off california the oarfish are rising to celebrate trumps victory. 

an early christmas advert

'last night the waning moon shone bright and cold in the east and I had a horrible dream that I was married to mrs. danzey and living as a curate in gwythian. I woke up in a cold sweat...' - kilvert's diary, 16th november 1870. 

last night beaver's moon (in the farmer's almanac moon classification allegedly lifted from native american sources). the last of four consecutive super moons for the year. 

today (with about one hour's notice) the delivery of the washing machine. 

'the relation between what we see and what we know is never settled... the way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe... every image embodies a way of seeing. even a photograph... our perception or appreciation of an image depends also upon our own way of seeing...'

thus is john berger's ways of seeing paraphrased in olivia laing's documentary. it's the end of the third lockdown, she gets the 55 bus into to go to the national gallery to see a giovanni di paolo.  her intro is reminiscent of la jetée the1962 french science fiction feature directed by chris marker. (horsemouth has berger and marker slightly confused in his head too). 

horsemouth has been touring back between the blog entries of his decembers and his januaries. he's been looking for inspiration to write the great summary of the year but before that there's the golden glow christmas carol with the three mixes by horsemouth and howard each released 6 days apart in december.  

the problem for horsemouth is how to collect and celebrate the other 3 mixes done by himself and howard in the other months of the year - normally he just reposts them on the day they were released (similar to his alice coltrane celebrations). 

horsemouth often enjoys reading his old blogs. sometimes he has an enthusiasm (a research project) and you can see it in the text. between enthusiasms  he is just drifting, 

'and, oh, a hundred thousand other things' (memorials of a quiet life)

 a day before blogpost (mostly)

kilvert is in clyro this day in 1870. 

'a snowy morning. it was very cold in the night. my watch stopped soon after one o'clock, and the country was covered with snow at daylight. the morning frosty and exquisitely clear and lovely with a brilliant blue sky meeting dazzling white slopes and the roads, hard, icy and dangerous travelling. letters from my father and mother enclosing a nice letter from augustus hare...'

augustus, a schoolfriend of kilvert's (and later a friend of somerset maugham), reminisces about school, about being taught about crema  and cremona, 'and, oh, a hundred thousand other things.' 

tomorrow kilvert will discover that augustus hare's adopted mother is dead. 

hare is the author of memorials of a quiet life, an autobiography in six volumes that features a number of encounters with ghosts, and a number of travel books. kilvert mentions  'a book in two vols. called 'walks in rome'.'

we are solidly in kilvert country until the 19th and on the 19th there's an entry from kafka from 1915. 

horsemouth has just turned off the world at one (moaning farmers, sexually harassed women prisoners, people being bombed in palestine).  he's sent in an email to the decarbonisation lot (hopefully they'll ignore it).

horsemouth is slightly sad. his friends are up in london (there's a photo) but he's out in the wilds. but before he'd seen the photo he was  happy - he'd been out bellringing and he was back from the pub. anyway he's up to town soon enough.  

bookpilled is clearing the decks for a 'read all the books you have bought' session by ranking all the books he has read so far this year - solid mentions for the strugatskys and d.g. compton. 

horsemouth in the wild

sounds like howard is starting off his mixcloud golden glow mix from this date in 2022 with the cocteau twins and then manaha do carnival. (good cover photo to this too! with lots of howard's drawings)

tomorrow horsemouth is back on the diary rota. 

phew. it's the day before and horsemouth has done his tasks for the day (excepting rolling the waste bin down the drive and feeding and locking up the chickens this evening). 

tasks make horsemouth grumpy (he never likes to be observed when he is doing them). ok he's going to nip outside now and feed and lock up the chickens (for their own protection you understand). there's a moon up in the sky but it is not yet full. (beaver's moon friday)

hmm. just saw marlowe chan-reeves in shetland (series 9 episode 2). well done dude. this follows on from seeing django chan-reeves in van der valk a few years ago. 

horsemouth watches very little tv with his mum now that the internet is available but he does find himself bored (and boring) at the moment. 

similarly he's not reading much. in theory he has victor serge's the conquered city and the diary of the reverend william poole on the go. the victor serge is great (the little horsemouth has read of it). 

in the morning he will go down to the bottom of the drive to get the bin (after he has fed and unleashed the chickens of course).  thursday night bell-ringing. saturday the new washing-machine is coming. sunday horsemouth's brother comes to visit. 

it's the morning. horsemouth hasn't been down to the bottom the drive to get the bin yet but he has fed and unleashed the chickens. 

he's been trying to catch up with his reading on the decarbonisation side of things. there's a mancom monday with a necessary vote by this point horsemouth will be back in the wen. he will be up in the wen until the friday (he'd like to go up earlier and stay longer but he thinks he may be needed back in the wilds). 

horsemouth gets the band back together

this morning an entirely written in the morning blogpost.

yesterday horsemouth, james, colin, liam, alex and jamie got the band back together and relaunched the decarbonisation bid. they have 13 days to get the bid done and  in - it's a bid that they have largely done it before and will now have to tweak it to the new revised circumstances.

instead of insulating the property to the 90kwh/m2/year higher C heating requirement (that would set the property up nicely for fitting an air source heat pump at a later date) the government now wants such measures added that get the properties up to an energy performance certificate C rating with little or no overperformance (a considerably lower target). the government contribution has been lowered also from £10k per dwelling to a maximum of £7,500. 

where the new scheme has improved is that it offers £20k on 10% of properties to insulate the property to the required level and install an air-source heat pump - so that would be one home for the communal endeavour. 

horsemouth is confident they have the money to do it and he's confident they can achieve the EPC C on all the properties by the end of 2028 (largely because the people they are paying to put the bid together tell him so and they all know what they are doing). 

the government has opened up a pathway where housing organisations with less than 100 properties not in a consortium  may bid. now to see if this pathway will actually work. 

------------------------------------------

yesterday also a walk on the common and later a walk to the village (ewyas harold) and back. 

halfway to the solstice

accessions diary 

11/11/24 - dore abbey - ten squid- the diary of the reverend william poole, the: perpetual curate of the parish of hentland & hoarwithy

'... (at) the end of 2021 a victorian diary, quarter-bound and with marbled boards, was donated to a charity shop in york. among the handwritten entries, the words ‘hentland and hoarwithy’ were noted, enquiries made... . covering the years 1857–62, the diary was identified as belonging to the reverend william poole – the wealthy curate responsible for transforming hoarwithy’s chapel of ease from ‘an ugly brick building’ into one of the county’s loveliest and most surprising churches...' - logaston press website.

so far, in horsemouth's reading, he is an interesting fellow, and horsemouth will be sharing some of his diary entries as they come up. 

 'so much is brilliant about the digital age' 

the FT discusses music. their aim? to break out of the spotify algorithm of machine driven recommendation. people have never liked this idea - that their tastes are predictable. 

their recommendation? more mixtapes, more playlists. 

yesterday horsemouth's mum has some business down at the village hall - they sat around in the sunshine by the abbey (which wasn't so bad). today  

today horsemouth is up (ad so is the sun). it's a cold morning (it has been down to 4C overnight assisted by clear skies). it's going to be a sunshine-y day.  horsemouth has a decarbonisation meeting to attend on zoom (or the equivalent) in the afternoon. at some point he has to make a journey into ewyas harold. sunday horsemouth's brother arrives for a visit.

horsemouth is halfway to the solstice from the equinox  (approximately speaking).   

diaries and notices for a monday morning

 so how are we doing in the 'embers?

sunday howard was out at the big empty pub doing some reading. 

diaries and notices.

- eleven kilvert diary entries for the rest of november and the tale begins of the death of his aunt maria kilvert of worcester (and of her funeral and inheritance). but nothing new now until the 15th. (1870)

-  edmond de goncourt (1870) nothing now until december the 5th

- two entries in kafka's  diary - the 19th and 21st of november and then nothing until nearly the end of the year. (1915)

- thoreau has quite a lot to say (from november 20th a trip to philadelphia and new york)

- similarly with john clare's letters and sinyavsky's letters to his wife and anton chekhov's letters - they are either undated or the correspondence is too broken up to make a good story. 

14th november there's howard's last golden glow before he moved on to distant sounds. horsemouth is listening to it now as he types this. it's the sunday afternoon, he's a little bored, but he's already been for his walk up on the common (up over to the house at st. john's well). ok he should get out for a quick wander before the sun goes down.

'in 2020(4) the pattern for the next few years will come into being.' 

so remarked horsemouth at the end of 2020(3). now we are moving towards 2020(5). 

horsemouth has made a premature review of the year (he was surprised how much music he has seen).

he saw alula down play in malvern and (backing jacken elswyth) play in camden.  charlie parr and two white cranes  in hackney (thanks mike), lou and leo and the water chorus at waterintobeer (thanks martin), ruth crawford-seeger 'three chants for women's chorus' at the QEH foyer, minny pops (thanks iona), triple negative, evan parker and bill nace, the renaissance music festival in  crystal palace ( killercorp, concrete age, die|kur etc. thanks enza), stick in the wheel and laura cannell at cafe OTO (thanks howard).

his mum has some business down at the village hall monday midday. horsemouth has a decarbonisation meeting to attend on zoom 3-4pm tuesday afternoon. sunday horsemouth's brother arrives for a visit.  

films, books, gigs, events october 2024

 books

- love's work gillian rose

- a voice from the chorus abram tertz

- station eleven emily st.john mandel 

- an article on the gig economy (the new yorker) and the google books excerpt of band people (franz nikolay)

- the selected letters of anton chekhov lillian hellman

-  susan sontag, on photography.

-  a somewhat ungenerous article in the LRB on soviet era dissidents (sheila fitzpatrick)

-  tom howlett, ITV central news 14th october 2024, housing campaigners outraged as birmingham city council plan to slash affordable housing targets. 

- fragments of hannah arendt's poetry 

- kilvert's diary, the goncourt journals, kafka journals on a hiatus 

films

- doomsterism from paul kingsnorth

- andy edwards ten nails in the coffin of rock

- the coming storm (R4) 

 - annie briggs interviewed (R4)

- zodiac (1976) - a whodunnit solved with astrology

- roger barnes has released another video about his life in a small breton fishing town

- outlaw bookseller, book-

gigs none 

events

visit london, mike visits (soho, hazlitt house, natlib), john visits (the william morris museum to look at some of the japanese prints upstairs, self-storage location), witness  protesting school-shildren from st. dominic's, quick wander with TG, visit howard's and the big empty pub. ewyas harold floods, 

did horsemouth drink the kool-aid? (nipples on the thumbnail)

horsemouth is a bit stuck. he has no (inspiring) quotes for the day (there's a gap in his writer's diary coverage). 

facebook have removed one of horsemouth's posts 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Land_at_the_End_of_the_World on the basis that; 

You shared this on your profile 28 Jan 2023

This goes against our Community Standards on nudity or sexual activity

horsemouth is glad to see that facebook are against wikipedia articles on obscure portuguese novels (even if they are somewhat indelicately titled in the portuguese).  

ok on reflection horsemouth thinks he's bang to rights but they have restored his content (for now)(to be continued). 

fairplay there are some very small nipples on the thumbnail - that people would only be able to see for sure if they clicked through.

six years ago horsemouth was playing a solo gig at waterintobeer (thanks martin).  he's up on a stool, he's got the hummingbird copy guitar out and the slide (horsemouth guesses satan your kingdom must come down). 

five years ago he was rehearsing for the gig with peter, paul and enza. 

 as horsemouth noted here three years ago now; 

'you find horsemouth at a transitional moment and it's not just that he is stuck between years... the work has ended and so the necessity to stay in the seaside towns has ended. on the other hand horsemouth has no firm real plans to move out. he has a somewhat enlarged library to potlatch for starters...' 

here the sun is breaking through the fog. monday a sunny day (allegedly). it's a dry week coming up so maybe the chance to do something in the garden without having the mud stick to your boots. horsemouth has unleashed the chickens. the visiting sheep munch contentedly. 

 

'certainly they themselves do not count on being read, the pleasure of writing itself is their only motive'

'most young  novelists present their thinly veiled autobiographies as fiction 

(I, for variety, present mine as neuroscience).

thanks to the internet, there is even a new variety of continuously updated on-line memoir sometimes called the blog... thousands of authors simply write their diaries onto web page for the rest of the world to read...' - alice w. flaherty, the midnight disease: the drive to write, writer's block and the creative brain (2004).  

'certainly they themselves do not count on being read, the pleasure of writing itself is their only motive' - emil kraepelin, german psychiatrist on graphomaniacs, as quoted in the midnight disease.

it was the night before the blogpost and horsemouth saw some fireworks (he assumes it's the neighbours). 

one two. buckle horsemouth's shoes but he's grumpy. 

he's not sure why. everything worked. 

well, the washing machine has died. its parts are made no more. it will go to join the great scrap heap in the sky (well under the ground actually, ok no some of it will be recycled horsemouth would like to believe).  

they can get it out of the kitchen that is. 

and that's horsemouth's worry - the kitchen is too narrow to just roll it in on a trolley, it will have to be lifted (worries horsemouth)- this is horsemouth's latest paranoid fantasy (and, more importantly to horsemouth, there's getting the new one in too). 

horsemouth guesses the repair man wouldn''t have stood there in the kitchen and suggested its replacement if there was no hope of either getting the old one out or getting the new one in (other people must have narrow kitchens). 

what worked is getting the repair man out to call it.  

-------------------------------------------------------

'recording improvised music – freezing a performance which happens once and then is gone – depends on one’s being able to count on the likelihood of something important, some unique combination of elements worthy of being captured and frozen, taking place...' - ed michel on the recording of alice coltrane’s february 1971 performance at new york’s carnegie hall.

andy edwards (the ex-grump of prog) mentioned the above track (good isn't it).  andy is much exercised by collaboration seeing it as the way to unify people's audiences and thus grow the bands. he has seen the different political economy of music available in dance music and hip-hop and wishes to offer the advantages of this system to performing musicians. record sales are dead, gigs are pretty much dead, facebook (and the other platforms) control your ability to communicate with your audience. how is our poor scholar to make his living?

here a grey day and horsemouth has finished his coffee. 

each phase of nature (mosaics of reservoir, lake, paths and gardens)

'each phase of nature, while not invisible, is yet not too distinct and obtrusive. it is there to be found when we look for it, but not demanding our attention. it is like a silent but sympathising companion in whose company we retain most of the advantages of solitude, with whom we can walk and talk, or be silent, naturally, without necessity of talking in a strain foreign to the place.' 

- h.d. thoreau, a writer's journal, 8th november 1858. 

today and tomorrow are the anniversaries of the recording of central park's mosaics of reservoir, lake, paths and gardens by wadada leo smith and amina claudine myers. it was recorded in 2021 at sear sound, new york. 

horsemouth is up early (well the same time as usual actually). he is waiting for the washing machine repair man (or his phonecall even - ok he's due to be arriving 10am-12 am). 

and here in schadenfreude corner

mike amesbury mp (the one who repeatedly punched a disgruntled constituent) has been charged with s.39 common assault. usually this sort of behaviour results in a community service order not a custodial sentence but it all depends on what happens when he comes to his trial.at magistrates court.  

a custodial sentence would be the trigger for a recall petition.

even if he is given a custodial sentence  he may still appeal (because this is not a typical outcome for s.39 cases). look at the claudia webbe case (largely cleared on appeal) for how long this sort of thing may drag on. 

and of course all this time mike is continuing in role as an mp and taking that mp's salary. 

horsemouth is making slow progress with the bell ringing but he's making progress. 

in the 75 days of the phony war (and the longterm plan)

awesome! roger barnes tells us more about retrofitting his house in a small french fishing village. (he's going to be heating it with a wood burner so horsemouth doubts how ecological it will now truly be but horsemouth was interested to see his air-source heat pump water cylinder for supplying the hot water). 

other than this we have an entirely written in the morning blogpost. 

horsemouth is up. he has his coffee. he has fed the chickens. he has been out to the garage to get a bottle of milk. 

how did trump win? 

well (for a start) five million more americans voted for him than kamala. kamala looked to horsemouth like a perfectly good candidate who ran a  perfectly good campaign (in the limited time she had available). it didn't touch the economic pain of much of the country in a cost of living crisis because that's not her experience.

horsemouth is amused to find himself a defend the status quo person (rather than a fuck shit up person). if the rich get what they want out of trump (tax cuts) this will drive inflationary pressures and make the american poor even poorer (ho hum). 

we are in the 75 days of the phony war - before trump's bullshit really starts. 

is horsemouth now a doomster?

well there is the question of how the world fails as it falls back from a globalised capitalism - if indeed there are trade wars, if indeed it does this. more protectionism doesn't mean that capitalism is less of a global system (well it does but perhaps not in a historically productive way that leads anywhere). free trade is an ideology of a capitalism that never actually existed

ultimately horsemouth expects the destabilisation caused by the climate crisis to be decisive. in kubler-ross speak net zero and decarbonisation are bargaining- you cannot alter the underlying situation but you can make yourself feel better about it by talking a good talk. society will rebalance at a lower level of consumption for vast numbers of people (this is how decarbonisation will actually be achieved).

he expects global trade to die back and such production as there is to be onshored but he expects the market-place to remain global and platform-mediated. the super-rich will remain super rich. 

today (in 1870) edmond de goncourt goes to call on victor hugo. goncourt questions him on what he now makes of paris having returned to it,

'yes I like paris as it is today... now it's a quagmire, a ruin, it appeals to me... it's beautiful, it's grandiose!'

hugo comments on the new boulevards (and on the german armies occupying northern france); 

'... the empire did nothing to provide a defence against foreigners; everything it did was designed to provide a defence against the population.' 

horsemouth is hoping to get the net zero and decarbonisation of the communal endeavour going again (he knows there is a contradiction here - but what can one do).   

'the light of the flames flickers on their sombre, fanatic faces.'

6th november 1915 kafka goes to visit the model of a trench outside prague. 

'view of the antlike movements of the crowd in front of and in the trench.'

kafka  is only just back from his war bond mania of the day before. later a strange fragment obviously a quote (but where from?).

'the light of the flames flickers on their sombre, fanatic faces.'

not all the election results are in but it looks like a trump victory this morning. (plus the republicans look like winning a majority in the senate and the house of representatives races and so be in a position to enact whatever crazy legislation comes into their heads). 

for horsemouth (filthy lefty that he is) this is bad news - trump now has four years to actually slide the US into fascism. as usual it is not that horsemouth is a great fan of the status quo or the democratic party, it's that he doesn't like this lot in power. horsemouth has few friends in america (ny, san fran, texas) he wishes them all the best of luck. 

the oligarchs have called it. their guy is in. god help us all. 

but it's also that the people have spoken (those registered to vote, those who bothered to vote, given the vagaries of the electoral college system) and roughly half of them (perhaps slightly more) want trump. 

-------------------

above don cherry keeps the music moving. 

'little friend, pour forth'

 5th december 1915 and kafka is having a manic episode.

'(it) began with my considering if and how many war bonds I should buy. twice went to the office to give the necessary order and twice returned without having gone in. feverishly computed the interest... I felt myself directly involved in the war...' 

but then,

'gradually my excitement underwent a transformation, my thoughts turned to writing... with pains in my heart crossed the stone bridge a ta run, felt what I had experienced so very often, the unhappy sense of a consuming fire inside me that was not allowed to break out, made up a sentence 'little friend, pour forth' - incessantly sang it to a special tune, and squeezed and released a handkerchief in my pocket in accompaniment as if it were a bagpipe.' 

horsemouth has just started re-reading alice w. flaherty's the midnight disease an account of graphomania, compulsive writing, and writers block. elsewhere rick beato and andy edwards go at it over creativity and the age when people do their best work (in horsemouth's case long gone). 

elsewhere, yesterday evening, he listened to controlled weirdness interview noted scenester miss pink. there's a deptford connection to back to the planet which horsemouth hadn't realised. 

he acquired at some point in the day a stiffness in his neck and shoulder (too much time on the laptop he thinks), he will try to get it under manners today. 

'come and reminisce if you think you're old enough'

'my journal is that of me which would else spill over and run to waste, gleanings from the field which in action I reap.'  - h.d. thoreau, writer's journal, 8th february 1841.

horsemouth  is still feeling out of sorts. he went out for a wander on the common but was soon back. the sheep are back in the field (he'll see if his mum mentions it).  today (at midday) a decarbonisation meeting on zoom. 

'I remember a corner in brescia... a church in verona...' 

- franz kafka, diaries, 4th november 1915. 

tomorrow an interesting day for franz (but today less so). 

horsemouth is up and reminiscing about the deptford free festival fired up by two old dudes discussing it. there was a whole scene down there. back to the planet were the main band to come out of it (horsemouth opines).  dave (mr.social control) played there loads. the guy mentions ruff,ruff, and ready (who horsemouth thought were excellent), they later split to become fat dinosaur and the co-creators. (the co-creators were wonderful). 

the guys also do the london rave and hip-hop scenes (so horsemouth will be returning to it). 

horsemouth is told one of the old punk bands opens with the terrace chant of 'come and have a go if you think you're hard enough' changed into 'come and reminisce if you think you're old enough'.

two wonderful sisters, three wonderful sisters...

'went about a great deal lately. fewer headaches...' 

- franz kafka, diaries, 3rd november 2015. 

kafka is going about with miss r. and  'the two wonderful sisters esther and tilka; they are like the contrast between a light on and a light off. tilka especially is beautiful; olive-brown, lowered, curving eyelids, heart of asia ..'  

and yet he dreams of esther.  

'half asleep I had a long vision of esther, who, with the passion she impresses me as having or everything spiritual, had the knot of a rope firmly between her teeth and swung energetically back and forth in the empty room like the clapper in a bell (a film poster I remember).'

we are with kafka until the 6th. we are back with edmond de goncourt on the 7th and kilvert on the 8th. 

horsemouth was reading a review of love's work (and gillian rose's other works) and who should appear in it but rahel varnhagen (as earlier written about by hannah arendt). 

in some ways there is a repeat of thoreau's admonition from yesterday;

'we should not endeavour coolly to  analyse our thoughts, but, keeping the pen even and parallel with the current, make an accurate transcript of them.' in some ways rahel is praised by arendt for doing this, but she is also called a schlemihl, a shadow, an unfortunate. 

there's a lot here and horsemouth is not going to struggle with it first thing (once upon a time he 'understood'  a lot of this, or at least he could swim in that pool). 

NTS has put out a compilation of instrumental guitar, mapping out the european analogues of the american primitive guitar movement. there was a show on NTS as well. 

the pen (even and parallel with the current)

 diaries notices

- only one kilvert diary entry for the next two weeks (1870)

- only one entry from edmond de goncourt (1870) also

- four days solid of the kafka diary (and then about two weeks of radio silence) (1915)

- thoreau has quite a lot to say (but it's not very date specific)

- similarly with john clare's letters and sinyavsky's letters to his wife.

'reintroducing the freeze on local housing allowance is deeply disappointing for the hundreds of thousands of families struggling in temporary housing or facing eviction..' - the women’s budget group thinktank.

from here on in a written in the morning blogpost.

----------------------------------------------------- 

'we should not endeavour coolly to  analyse our thoughts, but, keeping the pen even and parallel with the current, make an accurate transcript of them.' - h.d. thoreau, a writer's journal, 7th march 1838. 

yesterday was a difficult day. horsemouth was slightly run down and grumpy after thursday evening. there was a zoom call with howard but horsemouth was still on the tea. horsemouth's mum seemed moody as well. the new roof is on the wood shed. the washing machine repairman is coming on the 8th. horsemouth and his mum still have a full-ish tank of oil against the winter. 

today he starts the day (at least) a bit more cheerful. 

monday a meeting with the RISE team supporting applications for the government's decarbonisation funds. horsemouth does hope he can get it up and over the finishing line this time. any money the government can kick in leaves the communal endeavour with more money in its pocket to do the next stages of decarbonisation. of course the government money would come with various strings attached (PAS 2035, fabric first approach).  

it's all go in grosmont

as they entered the pub don't fear the reaper came on. the lad with the white face (who had earlier been sitting stock still on the banking opposite) was there. earlier some ghosts had been projected on a wall. later still the shanty singers came in. 

it's all go in grosmont. 

earlier horsemouth had been directed to the church by a group of children who were prowling around in the dark, it was a narrow climb up the bell tower to the ringing room. the ringing room was very nicely appointed (carpeted, comfy chairs). the ceiling was comparatively low, the ropes vanished up into the ceiling. 

the owl service have released a new ep including a re-imaginings of the theme to fulci's zombie flesh eaters and various other excellently synthy horror movies. truly it was a golden age for this sort of stuff. 

the film has come back from being developed  from howard's camera from the debrief session in his back garden round about august 25th/ 26th.  

here we see horsemouth with don and moki cherry's organic music societies. (horsemouth has cropped this photo from howard's original).

horsemouth forgets what point he was trying to make with these photos. 

horsemouth wakes up not tip-top but mercifully hangover free. today is grey-ish day (but hopefully rain free).