'instantly associate all literary labour with pecuniary reward'

'a letter from my mother brings the astonishing news that mr. ashe wishes to have a stove in langley burrell church and will offer no opposition to the gallery being taken down to admit of the stove...'  - kilvert, diaries, 4th april 1871. 

'men's minds run so much on work and money that the mass instantly associate all literary labour with pecuniary reward' - thoreau, diaries, 3rd april 1859. 

if this was true in thoreau's day it is so much more true now. or at least with the dream of it (look at substack). 

there is (of course) a similar dream for music.

the action that attracts the attention with thoreau is physically writing in a notebook. it was similar with claude levi-strauss, the locals could see something was going on but they couldn't tell what. with levi-strauss the locals assumed it was magic and power, with mid-19th C. americans money. 

similarly, as an experiment, try showing up anywhere with a clipboard. 

nowadays everything is typed on a computer or a phone (of sorts) or filmed with a  phone. 

horsemouth would settle for being read (or listened to). and then with being read (or listened to) a little more. 

horsemouth has partially destroyed his own reading by diarising 

he is not reading the thoreau like he should because he scan reads the book looking for material from the correct day of the month so he can quote it here.  nothing from the fernando pessoa today (for example). and similarly with that.

there is a temptation to involve things with time, to repeat them at a meaningful date. 

today he read recollections of the lakes and the lake poets: coleridge, wordsworth and southey by thomas de quincey.

(funnily enough in 1871 kilvert has just been to visit someone who was the niece of wordsworth's wife).

de quincey is an egregiously sentimental writer (even by victorian standards) and about as accurate with his dates as carlos castaneda. 

horsemouth also has de quincey's the ceasars in a similar edition. by then de quincey was 'denied the use of books'  in composing it. 'I was obliged to depend upon my memory for materials..' 

horsemouth has them in a green hardback edition (mdccclxii) from blacks of edinburgh - he thinks he bought them in a library sale at goldsmith's university.  the spines are off but (at least in the ceasars) some of the pages are still uncut. he thinks they were probably rebound by the library. 

horsemouth has been thinking of re-launching

that dream of music-making again.

what he would need to do is get one of those digital recorders (probably a multitrack because he loves multitracking things).  really he should get a CD burner again (because he liked that means of distribution). he should get into streaming (and recording) gigs. become a digital cottage industry. 

hmmm. that's a pretty good post. horsemouth thought he had nothing to say. 

michael hurley has died

michael hurley has died. he was the king (the originating don) of freak folk. just listen to the genius of that. 'I'm with you til the morning baby, til the break of day,,'. horsemouth thought it could never happen. horsemouth thought he was invincible. 'I remember that old scumbag coffee shop we used to hang out at..' it's heartbreak, it's the velvet underground.