no dominion

for the birth of dylan thomas. a richard burton under milk wood sample. 

'today, in the night of the demon timeline, holden visits the hobart farm, checks the runes on nearby stonehenge, attends a seance where they sing cherryripe to get the spirits to descend, and then attempts to burglarise lufford hall. 

he will include advice on watching it tomorrow to set the denouement for 10pm..' 

yesterday it's six o'clock and it is really dark (because it is 7 o'clock really already). 

and on november the 1st (after samhain) winter really begins. we are halfway down the long dark tunnel towards the winter solstice (the darkest point) and then it is a long slow grind back up towards the light. 

having watched profondo rosso  horsemouth is now watching nomadland. she works for a while in an amazon enrichment centre (these jobs are now being automated). 

'the titanic is sinking' but it is sinking slowly and unevenly. work will not pay enough to keep a roof over your head. surely this is a problem not an opportunity. 

today it is a bright (if blowy) morning. horsemouth has just been down to the abbey to unlock it (and he will go back in the evening to lock it up again). this is in addition to his normal morning and evening task of unlocking (and locking up) the chickens. he has his coffee. 

tomorrow (1871) kilvert will be returning from bockleton vicarage. 

it is the morning on which the clocks have gone back

1871 kilvert goes to the 9 am service at st. michael's, tenbury wells. 

a full choral service with a te deum, venite and psalms. 

meanwhile in 1872 edmond de goncourt is back from attending theophile gautier's funeral...

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it is the morning on which the clocks have gone back. 

horsemouth has attended to the ones he can get at - some are those set  by a distant signal ones and will have to shift for themselves. 

pardon him the sun is up and it is shining in the window - being out of its red-ish 'dawn's early light' phase. 

last night he watched profondo rosso (deep red) one on the most successful dario argento giallos. the copy he was watching kept swapping between italian and english and the voices of the characters altered (most strange). horsemouth thinks it was the longest version he has ever seen with several additional shots (mostly unnecessary).  

he listened to annie briggs interviewed (first at the serpentine then on the west coast of scotland).  he imagined them meeting in the old serpentine restaurant (recently featured in deadly affair). 

today horsemouth may be bell-ringing (or seeing as he missed the last practice he may bottle out). 

he went (bit of a disaster but he will learn). 

the bird with the crystal plumage and butter wouldn't melt

ok nothing is leaping out of the stacks at him suggesting that october 25th has any magical particularity about it.

next week horsemouth and his mum are on abbey duty. remind him to go down and unlock it in the morning (and to lock it back up at night). in the week the weather gradually goes from bad to worse and worse still in the next week (but anyway by that point we are into november). 

horsemouth has already prepared some of his read,  listened to, watched list for october 2025. 

horsemouth is about 2/3rds of the way through black mass by john gray (currently we are with the disinformation that led up to the gulf war).  leo strauss has made an appearance (horsemouth has gone and got his book on machiavelli (thoughts on machiavelli) out of the garage, maybe he should go and get his books by machiavelli (the prince, the discourses on livy) out of the garage also).  

he has been watching the bird with the crystal plumage (dario argento's first movie as director) and bloody great it is. it has one of those super creepy butter wouldn't melt morricone theme tunes and slightly more atonal cue music than usual (at argento's request). 

untitled with rain

'horsemouth on the decks...  playing tracks by john surman, skip james, washington phillips, obray ramsey and more.... expect oddness and rarities...'

9 years ago now to this day horsemouthfolk curated this mix (though the mix itself was assembled by howard). 

there were (of course) no record  decks, that was just a manner of speaking even in those already digital days.

horsemouth was just dropped into it where he finished listening to it last time - judee sill's enchanted sky machines, john fahey's red cross disciple of  christ today.  

fahey's album red cross... ends with the sound of rain falling outside the studio (untitled with rain  24 minutes of it). it is the 33rd and final studio album by him, recorded a few months before his death in 2001. the posthumous releases and re-issue compilations will continue until 2023's proofs and refutations (and may indeed continue further on). 

he had forgotten skip spence's the land of the sun and was surprised when it came on. 

plaid take caerphilly in the by-election. as someone pointed out when labour were down to 50 seats one of them was caerphilly - it is really bad news for them for labour to have lost it, it does not bode well for the may sennedd elections. given the polls the tactical vote to keep out reform would have been plaid (horsemouth suspects this is what happened). 

last night horsemouth watched sidney lumet's the deadly affair - an early crack at john le carre's smiley series (but under another name with james mason). it doesn't work (but it's well enough made). the james mason / simone signoret couple just does not work, he's too old (it would have worked when he was younger). she does her best with the part. 

here a glorious autumnal morning. horsemouth failed to go out bell-ringing last night (he feels bad about this). 

three years, five months, and two days in the life of... horsemouth folk

so that would make our target date 20th may 2022

'horsemouth's basic plan is to abandon work and engage in a retirement where he does some writing (and some making of music)...' he wrote on the 21st of may 2022. 

retirement

'his 'retirement' is ok so far (he's a bit bored)'

by this point horsemouth had abandoned work and was starting in on his retirement. three years, five months... horsemouth was coming to the end of his redundancy and pension taken in advance money and beginning to dig into his (limited) savings. 

he was still living in london in the basement room in a shared house. 

now he lives out in the wilds keeping an eye on his mum as she gets older. 

music

volume four and the various other EPs and similar projects had been released by then but the band had been running at about one gig a year ever since covid and pressures of work (for howard) were going to mean that it would become increasingly difficult to record and finish material. 

horsemouth now has his guitars, the harmonium, and various other (smaller) instruments with him in the wilds. perhaps he will enter a new period of musical productivity. 

today a strange one. a phonecall from andy from the band horsemouth was in way back when.

writing

well horsemouth does the blog every day (and substack or good reads as and when) but he doesn't have a bigger project on the go at the moment. he barely keeps a diary any more. he is almost never physically writing (it's all typed - and into one of these). 

ok it's a grey morning and the bin lorry has just been (hail the bin-men!). 

bin day! remembering it. remembering whether it's the recycling or the waste this time. walking the bin down the drive to the pick up point. getting up all excited in the morning to discover that the bin has been magically emptied. (the visitation of a strange craft with flashing lights for those up early enough). bringing it back up the hill to the house. arguing over what properly goes in each bin. hail the bin-men!

the heavenly city of the eighteenth century philosophers and a day in the life of the horsemouth

how goes john gray's black mass?

p.25 and carl becker author of the heavenly city of the eighteenth century philosophers appears as christianity injects into philosophy the idea that human life/ history has a goal. horsemouth has this book somewhere (it was part of his utopian collecting).

it is a month on from the autumn equinox 

we are a month into the long dark tunnel moving towards the winter solstice and ultimate darkness before we begin to ascend up and into the light. the celtic quarter day (samhain) is imperfectly placed at the end of this month/ the beginning of the next, slightly too early to be a half-way point. 

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'the subjective experience of lived time is different'  bookpilled/ thrift a life in a reflective mood and considering his life as a digital nomad.

a day in the life of the horsemouth

the guitarist of musicians of bremen tells us about his life in the beautiful herefordshire countryside. 

all of this is, of course, a parody of a daily torygraph magazine column where celebrities tell us about their good taste weekends (shopping, fine dining, a little opera etc.). 

7am horsemouth gets up. (more like 8am these days but soon to be 7am again due to the ending of british summer time).  he puts on the kettle, opens the curtains and makes a cafetiere of coffee. while that is brewing, he will take the milk over to the refrigerator in  the garage and let out the chickens (this used to be part of  his mother's morning routine but it is now his).

soon the frosts will come to kill off the plants in the garden and in the greenhouse. horsemouth will then clear them out and horticulture will be over for the year. 

horsemouth knows little about gardening so he is going to have to learn. the main thing he has learned so far is not to grow so many marrows. 

as he drinks his coffee (black no sugar) he turns on the laptop and either blogs or posts up the blog he has written already, then he copies a link to the blog to facebook, checks through his likes, possibly posts up a memory from that day in previous years. 

he can no longer listen to news briefing on R4  in the morning (it has been abolished) but he will check the bbc weather several times during the day. 

9am-ish breakfast. porridge and toast in the week, eggs at the weekend, two pieces of toast, cup of tea. after this horsemouth will finish farting about on the laptop (the grauniad, housing news mostly, if he finds something there he will post it, of course he should stop with this, housing is no longer his problem).

in winter he often goes for a quick walkabout on the common - it's normally just a stomp around waving to the dogwalkers (but trying to stay out of their way). 

12ish (is that am or pm? he's never sure.) he listens to the R4 midday news. he hasn't listened to  a podcast from the FT for a while now (good to be reminded of them), he looks to see if there are any articles/ podcasts/ videos on LRB, nlr. probably a small pot of tea and two cheese sandwiches. he's always surprised there is no world at one on a saturday, it throws the day's rhythm about for some reason.

perhaps after this some more tasks or maybe a read or maybe a snooze or maybe a walk again. 

4pm  he'll start looking at youtube vids (bookpilled, outlaw bookseller, novara media).  he's back to watching movies a lot. 

at some point in the day  horsemouth will play some guitar and sing. he's got most of his guitars here now. he has a  hi-fi systems set up so he could in theory listen to the drawers full of CDs he brought with him (but he doesn't tend to). 

when night falls he will go and lock up the chickens. 

7pm dinner. 

thereafter more fiddling about on the internet or perhaps reading. there's sometimes something on tv he wants to watch (but not often). 

10pm(ish) news. and weather. and local news. and weather. (now horsemouth and his mum skip this). 

his reading (of books) is much diminished.

his vision is getting poorer he thinks he probably needs glasses. 

horsemouth's mum now makes do with the hereford times (it has a tv guide in it). 

apocalypse and transport panic

so horsemouth has recovered john gray's false dawn: the delusions of global capitalism from the racks (that should probably be capitalisms) to go with his copy of black mass: apocalyptic religion and the death of utopia.

will self is a fan (so that's probably a bad sign). 

black mass benefits from the chats gray had with norman cohn whose the pursuit of the millennium was particularly influential. 

here it has been raining but it has now stopped again (and now it has started again).

horsemouth very much enjoyed this john gray conversation because essentially horsemouth is a doomster not a booster - he sees no way out of the current collapse of (neo-)liberalism that leads to progress up into any kind of world in which he would want to live, in fact all he sees is it's collapse into even worse varieties of capitalism, authoritarianism and  attempts at re-founding 'community'. 

the thing that distresses him most is that this seems to come not from the ruling class but from the people (although the british ruling class may eventually work out how to profit from it). 

that's not because he think that it is impossible that there can be progress towards a better world but because he thinks there won't be progress towards a better world given the current balance of forces. 

but (conversely) for the right wingers to get what they want everything has to line up for them too (and horsemouth does not see this happening either). 

once again horsemouth was thrown into a transport panic - there was an agreement to a doctor's appointment without checking if there were any buses to the village, initially it appeared not (no 440) but later it appeared there was (442). 

sun in aquarius (larks' tongues in aspic)

jewels of thought by pharoah sanders recorded this day in 1969. 

sun in aquarius (horsemouth would argue) is lifted (at least at the layer of texture) to make king crimson's larks' tongues in aspic.

over on substack reheated horsemouth blogposts (from back when he was good and some new stuff). 

here (the sunday) a rainy day with little to recommend it. 

ok horsemouth is about to go for the world this weekend news (1pm).  robbery at the louvre. pressure on venezuela.

in the evening horsemouth watched hopscotch (walter matthau the super competent, this time as disgruntled CIA agent doing a spycatcher). before that he watched john gray being interviewed on why he wasn't a post-liberal. 

now horsemouth has a number of john gray's round here (false dawn, straw dogs, black mass etc. none of which he has read properly). now the basic argument of all of them is a kind of derridean quibbling - for example in false dawn  there was never actually existing free trade (say) (or if there was it only existed for a brief period and had to be maintained with force) so attempts to grow this into an ideology are doomed to failure (or at least the policies that might propose are doomed to failure). 

broadly for john gray the center cannot hold...  apply this technique to all the shibboleths of liberal debate as seems fit. 

ok horsemouth has found his copies of black mass and false dawn, straw dogs remains elusive in the stacks (maybe he never owned it). 

and now gray has lived long enough to be able to apply them to post-liberal thought (and in particular that of  alasdair chalmers macintyre and in particular his after virtue)  this is becoming a thing as the liberal political project enters into a (possibly terminal) period of difficulty.

ok the morning doesn't look too bad but the weather forecast said it was going to get rainy later. this week a bit rubbish, next week a bit better. 

still to try (rain rain go away)

still to try reads the somewhat cryptic diary entry for this day in horsemouth's (somewhat tightlipped) diary. 

it looks like a rainy week coming up. (rain rain go away)

on the 24th there's the anniversary of one of horsemouth's golden glow mixclouds (tunes selected by horsemouth, mix assembled by howard). you can see the full list of them here together with some shows horsemouth recommends (robbie basho and takoma records).

goethe leaves cento in the morning and travels to bologna. he then looks at a loads of paintings and churches and suchlike. he laments the lot of durer (unappreciated in his time and poor).

yesterday a wander up the hill to deliver eggs. horsemouth watched an elvira film (it was pretty terrible). there's another one he's watched the start of. 

today a greyish morning with rain later. 

in which horsemouth gives a good account of himself

'I am writing from guercino's home town and in a better mood than I was yesterday..'

having been in venice and ferrara goethe is on his way to bologna. he has stopped off at the painter guercino's home town of cento. 

horsemouth (as you know) is out in the wilds 

he has been for slightly over two years now. he has only recently moved the last of his stuff from the room in london and in truth there is still some stuff jammed in the backroom (out of sight and out of mind - hopefully). 

he has been at the bell-ringing for slightly more than a year (one night a week) and is beginning to make progress with it. 

he writes this blog regularly and has expanded onto substack. he goes for regular walks on the common. he plays a bit of guitar. 

this is probably not enough activity for him

the town (hereford) is the best part of 45 minutes travel away (and in the region of £8 bus fare return). for this reason (and because the book shopping there is a bit limited) he does not go there much. abergavenny is similar (perhaps very slightly better). hay-on-wye (where they at least have books) is a two/ three bus journey (at a minimum) without a car.  it is probably just as well that hay is a way. 

horsemouth needs to up his activity.

that said things keep attracting him back to london. 

45 years of levitation

levitation - hawkwind's  tenth studio album 

released october 17th 1980 

eagerly awaited by a young horsemouth

so why is it so good?

erm. because it is a unique hawkwind album. it's not about the lyrics (no bob calvert, no michael moorcock). it's not about the concept (warrior on the edge of time, chronicle of the black sword).

it benefits from both a super clear digital production giving it a radically different sound to hawkwind albums before or since and some quality musicians playing on it. the album is distinctly short on grunt but it is punchy. this is the only 80ies album where 80ies production does it any favours. 

it is an album of (mostly) instrumentals powered by the drumming of ginger baker and the hunger and skill of huw lloyd-langton. tim blake is in there too. harvey bainbridge from that ARC/ hawklords/ sonic assassins line up also. huw has a variety of guitars and techniques and brings the drama to the songs (notably space chase). 

this is a work gig for ginger baker. he shows up and gives a solid performance while including just enough fills, displacements and substitutions to keep himself entertained while doing it.

horsemouth often refers to this era as the bronze age because of the record company that this line-up were on, but that's not to disparage it.

horsemouth went to see the tour (08/11/1980) with his friends from caerphilly. by some mischance they conspired to miss the train into cardiff and had to get a lift (all wedged into one car) over to the venue (the polytechnic of south wales). 

right now (when horsemouth types this) it's the thursday 

horsemouth's mum is away buying things. having got off to a tetchy start (surprise phonecall in the morning). horsemouth believes things should calm down in the afternoon.

he's been for a stomp about on the common. 

it's the afternoon. horsemouth is hiding out before going bell-ringing.  (the bell-ringing is going well, he seems to be finally getting the hang of it). 

horsemouth is pleased with this photo of himself by max from max's friday 13th gig 2017 (he seems to be cradling something in the palms of his hands in a very meaningful way, as if telling a complicated story,  but he's probably just putting on the guitar slide). 

a chat with richard over the internet phone. possibly a gig plan.  

friday morning

horsemouth awaits the visit of his uncle, aunt, cousin and cousin's wife. his thoughts are turning to how to give a good account of himself. 

horsemouth in his bargaining with time and place

on this day in 1786 in the morning goethe is arriving in ferrara having been in venice.

1871 and kilvert is off with his father to st. davids. by nightfall they will have reached the castle inn in  haverford west (which still seems to be there). 

even pessoa is off for a walk 

'yes, it's sunset. I walk leisurely and distracted, down rua de alfandega towards the tagus...' - fernando pessoa, the book of disquiet, on this day 1931

horsemouth was trying to work out how to predict how many friday 13ths would be in a particular year based on the appearance of a friday 13th in a particular month.  each month adds a certain number of days. when you have reached 7 (voila!) there is another friday 13th. 

such is horsemouth's bargaining with time and place.

yesterday he wandered into ewyas harold to get two loaves of bread, a dozen eggs (the chickens not laying), and two bottles of beer (just in case). he's trying to persuade his mum to take it easy ahead of the visit of his uncle terry on friday. 

tonight the bell-ringing (hopefully). 

tomorrow 25 years of levitation. 

 

live in tasmania ('of all places!')

it is the forty-fifth anniversary of john fahey recording live in tasmania his first ever live album and possibly 'the first recording by an international artist to be made in tasmania'.

of all places.  

while the track listing suggests there are many new tracks in fact,

- tiger is lion, 

- tasmanian two-step is hawaiian two-step/ spanish two-step

- return of the tasmanian tiger is revolt of the dyke brigade

- indian-pacific r.r. blues is actually beverly, actually a studio recording from the album after the ball

- the approaching of the disco void is a re-working of  wine and roses. 

soon fahey will be moving to oregon and selling off  takoma records. railroad 1 will be the last album he will record for them. from then on fahey will have much more limited releases and after his 'rediscovery' his music will change.

in many ways the album marks the end of an era.  

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it's the morning. it is still not fully light outside. horsemouth has been out to unleash the chickens. (he has not so far found the secret stash of eggs etc.). he forgot to go and take the milk over to the garage yesterday - he presumes his mum must have done it. 

today the bins (waste) and probably a walk into the village to buy bread (and beer for horsemouth, he's out of beer). 

''the afternoon grew dark and threatened rain...'

'the afternoon grew dark and threatened rain. the dingle was gloomy and one yellow tree above the burnt house burnt like flame. 

tom williams came over to dine with us and talked to my father about old oriel days.' 

after a long walk yesterday (a friday the 13th) kilvert has a quiet day. (this day in 1871). 

there was only one friday the 13th in 2025 (in june), but there will be 3 in 2026 (february, march and november).  of course if there's a friday the 13th in february (28 day perfect four week month) there will be a friday the 13th in march (unless it is a leap year - if it's a leap year there won't be for sure). 

at two hours after sunset on the 14th october 1786 goethe will be leaving venice for ferrara and later rome.  horsemouth will attempt to follow him. 

yesterday horsemouth listened to the WKCR (new york) special broadcast celebrating pharoah sanders on what would have been his 85th birthday. he went for a walk on the common and photographed some more mushrooms (these photos he will post later). 

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ok it's the morning. horsemouth would like to solve the problem of why the hens have stopped laying (again). he suspects that they are just laying somewhere other than the nesting boxes in the hen shed but until he finds that location it's a problem. or it may just be that the dark and the cold are discouraging them. 

soon BST ends. samhain. we will be halfway to the winter solstice. 

fever dreams (a quiet day)

horsemouth has found another link to dario argento's inferno online.

this is the second in his the three mothers series following on from suspiria. more fever dreams inspired by de quincey. 

near the start our heroine revisits the bookseller (kazanian antiques) where she bought the book of the three mothers written by the alchemist varelli (allegedly). she asks some questions about it. (she is in any event living next door in mater tenebrarum, the mother of darkness's house in new york).

the bookseller proposes a number of other damned houses one of which is  the villa palagonia (or villa bhagheria), near palermo, sicily, called the villa dei mostri because it has a lot of grotesque statues on the garden walls. 

many travellers have visited the villa palagonia.  goethe visited it on his italian journeys (horsemouth should check this out).  part of  l'avventura by  antonioni was filmed there.

here (in part) is what goethe had to say about it.  (horsemouth went and got the book out of the garage where it currently resides). 

'our entire day has been taken up with the madness  of the prince of pallagonia (sic.). his follies turned out to be quite different from anything I had imagined after hearing and reading about them...' 

his travelling companion kniep is even more horrified by this than he is. 

'kniep's artistic feeling was almost driven to desperation in this mad-house; and, for the first time in my life, I found him quite impatient. he hurried me away, when I wished to take a note of, and to perpetuate the memory of these monstrous absurdities, one by one. good-naturedly enough, he at last took a sketch of one of these compositions, which did, at least, form a kind of group...'.

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horsemouth's brother is telling him london is enjoying an indian summer. here a rainy grey morning. the rain little better than mist. horsemouth has fed the chickens. they don't seem to be laying much (which is a bit of a mystery). 

today a quiet day (horsemouth hopes). there was a fair amount of damson picking and bottling yesterday but they have gone past their prime and horsemouth doesn't know that it is going to be as good as last year despite the huge crop. anyway, time will tell. 

on this day eight years ago now horsemouth plays a gig in the oranges and lemons church. it was a friday the 13th. 

it was a launch party for max's book mirkwood.

first cut is the deepest day

'there is occasionally something bordering on downright incompetence about works of genius...' 

- andrei sinyavsky (abram tertz), a voice from the chorus.

it is the anniversary of horsemouth writing first cut is the deepest  his essay length review of ben watson's derek bailey and the story of free improvisation. 

in the course of writing this horsemouth read (and managed to drag into the review) his reading of improvisation: it's nature and practice  in music by derek bailey as well as keith johnstone's impro: improvisation and the theatre. 

horsemouth's work is sadly not a work of genius but, also sadly, it is not entirely free of incompetence either... that said he is proud of it and recommends it to you. 

soon, well  saturday 15th nov 2025 there will be a showing of 4 episodes of derek bailey's documentary  on the edge – improvisation in music. the next day there will be a screening of rare footage of derek bailey solo and in collaboration.

meanwhile horsemouth has been listening to the keller quartet recording of bartok's  string quartets. quite how far he will get with them he does not know. he has the naxos version of the music for strings, percussion, and celeste  somewhere. 

ionarts seems to rate the keller quartet recording though;

'all meat and natural ease in excellent sonics... and perhaps one of the nowadays most underrated cycles out there.'

in string quartet no.1 bartok is supposed to be sobbing his heart out for violinist stefi geyer, 'dark to light' says this review. 

what will horsemouth do next? will he listen to no.2 (so as to demonstrate progress) or listen again to no.1 (so as to consolidate learning). 

yesterday a brief zoom beer with howard (knackered as usual). he's only got to survive two more weeks and it is half term. 

ok greyish morning. let horsemouth get his coffee. 

the eternal caravan of reincarnation (crops)

kilvert's dad has been visiting and has been away to llangorse to go fishing. 

'the best day's fishing he had ever had.'

yesterday horsemouth dug up some potatoes. some are really big (baked potato size). he also brought in some tomatoes to ripen on the windowsill (he wants the tomato plants to put their energy into ripening the green tomatoes that are on them). 

he wants to pause cropping the peppers to give them a chance to get bigger (but he suspects that they have had their lot for this year).

he wants to get out and take a crack at picking more damsons. (he's just taken a look - he thinks they've left it too late, most of the fruit have gone mushy). 

they have more spinach than they know what to do with (or could eat before the frosts come). 

it is the anniversary of the release of santana's caravanserai - the album where he starts making the jazzy prog that will last him until amigos and will become a definite part of what he does after. this will take him into the orbit of alice coltrane and john mclaughlin. 

in the evening horsemouth watched rififi a french gangster movie directed by the blacklisted jules dassin with an awesome robbery scene. 

in the morning well it's a grey-ish morning. horsemouth is unsure about the day.

the common's water

october 10th 1871 no kilvert. (more kilvert tomorrow)

nothing obvious in the diary. 

horsemouth went to a meeting of the commons water trust. he walked in and got a lift back. he missed out on his bell-ringing for the evening (hopefully he can get in next week's one). 

the water comes from an aquifier up in the black mountains and after much filtration through gravel and clay pops out at st. michael's well on the common. from there it is gravity fed to a large tank and thence by a series of alkethene pipes to horsemouth's mum and all the people lower down on the common. (the water is pumped up to the people higher up on the common). 

the pipework and the infrastructure is the remnants of a military base - it's mostly in steel, fortunately there seems to be no sign of lead or of asbestos. thereafter the the pipes that deliver to the houses are in alkethene.

it was a small meeting. the people from the house at st.michael's well were there. broadly after two drought years on a roll people recognise that that water from the common is a scarce resource and that the infrastructure is in need of replacing if the supply is going to be resilient. 

today a quiet day (horsemouth thinks). 

tomorrow maybe zoom beers with howard. 

babylon is falling

'there was a frost in the night and this morning the tops of the poplar spires are touched, are turned to finest gold.' - kilvert, 9th october 1871. 

'neither succumb to the past nor to the future...' -  karl jaspers 

(autotranslation of the first line of the epigraph).  

preface to the first edition (rewritten)

'... we can  no longer hope for an eventual restoration of the old world order with all its traditions, or for the reintegration of the masses of five continents who have been thrown into a chaos produced by the violence of wars and revolutions and the growing decay of all that has been spared... 

homelessness on an unprecedented scale, rootlessness to an unprecedented depth.

never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest - forces that look like sheer insanity...'

this is not of course the first moment that hannah arendt's the origins of totalitarianism  has been popular. it was popular in the anti-nazi and an anti-stalinist 50ies, a decade haunted by nuclear war, it was popular at the first election of trump, it is popular again at his second election. 

there has been more discussion over on substack of dylan riley's hannah arendt was wrong thesis. 

the next presidential inauguration is due to be held on january 20th, 2029. whether it will happen or not, whether it will be trump (again), whether it will be a trump-a-like, all this is possible. 

and in the UK what will happen here? 

horsemouth would predict major gains for reform in the may 2026 local, mayoral, and regional elections (assuming they don't crash and burn before then). but then they have 3 years to wait until the general election  15th august 2029 (during which time they may crash and burn). 

reform is farage. farage is reform. but he himself has nothing to offer but a warmed up thatcherism and anti-immigrant sentiment. 

on the subject of thatcher clones kemi (bad enoch) played a good conference (horsemouth was shocked). he thought there was no hope for her, he may have been wrong. 

robert jenrick (jokerman) laid out his powellite stall. what are his concerns? litter. fare-dodging. a shortage of white faces in handsworth.

in this he is more avowedly racist than reform. reform at least, are working hard to render themselves electable (of the we're not racists but variety).  

but the people who want to go back to an earlier world are deluded. there is no going back. 

babylon is falling sing steel pulse from 1978 (and from handsworth). this is the way horsemouth sees it - the west is falling, china is rising, the entire of world history since 1945 (maybe 1918) is the history of that fall. if it is not falling to world communism but to chinese capitalism  (and the contradictions within capitalism itself) then that's what it is. global warming will profoundly destabilise what remains. it will be a century that favours command economies able to mobilise the vast engineering and logistical resources that will be necessary to keep the show on the road. 

and how do we respond? at great expense the machines can be made to seem to speak (this is not enough). 

the fact that it is falling does not mean that it will fall utterly. like the collapsed roman empire we will live on leaned up against its ruins for generations. 

a voice from the chorus (stiller than water. lower than grass)

'you need paper to lose yourself in its whiteness. writing means diving into a page and coming up with some idea or word...' 

it is the centenary of the birth of andrei sinyavsky (aka. abram tertz).

horsemouth has a number of his books most notably a voice from the chorus taken from his letters to his wife while he was in prison and edited by him when he was freed. sinyavsky had to be very careful in what he wrote because of the possibility of reprisals by the prison authorities. consequently we get his thoughts on the few books he can find to read or on random things he remembers, irish myths, alice in wonderland, robinson crusoe, the poetry of anna akhmatova, on the speech and song of the convicts, sea shanties, chechen songs, the feast of the assumption etc

for his birthday sinyavsky is given a biro refill. the next day he writes the following; 

'in the autumn the orange colour blends with the violet and they both have something in common - over and above their yellow and blue foundation, and that common quality rushes about and darts in and out of the two colours like lightning and suddenly strikes - red.' (9th october 1969)

the title is taken from that of an aleksandr blok poem.

'then be content with life today.

stiller than water. lower than grass...'  

horsemouth has his the makepeace experiment round here somewhere. 

horsemouth is up. for now the sun is shining but it will soon ascend above the clouds. today the usual. tomorrow a visit to the commons water committee rather than a dose of bell-ringing. 

harvest moon (the preface to the first edition)

'the widows were decorated with latin and st.andrew's crosses and other beautiful devices in moss with dazzling flowers...'  -  the hereford times inserts a misprint into  kilvert and friend's account on the harvest festival, this day 1871. 

they laughed. 

in the night there had been a battle between poachers and gamekeepers up on the moor. in it two keepers were beaten about the head with bludgeons and a poacher stabbed so that his life was despaired of.

'everything I searched for in life, I gave up precisely because I had to search for it. I am like someone distractedly looking for something which he sought in dreams, having since forgotten what exactly it was...'  - fernando pessoa, the book of disquiet, 128 (178), 7th october 1931.

7th october – 18:20 BST - harvest moon 

horsemouth had a quick look at harvest moon (one of the last great songs by the blue oyster cult). he likes the concept (rural murder - ritual sacrifice?) but at the moment he's not seeing a way into playing it. it's that Am -F, F G Am all along the watchtower thing.

yesterday outside it was a beautiful day. horsemouth had already been up for a walk up on the common and then up into the top field with his mum to check on the apple and pear trees. he has moved the pepper plants indoors. hopefully the warm sunshine will drive more of the tomatoes to ripen and warm up the air to keep off the frosts. 

he dug some potatoes up in the garden. there's only really the potatoes and the spinach left. 

today is judee sill's birthday. today grey all day (it looks like). 

'judee developed her psychic abilities at this time and became a gifted reader of tarot cards...'

stung by the accusation that hannah arendt could be wrong horsemouth has been re-reading the origins of totalitarianism. as usual the germans are great not just on the grim situation we find ourselves in but also the collapse of reason's ability to enable us to understand it. 

'this moment of anticipation is like the calm that settles after all hopes have died...' 

curiously arendt is writing this (the preface to the first edition)  just after the end of world war 2 which is now viewed as a positive hopeful moment. 

'neither succumb to the past nor to the future. the point is to be fully present...' -  karl jaspers 

goes an autotranslation of the epigraph.  

wishful thinking (in the grim circumstances in which we find ourselves)

'for arendt, the key precondition for totalitarianism was the pulverization of civil society, which produced the isolation of mass society, full of disoriented individuals available for demagogic mass movements...

... it must be emphasized that despite (hannah arendt's) 'the origins of totalitarianism's' many interesting insights... its central argument is largely wrong.'

dylan riley (in the new left review) takes after hannah arendt

civil society, that place that is not the state, is held to be the place where we must battle our misguided fellow citizens. 

horsemouth has heard the view expressed before that it was not the weakness of civil society that led to the rise of fascism in germany and italy but its strength. a society with lots of sporting clubs, societies, women's guilds, scout groups etc. is ripe for takeover. because all the fascists have to do is take over these bodies. (he just can't remember where he read it. gramsci probably). 

for his sins horsemouth spends a lot of time watching political opinion videos

there are a number of right wingers he regularly listens to;

(a word of warning. let us be blunt about this, these people are stone racists and anti-semites. this is not a way of being in the world that horsemouth approves of. he thinks that you owe it to yourself, and to the people you meet, to make efforts to overcome your racisms and prejudices). 

an elite theorist might think that small highly organised minorities actually have a real political effect and run things and that large (populist) movements do not, hence what we see is a  populist delusion. thus the populist movements we are seeing will not work, or at least not take people where they want to go.

alternately another might agree with the thesis that the pulverisation of civil society has produced the isolation of mass society, full of disoriented individuals. whether that can actually be organised into a movement to do what is needed is another matter. 

many on the right commentariat seem to think tommy robinson is a grifter and (in that they are anti-semites) are offended that he is in receipt of israeli money.

ultimately there are limits to how far the great british public (in their wisdom) will support rampaging racist football hooligans. (it's just not a good look).

many on the right commentariat think the flag campaign is moving things into a pointless empty symbolic rhetoric - the flag can basically mean anything and be embraced by anyone (even sir keir). 

on the other (electoral) hand many on the right commentariat seem to think that reform/ nigel farage is leading people back into the morass of electoral politics (and that reform is insufficiently racist being only interested in immigration controls, sovereignty etc.). should he be elected he would confront the british deep state - the unelected and largely invisible true power structure of the country - whether he could get his hands on any levers of power is another matter. 

the right remains divided (but then the former labour vote will split too). the tories have poisoned  themselves (first by ingesting neo-liberalism to excess, then by actually taking the UK out of the EU). they have burst and are haemorrhaging voters and supporters to reform, to the lib dems. 

but similarly labour will haemorrhaging voters and supporters to the lib dems, the greens and the ex-labour left. 

in this situation sir keir's digital ID cards plan is insanely stupid and dangerous. it is actually likely to unite the right in resistance to it. 

of course the next uk general election could be as late as 15th august 2029 so all these tendencies have a lot of time in which to work themselves out/ people have a long time to become even more frustrated with the 'political process'. 

and of course what horsemouth is indulging in here might be described as cope  - wishful thinking in the grim circumstances in which we find ourselves. 

the last 40 pages of disgrace

horsemouth has been having a coetzee moment (on substack)

someone mentioned reading the last 40 pages of disgrace so horsemouth thought he might give it a go. (this is a trick he often uses when he is finding it difficult to get started with his reading).

he started at chapter 20, 'he re-enters capetown on the N2. he has been away less than three months...' 

our academic hero is in disgrace (hence the title). he will move away. his life in capetown is already over he just hasn't quite finished with it yet. 

horsemouth finds this situation somewhat analogous to his own - he has moved out to embrace (somewhat) a life in the wilds. of course he's not actually in disgrace but he has been there before. 

coetzee's character comes home to find his old house looted and all his possessions gone (horsemouth is slightly envious, he has just had to move his). 

coetzee's character is writing an opera (horsemouth is again envious). 

horsemouth had been made redundant some years before and taken that opportunity to retire (rather than been slung out in disgrace) and several years later he has taken the opportunity to move. for him it has not happened all at once but step-by-step. and now he is here. 

as usual when horsemouth comes to re-read something there is stuff there he does not recognise, stuff he had forgotten or did not see the first time. 

'... it is humiliating. but perhaps that is a good point to start from again. perhaps that is what I must learn to accept. to start at ground level. with nothing. not with nothing but. with nothing...'

'like a dog.'

'yes, like a dog.' 

ultimately the point is to start again (for coetzee,  to start again in the new south africa).

yesterday (as will be when you read this probably) a sunshine-y day but windy.  distant bells from the abbey. he just went for a quick walk in the rain (and when he had come back in the sun came out). 

the day before that he watched three days of the condor. (one of the weakest of the post-watergate conspiracy thrillers). yesterday (as will be) he watched a bit of nic roeg's walkabout (which is very j.g. ballard). he didn't take his opportunity to watch dune. 

he set up the CD racks and brought in some clothing. he re-arranged the room so that the mirror is now on his left and the guitars on his right. 

today  a grey morning. the day after it is not supposed to be too bad. overnight temperatures are down into single figures. 

at the setting of the sun ('sensation derived from the subject matter' )

'the epic theatre purposes (sic?) to 'deprive the stage of its sensation derived from subject matter'. thus an old story will often do more for it than a new one... historical incidents would be the most suitable'  

- walter benjamin, what is epic theatre? in illuminations. 

walter benjamin describes brecht's theorisation of his own method and what he has learned from chinese theatre. 

yesterday jollies in kilvert land with a parish dinner followed by a game of football.

'after dinner all the men played, or rather kicked, football and each other and then til it grew dark, when the game ended in a general royal scuffle and scrummage...' 

today a ghost story

kilvert goes to saffron hill. a child had drowned in a peat pit saturday 23rd september 1871.

the child had previously said they had seen a ghost a fortnight before crossing the bridge over the milw on the border of the parishes of clyro and newchurch. 

'a tall person dressed in white and it looked down upon me. when I had got passed I looked back and I saw it looking after me.' 

kilvert reports;

'mrs. watkins thought it must be the apparition of his mother who died when the child was four days old and prayed with her dying breath that the child might never be reared, but that it might be spared the miseries of the world.' 

so what the folk(song) is going on?

of course these are not the kind of stories brecht would want, all 'sensation derived from the subject matter', all resonance, all ghosts. 

the girl who is shot mistaken.. for a swan. 

this morning sunshine (but light rain also). 

imaginary journalist - ‘why do you write?’ 

horsemouth - ‘that is a question I ask myself.’

horsemouth realises this is not of general interest (an autobiographical piece by the author)

journalist - ‘why do you write?’ 

coetzee - ‘this is not a question I ask myself.’

situation from a piece in the sydney review of books on j.m. coetzee. 

yesterday horsemouth was out digging over the garden and planting some broad beans for the early crop  (they grow, the snow knocks them down, they come up again, you get your broad beans early the next year). 

that's the theory anyway. 

he's held some seed broad beans back for the main crop. 

he shelled the overgrown runner beans (apparently they are fine to eat as long as they are boiled for about 10 minutes first, horsemouth has done it before and not died yet etc.), he cropped the marrows (anybody want a marrow? horsemouth has way too many), he found the last but one beetroot (he thinks). 

there are still flowers on the marrows, tomatoes and some of the runner beans. 

the night before he had brought in all the red (or yellow) tomatoes he could find (he thinks he's got until the end of the month before the frosts start getting after things). he'll bring the pepper plants into the conservatory to see if he can keep those going. 

there's a ton of spinach. there's a ton a damsons and of apples. 

horsemouth realises this is not of general interest but such were his tasks for the day. he did not get out for a wander on the common but he did get down the drive to bring the bin back up.  

in the evening (in the dark) he went off to practice his bell-ringing. it went well. afterwards he returned early. 

later (after he had read the coetzee piece) horsemouth read an autobiographical piece by the author (which he enjoyed). finding it sorted out a structural problem with this blogpost - that it was not of general interest - and attached it to horsemouth's various (auto)biographical projects. 

it's a grey morning. it has clearly rained in the night. 

today he goes out with sylvia at 3pm to clean up the batshit from the abbey belltower. he'll try and take a camera and get some footage of the bats. 

accumulated meaning ('as if the events of the world might become legible')

'how is it that dying people so often see a beautiful place or garden and beautiful little children that it has come to be an almost certain sign of approaching death? little katie died at 3 o' clock this morning, that hour in the 24 at which the thread of life seems to grow thinnest, for at that hour most people die...' 

- the reverend kilvert, 2nd october 1871.

'we do not write a phrase - it writes itself, and all we do is to clarify, as far as we are able, the accumulated meaning concealed within it.'  - sinyavsky in a letter to his wife from prison, 1966.

'... as if the events of the world might become legible, rising through the ink shadow of the page.'  - laura marris from states of plague: reading albert camus in a pandemic by alice kaplan and laura marris.

it is the day before in a bit horsemouth goes to take the eggs to the crossroads and to take the bins down the drive. the podiatrist has just been for his mum.  

he is glancing through previous october's blogposts - this is where he has learnt that october 8th will be the centenary of andrei sinyavsky's birth, october 18th the 15th anniversary of marion brown's death.

horsemouth walked into ewyas harold to post off the keys. later he phoned up the bank to cancel his rent cheques. he should probably have got on with changing his address right there and then (but hey). 

he has been out to the garden to dig up some potatoes.  he proposed some spinach also (there is rather a lot of spinach growing) but his mum said no (spinach tomorrow).

in the evening he watched a drama based on the phonehacking scandal and then he watched  caravan to vaccarès (1977) – 'gypsies, smugglers, and a deadly international conflict in provence' by alistair maclean. famous flamenco guitarist manitas de plata appears as one of the gypsies. famous racing driver graham hill appears as a helicopter pilot!

october (octobear - 8 bears) is of course a ber,  a cousin to the -embers. 

isn't it tory conference season soon? (horsemouth could do with a laugh)

horsemouth's mum is up early. horsemouth is up late. grey morning. bell-ringing later (probably). 

yesterday horsemouth had a brief epiphany about the prospects for mixing walk on the wildside and jimi hendrix's version of all along the watchtower together. he had a fantasy about playing an audience participation version of walk on the wildside. 

 

 

books, films, gigs, events september 2025

read, watched, listened to, happened 

books 

-  non-stop; brian aldiss (finished)

-  watership down: richard adams (started) 

- caleb williams: william godwin (started)

- diaries (thoreau, pessoa, kilvert) as and when

-  LRB brandon taylor ponders the order in which to read the  rougon-macquart novels

-  marina tsvetaeva wikipedia entry

- nlr marco erramo article

- substacks various

- guardian, nlr, LRB online various

- stewart lee guardian article on derek bailey

films 

- the big shots/ les caids (1972) serge reggiani

- the mackintosh man (1973) paul newman 

- wade schuman of hazmat modine (as part of the three pieces series) talks about abdel gadir salim

-  jean-pierre melville's le samourai  (dubbed into russian)

- lea ypi and aaron bastani (downstream generally)

- roger barnes messing about in boats on the french canal system

- LRB's podcast on labour's problems

- R4's 'great lives'  comedian stewart lee on derek bailey 

gigs

- channel one soundsystem (40 years of the hackney peace mural celebration)

- bermondsey folk festival:  okinawa sanshinkai, gemma khawaja, polly vaughn, bity booker, carragher academy of irish dance, cunning folk 

events 

 crossbones graveyard ceremony, equinox,  mike H visits, art show with barney, horsemouth waves goodbye to hackney.

non events 

miss woodbridge ambient music festival, the rapture doesn't come (again)

pinch punch first of the month (octoberon)

'the great change was stealing over her. death was stamped on her face. I saw the child was dying then  and I knew she would not live to see the morning light of this world... 

she had seen a beautiful bright place, a garden, and numbers of beautiful children and was much vexed because her sister bella could not see them too.'  

kilvert attends katie whitney a dying young girl. 1st october  1871.

horsemouth saw sten off this morning. he had rinsed the battery in his car charging his phone and so required a push down the road to get going. horsemouth sent him off with some marrows, some damsons and some apples. 

horsemouth's mum has given up on watching the news.  horsemouth doesn't blame her. the world is not in a good way at the moment. it means missing out on the weather report. the weather looks ok though. greyish morning bryter later. 

ah yeah the calendars can be changed (yay!).

horsemouth has just woken up and gone and unleashed the chickens. he will now go and change the calendars. (done it). he hopes he is not stealing the pleasure of the task from his mum. 

he has just seen a deer - jumping the fence into the disused field next door. 

robert lawson's new album (ectoplasmic heartache) has just arrived. horsemouth will be listening to it shortly. he is really digging 'in space no one can steal your dreams'. 

he has done his read, watched, listened to, happened list for september 2025.

thursday horsemouth hopes to resume his bell-ringing (having told so many people about it). 

the good news is that horsemouth's uncle terry is coming over friday. him and horsemouth's mum get on very well. er. that day the weather doesn't look so good.