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.