Showing posts with label albert camus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label albert camus. Show all posts

Friday, 5 November 2021

horsemouth 'whataboutist' ('remember, remember, the fifth of november')

morning peoples. 

'starmer is boring but not corrupt' it was put to him. (er. except when him and his cronies were sabotaging the previous labour leader but we will let that go because it has indeed gone by). 

and then it was put to him that he was guilty of 'whataboutism' or 'whataboutery'. 

he replied that things happen (yes), but other things happen also, and it is permissible to go 'but what about...' because the other things may be a part of the first thing (a decay in wider political life for example). 

horsemouth has heard sten raise boris and lady nut nut's home decoration habit (paid for by anonymous donors - no danger of access or political influence being purchases there!) on the back of paterson MP's double my salary scheme, is this not 'whataboutery'? (or whatever the scope limiting measure is called). 

horsemouth is glad boris has been knocked back on his first attempt to knobble the regulator but he will soon be back at it (and probably, when the dust has settled, with labour assistance).

horsemouth's but what about? was claudia webbe MP who conducted a campaign of harassment against someone she suspected of having an affair with her partner (including threatening to thrown acid in their face). for this she received a suspended sentence and community service (which strikes horsemouth as unduly lenient). when you look at her website she is making all the right noises for someone of horsemouth's political persuasion and there she is ascending the greasy pole up from islington councillor onto the labour national executive. it only goes to show you can't tell very much about people from who they say they re

sproatley smith (and the weirdshire lot) have put up a compilation album of various artists who have played weirdshire events at the babar cafe (and very good it is too). horsemouth thinks it's a great 'scene' alula down, haress etc. and recommends you buy it , similarly he recommends the stuff from leigh on sea (the owl service etc.), the stuff stick in the wheel put out, gwenifer raymond's take on american primitive. 

meanwhile what is happening with the musicians...

'remember, remember the fifth of november...'

because it's bandcamp friday. (rather than the day on which we celebrate a conspiracy to blow up parliament rather a long time ago). 

on this day bandcamp waive their revenue share so more of the money goes to the musicians themselves (and they are hungry if not technically a famine). remember you can get the whole musicians of bremen digital discography  (and that's all the albums, EPs and digital singles you can see here) for a mere  £11.25 GBP or, if you've done that already, maybe you could purchase the weirdshire compilation or some of the music horsemouth has recommended above. 

horsemouth is very bad at this self-promotion lark and facebook and blogspot are obviously not the places to do it. 

horsemouth is coming to the end of milan kundera's immortality a book based around a (private life) sex/ (public life) fame dichotomy. if horsemouth is honest he has always been a shy boy (and now he is rapidly becoming old) and has not really had enough of either to satisfy him. he suspects he's pretty much had his lot (of either sex or fame) and from here on he will have to make music because he enjoys making it. 

his immediate task is the peter, paul and enza stuff, to negotiate a playing of some of  pete's songs (to their mutual satisfaction) and get a version of enza's loops of heaven  up and running.  

Tuesday, 22 April 2014

'a town without intimations'

horsemouth is very taken by albert camus description of oran in the introduction to his the plague (red cross I think it was - no british heart foundation - lewisham - two pounds fifty, when horsemouth got it home he discovered that he already had a copy - undisclosed charity shop 25p, but by then he'd started reading it... and anyway this just gives him a duplicate copy for disbursement). the reading of it goes smoothly and quickly (like camus' early stories that horsemouth read recently), it's like a j.g.ballard or defoe's journal of the plague year, or the opening set up of the decamaron or the opening set up to artaud's theatre and it's double, or foucault on the social discipline necessary to overcome the plague. (anyway it goes quickly p.84 so far)

it even opens with a quotation from defoe's robinson crusoe,

 'it is as reasonable to represent one kind of imprisonment by another, as it is to represent anything that really exists by that which does not!' - robinson crusoe's preface to the third volume of robinson crusoe. (there are of course several games being played here).

further to this horsemouth has also finished ronald blythe's account of an east anglian village akenfield which is truly great - he ends it by interviewing a gravedigger (who wants to be cremated and his ashes thrown straight up into the air). horsemouth may have to find another copy to give to is parents.

this morning horsemouth trammed it to lewisham and wandered from there over blackheath and down through greenwich. the sun shone and then it pissed it down. by the time horsemouth was home it was sunny again. for the next 4 days horsemouth works, and then similarly for the next 3 weeks, and then what?