hail the vandals

horsemouth (thanks to john clarkson) went to see richard skelton play - he bowed a bouzouki laid flat which made a pleasant feedback-y kind of noise at important moments and a string quartet produced a range of textures (sometimes reducing the volume to (near) silence). horsemouth knows too little about music to tell you what was going on structurally but at the level of texture and dynamics it was very pleasing. he makes a wide range of things (recordings, pamphlets, poems, books, and no doubt physical appearances as well as all authors of books, and not just recorders of music, are required to do these days http://richardskelton.wordpress.com/)

the peformance space was st. luke's - a church at old street with a giant hawksmoorean monolith instead of a tower (horsemouth has a memory of max climbing in a window when it was still derelict and wandering about a bit), the performance didn't start until 7.45 so john and horsemouth adjourned to the cafe downstairs sited in what had formerly been the crypt full of dead victorian citizens (displaced in the name of art rather than invited to join proceedings). just like the archeologists at the exhumations in the crypt of christchurch spitalfields the rumanian/ albanian/ polish workers doing the exhumations at st. luke's (largely chosen because of their up-to-date vaccinations against a wide range of victorian pestilences) were shocked at how recent the bodies were and in what a 'good' condition they were in. some of the archeologists at christchurch had required counselling to deal with the feeling that they were tampering with the bodies of the dead - whether the east european workers at st. luke's were offered counselling is not recorded.

there were fears that the coffins might contain still active anthrax spores and that upon release those spores would drift over the silicon roundabout wiping out a whole generation of startups, spreading over shoreditch and brick lane (hipsters bohemians dying in the street), then seeming to gather its forces before rolling downhill into the financial district. (this was not to be).

may booklist

read

you are not a gadget - jaron lanier

green history (part) - derek wall

letters - anton chekhov (reading currently)

dr. bloodmoney - philip k. dick

to the end of the world - blaise cendrars

elite theory (part) - author forgotten

tales of hoffman - e.t.a. hoffman (reading currently)

read a little of...

blue lantern - colette

(intro to) arthur pym - edgar allen poe

bought

shadow line - joseph conrad 

akenfield - ronald blythe (duplicate copy)

strange visions (basket of light)

horsemouth was recently asked what his influences were.

in musicians of bremen it's much less about his influences than howard's (many of which are more recent than horsemouth's), there are influences in common, you can see this in one of the cover versions that horsemouth has brought to the band - allen ginsberg's father death blues - but on the whole horsemouth supposes the trick is not to find a song where the current version is amazing (why they have chosen blue crystal fire and silver raven) but to find one where it isn't fullfilling its full potential - live and learn.

there is one record that has had a key influence on horsemouth's 'folk' direction...

in the valleys of south wales in the 1970ies nestling between the moody blues in search of the lost chord  and the beatles blue album in horsemouth's parents record collection was basket of light  by pentangle. it had a gatefold sleeve in a distinctive brown (like led zepellin II known to fans as the brown bomber), a  photo of them onstage at the royal albert hall has been recomposed so that they are doubled and floating  above the circled tiers of opera boxes with their orange curtains. inside is the tracklisting, a brief description of each of the songs ('learnt by bert from neighbour's children in somerset', 'written on a 74 bus from gloucester road to greencroft gardens on an early spring day'), and black and white photos overexposed and close cropped that make them appear more bohemian and arty than they actually were (they were infact a notorious pack of drinkers). 

it was the particular lightness and space of the acoustic instrumentation that made it stand out - the double bass of danny thompson and the drumming of tony cox, the shifting time signatures and accents that keep the songs on their toes - that and the astonishing clarity and purity of jacqui mcshee's singing. this is probably the element of the band that horsemouth likes the least - but it's sparingly deployed, broken up by two group sing-alongs and three duets  (in particular bert jansch's singing voice is pleasingly un-dulcet and sits really well against mcshee's). one can imagine what pentangle would have sounded like if they'd had a harsh voiced singer. 

much of the record is made up of band compositions - bluesy, aimiable tunes given a bit of oomph by danny thompson's bass and their cover of the jaynetts 'sally go round the roses'   (for example, or springtime promises a notting hill feelin' groovy). what  is interesting is how few of the tunes are actually 'folk' tunes - slightly less than half - 'lyke walk dirge', 'once I had a sweetheart', 'the house carpenter'. 'the cuckoo'. all these are well known tunes from the folk revival scene played by other artists and in pretty much their standard forms. four songs deal with supernatural events 'lyke walk dirge', 'the hunting song', 'the house carpenter', arguably light flight itself ('strange visions (pass me by)'). it is in the middle 8 of these songs that the magic occurs - where a change in instrumental or vocal texture takes the narrative wordlessly on.

one reason is that it's hard to achieve transcendence through bluster (through mere volume) as it is often achieved in rock music with acoustic instruments - it's on a more human scale, it takes more thought.

horsemouth never quite found this elsewhere, pentangle never quite found this form again (though they had losts of good moments but also more than their fair share of underwhelming noodling). horsemouth never really found this in the incredible string band ,or fairport or the rest of the english folk scene, perhaps in the odd record he hears it, in katie cruel, in silver raven.  

but if it doesn't yet exist it remains to be made. 

march 9th. 40 martyrs and 10,000 skylarks

'i am of the opinion that real happiness is impossible without idleness.' - a. chekhov (who also wrote the list that serves as a title)

the great freedom is beginning (though the weather is not giving horsemouth cause for hope). if horsemouth had his act together he could be away for months. but it's true he does feel lighter and more cheerful already, despite the fact that there are still small things to be done at work.

the front cover of the selected letters of anton chekhov shows him with a small daschund type dog but following his trip to sakhalin (far east prison island of the czars - as written up in his book the island) chekhov returns by sea calling in at hong kong, india and sri lanka. it is at the last that he acquires a mongoose - he seems fond of it (though he worries it will attack and kill his dog - or vice versa). later he describes it as a 'rascal' in a letter to his family. the poet tom shapcott has written about it - like foucault's pendulum or the pope's rhinocerous the historical person and the possessive is just too prefect (chekhov's mongoose).

it is the animal spirit of the book - intelligent and flexible and with sharp teeth. of course when chekhov returns from sakhalin bunenin the critic suggests that he goes back there.

graverobberyintheseasidetowns

the sky above the estate was a grey gradient fill stolen from an e-commerce website. the real life second life avatars were up early and off to work not even trying to teach each other that amazing new dance step. meanwhile  two unemployed actors familiar to viewers of yugoslavian tv in the 70ies laboured digging up bodies from the estate graveyard. having had their full compliment of innoculations as children and by virtue of being cheap they were eminently suitable for this work. later they would transport the body by shopping cart across the seaside towns turning them in to a theatrical impressario/ community artist with access to freeze drying machinery (who would shortly be opening a show called 'mummies of the east end'). the rain fell. it was important to work quickly, only once the archeology had been done could the wrecking begin.

- I knew him.

-You did not

- I say we get the head off rather than disturb the gas pipe

- won't it come?

-no

-give it a pull

there was some pulling some tugging a schlorpp sound

a pause

there was some half-hearted chopping with the spade. then it stopped. 

- he's been here a long time 

- hmmn

- aren't those adidas?

the bodies were to be treated with respect (the site manager was clear about this) - they were to be wrapped in polythene and the skip was to be lined with polythene also.

chop went the spade

- someone must have a spare head

chop

-hmnn

- quit using that phone and give me a hand

- a hand 

a pause

'unparalleled (im)material plenty with a low standard of living'

last night horsemouth dreamt he was squatting in north west london (when he went for a wander outside there were mountains and a pavement coffee shop). the flat was large and concrete-y but horsemouth couldn't seem to find all the doors because strangers kept wandering through. horsemouth had a lot of kipple - he should really think about reducing it down if he's going to cart it about with him in his dreams.

 hipster as hunter-gatherer

 'unparalleled material plenty with a low standard of living' says marshall sahlins of the lives of hunter-gatherers in the green reader horsemouth has (featuring eroded attica - plato on soil erosion). of course the compensation for our security-lite employment prospects is that we can download/ stream or otherwise consume tons of cultural product for free and even produce it ourselves (good morning horsemouth writing again I see). it is not (as jaron lanier argues against the share -and -share-alike pay nothing digital economy) that the top of maslow's pyramid becomes blocked to us because we can no longer make a living (or at least not yet) but that it becomes more availiable as compensation for the menial nature of our various employments - think of all the people you see fiddling about on their phones during downtimes at work these days (only the homeless have time to read books).

there's a definition (somewhere in the wikipedia hipster entry) of hipsters as being more interested in what money does than in money itself - horsemouth thinks it would be good if that relationship could be so simply renegotiated. horsemouth voluntarily opted for a life where he made less money than his parents where he did not have a career, where he worked part time - in general he subscribed to the artist critique of capital, and, for his sins, capitalism has responded creating entire generations in this image.

ah well the job at tescos awaits when horsemouth is old and arthritic.

yesterday horsemouth mostly slept -off and on - he went down to the riverside (east india dock) to watch the proud owners out dog walking (poodles have such horrible feet). he's been reading anton chekov's letters (one of a line of doctors who are after hours scribblers - bulgakov, leonid tsypkin). lillian hellman, in her introduction, almost spoils it by making him sound too sensible (this is not what we read russians for! think of gogol, dostoyevsky, we read them because they howl so well) but fortunately she's right chekov is an agreeable character. 

 'I do not like my little book at all. it is a hotch-potch, a disorderly ragbag of feeble essays written at the university, slashed by the sensors and editors of humorous publications... had I known that people were reading me.... I would not have had the book published.'

wang kok kok. takak batok (old skulls)

----here is an old post from 5th may 2011---------

horsemouth has discovered the major problem with the headhunting project - old skulls, lurking in the rafters, the warriors who killed them and so derived the magic power for the tribe are long dead but the skulls are still in the house needing to be placated, they aer the nuclear waste of the headhunting business. this is a bad deal for subsequent generations of headhunters - how do they solve this? - they move. they build a new house elsewhere (without mentioning it in the old house) and then one day they light a large fire and leave. after a few days the fire goes out and the skulls notice they are cold 'where have all the humans gone?' they ask,'and the roof has fallen in', 'let's look for them' ... but the rain has obliterated their tracks. how did headhunting start? a frog advised the warparty wang kok kok. takak batok - the last part of which means cut the neck.

bring me the head of alfredo garcia

horsemouth is a very dense creature (in the south wales meaning of the term - meaning stupid) he had not associated his reading of alfred c. haddon's head hunters: black, white and brown with his watching (last night) of bring me the head of alfredo garcia ) surely a guide to the many practical problems facing headhunters. he's still digesting. part of the pleasure of haddon's book derives from the fact that the european anthropologists were going around measuring everybodies heads with calipers (the better to determine their intelligence), conversely there were also ghost headhunters - come to collect heads to form the foundations of government infrastructure projects. a similar idea (that it is good to build on skulls) can be found in the discussion of london bridge is falling down by the opies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iona_and_Peter_Opie).

horsemouth is reminded of the scene in murnau's tabu when there is a montage shot of money being paid and bills for debts being presented with the word 'tabu' superimposed over them - it is money's undecideable character (good as money bad as debt) that enables this. these notions of tabu and fetish enter, his use of virgil's aura sacri fames - 'the accursed thrist for gold' translates only one side of this division.