dreams, plans of attack and defence, remembrances, titles of books, potential creditors, obsessive phrases, monuments.....

'I would stand at the table and register in this celestial sort of ledger the innumerable little items which constitute a writer's book-keeping: dreams, plans of attack ... and so on..'   - henry miller, preface to the air-conditioned nightmare. 

dreams

he has remembered a past lover in a dream (this pleases him). horsemouth hardly ever remembers his dreams and certainly not by the time he's made coffee and hand cranked the computer into operation. he has zadkiel, sibley, freud and jung on hand for interpretation.

plans of attack

seeing as there's so much conflict in horsemouth's existence (well in his head at least) and seeing as almost nothing ever happens in horsemouth's life without him having the opportunity to think about it first, horsemouth is almost never without a plan of attack (usually formulated as a list), similarly,

plans of defence.

usually horsemouth tires himself thinking about these things even before actual hostilities begin. consequently he tends to avoid most conflict (very wise) but sadly does not manage to avoid thinking about it. while horsemouth may dive into writing something unprepared at some point he will get pen and paper (and it is almost always pen and paper) out and begin to make a plan, to sketch out the major oppositions, to note down the key phrases (see obsessive phrases op.cit.). derrida has trained him to look for the hesitations in a text but deleuze enjoins him to treat those hesitations as deliberate moves.


remembrances

horsemouth is a very forgetful creature - that is why he keeps diaries, notebooks, draws spider diagrams, venn diagrams. at the moment he is vexed at forgetting the chords to a song he has not played in maybe 5 years. titles of books/ songs horsemouth tries to keep a list of books he has bought, a list of books he has read, and tries to write about books just after he has read them in an effort to jog his memory and critical faculties into engaging with them. it would be a shame to have a book pass beneath horsermouth's eyes and have it emerge undigested at the other end. further he keeps several lists of songs he plans to write or learn to play or it might be possible to play. he keeps a list of good lines or quotes both from books and from life. writing things down is one of the things that works for him.

names and addresses of potential creditors this one is not relevant to horsemouth - in general he subscribes to the principle (inculcated by his scottish granny) of neither a lender nor a borrower be - he never borrows, he never lends out real sums of money. one of the things he is most pleased about is a certain financial independence and having a flat of his own (at least until he loses his job) - this means he can suit himself (this is important to him).

obsessive phrases

horsemouth is always on the look out for these - largely to serve as titles to his blog posts but also as weak points in an argument (tells - see derrida, adorno), indications of ideology .

editors to harry

during his theory writing phase this was more important to him... but no not really... similarly with promotors to harry, he is a bit remiss about sorting out gigs, recording etc. - he would pay a manager to do this for him, he really would.

battlefields ah where would the cantankerous old mule be without his conflicts?

monuments

the entire borough of hackney, the monkey-on-a-stick housing co-operative, various recordings, articles, desecrations and scribbles, his extensive and eclectic library (not so much his record and cd collection, his cassette tapes have pretty much gone west already). to be frank horsemouth's cultural legacy bothers him, he just sees it all piled in a skip after his death...

monastic retreats

his parents place, his flat, spain, portugal, the czech republic, brittany, the salt marshes, bow ecology park, east india dock - broadly anywhere he can wander around and read books in the sunshine and scribble a few notes in his diary.

inside the new soft city

'I would stand at the table and register in this celestial sort of ledger the innumerable little items which constitute a writer's book-keeping: dreams, plans of attack and defence, remembrances, titles of books I intended to write, names and addresses of potential creditors, obsessive phrases, editors to harry, battlefields, monuments, monastic retreats and so on...' - henry miller, preface to the air-conditioned nightmare. 

horsemouth - a graduate of seaside towns university college (the one with the founder in a box), struggled hard for years with a sciences type degree before lunching it for the world of anarchist politics (if indeed such a thing ever existed). despite an unpromising start due to lack of any real ability and manifest efforts in the second year he left the institution largely defeated and with the confirmed belief of his own stupidity. to horsemouth, not knowing what he wanted to do, all he had to do was survive and not fail, and this he eventually managed (though not as well as he would have liked). but lets be honest about this - he finds it hard to write the word fail - he has rationalised it so that he can see the benefits of having done it.

partly today horsemouth wants to talk about education - he has met a true believer precisely at that point where social formation, the way forward to an organised life, is open before them.

this makes horsemouth to cast his mind back to his own time at universe-ity. horsemouth was forced to recognise his manifest lack of talent in the area he had chosen but the mental resilience that comes from bashing his head against the wall of his own stupidity has never entirely left him (nor the sheer determination necessary). similarly he has always been cautious over what can be said. in fact his determination, focus and single-mindedness is one of his key problems - when he is afraid to jump he often gets pushed.

he stepped off the yellow brick road and self-rusticated to hackney (which felt like a forgotten corner of the known world) made up of even more forgetable bits, and built a new life in the ruins. he liked the ruins (ably described in paul harrison's inside the inner city) and took great pleasure in the anonymity. horsemouth arrived just as the population stopped droping - as the city began to repopulate, as hackney became in effect the new islington (like jonathan raban's soft city but with lower rent)...

horsemouth has no great natural talents as a musician and he has not studied it hard enough - it has all been work - he has become good at what he does - but he has not been consistent in dealing with his weaknesses. indeed as one jazz musician remarked to him it's no good having weaknesses... (horsemouth did admire his focus at least).

yesterday horsemouth went to an exploratory jam with john clarkson (john playing harmonium -and if and when they can find enough batteries - omnichord - a kind of electric autoharp) - it went well - horsemouth is very hopeful. they worked on the devil song, walk on guilded splinters, fanfare.., (down by) riverside, and rain and snow (a little). the drones, the little melodies, it was all sounding good. previously john had remarked he liked a version horsemouth had worked out of a song denise taught him sleabh na gael (maybe) - that will be worth revisiting. later horsemouth went off up into the hills to babysit returning by car this morning.

he did some of his usual book-keeping when he does a project, keeping a list of possible songs, possible singers, spider diagrams of possible parts

dance of the inhabitants of the invisible city of bladensburg (a year on the killing streets)

(again, in part, fahey with the titles). inspired by rimsky-korsakov’s opera legend of the invisible city of kitezh, a city which became invisible when attacked by the tatars, a legendary city of beautiful people with gracious hearts. fahey eventually renamed this one dance of the inhabitants of the palace of king phillip XIV (er... and then named it back again). how much any of this resembles the real bladensburg horsemouth really couldn't say. the outro (on the version from the yellow princess) is played by Jay Ferguson and Mark Andes from Spirit apparently - not a lot of people know that.

horsemouth is back in b'more with david simon's homicide: a year on the killing streets - the murder rate is two every three days - the forward is written by richard price (who wrote clockers - horsemouth's other guide to the underside of america). strangely enough horsemouth would probably add jerome charyn's isaac series of novels (though they'e clearly old new york / kojak style fantasies). 

it's bright and sunny out - horsemouth is up early so he can read a bit more and blog a bit before he goes out. yesterday he played a little guitar with andrew (he took the resonator) - there are moments when they're managing some rough-hewn harmonies he swears. he should probably take the nylon guitar though - it's just better and clearer and easier to pitch to.

flatwise - he should get some more compost and begin planting stuff out on his balcony (or at least starting stuff off on his windowsill).


horsemouth listened through to alabama by john coltrane - mcoy tyner vamps away on an Aminor chord while coltrane runs around a scale - this states the major themes - two descending notes lead it back into single notes backed by chords that lead it back to A minor (not once but twice) - that's the head of the piece, they return to it at the end, the band are then off onto the second page of the music (where horsemouth cannot follow them without paying). at the start it's not so much a drone as a churn - horsemouth will probably have to learn the initial melodies from the recordings (his reading is not so good) - once it's into the chords he's better.

the penance for eating horse meat is four years on bread and water - irish penitential (7th century)

matsuo basho (the haiku poet) took his name from a banana tree given him by a grateful student - robbie basho was the name taken by another takoma park guitarist who relocated to san francisco, adopted at birth he had previously gone by the name of daniel robinson, Jr. in east germany in the 80ies steffen junghans became interested in the music of robbie basho (and the poetry of matsuo basho) and renamed himself steffen basho-junghans.

watchers of the jamaica set caper film rockers will notice in it the reggae drummer leroy wallace (who renamed himself horsemouth). musicians often take the opportunity to improve their names.

horsemouth has finished reading patrick hamilton's hangover square - like derek raymond's the crust on its uppers  it's a good account of the seedy side of the posh. hamilton's novel is set in 1939 just before the second world war kicks off - curiously it is like sartre's nausea in describing the sense of disgust at the collusion with fascism. it's another novel horsemouth has read in record time. (and another good recommendation from andy). as derek raymond notes people in that life (of idleness, drinking and low level crime) are vivid if nothing else.

horsemouth always planned to turn more of his brief acquaintance with this scene into song (beyond gentleman john that is). he would (of course) heavily anonymise it all.

saturday was candlemas.

'when the catfish is in bloom' (how bluegrass music destroyed my life)

well fahey week (featuring basho day)  is over. horsemouth hopes you have enjoyed it. 

this is another thing horsemouth loves about fahey - his song titling. broadly fahey has the difficult proposition of selling essentially very similar guitar instrumentals (album after album, short song after short song) to a largely indifferent public over and over again. but like an abstract work of art half the battle is in the titling.

'on the sunny side of the ocean' (what does that mean?),
'when the catfish is in bloom' (conflation of fish and vegetable genera, possible confusion of singulars and plurals, all going along euphoniously together to create a deliberately fake southernism),


'requiem for mississippi john hurt' (deliberate admixture of song titling procedures from western classical music with subject matter of blues musicians).
 and take the album titles
'death chants, break downs & military waltzes (1963)', 
'the dance of death and other plantation favourites'. 
'the transfiguration of blind joe death'....

 this extends to fahey's collected writings how bluegrass music destroyed my life (quality fake moral panic) and to the sleeve notes on his albums - the finest quality frontier gibberish available. his academic writing (his thesis on charlie patton) displays this also - this maybe where he learnt it, titling academic essays is an object lesson in surrealist juxtaposition.

the death of 'blind' john fahey ("how can i be a folk?")

"still, this is so dumbfoundingly extraordinary. In a very short while there will be no more of me – and of all the things worldly, of all the affairs and destinies, from then on I will be unaware..." - 2 may 1953, last diary note, ivan bunin.

today in the seaside towns it is a bright sunny morning (but clouding over rapidly) - horsemouth should get out there double quick.

in the last couple of days he's started reading ivan bunin (a russian writer of the turgenev/ chekov variety - though praised by gorky). during the second world war bunin did not flee to america but hid out with his wife and friends in the french alps growing potatoes and living on a starvation diet. the book itself (the elaghin affair and other stories) was formerly the property of prince george's county memorial library (seemingly from jan22 1971 until july 1986) bladensburg, hyattsville and other locations (broadly the region between washington dc and annapolis, maryland. how it then made its way to halcyonandon books in greenwich the lord only knows.

yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the assassination of malcolm x.


also coming from maryland - born in washington dc and raised in the suburb of takoma park - was john aloysius fahey (born february 28, 1939 died february 22, 2001) - horsemouth will be celebrating his birth at the end of the week. today he is celebrating fahey's death. fahey's championing of 'old-timey' music is of course problematic - to a lot of people the old times were bad times and there's no need to be raking all that up again - furthermore he was geographically in the wrong place "how can i be a folk? i'm from the suburbs you know" on the edge of the south (and later in a california totally contrary to his instincts, still later in salem oregon). further the music is difficult to place on a simple folk-art-commercial grid running from pay-the-rent christmastime cheese to collages of modern classical and blues to the somewhat lazy noise/ improv that we think of as radical of his later years (but hey... at least he was working).

that fahey ended his life in poverty and sickness is held against him. that he had drug and alcohol problems is held against him. there is a don't-try-this-at-home-children moralism that alternates with a fascination for the bohemian existence (as if it was planned) that is cut with a modern disdain for anyone who doesn't have a career in the arts that enables them to sup lattes and sit in coffee shops. (by way of compensation at least he had a beard later). fahey didn't die young and leave us recordings and a reputation as a thoroughly nice fellow (like robbie basho whose life and death horsemouth will be celebrating on saturday or the dude from sparklehorse). if he survived long enough to get ugly at least he got paid to make music still.

the unfashionable edges (where it is cheap to live) this is where we are going - from the suburbs we came to the suburbs we shall return.

horsemouth has been watching true detective again (this is the kind of thing fahey should have been soundtracking - this, southern comfort, paris texas, deliverance ...) - it's the scale of america (necessitating good cars and being able to drive), that industrial/ rural mix. the pathologisation of the proles continues, history is a source of danger, modernity an incomplete and botched project.

the revolution will not be twittered

war in the east. (sorry that should read 'ceasefire in the east').

and in the european family 'intense diplomatic efforts' (aka bullying). the greeks made them an offer they couldn't accept (so regretfully they had to refuse). if the greeks succeed the bond markets will have to wait longer for 'their' money and austerity will be less intense - if the greeks fail either they crash out, great carnage to the benefit of the bond markets or they carry on being slowly choked to death in perpetuity at the discretion of their fellow europeans.

yanis V is some kind of a marxist (he says) - it would be good to understand better why he thinks what he does - drawing him as a zombie (as horsemouth has done) is just not an adequate response. if the eurozone can grant concessions then it would be good to get it to do so (would it not?) - that would constitute a victory (of sorts), why is his analogy between thatcher days and greece now incorrect, why is he quibbling over the difficulty in valorising the human factor in value production... etc. etc. 

later horsemouth goes to work. he has rearranged his shelving a little (now 3 shelves of russians/ east europeans, 1 shelf of gothics/ decadents, 1 shelf random unsorted), constituted a box of utopians/ transcendentalists and dusted in the hallway. as usual this brings horsemouth face to face with what he has not read. he should really at least put up some more shelves (or have them put up)




horsemouth has listened to; two tracks by his bandmate in musicians of bremen john smith (the second) or howard grange or whatever he's calling himself at the minute - pleasant durrutti columnish stuff well sung and well played on his new acoustic guitar. (horsemouth may be out of the game).

horsemouth also listened to the free cd by long pike hollow - crafty and intelligent guitar soli, and the new track by stick in the wheel (which is about a horse, and a horse as a labouring creature at that).
 
the difficulty here horsemouth feels is finding the way to make our musical efforts distinctive that respects what they are - horsemouth has no answers but he thinks it's the key question at least - to have a verse and a chorus and lyrics enough to cover them is no longer sufficient.

 'the lowing of cattle is the natural bass to the melody of human voices' - elisabeth palmer peabody (transcendentalist and brook farmer).