how to become a successful nashville songwriter

this is what comes in - they have stabbed horsemouth three times in the heart with their swords, three of the wine goblets have fallen over on the ground spilling out their wine (but behind him two remain), a river runs through the landscape past the castle, this is where it leads - horsemouth is punting a boat on a lake towards distant buildings, there seems to be a family in the boat but his face is turned away from us intent on his task, more swords, this is what leaves - swords hang on the wall above his bed, horsemouth is in despair, exhausted (the haitians made cards like these). the tarot card horsemouth is least interested in is the one in the centre - horsemouth the fabricator sitting down making pentacles (coins). this is what links it all together - work, creative action (it's a bright happy card).

horsemouth is a little sick of work and creative action as the cure for his distance - to be honest it doesn't feel like it's working.


horsemouth has been reading how to become a successful nashville songwriter by michael kosser - horsemouth admires the sheer niche nature of the work - sit in a room, write songs, teach them to studio musicians who make a demo, wait for other artists to record them, wait to see if they become a hit, wait for the royalties and performing rights cheques to come. it's good on the frustrations of the life at the mercy of ones own creativity and life at the mercy of 'success'.

hosemouth thinks he should get on with writing more songs (not that any cheques or success will come as a result of this activity).

previously he always found it difficult to link together the music and the words - he has no problem coming up with music, he has no problem sticking words (and something like a melody) on other peoples music. the clash (horsemouth notes) are fond of the bo diddley (so were big audio dynamite after them) - horsemouth has resolved to write a song using this - as usual (and following bob calvert) he will half-inch most of the words from someone else, or if not the actual words at least the speaker's position. then there's his second true story song (the one he's been meaning to write for years) perhaps it will come now. horsemouth is singing more strongly - he's been exposed to more material than before, he has years of creative work behind him that he can draw on.

april's books

20th century russian reader - mandelstams, platonov, pasternak, akhmatova and others new to horsemouth,
mary deare - hammond innes,
beyond good and evil - nietzsche (part),
sun and steel - yukio mishima (part),
yellow back radio broke down - ishmael read,
western marxism - j.q.merquior (still reading),
the marvellous adventure of cabeza de vaca - haniel long.

mayday (going back to bed)

'philosophy is not just the owl of minerva, which takes flight only at sunset, it is also the cock's crow, which announces the dawn of a new day.' - ludwig michelet, 1843. 

from the utopians marx borrowed, from fourier 'the abolition of the division of labour' from saint-simon the replacement of 'the government of men by the administration of things'.

we have passed through the dangerous night of may eve (celtic fire festivals for those who wish to resist, witches sabbats for those who wish to succumb) and are into mayday - the festival of rebirth and big party with cake. having been driven between two fires to purify them the cattle are driven out to their summer pasture, food is offered to the wolves and foxes and crows to ensure good health for the cattle. all is growth and life.


horsemouth has forgotten his dreams from last night (this morning) - unable to find a celtic fire festival or a witches sabbat he was early to bed. ok he remembers the red tops were strangely interested in architecture. how to preserve ones thoughts until one can get them written down - pen and pad at all times obviously (inspiration strikes when horsemouth is on trains, asleep, doing the washing up, walking), oppositions and relationships, diagrams horsemouth finds useful good | evil etc. re-encoding as aphorisms, songs, pictures...

once upon a creative writing course a writer explained that having sent the children off to school she would go back to bed and doodle and dawdle and scrible down a few aimless notes - the main thing was to retain that feeling of unimportant aimless activity that was not work. how it would all fit together later could be left until later.


to celebrate may eve horsemouth watched the devil rides out - which features a witches sabbat on may eve - the music is great - especially for the 'party' scene. christopher lee hams it up mercilessly. ok to celebrate international workers day horsemouth went to work. there's something wrong / right there.

(the next day horsemouth will discover that one of his friends was out raving it up until the early morning of the 2nd in soho)

in that instant (the higher-rent clearances)

there is a moment between the ending of the senseless babble of sleep but before the listing of the tasks of the day when memory returns. in that instant life returns.

horsemouth didn't get much reading done yesterday - left to himself he is a bit disorganised and aimless. he played his simplified version of la fille au cheveux de lin through a few times (because that's how the guitar nearest to hand is tuned).

horsemouth continues reading merquior's western marxism (then he snoozes a bit and farts about on facebook). it is as thorough and well executed a hatchet job as the one merquior did on foucault - he compares sources, he finds counter arguments, he tracks changes but above all he takes to a nearby hill and shows us the disposition of forces. we are with lukacs in budapest, he has a reading circle with kodaly, bartok, arnold hauser, michael polanyi, he will soon be writing history and class consciousness (the book horsemouth hasn't read yet).

in the cities that thrive the workers are being driven off the land so that a higher rent can be sought (horsemouth is tempted to call them the higher-rent clearances) to be replaced by workers who can pay more for the priviledge of still working. outside of the city (where 50,000 famillies have been driven in the past 3 years) there is rent plus season ticket - the reproduction of the labour force is effectively taxed and milked for profit.

companies seek to buy-back their shares so they will not have to distribute dividends and the dividends they didn't distribute appear as profit. these companies then won't be subjected to the judgement of either the shareholders or the market. they don't need the capital to expand, why would they expand? this is the productive part of capitalism roaring with risk-aversion, a capitalism drawing in its resources and trying to go back to sleep.

in the cities that are dying the rioters smash a few windows on the new boulevards down by the harbour and then are driven back up the hills past the 16,000 vacant row houses and their sub-prime rent gathering (a rent gathering so subprime it is only worth doing by means of a bubble) - more higher-rent clearances with the poor eventually forced out of the city too - to the neighbouring counties.

capitalism has never totally energised the whole of the economy, the whole of the city, its coverage (like horsemouth's phone network) has always been patchy. it has until now always needed a convenient outside - a reserve army of labour in the squatter camps.

horsemouth supposes that all over the world the homeless are walking out of history into the freedom of poverty and the cyclical daily tasks necessary for survival. horsemouth supposes that all over the world the young are preparing to make the march into the cities in search of work. the will stay many years and then they will be gone.

come on, get up, it's time to go to work.

noah (descend in peace from us)

horsemouth was up at howard's recording 'noah' this friday (he will will have to sort out the sore throat vocal some other time). while there he repo'd some books;

typee - herman melville,
christ stopped at eboli - carlo levi,
to the finland station - edmund wilson,
the marvellous adventure of cabeza da vaca - haniel long,
friedrich engels (his life and thought) - terrell carver,
goodbye london (an illustrated guide to threatened buildings from 1973) - christopher booker and candida lycett green.

christ stopped at eboli both film and book are great - horsemouth thinks the film wins - Gian Maria Volonte is amazing in it. he must bring out the 'goodbye london' next time they go wandering - if only to see what survived and what didn't.

so horsemouth now has a thumbnail sketch of the song noah courtesy of a recording session with howard. horsemouth played a demo version on or about the winter solstice at his solo gig. horsemouth's guide vocal on it is a bit froggy - he's singing at the top of his range using a 'head' voice after a cold (honey and lemon would help probably). he's not averse to having backing vocals to hide his nakedness (hint). the ukulele part gives it the necessary lift and variation that horsemouth's guitar and vocal version did not have.

noah is a song partially written with bibliomancy (book diviniation). the flood abates, the ark settles on mount ararat, the trees and grass begin to grow again, a less than omniscient god (or the song's narrator at least) looks to see if someone has survived, he looks for them among the trees, he looks for them among the grass. but they have not survived, they are among the drowned. (it is strange that horsemouth, who was raised by atheists, should indulge in such god bothering).

the great advantage of being able to hear something outside of your own head is to be able to think about varying it - horsemouth thinks a little extension on the final verse, he thinks a ukulele introduction, he thinks a possible repeat of the intial theme as a middle 8, broadly the verse and chorus are two sets of two chords that are related to each other (G and F, Dsus4 and Aminor) and will sit over each other comfortably - a little more should be made of this. sometimes while recording horsemouth would fail to ground the chorus with a firm d bass note at the start - this may be worth repeating (it's an interesting effect).

broadly he wants a version for himself. the way he wants it - and with himself as lead vocal (even though his vice is not realy suited to itl) because he wants to do, if not a solo album, then a 'horsemouth to the fore' record. probably he will be using max's excellent photo from the gig as a cover. to do this he envisages recording over the summer (by some means or other), recording new versions of the better songs from his horsemouthfolk incarnation - the devil song, la fille au cheveux de lin, etc. he could dig up the versions of these currently malingering on myspace or on the harddrive of his mothballed computer, but really he needs fresh modern versions.

the musician of bremen stuff horsemouth would gladly keep doing as a joint project with howard and yet its key ingredients as it stands are howard's voice and howard's songs. horsemouth wants something of his own.

the tale of the hound! a bestiary of our times

outside it is rainy and grey and unhopeful looking (ok it's picking up).

the hound of hounslow (as with the london whale - what is the bestiary?) has been using his parents personal computer to wipe billions off the 'value' of 'markets' (allegedly). as even the evening standard notes once upon a time a decent bond villain would have needed a converted supertanker or volcano with rogue nuclear submarines or spaceships and minions, thousands of minions. but the hound, merely by pretending to make stock market trades and then cancelling them, the stock market equivalent of innuendo, can so totally befuddle the gatekeepers of value (and their electronic trading algorithm assistants/ masters) that they completely lose faith in the underlying commodity/ industry... and stock market carnage results - but carnage with real results for peoples jobs and wellbeing.

however many persian cats/ sharks/ henchmen with metal teeth the hound owns or has on a retainer, he's a pretty poor villain (him, his PC, his parent's semi in the suburbs, his mere millions in swag) but the wider question needs to be asked - if the hound can do this what's to stop any other muppet following suit. it's a pretty poor way to run a planet that is so unstable that mutley here can push it over.

the london whale (un)worked at JP Morgan Chase (and Co.) - he lost $6.2 billion in 2012 but then co-operated and ratted up his supervisors who 3 years later are still fighting extradition from their home countries. just as with my comments with mayor bimmer yesterday it is the fact that the hound of hounslow is an independent that means he's probably toast.

but is not the tale of the hound (pause - no, oh well) merely the tale of our age writ exceeding small? a growth in the area of speculation in the economy that (accidentally?) crashes (because it is essentially unstable) wiping billions off the 'value' of capitalism all over the world that is then followed by a campaign of austerity to beat that lost value out of the workers. the money of the rich (hungry for return) floods into commodities driving up the price of rice and taking it out of the mouths of the poor man's children.

 'deliver the poor and needy from the hands of the wicked' sang misty in roots. 

over on mute some postulate a zombie apocalypse - it is no good hoping they say, no good hoping that things will get so bad that people will rise up (for example), no good hoping that things can only get better. we should embrace despair, keep moving anyway and become zombies). horsemouth is pleased to see these ambiguous beasts shuffling round the mall again (so much better mannered than the rage zombies).

horsemouth has been multiply distracted in his reading - currently he's with j.q.merquior and his western marxism. surveying the 20th century merquior seems to have liked every variety of marxism excepting western marxism (oh and stalinism). horsemouth has the founding document of the movement - lukac's history and class consciousness - he should give that a read next (he's ashamed to say he's never read it).

this evening horsemouth goes to babysit his brother's kids (well only the youngest one realy - the eldest can entertain himself with grand theft auto or slaughterhouse 5 or whatever it's called). at least they're not playing the stock markets yet.

'the creative person should have no other biography than his works'

- b.traven (allegedly)

horsemouth missed the quote when he first read the article a month or so ago (seems like the quote is genuine).

horsemouth has been reading yellow back radio broke-down by ishmael reed, a pataphysical pynchonesque blaxploitation cowboy story. he writes this in bed (on his new matress with his freshly laundered duvet covers and sheet) in his sprung-cleaned flat (ok ok there are still dusty corners where the spiders roam).

of course the quote presents horsemouth with a problem - his whole generation is serving up their lives as entertainment and validation on faceborg leaving no mystique or wriggle-room or cooking-time for themselves and their own cultural product. (as horsemouth is doing now). only a few have held out against the world-wide confession -hopefully they will produce extended works of such genius that the rest of us will be shamed into composition. and, as friends joked yesterday, the least gchq can do, if it is monitoring us, is to offer a free back up system;

'gchq? oh sorry NSA... I appear to have lost my blog post... thank you. if you would. most kind. etc.' 

b. traven shows us how it is done - autobiographical failure and amnesias all round - just the works.

 

horsemouth has been working on killing floor - taking howling wolf's original as his guide rather than jimi hendrix's combined lead and rhythm guitar fuck you eric clapton  version. it's a lot like carla thomas's tramp (later robbed by salt n' pepa, aphrodite and mickey finn etc.) the problem for horsemouth is not the horn chant parts (as it were) but the rhythmic chug - if he can get that right he can make a reasonable fist of the vocal. he's starting to have fun with the resonator - it's starting to speak.