the longest day (the shortest dark night of the soul)

'the romanticism if the gendarmes, the dramatic exercises of the detectives, the lavish setting for the display of loyal zeal... the whippers-in, the hounds...' - herzen, ends and beginnings, p.122. 

of course being a noble herzen is eventually reprieved from siberia and found a job in the imperial bureaucracy, on his second offence he is posted to novgorod. there he finds a thoroughly bent admninistration and has himself transfered to the least bent bit of it, the bit that oversees political exiles (like himself). in this capacity he hears the police's reports on himself (they tactfully don't mention any activity that might be embarrasing). in this horsemouth finds a shade of through a scanner darkly.

in novgorod in the 12th century the new church took the statue of the slav sky god perun and threw it in the river - herzen calls them voltaireans.


horsemouth was round house of howard recording some guitar parts for the song currently titled police close off the southbound entrance to the blackwall tunnel - using the resonator he recorded a daddad tuned slide round the chords (it's probably a bit quiet - especially in the bits where he's sliding harmonics) and then a portishead-type minor-feel feed -in (guitar tuned dgcfad to make it 'shake' a bit more - the resonator has high string tension and so does not exhibit much vibrato - at least not with horsemouth dragging the strings about). you probably can't have the the two guitars doing the feed-in at the same time. it needs organ, maybe harmonium.

the song's only opportunity to go big is on the line this city's mine (which horsemouth thinks will bear a repeat) - a very contested sentiment these days.

the murder mile may have reached and passed peak gentrification (horsemouth enjoys the look of horror locals give him when he mentions he goes there) - the bourge families are dying back to be replaced by the youth in multiple occupation - it's all vintage fairs and second rate soul music (bane to humanity) 'bought' good taste. the musicians of bremen may be returning their patronage to at the sign of the owltopus.

'who does not at times dream of the impossible ideal of being totally recorded?'

so asks john berger in his photo essay (with jean mohr) a fortunate man - which is, like everything horsemouth has ever read by john berger, stunning. a piece of ethnography on a doctor, (the fortunate man himself) and on his patients - the poor of the forest of dean. but it has true depth - a diagnosis of the whole culture. it sits comfortably with horsemouth's reading in we the cosmopolitans (we are all together) and with his thinking about empathy (the mental attitude that makes this possible).





one of the things that is interesting about berger and mohr's a fortunate man is the way it diagnoses a cultural deficit that results in an expressive deficit in the doctor's patients. in this it is like many late 60ies books, or the early works of john borman - it resembles a bbc documentary - horsemouth can practically smell the dampness as the voiceover buzzes in his ears. later (as it searches for an ending) it begins to worry about the process of writing and genre itself - we have biographies because 'X is the famous X' , there are few biographies of the humble because people are famous for what they did and what they did prior to that (or what was done to them) is held to explain what they did later. if they never did nothing there's nothing to explain the later absence of action (and nothing to explain).

in lucio colletti's reading of the problems of the left hegelians (from hegel to marcuse) there is something of this. hegel is taken to have a radical method that (due to historical circumstances maybe?) produced conservative conclusions - the left hegelians can now surpass him. but in doing so they supplant hegel's god/ worldspirit object and they change the realm of action of the theories to the political realm. colletti tells us however that marx does not buy it.

horsemouth also read lucio colletti's mandeville, rousseau, smith which tracks mandeville's fable of the bees: or private vices, publick benefits through rousseau's discourse on the origin of inequality, and adam smith's review and juxtaposition of them in the edinburgh review. in rousseau the desire to rise above other men, and the necessity of tricking them to do so, is the motor of development and this is a bad thing - and in mandeville also, but it is a good thing, as this development lifts up man out of abjection and want it is a publick good deriving from a private vice... and of course thence to marx 'the accumulation of capital is therefore the increase of the proletariat' .

of course when horsemouth has done with the cosmopolitans (who he finds agreeable) he has to engage with the transnationalisers of empathy.  kroker (one of them anyway) - talks about not cosmopolitanism but claustropolitanism - the peoples of the world are all together but we are fearful.

horsemouth the babysitter (on having an act)

horsemouth goes to do some babysitting (in the rain). last night he dreamed he was at curt's leaving do - as were hundreds maybe thousands of others - the do was in a big modern building and was catered like the party in la notte - with a break in the festivities for coffee and sandwiches. horsemouth was blanked by the object of his affections going in (though they did meet up later).


horsemouth has a slight headache from the one bottle of beer he consumed round andrew's while playing guitar - sometimes our dreams float like anchors, I still miss someone, dark as a dungeon, mojo working, who do you love, how, great thou art, peace in the valley, power in the blood, silver raven, eagle etc. this, together with a bit of slide guitar and harmonica and another instrument and horsemouth thinks they've got an act.

it is important (unless you are playing singer/songwriter) to do more than just sit or stand there and sing your songs and play your guitar. the songs should of course be strong enough to stand up on their own (the folk principle) but there has to be something memorable about the presentation of it - people go out to be entertained. they deserve your work in this area.

the three deaths of harry smith

harry smith claimed to remember three near death experiences (though later on he only claimed to remember two).

 1.) aged 9- 10, up in the pacific northwest, he swims out too far and begins to drown - his life flashes before his eyes in chronological order.

 2.) later he lives above a jazz club in the fillmore in san francisco. after an afterparty with lots of heroin, gin and weed, they all get in the car for a drive. strangely, on one of san francisco's legendary hills the brakes fail. he is flung through the car windscreen, as he lays on the pavement a priest gives him last rites (and, he says, an opportunistic perv feels his balls). this time his life comes back to him differently. 

'a vast panorama. it was like a giant jigsaw puzzle that I could look at all at once, of my entire life laid out, each part fitted together... ...it was as if life was seen in a way where no mistake is possible. that everything fitted together well, it was absolutely extraordinary, that as it says, I believe in St. Mark 'his eye is on the sparrow' 
 'you see, there was like joy because I realized how foolish I was to have worried about the rent, and what people thought of me, and all those things, because they were so trivial in relation to the grandeur of the construction of the universe.' 

3.) that only leaves his actual death - he died at the chelsea hotel 27th november 1991 - all day his assistant (rani singh) tried to get him to go to hospital - all he would say was 'no.I'm dying. I'll die.' 

then he said 'I'm dying' , coughed up some blood and died.

booklist to end of may

• a hovel in the hills - elizabeth west
• ghost of chance - william s. burroughs
• the eve of fluxus - billie maciunas
• the philosophy of history - voltaire
• think of the self speaking -harry smith

'I saw america changed through music'

it's a grey morning (later in the week sounds better). yesterday horsemouth was bored - he thought it might be a day of events but instead it was same old same old. he failed to go to something he should have gone to. he went down to bow eco park, a tour group paused by the bridge over the railway line to regard london island (recently raised up out of the salt marshes by volcanic activity and already colonised with rent farming tower blocks) and then trooped off across the post modern bridge to... who knows where.

having missed harry smith's birthday horsemouth has been re-reading think of the self speaking (a collection of curmudgeonly interviews). he talks about collecting rare early records that later he compiled to form the anthology of american folk music (arguably one of the most influential collections of recordings ever).

 'I'm glad to say that my dreams came true. I saw America changed through music.' 

he thought the music of blacks and hillbillies and mexicans and cajuns had something to teach us (and he was right).

but smith can't resist putting the interviewer on and laying a false trail, he includes in this list such records as those of jilson setters (as mentioned in jean tilson's book the lost fiddler) secure in the knowledge that those interviewing him will not know that these two were fraudsters mocking up fake appalachian versions of old elizabethan ballads the better to get paid by anglophiles and credulous english people. (indeed setters played the royal albert hall).

but not only was smith an egregious trickster he also wasn't averse to 'earning' his living this way - by hustling.

 j. cohen - 'I've heard people accuse you of living off others - trying to disregard the whole concept of doing things that would earn your living. you've bothered me, my friends, and others in the sense that you don't accept the fact that you have to earn money to be a fruitful part of society. now that's a hard thing for me to say.' 

harry smith - 'certainly, I said it just before you did...' and indeed he had;

 'the purpose of making books on folk songs is to make money. everybody has to eat. we're all trapped in a social system where you have to do something to provide food and shelter. I thought for a while that drinking got me out of food and shelter, but it's a way of living that is pushed underground. thousands and thousands of derelicts...'

 and he continues;

 '... there are certain ways you can evade that responsibility, but it's like, the wages of sin is death. I try not to do that. I've reformed.'

jonas meekas buys smith's film heaven and earth magic and hails him as a genius (here we have the connection with maciunas and fluxus), he lets him have an 'office' in the building for a few years. but pesky interviewers keep showing up wanting to know about folkways records, the anthology, and moses asch. folkways was a cheapskate operation - the compilers of records having to type up their own sleeve notes - smith took this as an opportunity for collage, the kind of collage he applied when sequencing the tracks on the record, to collage magical elements with this music, a mixing on equal terms of high and low cultures, of analysed and analysing. bob dylan got this (perhaps) - but many of the other folk scenesters didn't.

someone has made a recreation of the tarot pack with haitian artists - cards that work (as horsemouth's friend martin has noted) by condensation and displacement but also by collage. it is said that smith once made a tarot pack that was popular with the crowleyites. the haitian artists photographed do great things. it's interesting that many of the poses are in fact mirror images of the cards (as if they wanted to leave some things a bit alone).

quoth the heron 'nevermore' (on the eve of fluxus)

horsemouth is up (early) with a slight headache having bumped into his old friend luzette strauss (and her husband richard) on the canal towpath. the repaired to the improbable hipster pub by the side of the blackwall tunnel approach to speculate on how business people think.

horsemouth was off up three mills field the better to read the eve of fluxus the fluxmemoir of billie maciunas  wife of fluxus founder and guru george maciunas. unlike many art memoirs that are full of the joys of the artistic life, or at least redemption of the suffering through eventual success, this is a bleak tale of the art world, art dealers and even friends descending like vultures after george's death to strip the corpse of fluxus. years later billie sees george maciunas prefabricated building system exhibited in a gallery. the building system was originally designed to provide mass housing and was published as an appendix to henry flynt's book communists must give revolutionary leadership in culture, a book which george had designed. however the gallery owner denied that there was any connection between maciunas and flynt and 'macunias's political statement on the efficacy of mass-produced housing was branded as apolitical, seamless and purely aesthetic'.

in his life maciunas was anti the art world, in billie and nam june paik's reading he 'tried to seize not only the production's medium but also the distribution system of the art world' , he saw that artists lost control of their own products.

following george's death billie suffers at the hands of various beatniks, artist' colonies, dealers, before escaping to portugal, later she learns portuguese and translates poetry. richard translates from the portuguese and for a long time published translations of mozambiquan and other african authors - sadly print on demand and e-books (and all the rest of it) came to late to save his publishing business aflame books.

quoth the heron 'nevermore'

a heron is perched on the door of number 10 downing street muttering nevermore to itself, attacking policemen, hunting socks the cat, and making sorties to divebomb guardsmen. johnny morris is dead - they may have to call bear grylls.