robinson in space ( ‘an attentive listener and scrupulous recorder during our many long conversations’)

and another childhood classic - a french tv production of robinson crusoe, sold in germany and italy also, with new music (by songwriter, music publisher and lyricist Robert Mellin and P. Reverberi) and dubbed into english it was sold for exhibition in the uk market. the adaptation was made by a 'jean paul carriere' (who turns out to be jean-claude carriere) and pierre reynal.

last night (after much christmas ghost story watching - whistle and I’ll come to you, lost hearts and shalken the painter). horsemouth went to bed and read the first few pages of my last breath (not another ghost story) but an autobiography of surrealist film-maker luis bunuel. he thinks it is brinley’s old copy.

of course, on any of the previous occasions when he’d read it, if horsemouth had read the dedications with attention, he would have realised that it is ghost-written by jean-claude carriere,

 ‘an attentive listener and scrupulous recorder during our many long conversations’ 

it begins with a disquisition on memory (think the dr.who christmas special, the modern remake of whistle and I’ll come to you). and even false memories, bunuel has a very clear memory of attending paul nizan’s wedding in a church with jean-paul sartre as best man, the only problem is it can’t be true.

‘in my own village of calanda, where I was born on the twenty-second of february 1900, the middle ages lasted until world war 1.’

there are photos too - of dali on the set of l’age d’or with what appears to be a mohican haircut, of lorca and bunuel photographed in a model aircraft at carnival. carriere (the writer on many of bunuel’s later films as well as of horsemouth’s childhood favourite the adventures of robinson crusoe) is unobtrusive - it reads well, just like a rambling, suggestive set of recollections should.

st.stephen - deacon and martyr (a poem made of best lines)

the mallorcan girl mentioned this (most excellent)...
and now a poem made of the best lines from horsemouth's blogging



horsemouth is on his way to egypt
to see about eternal life
in preparations for the apocalypse;

you feel sorry for the fire chief (eyre shaw)
and the coroner (carttar)
- their names crop up rather too frequently.

he returns to London and there’s a garden party
at one point he accidentally turned the lights out

there was also
a quick visit to the wharf of canaries
to pick up an ‘academic’ diary for the year ahead
(the better to ensure continuity with previous drivel)

pleading poverty this month
it all feels a bit speculative and insecure
the stress of being reasonable

it is the equinox. it is 5778, it is 1439
the long dark rabbit hole of work once again,
emerge near the summer solstice
blinking in sunlight,

in the library the children sing –
‘run! run! as fast as you can,
you can’t catch me
I’m the gingerbread man’

(a novel of the type: found book).

at the crossroads between fiction and documentary.
the crossroads is in Spain at the time of the spanish civil war,
at the front line and in a rebel Barcelona
1984 itself is a novel of the type: found book

we are glad for him (he can rest).

he went to a meeting – which went better than he expected
(eventually it will all go to hell in a bucket)

life –
swings,
roundabouts,
giant puddles of shit.

solstice survived - now hiding out in the countryside until the hue and cry dies down

the last time you heard from horsemouth howard was finishing work (and going for a celebratory pint) and john was coming to visit. now read on...

john has departed but before that horsemouth has removed (by bus, by tube, by expensive part private part state funded railway, by a lift in his brother’s car) to his parents in the green. his brother, his brother’s wife and their two frighteningly tall offspring are here also (but they’re away tomorrow)...

but before all that horsemouth (and some others - howard, myk, mike t, martin) went out to a gig to celebrate the winter solstice - stick in the wheel played (howard pronounced himself most impressed) as well as three other rising folk acts.

sadly horsemouth failed to watch stick in the wheel as he was chatting up a delightful mallorcan girl and a delightful hungarian girl near the front door well away from the action (it was similar to the time he reviewed flux of pink indians from the bar on their uncarved block tour - in about 88 that would have been).

while howard pronounced himself pleased martin remained resolutely unconvinced. as to the other acts broadly people split into two camps - myk and john found themselves in sympathy with the earlier acts, martin and howard less so. jon boden - can play, but not horsemouth’s kind of thing (so he couldn’t comment), laura smyth & ted kemp - horsemouth liked the a capellas (as did john, as did howard), the other things didn’t really do it for him (howard was moaning their accents weren’t poor and downtrodden and northern enough), lisa knapp (andy barnes had come to see her specially) horsemouth quite liked but he was towed off in the direction of more beer.

later they went on to the pride of spitalfields and later still horsemouth made an unconscionable arse of himself (he does hope no one was too offended).

the next day a contrite (if not technically hung over) horsemouth sat with howard while they mixed their recordings from earlier in the year - howard has added a vocal to Sliabh... it all sounds pretty good (he opines modestly) and it all hangs together as a thing. there may be more work to be done on it (or there may not) - horsemouth awaits the rough mixes.

manwhile howard has also been working on the golden glow  - here are two mixes to celebrate the end of the year

aniki-bóbó (the restless one)

so last night horsemouth watched aniki-bóbó either an early anticipation of italian neo-realism or an over sentimental patchwork vision of porto in the forties. aniki-bóbó itself is a children’s counting game (similar to beggarman thief).


he then watched arabian nights:1. the restless one - the dockers struggle against the closing down of the shipyards at viana do castelo, a cockerel is nearly elected mayor in resende, austerity portuguese style is retold in the manner of a thousand and one nights.

today horsemouth is struggling to buy a cd (tesco maybe?)- he wishes to avoid travelling into town to visit the largest record shop he knows (a true dinosaur flagship if ever there was one - and yet it has survived. (if he knew how to do it he could - of course - order it cheaper online).

last night john and myk were out at a the richard dawson gig (john has pronounced it among his top 3 gigs for the year) - tonight they are all off to see stick in the wheel (minty is ill and so won’t be making it out later, horsemouth is trying to tempt howard out).

friday horsemouth hopes to be recording/ mixing, saturday he’s away to see his folks (his brother and his wife and kids are there already). he's back before new years to do more recording (hopefully). his january will be quiet so he'll have the chance to catch up on a few more things.

against ‘the life of creative (paid) leisure' (the cranes may soon be gone)

horsemouth missed a love supreme day (last saturday) and is up the library, donkey portage work has cancelled for the day, , friday - in all probability - he works, there may be some smidgeons next week - now read on).

reading is important (horsemouth opines) - reading the back cover of photography (garden wall, near victoria park, free) horsemouth discovered that the author, architectural photographer eric de mare, was descended from huguenot's and a longtime advocate that 'with machines to toil for us, a new age of creative (paid) leisure for all should be our aim'.

similarly in his latest acquisition (university of cyprus in docklands slushpile - free) like shaking hands with god: a conversation about writing - kurt vonnegut and lee stringer - horsemouth discovers a previously unknown mark twain story -   an extract from captain stormfield’s visit to heaven. the great writer (who worked his whole life as a tailor) is never read (but in heaven he receives his honour).

before he became a writer lee was homeless and crack addicted and using a pencil to clean out the mesh in his crack pipe when he ran out of crack. to kill time (when he'd run out of crack) he began writing with the pencil... five hours later he stopped (but he was hooked). this may be because, as kurt says paraphrasing psychoanalyst edmund bergler, writing allows us to treat our own neuroses, by writing.

horsemouth is against the life of creative (paid) leisure in part because at the moment they are currently only proposing it for citizens. vonnegut is attentive to the losses that computers bring - in going out and wandering around and meeting people - this is a loss in experience, this is why he still uses a typewriter (and then annotates it in pencil).

  ‘the skyline west of whitechapel was spiky with construction cranes’ - the difference engine, gibson and sterling, p.16

‘they were the faithful witnesses, the social recorders...’ writes eric de mare in his book photography of the street photographers whose career was made possible by fast acting film, better lenses and the improved portability of cameras.

but the cranes may soon be gone - replaced by jump factories that merely put together from prefabricated units and service ducts assembled off-site. these are then delivered in containers just-in-time and winched up to the factory atop the tower block that adds a floor a week to the structure - horsemouth was wrong about the drying speed of concrete being the only limit to gentrification (there’s always prefabrication - as widely used on the city island project). of course part of this removes the need for skilled builders - the construction of the fabricated components can take place on an assembly line with similar gains in de-skilling (if that makes sense) and allowing skills-shortages (the kind of thing that causes wages to rise) to be circumvented.

puppets with tin drums ‘immensely fun’ (the mule with no name)

tuesday night horsemouth was out listening to music played by amateurs (people who do it because they love it without even the alibi of remuneration, ok possibly they alibi it as ‘education’). all this was part of the spitalifields music festival 2017, it was even free (bless you people). ‘do you have a ticket? what’s your name?’ asked the woman on the door, ‘no I don’t have one.’ replied horsemouth, ‘what! you don’t have a name?’ chimed in her boss (they let the mule with no name in anyway)

Congrats to THAMES Big Band and Senior String Ensemble for the Electric Counterpoint show last night. With thanks to @SpitsMusic @rachleachmusic #partnerships #collaboration #music #performance pic.twitter.com/w42kW1J6r2

— THAMES Arts & Music (@thames_music) December 6, 2017

first up THAMES (tower hamlets arts and musical education service) senior string ensemble composed (as far as horsemouth could see) of children instead of seniors. richard meyer’s fantasia on a theme from thailand (debussyish and a bit pentatonic), three pieces by bartok, and finally momentum by richard meyer, which seemed to incorporate the tune we shall overcome (but modulating away on be-lieve). parents and carers applauded enthusiastically, siblings hid their faces and fiddled with their phones.

next up the string ensemble together with the THAMES big band - a piece ‘facilitated’ by composer rachel leach connecting bach’s counterpoint and reich’s electric counterpoint and minimalism (and connecting it with a concert on later that night hyperchromatic counterpoint by microtonal accordionist veli kujala). a flat sandwich the kids had called it (a flat as in tonality, sandwich as in structure). there were some nicely auto-conducted dynamic crescendo-diminuendo’s (in a reich-stylee) and a kind of charles mingus feel to it (horsemouth is really a bit limited as a music critic).

finally the THAMES big band on their own (as you would expect older, playing big band music from a variety of jazz composers). they  played stevie wonder’s I wish (a corker - honourable mention for the bassist and guitarist - although there must have been some changes pre-gig as horsemouth does not find their names in the concert notes), manha de carnaval (a horsemouth favourite from black orpheus), and shofuka (by michael league of snarky puppy) - the funk was had, solos were taken, back to the head and out...

thereafter horsemouth went off for a birthday celebration.

wednesday horsemouth attended a seminar on gentrification (his favourite topic) in sunny elephant and castle- the law will save us (apparently).

books, gigs, films november 2017

gigs

• old weird albion (sharron kraus, justin hopper, wendy pye, angus carlyle). 
• the ecstatic music of alice coltrane -st. luke's old street.

books

• the glass teat - harlan ellison, 
• words and characters - lytton strachey, 
• theory of film - siegfried kracauer, 
• in search of robert johnson - guralnik, 
• the eclipse of council housing, 
• the new spirit of capitalism - boltanski and chiapello  
• a concise history of photography, 
• 8 metaphors (because the moving image is not a book)

films

• the assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford, 
• through a scanner darkly, 
• the kingsman service, 
• dog soldiers, 
• the phantom/ the shadow, 
• six feet from the edge, 
• various mockingjays and x-men
• rewatch true detective series one. 

events

• beer and a pizza with denise and darsavini
• arrival of horsemouth's care package from robert john lawson
• sean visits