serpent(S)

horsemouth has survived another day - he’s leaving his calendar for march blank in the hope that this will make time flow quicker.

sunday horsemouth nipped round howard’s to listen to the first mix of serpent(S) - horsemouth pronounced it most chaotic (it not making use of the ‘stomps’ to bind it together and having the main guitar turned down) - still it sounded pretty good - more adventurous than it would have sounded.

having listened through to a few things they adjourned up to the pizza restaurant for a pizza (a morrissey) and a beer. it was an expensive place to have both but horsemouth pronounced himself well satisfied. 

howard announced that he had been listening to the first record (and pronounced it good) - horsemouth admitted that he felt similarly.

books, gigs, films february 2018

films

• the howling, 
• island of terror,
•  tales from the crypt, 
• the fog, 
• jack the ripper (hammer jtr vs. sherlock holmes), 
• lobster, 
• monkey paw, 
• the lost continent 

books

• anti-memoirs (andre malraux), 
• post office (bukowski), 
• exploring the new river (michael essex-lopresti), 
• colleges in crisis, 
• liar's poker (michael lewis),
•  the suitcase (sergei dovlatov), 
• garden of the finzi-continis (giorgio bassani),
•  work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction essay again (walter benjamin)

fahey week 2018 day one - john fahey and the dance of death

horsemouth begins it with his thoughts on a ‘radio’ documentary - an interview about fahey’s life and work by nicholas thompson, the editor-in-chief of wired, former editor of newyorker.com, an avid fingerstyle guitarist, with steve lowenthal, the author of dance of death: the life of john fahey, american guitarist.

this is a very useful interview because it shows how wide the church of fahey fans is - these two dudes profoundly do not get it. their main problem is that they find his alcoholism and indifference to success perplexing - everything must be judged against the yardstick of money and success (or fall into that aesthetic catch-all weird). they find themselves drawn to fahey’s work - but he’s not as good, they tell us, as leo kottke, michael hedges, william ackermann etc. - the guitarists they really admire, clean, upstanding technically proficient guitarists. and so they treat his memory with a degree of rubber gloved embarrassment.

fahey's disdain for the folk scene gets some approval, as do his record collecting trips to the south when he was young (hey those things are valuable, what a smart guy), as does his rediscovery of classic blues singers (skip james - live human being - seamlessly brought in with the records), as does his making of a christmas album (see smart commercial move).

but the moves that were not smart they find dark and disturbing - even when (in the era of kurt cobain and daniel johnson as they frame it) being some kind of an outsider artist was a viable strategy in the music industry, fahey would not do it, moving to salem oregon, living in a welfare hotel, ill, alcoholic, eventually dying, listen to the pun in this, of complications from a sextupal bypass.

and yet there is something in fahey’s playing that reaches them (indeed something in playing fingerstyle guitar that reaches them - beyond merely being good at it) but they cannot quite see clearly what it is.

there’s some bandying by steve lowenthal of the term ennui - for which horsemouth reads dread, world-weariness. and yet, even as it discusses fahey’s distance from the blues, the music that black people produced as a result of their experiences in america, it is a show that fails to mention black people. and yet it is in this music that fahey found the expressive material to deal with his own dysfunction (as lowenthal puts it). and it is only in terms of this dysfunction that fahey’s story can be told.

but this is not the only source of fahey’s routine - there is also an avant-garde, modern classical music root that is similarly difficult to re-incorporate into a philistine world of mere success. steve felt inspired to write this autobiography (after writing his doctoral thesis on fahey) because in the liner notes to one of his albums (the transfiguration of blind joe death) fahey had imagined a doctoral thesis writer in 2010 writing about a little known guitarist - one john fahey. just as fahey hid behind the name blind joe death for half his first album (itself simultaneously an engagement with the myth of the bluesman and a parody on it), so he could hide behind parodies of earnest liner notes and ethnomusicologist’s doctoral theses.

it’s a good routine but sometimes horsemouth is not sure that everyone gets it (and on the other hand there’s no point explaining a joke).


the dance of death and other plantation favourites

this was how fahey titled one of his albums - what was safely immured in history (and european history at that) comes back home.

george sand begins her the devil’s pool with an account of seeing an illustration from hans holbein (the younger)’s the dance of death. a ploughman ploughs a field but death capers alongside him as he does - as he does in all the other illustrations, as cup-bearer to the drinkers etc.

these were meant to remind the medieval body politic that all were subject to death equally - and to warn them of the vanity of earthly life and the necessity of attending to their religious duties. george sand (from somewhere nearer our time) points out that this memento mori was all slightly futile - and yet the form of the argument has returned to us as we (or novelists of sand’s time) threaten the rich (in novels) with visions of their future executioners.

 ‘we prefer the sweet and gentle characters which can attempt and effect conversations to the melodramatic villains who inspire terror; for terror never cures selfishness but increases it... I have allowed myself to be drawn into this digression for the sake of a labourer; and it is the story of a labourer which I have been meaning to tell you...’

fahey’s strategy relies on two things - one is a classical treatment of folk and blues themes derived from ralph vaughan williams/ bela bartok, the other is a respect for the playing ability and technical innovations of an earlier generation of blues musicians. fahey is not interested in turning this into propaganda for social justice  immediately (like the folkies) but is interested in it as music as something with the power to reach into the human soul.

yellow earth dog day/ stamping in the studio/ serpent(s) in the garden

last night horsemouth slept badly (as a result he’s feeling a bit rundown and crap at the moment). we are into the year of the yellow earth dog (apparently a friendly helpful year). the sun is shining.

tonight he goes to a party. he will take a guitar. his plan is to be sensible, see a few people, and have an early one. (who knows if that one will work).

sunday he will recover. monday to friday he will work. thursday fahey week begins.

yesterday he recorded round howard's - serpent(s) in the garden - they re-recorded a repetitive african type thing on the ukulele of howard’s and then horsemouth added a south african(ish) type guitar part at the fairly brisk tempo, howard added more uke and some throat singing and some melodica drones (on john clarkson’s melodica), horsemouth then added some whistles and then some half-speed stomping (there may be photos).


with that that the track could be pronounced finished - howard found the title of it using book divination. it doesn’t qualify as an improvisation because horsemouth pretty much knew what he wanted to do as soon as he’s had a chance to play over it and was aiming at a fairly well defined genre. howard wants to do more tracks like this reasoning that since no one listens to their stuff they are free to do what they want.

after lunch (horsemouth thanks howard for feeding him) horsemouth added a ukulele fanfare to la fille au cheveux de lin or her hair like some glittering gold (as horsemouth now calls it). they made a mix of sliabh without howard’s vocals to give denise a decent crack at singing it (if she so wishes).

with that they adjourned to the sign of the owltopus, having sunk something in the region of four pints (an expensive hobby these days), they returned back to howard’s to pick up horsemouth’s guitar and watch la jetee (howard pronounced himself horrified) and listen to various folkies.

hunger drove them out of doors and they went their separate ways. 

 

january in retrospect (a german expressionist poem)

it's a year since horsemouth saw this guy (with john clarkson dahn sarf)

january - a german expressionist poem

12 groundhogs (cloud gate)
ten years after the financial crisis
- where are we now?
‘nonprime has a nice ring to it’

‘I ludwig meidner clod of earth 
 cut into little pieces, 
 outlawed, apocalyptic, 
 my skull blown into oblivion 
 by the winter wind.’ 

fat cats and seaplanes (don't mix).
fat cat day (jan 4th)
to death
(a pamphlet for the metropolis)

‘the status quo cracks, 
 primeval chaos rises to the surface.’ 

causes of death in english folk songs (a pie chart)

'first the landlord came for me, 
then the banks came for me, 
then st. mungos came for me, 
and in the end 
I was no longer left' 

horsemouth has a terrible vision of himself in ten/ twenty years time - on anti-depressants, on crutches, towing round an oxygen tank and adopting some crazed nostalgic piece of self-harm as a political programme (like his parents with brexit).

the black king, the muslim prime minister, black power, big up meghan markle, kind hearts and coronets 'I shot an arrow in the air...' (if the spare becomes the heir)

‘laugh, laugh, troy burns; 
cassandra does go on...' 

the apocalypse in iambic pentameter (in spondees even).
the preppers were right you need a break out bag.

features sitar-smashing and white girls in saris ...

(... and one from february)
12 flatlining groundhogs
death will not be cheated
(and the performance is over)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

‘it has two parts one part is engaged in doing some job, and the other part synchronically narrates what the first part does… for the common sense perspective the machine might be called a ‘commentator machine’, its parts ‘the doing’ and ‘the saying’ parts’

12 flatlining groundhogs (death is not amused)

groundhog day is over. horsemouth has repeated and repeated and repeated until he has learnt his lesson and become a caring sharing human being capable of being sympathetic to andi mcdowell’s vacuous airhead character. it is a story of the type - humanisation of the misanthrope.

as far as horsemouth remembers the morning of groundhog day was cloudy - thus meaning the sacred badger (once a sacred bear now a mere groundhog) does not see its shadow and thus assumes that given the dampness and the clouds winter will soon be over. it retreats back into the burrow to snooze a bit more. it can’t be soon enough for horsemouth’s lungs (which are distinctly fucked).

work jogs on (or it did - it has been a bit tense of late).

so the guy who wrote source code has written the re-make of flatliners - plotline: good looking medical students experiment with near death experiences, death is not amused (and will not be cheated). similarly see also final destination. this one is not for straying despite the diminishing returns (is that a stockpicking term?)

this week ends with the anniversary of the death of sheridan le fanu (author of green tea, monkey paw and carmilla  arguably the first lesbian vampire short story). .

john fahey (horsemouth’s guru) is to be honored with a three-day american primitive festival in his hometown of takoma park, MD in april. this is happening in conjunction with the release of a double LP / CD package of first generation american primitive guitarists and banjo players, (with 6500 words of liner notes) in march.

petrushka (‘I must start my story by confessing that i have somehow failed to become a real patriot..')

horsemouth is reading alexandre benois’s memoirs (he's peter ustinov’s uncle) - they’re an interesting family venetian-french-german st. petersburgers,

‘I must start my story by confessing that i have somehow failed to become a real patriot... petersburg itself I loved...’ 

benois is a so-so musician but an excellent sketcher - he collects toys - eventually his collection goes to the russian museum in st. petersburg. like benjamin he is fascinated by small things - dwarf world he calls it, book illustrations, gulliver’s travels (the lilliputians), robinson crusoe and by praxinoscopes, zootropes, and magic lanterns.

the first theatre he went to was a dog theatre,

‘I was not more than four years old... I remember most clearly a remarkably intellignt, beautiful black labrador, who.. executed the well-known dog’s valse on the piano with his master in a duet for two hands and two paws. I learnt afterwards to play that simple little piece.’

later he graduated to toy theatres and puppet theatres at home (taking his first steps to becoming a theatrical designer), and then to punch and judy (petrushka) shows and harlequin shows.

in the petrushka show there is an unexpected interlude (petrushka, on the run after murdering the policeman lover of his intended joins the army and has just killed his sergeant, now read on)- two ‘black men’ appear,

 ‘they both carry sticks, which they throw skilfully up into the air and from one to another, and then use to hit each other over the head with resounding blows’.

then we are back to the main action in the piece - a musician who petrushka has been insulting offers him a strange creature, which he tells him is a lamb, petrushka rides the strange beast back and fore a few times. but then, quick as a trice, it throws petrushka off and is revealed as the devil - the devil then drags petrushka down to hell. his death rattle is heard - the musician plays a gay gallop, and the performance is over.

benois notes the superiority of the street shows over those given by members of high-society and in doing show tells us what the street show puppets looked like - ‘chipped and faded’ and not ‘freshly painted’. 

owing to the cold the roundabouts of the fair had to be erected in tents - outside of each would be a barker (a dyed - or grandpa - to get people in), two dancing girls to skip round him, and two animal figures - the goat and the crane,

‘they were dressed in long white shirts, and from their necks, about three yards long, dangled a bearded snout with horns and a bird’s head with a long beak.’

eventually the temperance society succeeded in driving the fair with its puppet shows, pantomimes and drunkenness out of town, post 1880 heavy moralising folk plays (he names lermontov and pushkin) came to replace the stories of tricksters like punch and harlequin.

benois becomes a ballet enthusiast, harlequin has become mephisto, his interest in puppet shows feeds in to coppelia. soon he will be moving in this world himself.

his elder brother (the charmer) is a great improviser of music (benois is no slouch himself).

after the revolution they all continue to live in their old st. petersburg palaces but now must share them with the hoi-polloi.

horsemouth is reminded of a tale he heard told by an anthropologist film-maker one time. the film-maker is in china, but he doesn’t speak much chinese, he’s filming workers in a communal house, every so often a little old man will come up to him and begin chattering on nervously, the film-maker hums and ha’s - it’s not what he came here to film. later he is watching the film back with his translator - ah that’s interesting, wind that back says the translator, he was the owner of the house... and then, with the revolution it was requisitioned...