it's lockdown again for odysseus ( the latest news from the field of cybernetics)

horsemouth is up. he is dressed (jumper, t-shirt, underwear, jeans,socks). the heating has been on.

it is lockdown again for odysseus. he's self-isolating (tied to the mast). it's earwax for the crew as they labour on (essential workers). the virus sweetly singing. such is the latest news from the field of cybernetics.  

this week things at work should resolve themselves. then 3 weeks (maybe 4 weeks actual run up to christmas).. and then, for horsemouth, 2020 cannot end too soon. 

friday he has to travel to work (he'd really rather not). 

last night he did the weekly phonecall to his mother that he's been keeping up since the start of the pandemic. he then failed to watch a movie and watched a series of music videos instead - there's a 'plan' to do another horsemouth curated golden glow over on mixcloud at some point and horsemouth should gather together enough material to make himself sound interesting. . 

things enter a crucial juncture with you now what and now it cannot be mentioned until friday. as soon as horsemouth can mention it again he will. he will probably organise a facebook event so that he can tell you all about it and spam all his friends with it (including the dead ones, people he met once, people he hasn't seen in years, people he added by mistake, people he hasn't spoken to in years, and that select (and much smaller) group - true fans of horsemouth's artistic productions).  

'what if we awake one day, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable to read?'

so proposes nabokov (thinking about it horsemouth is surprised there isn't a jose saramago novel  where this happens, or maybe there is but he hasn't read it yet). 

horsemouth supposes that if he were unable to read he would watch more films but, being unable to read the titles/ subtitles, he would have to rely upon our visual memory of the covers to know which film he was going to to be watching and his learning of foreign languages would be accelerated.

either that or the days would certainly be longer util such time as humanity re-perfected architecture and the visual and sonic arts. 

horsemouth has spent a lot of time accumulating books - he would presumably keep them around as a way of reminding himself of their contents (at least until the next move). 

having recommended it (but not having watched it in a long time) horsemouth watched persona again - one actress gets to speak, the other can can only act and react. as usual with bergman it is about his personal guilts, his life is in his work but made to stand in different places,  but also the work of actors and directors, about getting people to do your emotional work for you.

fortunately there's much less of this going on in the fall of the house of fitzgerald (as soon as he can horsemouth will share it with you). or at least if there is it is in a less-self-conscious way. horsemouth is pleased with it, bits of it succeed, it does the work of mourning and it does the work of creation and collaboration (and it looks good doing it which is the main thing). 

lessons to learn from it? a little more insistence on getting things filmed ('cover' he believes filmmakers call it) rather than photographed. as suke noted the live action sequences are much stronger than the photographs. there are a number of distressing thunks and thuds on horsemouth's rendition of high-rise strutter's ball (really early jazz tune  darktown strutter's ball) that had horsemouth taken his own guitar to the session when he recorded it wouldn't have been there. 

the pandemic limited the amount of time we can be together to make our art, so we must make it count (the same could be said for musicians of bremen volume four and the other recordings round that). . 

the wrecking ball will come and convert people's homes into rubble. against this the fall of the house of fitzgerald proposes art, dance, music and film. film and recording that turn moments of time into stone. the gaze of the medusa (the medenza) converts flesh into stone. you see that's interesting. the medusa was in the film because enza had a medusa head dress and it looked good, but horsemouth had never thought about what it might mean, it becomes available to mean something (it turns to stone) when it is filmed. 

and now it is connected with UFOs and pyramids. 

here we see a dialectic of solidity (stone, film, painting, photography, recording, the work) and mobility (dance, light, happening, music, work) and the movement between the two. 

what no press conference in the rose garden? (the curse of friday the 13th)

he had so much more still to give (in terms of creative destruction). a nation mourns. on the plus side he'll be able to do the things he couldn't do in office like get an eye test and spend more time with his wife's family (no wait he's done those already)).

dominic cummings has fallen. horsemouth rejoices (in a way). dominic is the only one of the tories horsemouth would trust to get his nose out of the trough for long enough to have a political idea - and that idea was to trade of the dissatisfaction of the politically unrepresented. he took them from out of the grasp of labour and the brexit party and ukip and gave them to the conservatives. 

from now on horsemouth will celebrate every  friday 13th as dominic cummings day. caution. there can be more than one a year. 

for the tories covid arrived and blew them off course and after that everything they needed to do was contrary to their natures. 

and in a way horsemouth doesn't rejoice. there was little to cummings beyond quack pareto style management nostrums but at least he wanted government that could deliver (and wouldn't that have been useful in the pandemic children but similarly where are the results for the money handed over?). he leaves behind a downing street thoroughly seeded with the dragon's teeth children of the leave campaign (will they dig in for the short walk through the cabinet office?). 

ultimately his ship comes to grief on the hidden rocks of the deep state on its inability to do anything except line its own pockets (and spy on militant vegetarians and grieving parents).

dialectically it gives the red wall some power when they either defect back from the tories or seal the deal, but there are no guarantees it won't sabotage itself. it pushes scotland towards the fools errand of independence. and then there's the legacy project - brexit. 

my but january will be harsh wake up (you will hear horsemouth saying 'horsemouth told you so'.)

horsemouth is back from sunny mile end and filmshow 13th. he thanks suke (and enza) for an excellent evening. he has the final cut of the fall of the house of fitzgerald on his laptop. in a minute he will watch it again but he pronounces himself pleased with it. soon it will be shared online and horsemouth will invite you all to see it. there will be no launch party (with actual people) until things have calmed down.

horsemouth adopts the howard hughes method of disease control. but then how can you go to an evening in mile end with food, drink and dancing horsemouth? because horsemouth hasn't done that in months horsemouth replies (er. since the last time him, enza and suke were together). horsemouth is a utilitarian not an absolutist. to be honest he's more worried about the railway journey across town and the lab booking on friday (sanctioned under lockdown under the double heading of 'work' and 'education').  this strikes him as objectively a greater risk. 

filmshow the 13th

in the immediate future (this evening in fact) there is filmshow the 13th (when horsemouth gets to see the final cut of 'the fall of the house of fitzgerald'). he's looking forward to this.  

work (for good and ill) has turned something of a corner. one problem solved (a little software training several months in). but then a landmine of an email, ok he will be a little out of pocket on several bookings he suspects. but fuck it (can't win them all). 

however the situation is... it can always get better. 

horsemouth is by nature grumpy. a 'decisionist', he thinks the way to things is through grit and determination (but often life isn't like that). often what the situation needs is a cool head. 

it is important to keep things in perspective. his only mission this year is not to die and he is already 3k up on this year courtesy of the furlough (huzzah). next year his only mission will be not to die (until and after such time as he can actually get vaccinated after that he'll just have to take his chances). at some point we will all be through this into the other side. (remind him to get his flu jab in).

'woke up. got out of bed...' (private press)

horsemouth woke up with a headache (actually he can remember having it while asleep). last night 'the silence' (bergman) - two sisters at war (one is bergman), the little boy lost in the hotel (he is bergman also), a troop of dwarves, a strange country with an incomprehensible language. 

horsemouth has found some private press acoustic music from the states - roger sherman, guitar, voice, drum machine, ruling planet (1978).  there are wordless falsetto vocal swoops. he drove four hours to be photographed at the beach (and it suits the music). guillaume apollinaire died of the spanish flu monday 1918, yesterday  he was buried his friends carrying his coffin through crowds celebrating the armistice chanting 'mort au guilaume!' (death to kaiser william). 

  

what passes for a success these days (the first and second great leaps forward)

phew. what passes for a success these days. 

horsemouth took the time to get set up. applied low brute cunning to the problem and eventually ended up in the meeting courtesy of his old laptop (gwann mi beauty!) because his brand swanky new work laptop was declined entry at the very gates. er...um. 

this software (you know the one he's talking about) is not designed to facilitate communication (as it is advertised) but to control access. for in truth education (like any other business)  is as much about controlling access to knowledge as it is about educating people to produce knowledge (or indeed anything else these days).

 and therein lies the first part of the problem. 

the next part of the problem is that we are living in the days of the second 'great leap forward'. 

in the first great leap forward chinese peasants were encouraged to give up trying to grow food and instead set to work out how to smelt iron. this they tried heroically. sadly all that they produced was deeply contaminated slag (because they lacked the necessary skills, equipment and training) and the nation fell into famine (some estimates put the number of the dead as high as 30 million). 

things are not so drastic in the second great leap forward. the pandemic has forced 'everyone' (except for the everyone it hasn't) to work from home. it thus relies on people's own infrastructure (and IT support capabilities) and people's own ability to learn the new softwares without being trained in them. with skills honed in the world of leisure the workers face their new distributed workplace.

no one said it would be pretty. no said it would be efficient. and yet it... stays the same. 

the real benefits of the second great leap forward lie in the destruction of value in the old office rental/ commercial property sector of the market, the destruction of value in city houses and flats (what is their worth when the commute is over). the shops, the cafes, the boutiques, the lunchtime sandwich, that whole rewards-in-the-working-day economy is gone online. the high street finally dead  in a massive centralisation. 

the night-clubs, the pubs, the whole night time economy parlous with debt, their workforce cast to the for winds.

'when this bloody 'demic's over (oh how happy we shall be)'

it will of course roll back (a little) but not all the way back. 

of course these empty offices and shops are not as valueless as we will soon be told (they will be sold at a relative premium to provide the new slum housing for the poor in jenrickvilles).  that public transport crippled with debt and charging more, the day of the bicycle has come.

a massive and pliant reserve army of labour will be created (fed out of foodbanks, struggling to dig themselves out of gig economy jobs into warehouse work, housed (temporarily) in jenrickvilles). 

horsemouth is nearly done. he's nearly out the door. he may survive the pandemic only to fall to the economic scythings of post-pandemic austerity/ the moments of the consolidation of the great leap forward. he's been holding out for a while.

horsemouth struggles. sometimes he is victorious. but nobody ever suggests crowning him king any more (which is a pity). not that he's up to it any more really.  

notes towards the longer form (downstream from utopia)

ok people. it looks like the facebook 'notes' blogging tool has finally popped. forward to the longer form. 

horsemouth does some preparatory listening to robert lawson's downstream from utopia. horsemouth writes and edits this while it plays.

dulcimers, zithers, hammered dulcimers? cimbaloms? khims? santurs? yang quins. all strings are struck if they are not plucked or bowed or driven by the wind. but not all strings are struck with hammers, sticks. a struck chordophone in the  Hornbostel–Sachs system of musical instrument classification (first published in the zeitschrift für ethnologie in 1914).  

cat among the strings isn't that like cat among the pigeons? meaning to cause trouble.  a short koto-like introduction. (perhaps koto like because of sound of the initial hit) then as diamond harvest revisited and downstream from utopia. a dog barks. a tap runs. 

ottakar dance no.2 there was a prince ottakar who founded ceske budjovice. a beer dance? a spirited waltz tarrying with forward propulsion (like mbira music). but dulcimers take us up into a kind of frictionless perfection where mbiras attach our feet firmly to the earth (even as we lift them up to dance). blossom supper/evening chimes 

mistaken flower ah the joys of delay and yankie doodle went to town variations. outside the dog is barking like it was earlier (but this is a fanfare maybe a jota) but then the change, the rattle, bent notes.

western rivers  

for the ghost of michael o'shea and his mo chara (nearly burnt in a beach bonfire).  

the album is over. horsemouth will return to it again. 

the ghoul like the reptile and plague of zombies another post colonial hammer (ok ok it's tyburn not hammer) horror (bad things brought back from abroad like vegetarian curry and a knowledge of foreign languages) plus an appearance of toccata and fugue in D minor, a young john hurt, and isn't that greg from survivors?