the fall of the house of fitzgerald (the launch of the UFO)

 

the fall of the house of fitzgerald has finally been released (so horsemouth can show it to you without getting an earful from his co-directors). north of 60 likes so far (of which about 12 are from horsemouth's side of the church). he did a kind of fake facebook event for friday evening so that he can chat to anyone who's interested in it and to enable him to spam his friends with the link. he also stuck it up on the musicians of bremen facebook page. .

he had great fun doing it (but he suspects catasto/fille aka suke had less fun and more work editing it. thank you).

it features music from  sounds of furore, horsemouth(folk) himself, martin jackson of confyde (who does a great electric fahey type thing), Вадим Померанцев (horsemouth has no idea how that's even said - he'll have to ask - ok vadim pomerantsev (no no the actor)) and musicians of bremen. he hopes you like it. 

today. a day off (officially) but horsemouth may still have to take a Teams meeting at some stage. last night to follow on from the ingmar bergman and paradjanov series, horsemouth has discovered a whole raft of herzog movies on youtube. he watched wings of hope. a plane crashes in the amazon, a young girl survives, her parents are ecologists so she understands the jungle and its real dangers, she follows the water until she finds a river and then she floats downstream until she finds people.

it looks like horsemouth's little netbook has finally bitten the dust (the mouse/ trackpad feature has stopped working) maybe horsemouth could plug in  an exterior mouse. it means carting the full sized work computer about (tomorrow for example when horsemouth goes to work - face to face). 

'I had been murdered to further the purposes of psychical research'

gwenifer raymond on the radio. see she's positively chatty now (but not as chatty as the host). 

horsemouth is getting in a quick post before not having to work (he suspects). he should go and check the work email. (it's ok he has his coffee it's not too much of an imposition).  

last night through a glass darkly by ingmar bergman which despite a great central performance, by harriet anderson, fails (it's the first one horsemouth has watched, and he's been having a bergman season,  that he thinks has failed). it fails because bergman tries to offer us a metaphysical reconciliation rather than staying with the events. 

horsemouth will listen to it later horsemouth apologises. we have missed the anniversary of this recording by pharoah sanders. recorded 1975 on the 17th november at the grand auditorium / studio 104 - maison de la radio. mastered from the original master tapes.. 

shopping (scenes from a marriage)

horsemouth is back from the supermarket (aldi). on the way in he noticed there was a homeless girl with her dog sitting on the floor outside in the sun (such as it was). when horsemouth came out she was gone.  horsemouth had passed some homeless dudes in the park.on his way back two of them were moving on (a rucksack and granny stroller each) and the third (an old feller) was sat up on the bench and being checked on by an ambulance crew. the park is on the junction opposite the brand new apartment blocks and commuter station. 

such are the giant strides being made in the care for the elderly and the homeless. 

horsemouth continues to hoard/ stockpile/ prepare for the apocalypse. e.g. he has 5.5l of banks' bitter, about 3kg of spaghetti and other pasta, a similar amount of rice, 2.6kgs of museli, 2kgs of yoghurt, 27 cans of red kidney/ butter/ canellini beans or chick peas and about a kilo each of carrots and potatoes.. on his next shopping expedition he will get a bag of onions (they keep). 

remind him to eat the carrots. he's not as fond of them as he should be. 

last night he watched ingmar bergan's scenes from a marriage - complacent bourge couple destroy their marriage in search of  love, there's an excellent montage scene showing the wife being socialised to be agreeable as a child (which could have come from any feminist book of the time) and then later there's some spousal abuse (which may shock younger viewers). eventually it all ends well. with a perfect cake and eating it scene. some of the scenes are from bergman's own marriage(s). 

yesterday work went well (as far as horsemouth can tell). today no work. tomorrow probably no work either (horsemouth should make sure people realize this is the case). thursday no work (hopefully). friday work and the release of something that horsemouth is forbidden from mentioning until it has been released. the plan is to ship the students home after december 9th so any labs and face-to-face stuff has to be got out of the way before then (or postponed until semester 2). consequently horsemouth has only a few more weeks when they can send him anywhere. then horsemouth will hunker down to see if he can assure himself he's ok to return to his parents for christmas. 

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).