(under) pressure

 phew. what scenes!

horsemouth wonders what russians must think looking at this. what serbs must think. what rumanians must think. anywhere where a government has been dragged down. where a mob has rampaged through the parliament building.

exciting times.  as the advert has it. 

now of course we are all supposed to applaud the return of due (democratic) process and the certification of the election of joe biden and kamala harris.

but wait. the biden victory is marked by the failure of his campaign to connect with both black lives matter and also the hollowing out of the lives of working people that found expression in make american great again,  it marks a return to politics as normal and inside the beltway.

had this been a majority black mob they would have been shot down on the steps but because they were a majority white mob sanctified by the president himself  the cops and security guards  didn't know where the boundary was. they let the theatre play out.

what does horsemouth (armchair general in chief) think? 

the 'patriots' (and their leader jamiroquai) must be secretly delighted (while remaining 'outraged' you understand). such moments are a heady charge. now the calculation must be about when the state will move on them, before the biden inauguration or after it or indeed at all. whether there will be an opportunity to come out to play again before the 20th. 

by the way kudos to jamiroquai for coming properly costumed -as buffalo bill, as a flag painted incarnation of america (as a certifiable berserker). the rest of the crowd (hoodies and winterwear) kind of let the side down sartorially, but at least they looked like americans 

trump still has 13 days to fuck shit up. he is the betrayed king, the man who has had the election robbed off  him (and off the american people) and in particular off the 74 million people who voted for him and the people who still believe that trump won. 

congress could (in theory) impeach him before he goes or he could be tried for treason after. 

could trump run again as a republican candidate after this? er. probably not. but if he doesn't run as a republican candidate and he runs again he will split the vote (which might be no bad thing, unless you are a conservative republican). 

in many ways the long game  of the conservative right via the supreme court is won. biden could roll it back by adding additional justices to the supreme court but will he in the current situation? the situation makes biden dependent on the good graces of conservative republicans to do anything (even though he has the extra georgia seats). 

horsemouth has to snicker at this situation. situations that are fucked up and irredeemable appeal to his sense of humour. he will return (emboldened) to his reading of the origins of totalitarianism.  

exciting times.  

horsemouth heard it the other way around

rob lawson in good company on don campau's no pigeonholes show. 

horsemouth heard it as war, pestilence, famine and death. that has a nice foot. the t-shirt company has it as 'death & war & famine & pestilence'. it seems strange to be naming the four horsemen of the apocalypse as if they were santa's reindeer (but hey). 

last night horsemouth watched suspiria (again) which is, he thinks, the best of them by a long way. it combines the best soundtrack with the best visuals with the best protagonist. 

musicians of bremen have a review (courtesy of martin - of martin+angela) 

'I've only heard volume four so far but I really like it because it incorporates electronica, folk, psychedelia.. it was like travelling on a soundwave that started with forest swords, had, intermittently, flashes of john fahey, and ended with an early floyd mashup. love it.' 

of course this is such a good review that horsemouth only wishes he'd had it as a blueprint and made the album in its image. (thanks dude). 

horsemouth has finished work for the week (he had a bottle of beer to celebrate). 

'I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be.' - joan didion. 

our joan is very stylish (she knows it, she is constantly reusing the same poses, the ones that worked well before). and she writes well (this scores big with horsemouth). she works well reduced to black and white either way. her prose is the tough guy prose of marlow (as is the territory). she shows us the memory trick - how one phrase that pricks the ear from a situation, written down, will bring it back to the minds eye and permit it to be looked at afresh - the importance of keeping a notebook.

neither facebook nor blogger work as notebooks anymore. facebook because it now has no index function (the furthest you can scroll back before your patience goes is about a month, and that's not enough to introduce you to your earlier selves), blogger because it now has to do service as a diary/ as a notebook it's no longer a selection. 

of course turned round it would be,

'the people we used to be are well advised to keep on nodding terms with us.' (by didion joan perhaps) 

lest they become forgotten and inexpressed, cut adrift. 

'this is our last dance. this is ourselves'

 trying this again

it actually rectifies a defect in the original

that you can't hear how amazingly good the words are...

'cause love's such an old fashioned word

and love dares you to care for

the people on the edge of the night

and love dares you to change our way of

caring about ourselves

this is our last dance

this is our last dance

this is ourselves

under pressure.'

so it's another lockdown (horsemouth believes). (notice the way the song returns to its start 'under pressure' - crafty that). that's the problem with queen, (and to some extent bowie too) too smart to be actually loveable.

it has been pointed out that boris has a distressing habit of delaying decisions until everybody is in agreement about what is to be done and then doing that. he is, in horsemouth's parlance a pencil sharpener - as soon as the work is set the pencil sharpener will slowly begin to retrieve their pencil case, extract a pencil, disgard it, choose another, look in the case for a pencil sharpener, make sure it is clean enough, look around for a bin into which to empty the sharpenings... when the pencil is nice and sharp the student is ready to work and then another student can be asked what answer they get or how to do it. the main aim is to take avoid the risk of being wrong. to make use of the general intellect. and affirm connections and friendships.

one of napoleon's generals had a way of shielding him from unwanted correspondence - any correspondence arriving was simply shoved into a desk unread and left (if it was significant then a messenger would be sent, otherwise it could wait).

last night profundo rosso (again). available in a history of horror series. also available (mixed up in a series of horror shorts is meshes in the afternoon). horsemouth finds the grisly murders not to his taste but he finds the set design, costumes, the way things are made to move, very much to his taste. apparently argento wanted pink floyd for the soundtrack (but he's lucky to have got goblin).

horsemouth is hiding out at his parents at some point he may/will have to return. today he works (twice), permissions and connections permitting.

yesterday breakfast, work (success), faff about, a walk on the common, dinner, a movie (and repeat).

on the literary origin of tropes in the work of dario argento (and their subsequent influence)

 in the argento/ soavi (1989) horror film ' the church' there's a reference to a book 'the mystery of cathedrals' by fulcanelli. it's a plot of the type  - the book that was lost is found (chaos ensues). trusting to luck horsemouth started searching. there was a fulcanelli a noted would-be alchemist from the 20 ies and 30ies, there was speculation about his real identity, beyond the title page horsemouth was unable to discover more of the contents of the book. 

atually that's not true - he seems to have just found a pdf of the whole thing.  excepting the first page of the introduction (which seems a strange omission). 

it seems to echo the chapter in victor hugo's notre-dame de paris where we are given an occult tour of the meanings of the church, its monuments and decorations. 

the book is given as a gift by the male protagonist to the female protagonist, she seems to quote from it at some point. it doesn't end well for them. the church in the film has been built over the graveyard of devil worshipers exterminated by the teutonic knights and as is usual in these things what is buried comes to light again (to tell you any more would be to give the plot away, such as it is). 

this follows on from horsemouth's watching of the inferno the second of the trilogy the three mothers. this contains a fictitious book - the book the three mothers  by varelli (the architect of their three houses). here it is  the names (if not the roles) of the three mothers are lifted from the levana and our ladies of sorrow section of thomas de quincey's suspiria de profundis. 

horsemouth's memory is so poor these days it affords him the enjoyment of watching movies over as if they were new. 

following on from the church he started watching profundo rosso (deep red) and here it is more the influence of argento that horsemouth noticed - in the first scene (a murder) on john carpenter's halloween then, in the second scene, a telepathy demonstration that goes wrong, on david cronenberg's scanners. 

horsemouth has also been enjoying joan didion's on keeping a notebook.

'the impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way any compulsion tries to justify itself...

'keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth by some presentiment of loss.'

a regretable situation in the schools

actual daily torygraph headline (saturday 2nd january 2021).

yesterday horsemouth dealt with the hmrc thing (he hopes). he also went for a walk on the common (which was exceptionally beautiful) and read a little of balzac's  a village doctor  but then a dark grey cloud filled up the sky and it began to hail (by the time horsemouth made it home it was merely snowing). 

last night amazing grace - aretha franklin does gospel (that's an amazing voice but that's an amazing ensemble performance too). it has horsemouth in tears at several points (it goes deep). sometimes you notice she has a cough. 

he reads joan didion's 'on keeping a notebook' online (well most of it). 

tomorrow horsemouth does some working from home (well that's the plan anyway).  today (low grey cloud and the remnants of snow) a walk on the common again. at some point he should attempt a discussion of hannah arendt's attitude to hobbes (hobbes from the darkside, hobbes as theorist of bourgeois subjectivity). 

'folk guitarist - an appellation that he found offensive'

the year begins well. a friend of howard has an internet radio show over in funky kingston (the comfort zone on green futures festival radio 8-11pm fridays) and he plays two tracks from the latest album - sand storm  and dark was the day. 

the DJ has a nice relaxed jonathan creek style thing going, he's just pootling about on air suiting himself, a joint  ex-presenter now lives down near weston-super-mare, he phones her up, she's in the bath, she's planning for happiness. he has some folk girl on streaming live, a really nice voice, banjo and guitar, it cuts through it's really clear, other than that there's loads of reggae, two tracks by culture and some kate bush (which also cuts through). there's a message board of fans somewhere.

the planning for happiness girl is a natural optimist finding the times hard, she's planning an exit strategy from the hard times with essential oils, sleep hygene and such like (see already horsemouth is hooked on the soap opera of it). 

still not bad for day one. opines horsemouth. but there's food for thought there. 

horsemouth listened to it on low volume in his room for fear of disturbing his parents. 

interesting choices. horsemouth would have gone with amarach, by far the strongest track on the record (in horsemouth's humble opinion) but perhaps a bit of a slow starter. dark was the day is decently immediate at least - the bells then the opening turn around lines. both are 'howard' tunes,  to sand storm horsemouth contributed the follow along guitar (and this the guitar exhaustion ending), to dark was the day he contributed the bassline (which goes for a bit of a pad at the end prog-rock style).  if there had been time (non-pandemic time) horsemouth would probably have added some big acoustic guitarchords. horsemouth thinks it and falling snow are too close together (like an attempt to express the same thing) in arrangement and sonics. but hey, the album is done and mixed, it cannot be redone and remixed to fit every situation, it has to make its own space in the world now.

last night horsemouth read about john fahey and joan didion. both people who came from away to california and found some kind of success and persona there. he should read some of joan's prose again. 

we are with fahey again. later years fahey. fahey the curmudgeon and his inventionof the term american primitive guitar.

'folk guitarist - an appellation that he found offensive'

'some of us were kinder than we might have been when reviewing the new CDs that fahey released during this time; the truth is, the music they contain is not a patch on his best work.'

on his way out the door howard remembered that it was new years day and that musicians of bremen had written a song on new years day so he played it. 

 

new years eve (the final countdown)

at about 6pm horsemouth goes for zoom beers with howard. they are both on good form. but a little way in (about a bottle and a half of beer) he is called for dinner. he tips the last half of the beer away (much to his mother's shock). later he watches a horror movie again (dario argento's inferno)

at 10.55 (and 30 seconds) horsemouth played the video of 'the final countdown' by europe on youtube in all its pseudo-baroque majesty. and at 11 as the video echoes off into the silence horsemouth waved goodbye to the EUtopian project. good luck my fellow EUtopians, horsemouth hopes to be rejoining you soon (well before his death anyway).  

at 12 he posted a happy new year and went to bed (to a good response as it turned out). early in the new year he received a response from mike in texas where it was just new year (and yes people were firing off their guns). 

indeed he has just received a text from his brother wishing him this. 

happy new year everyone! let our journey around the sun (re-)commence!

365 days. two solstices. two equinoxes. four celtic quarter days of cyclical time to fill. 

his mother remarks that it is the first day of brexit. horsemouth replies that the weather is worse. 

thanks to all who replied. and now on with the business of the year.

it's a grey dark day outside but the advantage of your modern new years day (at least at horsemouth's time of life) is that you don't start it out with a hang over. yesterday a brief walk on the common and up the fields. today probably another walk on the common (weather and mud permitting). 

horsemouth has done less walking than he would normally have done this last year. 

no walking into work (elephant and castle/ stratford, perhaps even holloway road), no walking up to walthamstow to browse charity shop bookshelves, no (or little) walking down to pop(u)lar or mile end  to make music or art, less walking over to the supermarkets in search of bargains and entertainment. 

while everyone else tells the lifestyle supplements they have been walking more (and indeed max 'crow' reeves has been circumnambulating momuments) .everyone with a camera has been off photographing the depopulated streets. (a little shocked at it all). 

even given modern entertainment technology it is difficult to achieve the levels of inactivity and pure 'staying in' required to prevent transmission of the virus (and especially given the calls to 'return' to work and the new 'more transmissible' variant). without a doubt the 'population' will have failed - but how can it be unsafe to visit your relatives but safe to teach a classroom full of children? 

anyway at some point horsemouth has to return to the seaside towns. there is the risk of the journey, the risk of the trains and tubes. horsemouth is fortunate in the nature of his employment (almost all of it can be done from home).