horsemouth al centro della terra

and so we approach peak death (part II). horsemouth is a bit flippant about these things. he knows people are losing members of their family (indeed people he knows are losing members of their family).  worse than the first time around.

the government are worried that as people are vaccinated they will no longer obey lockdown and social distancing regulations. (and they are right to be worried, that's why people are going to get vaccinated so that this can be over). the government are stuck upon a prong - on the one hand they want society if not locked down, then at least socially distanced, so that the virus does not spread, so that the health service is not overwhelmed, so that the death tolls are not even higher, on the other hand they want society open again and people going out and spending and digging the economy out of recession. 

can they have both? can they have their cake and eat it? probably not. 

horsemouth's advice, and he knows he's not morally best placed to give this advice, is to stay sat down, to stay home and wait for vaccination and then... well to stay home and wait some more, because vaccinating the world is a mammoth task, because in addition to not wanting to die of it yourself you don't want to pass it on nor be engaged in the kind of social activity that brings people who may catch it and pass it on.  in the end, while it poses some problems for horsemouth, it's not a difficult apocalypse for him, he's fairly anti-social to begin with. 

but of course a large percentage of the population don't have this choice. work compels them to be out and mingling. 

outside it is sunny (blueskies). today no work (horsemouth will go for a walk up on the common. past the windchimes. it will be very muddy up there. elsewhere in the country (as if to add insult to injury), flooding. 

in ercule al centro della terra hercules travels to the islands of the hesperides and then on to hades, christopher lee hams it up most excellently as a baddy, the director mario bava continues to work miracles with lighting, technicolour film stock and costumes. (techniques he will later apply to making giallo movies and straightforward horrors - from blood and black lace to black sabbath to kill baby kill! for example). in ercule al centro della terra the country is cursed (and the cattle are dying) because hercules's side-kick has returned from hades with persephone (pluto's daughter) - see horsemouth told you it was mythologically confused - plus christopher lee has been up to his evil tricks. 

in the end it is all resolved by the power of forgetfulness and everybody lives happily ever after (until the next episode if there ever was one). 

horsemouth and his struggle for dignity and status

outside it has clearly rained. it is due to rain pretty much all day tomorrow. at some point horsemouth will have to go for a walk.

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

big party with cake horsemouth reckons. but will that be enough to refloat the economy? time will tell. 

meanwhile he may have been being too pessimistic about things. the admissions rate has been falling for about a week (the number of people getting sick with the virus) this means that in about another week the death toll will start falling. we will have reached peak with the virus 'controlled' by the lock down. it will then die back until we free up (at which point it will all kick off again at least until such point we have a significant proportion of the population vaccinated). 

it will take a couple of (non monday) days of declining deaths to be confident we have reached peak. 

in fact there's not really a post-covid (in the sense of eradicating the virus). in the sense that we don't know even when twice vaccinated how long immunity lasts (it lasts until the news tells us it has stopped working). further we don't know that immunity will be maintained give new mutations in the virus as it becomes endemic in the human population in the poorer countries (i.e. the vast majority of the human population), the people it would require a concerted global effort to vaccinate.

there used to be a term third world that described a structural relationship with the western world where the poorer countries are kept poor (and not just somehow by accident the poorer countries) but apparently it is not PC to say it anymore. please pardon horsemouth for this slip of the tongue he's an old man. 

this is because, vaccinating the adult human population of the planet (twice), it is a huge world historic task and yet it is a minimum to avoid the risk of another pandemic. and indeed the health measures necessary to deal with further pandemics (that elusive test, track and trace) would need to be put in place on a global scale also. 

of course this is if anyone is serious about it. of course the governments of the world could merely take measures to vaccinate their own flocks and then slouch back into herbivorous pastoralism and the sheering of the sheep. 

horsemouth regrets to say the most likely outcome is some kind of bodge between the two. 

the virus has acted as a most excellent shock therapy to move society (and by this horsemouth means the middle classes) to working from home/ consuming at home, the working classes (the ones we don't mention) still have to travel and work face to face (they are in the meat/meet world of virus transmission and death). and thus it has always been since the masque of the red death (horsemouth's only piece of historical evidence). 

there has, of course, been disaster capitalism style looting by the ruling class and their mates (they have activated their networks and pulled out some plums) in the sourcing of PPE for example, in test, track and trace,  in stimulus packages. but that's not the big change (it's just a continuation of how they are). 

horsemouth suspects that even in their myopia the chattering classes have it right - it's the working from home.  

the other big change is the rerun of the operation of 2008 where the bill for this crisis is bounced on the poor instead of the rich. there again what is ideological is likely to take precedence over what is actually in the economic interest of the ruling class. it is in their interest to run the economy hot but can they get over the ideological hurdle of  allowing the poor to get a 'free ride'. 

beyond this (and coming down fast) is the climate crisis and the measures that will be necessary to deal with that. 

horsemouth's mum is reading head hand heart: the struggle for dignity and status in the 21st century by david goodhart. this is a future of work type book published in 2020. 

in fact, having done a (cursory) bit of reading, rather than on relying on a five minute chat with his mum during which he didn't listen properly, horsemouth finds the classic metropolis strategy of reducing social tension by recognition of the value of the work of others in society - the head must learn to recognise the value of the work of the hands  and the heart. (and you know this is important because it is a member of the head telling you this).

goodhart (is it really just a name) is a head-shrinker. by which he means we have put too much effort and resources into educating too many people and in fact society would run better if less people were educated to such a high standard. (this may well be true of post brexit britain - that we must all learn to be grateful - horsemouth couldn't possibly comment). 

now horsemouth is not interested in recognition and status. he is interested in cold hard cash, in the worker's share of GDP,  in improved pay for nurses and careworkers and the dude who delivers the pizzas. in this way we can measure how well we are doing and also by means of political struggle  necessary to achieve this approach a condition where the workers have power and agency (blah blah). 

anyway horsemouth will have a crack at head hand heart when his mum is done with it to see what the contemporary styles in futurology say. (until then he'll have to make do with the daily torygraph business section). 

'everything is going to be alright'

we carry on  with discussions. things don't turn out as planned. 

today horsemouth works (but not til this afternoon). it looks like a clear run out for the next 10 weeks. then it's exam season. horsemouth is unsure when he will make it back to the seaside towns (dodging the patrols). he is, after all, paying to live there.

next monday a meeting of the communal endeavour.  

it is 6 months since the release (by musicians of bremen) of 'everything is going to be alright'  with its attack on the block/ UFO apocalyptic cover.  horsemouth really likes the beat, ghazale's voice, and howard's guitar and keyboard work,  he wishes he'd got the chance to sort out his own guitar parts on the second part of the track more (but covid intervened). 

five years ago he was away to number 1 the thames. john clarkson was away saying goodbye to prior to the monster drive to portugal (I journeyed through england, through france and through spain as pentangle sing). eventually (and we are talking days here and by means of a tunnel not shown on their maps but only proposed) they arrived in the north of portugal and paused at a motorway service station to discover how the portuguese motorway charging system worked. 

while they were away the brexit vote happened and the whole idea of europe went down to defeat. they literally got up the morning after st.joao and surveyed the wreckage of their euro dreams. 

people were already on the move anticipating the wreck. and finally we are here in the new dispensation. horsemouth should renew his passport and get one of those new health insurance cards so he can participate in the full horror of it. (travel insurance too). 

'the coo-coo bird, is a pretty bird, she 'tempts coos, then she flies...'

all over the states right wingers of various persuasions must be waiting for the knock (or on the lam already). the grand old duke of york had marched them up to the capitol (and now he's marched them down again). horsemouth watched an observers book of right wing nutjobs video (their tats and symbols)  - oath keepers, 3 percenters (III), QAnon, proud boys, plus your generic  american nazis. that's the extent of his research.

hell the dude to the left of jamiroquai (QAnon shaman or whatever) even looks like a young horsemouth (except horsemouth never rocked a beard). 

they were lead astray goes neil young. horsemouth doesn't disagree (but it doesn't make them any the less dangerous/ arseholes). 

and what about the 70 million trump voters. 

anyway. bad news on the covid front - almost a third of recovered covid patients return to hospital within five months and one in eight die (er but not within the 28 days so they're not counted). 

later today horsemouth works.

in the evening he watched the girl who knew too much (la ragazza che sapeva troppo) a 1963 Italian giallo directed by mario bava, the director of lots of the early  barbara steel italo- horrors (er.  kill baby kill  for example). it's a sort of hitchcockian confection (but lit in a  great film noir style). letícia román is great in it as the heroine, she's a dab hand at comedy. it is usually hailed as the first giallo.

watching you (without me)

what did horsemouth do yesterday?

he's already told you.

he went for a walk on the common. there were windchimes and crows. but there were people also (and dogs). horsemouth generally tries to stay out of their way. he made a determined effort to remember these occurrences and when he returned he fashioned them into a little poem/ list. 

he will go out today and see if the muses are similarly kind

later that night spirals. the last series. 

before that horsemouth has been working on practical invisibility. 

stage 1 - horsemouth meditates on being invisible and passing unnoticed.

stage 2 - after about half an hour of meditation horsemouth has become transparent and people entering the room will no longer say hi to him or appear to notice that he is there.

stage 3 - horsemouth has completely disappeared!

howard has been working on playing things with his (newly received) valencia cg-160 classical guitar. here's watching you without me by kate bush.

horsemouth continued to have a look at playing astronomy by the blue oyster cult, well the blue oyster cult and sandy pearlman who wrote the lyrics, they tended to farm out the lyric writing, especially on secret treaties where they wrote none of the lyrics. horsemouth plays it on his palma c-103. joe bouchard manages it (so horsemouth should be able to do it). he's shifted it to Am rather than Em (so key of c he suspects rather than g). 

horsemouth may have been unduly pessimistic about the time taken to hit top. new cases are down about a third which means that in 2 weeks death rates will be down about a third (er. back down to a 1000 a day). and we will be over the peak. 

the isolation/ the alienation  takes a psychic toll. horsemouth is back with his folks (and he would have in any event been in a shared house) but still. 

saturday (run and play)

 

horsemouth has made it to another saturday. huzzah. it's a grey day out. 

last night a very enjoyable (and slightly drunken) zoom call with howard. horsemouth and howard played around with backgrounds inserting themselves into historical memories (like a rerun of the invention of morel or something from a christmas carol). horsemouth did a tour of the upper gallery (the photographs of the ancestors). he guesses that in the cold light of day the photos don't make it (but he hopes maybe some will appear at some point). 

then down to dinner. (horsemouth thanks his family for feeding him). 

they live is a terrible movie (and horsemouth can't honestly say it's john carpenter's worst) but 'it's a documentary'. and an almost perfect MAGA movie, reaganomics crossed with bound for glory woodie guthrie-isms, resentment against slick yuppie capitalists and their media machine. they're not just globalists, they're interstellarists. horsemouth loves it. 

'this one can see!' 

but has a number of defects that carpenter's earlier exploitation output didn't have - for a start the soundtrack is terrible (when you think of all the genius electronic music he made for the halloweens, the fog, escape from new york, assault on precinct 13... imagine how great it would have been with one of those. 

more, there's a weakness with his straight ahead action heroes (that only snake plissken escapes - and even he can't carry escape from LA). a double bill with repoman maybe? a friend suggests the people under the stairs. 

even when he's not using his own electronic music carpenter can make good music choices, listen to the sheer swagger of  george thorogood's bad to the bone in christine for example. 

later. breakfast. a walk on the common in the rain. 

horsemouth has work clear out until the end of march. (he reckons).

at howard's recommendation he watched an LRB documentary on the grenfell fire and what led to it. kind of a close but potted social history of ladbroke grove, the westway like the cross-bronx expressway. but horsemouth finds it slightly disingenuous. the contracting out of social provision (and social housing) has deep roots in kensington and chelsea and it's popularity with recent tory governments is held to be down to david cameron living in the borough.  

but it's not that is it? that's not the whole story. it's down to the (curiously unmentioned) new labour government of tony blair, it was them who really took the ball of service commissioning and ran with it, cameron and osborn were following them. 

it wasn't just kensinsgton and chelsea tenant management organisation who were receiving glowing reviews from its own board members for their own service delivery it was everywhere all over the country. it is far from, as the LRB would tend to suggest, a local problem. if it were a local problem of an entrenched tory regime then the kind of service privatisations and contracting out that happened in kensington and chelsea would only have happened there but instead it happened in councils all over britain (and indeed all over the western world). grenfell cannot help you think through people's dissatisfaction with labour if it is so narrowly framed. 

and of course this is the defect in the LRBs position. it was, in the corbyn years, a kind of house journal of new labour in exile,  runciman et al. use hobbes as an apologia for state power, rather than in the way arendt uses him (as an exemplar of the social pessimism of bourgeois subjectivity). nonetheless horsemouth enjoys their blogs and podcasts attempting to think through where we are going. 

ok the sun may actually be shining outside and the birds singing. horsemouth may have to go for a walk. 

horsemouth calls for unity

sylvain sylvain has died. horsemouth likes the photos of him. he's 69 he's fat. he's old. he's got a guitar. he looks happy to be doing what he does. he likes the earlier photos of him (he's very stylish). 

“my best friend for so many years, I can still remember the first time I saw him bop into the rehearsal space/bicycle shop with his carpetbag and guitar straight from the plane after having been deported from amsterdam, I instantly loved him,” david johansen. 

it's the morning. horsemouth is up. he's turned the radiator off (it was too hot). 

now what would horsemouth (the armchair general) be saying I told you so about? 

'england is like some stricken beast too stupid to know it is dead' - william burroughs. 

well brexit probably. we are in the foothills of the 'teething problems' and once we are over those we are into the long term disadvantages that the additional paperwork and costs will bring. the fish are rotting on the piers, there's a border in the irish sea, supermarket shelves in northern ireland are emptying, the dutch customs are confiscating lorry driver's ham sandwiches (in a friendly humorous way you understand, 'welcome to brexit' they go). 

fortunately for the government the problems with brexit are hidden by the deathtoll from covid. 

phew thank fuck for that they must be going. 

so covid.  the last time horsemouth checked the deathtoll was about 1500 a day and it still hadn't hit top. having been in humanity for a while the virus is starting to pop out some interesting mutations. if we are lucky the vaccines work against them all. and if we aren't lucky they don't. horsemouth guesses we are nowhere  near global top,

the government are plotting major reforms  to the NHS having discovered they love it they are going to destroy it in order to save it (oh and no pay rise for the nurses and doctors). 

uk top for new infections showing up at hospital is probably two weeks away at best (so feb 1st?) and thereafter two weeks later (feb 15th) peak death. 

horsemouth doesn't think you did this to yourselves people. no. he blames the government. repeatedly locking down too late. rinsing its trust with you. failing to set up a working track and trace. and generally dicking around getting you to eat out to help out and back to school and back to work . they've put nadhim zadhawi  in charge of vaccinations - who if horsemouth remembers correctly was the education secretary taken out by an educational contractor to the dinner of the presidents where even hardened showgirls were horrified by the shoddy, sleazy behaviour of the VIPs. (horsemouth doesn't expect much from him). 

however, at some point, somewhere beyond the peak, he expects enough old people to have been vaccinated for the death figures to start properly dropping off. (at which point the government will try and get us all back to work). 

and in other distractions. they have started the hunting down and imprisoning jamiroquai and the other bison who rampaged through capitol hill. being a sacred beast  jamiroquai requires organic food and lo, no white privilege involved, a judge has granted it him. the rioters turn out to be off duty cops and ex and serving military people, one brought a tazer to the party, another ziplock ties, they can't have been thinking of kidnapping anybody can they? there seems to be footage of republican staffers opening side doors, republican representatives texting where their colleagues are, and tales of panic buttons being removed from key senators offices. there is, to quote bob hoskins in the long good friday, 'the stench of disloyalty' about proceedings. 

whether that will be enough for republican lawmakers to actually impeach trump or not is another matter. or maybe it will be enough for them to sort of repudiate the insurrection and make a few calls for unity.