january friday 13th - on the elasticity of calendars

horsemouth has escaped the clutches of friday the 13th. (frankly it is good to get the dread day out of the way so early).  but it is not the friday the 13th, there can be multiple friday the 13th's in a year, this year we are due another one in october.  friday october 13th 2023. 

thereafter it is friday april 13th 2024 and friday december 13th 2024 and thence off into the mists of future time. (horsemouth guesses that it resembles the repeat patterns of when you can reuse diaries where leap years play a significant role).  apparently there will be three friday the 13ths in 2026. 

last night (well, this morning really) he dreamt of a whodunnit film set in a stately home based on a true story. it had been made into a film twice said the dream. horsemouth is unsure about the current wave of posho murder films - it seems more cult of the celebrities rather than the aristos. horsemouth would like to say that the plebs just want to see the aristos murdered but it is not that - it is more that they would like to take a holiday in a fantasy life of the rich. 

horsemouth seems beset by memories of his failings (this is because he hasn't dealt with them). of course the sooner you deal with them the sooner you are free of them. the knots of your being must allow for some motion. on the other hand some things do not easily resolve. (schneiderman's book on lacan goes well).

horsemouth supposes that the communal endeavour's engagement with the gods of housing is kind of like the deal in bedazzled (peter cook and dudley moore play faust for laughs) - it just keeps getting worse, you think you are getting one thing (in fact you are getting another). at the moment he is trying to stretch his head round the money or rather make the money stretch round the things his head wants to do with it. 

and of course while he is doing this the money warps in time - the government have just announced that the decision date on the social housing decarbonisation fund is to move back a month or two (just like that to quote the old magical formula). of course it is not clear yet whether the end date will similarly move (and thus whether horsemouth and his band of povs will have to find more money for their share of it in less time). 

today a grim grey day. horsemouth will go out for a wander at some point no doubt. 

les lendemains qui chantent

 'the tomorrows (that sing)'

if horsemouth has understood it correctly it is a warning against unreasonable hopes (the kind of hopes that keep people going really). horsemouth is reading stuart schneiderman's jacques lacan: the death of an intellectual hero - rum goings on in intersection between french academia and psychoanalysis (but enjoyable).  

meanwhile horsemouth is still trying to square circles and get things to add up. he is hoping to still his anxiety about things by understanding them better (or at least by understanding the process better). 

yesterday the birth of mississippi fred mcdowell, but the deaths of alice coltrane and jeff beck. yesterday two short walks. took out the recycling (hail the binmnen). horsemouth thinks he may have a cold (he had some toothache too but it seems better today). yesterday (also) he missed webb david's show (darn it)- he'll have to listen to it on catch up. 

sunday (assuming he is well) round to catastro/FILLE's to play some more guitar. 

today (he has already done a mission up to powerscroft road to the book box) he doesn't know what he will be up to. there's a meeting of the communal endeavour to prepare for on the 23rd (some stuff will need to be written if only to help clarify horsemouth's thoughts)

strangely sensuous

horsemouth is back from seeing triple negative at cafe OTO. things are beginning to open up post-pandemic (if indeed we are post pandemic). 

he saw enza, darsavini (newly relocated to west london), john cunningman, john and sarah, TG, demetra, but there were loads of others. and then of course there was matthew and anya and denis. before the gig he chatted to kozo from the headliners officine (there had been a power cut and everybody was  late soundchecking). angusraze he very much enjoyed, they were fronted by a youngster from wakefield now living down in kent.(bryan? ryan?). slam dancing as spectator sport (whooda thunk it?).

triple negative were strangely sensuous this time (kind of like PIL circa the flowers of romance or flux at the time of uncarved block). it was one of those gigs where it sounded fine out front but not so good to the band onstage. john (cunningman) opined that it was a kind of dub that functioned by accretion  rather than subtraction. horsemouth thinks the sightlines for them onstage are pretty terrible anyway. 

officine were engagingly hardcore. sarah was talking about doing improv things (horsemouth has always been scared of improv). 

horsemouth drank a fair bit (the expense of that is going to sting when he sees it) and was in a remarkably cheerful mood. he took cash out (but of course the modern world is largely cashless).  he returned on the bus. 

horsemouth goes (in)to... (too much detail) ( emptying the earth of human artefacts)

horsemouth back from the land of anxiety. he gets this periodically. it's not a pretty sight. (and it can take a fair amount of time until he begins to see sense). 

when horsemouth is this way nothing works for him. not phones. not computers. not zebra crossings. 

he thinks he's out the other side of it (but really he has just delayed it until tomorrow (er. which is now today). 

he missed the message and then it took him a while to get the message and by that time his contact was out of contact (you can see why this would make him anxious). hopefully communication and reassurance will be re-established. horsemouth will find all his circles squared and all his wagons drawn up in a circle (or some other invulnerable defensive formation) and then the (largely imagined) besieging hordes will not be able to harm him (huzzah). 

and indeed so it has turned out to be. there turns out to be no rush.  

horsemouth thinks he has always been like this. 

the interesting thing was that while he was being anxious his toothache entirely vanished. (a rare case of existential pain driving out physical pain - horsemouth normally holds that it is the other way round). 

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

(attempts to draw line underneath it - at least for now).

'... look at freud's office and note with care the staggering number of funerary objects, objects dug up from the earth by archeologists. freud was passionately involved with the process of emptying the earth of human artefacts.' 

and so they are in the detectorists. which continues on in its gentle way. does horsemouth think he can get to the bottom of his anxiety? he's not sure. usually he just wants to look at the surface of things, the sunny side of them. that is normally enough to get by. 

today also (this evening) the triple negative gig (quadruple positive as a friend described it) . maybe that will cheer him up...er. hopefully it will not be oversubscribed. 

  

blues people, the black atlantic and interstellar space (the victory comes book shaped)

yesterday was the anniversary of the death (9 years ago) of the poet amiri baraka (leroi jones). author of blues people. 

blues people had a profound effect on horsemouth (when he read it during the public enemy years). he read it in concert with nelson george's the death of rhythm and blues (which basically updated the story to then modern times) and paul gilroy's black atlantic.  if he is honest charles shaar-murray's crosstown traffic about jimi hendrix was also important to him, frank kofsky's black nationalism and the revolution in music about john cotrane too. later kodwo eshun's more brilliant than the sun. 

of course a lot has happened since then. 

having read two julian cope's in quick succession (head-on  and repossessed) horsemouth has read another singer-songwriter's autobiography that of p.p arnold (former ikette,  lover of mick jagger, jimi hendrix , (er.) rod stewart, mod,  and even roller-skating train in starlight express). she was in the right place at the right time  twice maybe three times in her life (she escaped from being in a loveless marriage with two kids aged 17 to be in the ike and tina turner review and then escaped again from the violence and exploitation of that into the london rock scene (and arguably a different kind of exploitation)).

there's a lot in this life  but it's also a familiar musicians life, the records that don't sell, the demos that don't come off, the recordings unreleased, the collaborations that don't happen. she lives a life between britain and the LA searching for the way back in.  

and hers is a life that, like the music, is at once the wider social process and a victory over it. in some ways the victory comes book shaped. 

gered mankowitz takes some photos  of her in the 70ies as sci-fi princess (like she should have been with sun ra or the art ensemble of chicago), it's the image on the cover of the book. horsemouth will hunt these out they look amazing. the book (soul survivor) is from the aldi book box. horsemouth will probably return to south of nowhere. 

horsemouth waits for the year to re-start. today a rainy day, nonetheless more of a walk and wander round kind of day. 

there's an awful lot of coffee in brazil... (diaries and notebooks)

'I had never been a writer or keeper of neat notebooks, yet I now needed to write continuously....'               - julian cope, repossessed: shamanic depressions in tamworth and london (1983-89).

... and it takes an awful lot of toy cars to keep julian cope's show on the road throughout the post-teardrop explodes years (he becomes a collector of dinky toys). other than that it's one long vast cold shoulder. japan saves him.

bolsonaro  is (almost to the day) having his copycat coup. horsemouth does not know enough about brazillian politics to make any kind of predictions. 

horsemouth has started on antonio lobo antunes south of nowhere (the title reminds him of bukowski's south of no north)- an ex-medical officer in a bar in lisbon in the 70ies reminisces about the angolan war (it's a chatto fiction proof edition from 1983 with a purple cover). john left it (horsemouth thinks he left all the books from the sally army in walthamstow unable to jam them into his rucksack). the prose is a little purple too (but maybe that's the character). horsemouth thinks his other antunes went west (but it may be round here somewhere buried in the stacks).

john also left a bohumil hrabal as well - closely observed trains (czech classic - there was a film too). john had no sooner returned to porto than it flooded. (horsemouth does hope everyone is ok). 

the angolan war is the thing that kicks it off - faced with their own unwinnable war in the global south the portuguese army rebel and bring down the dictatorship of salazar. there then follows a period of actual decolonisation (where the portuguese repudiate the colonial project). these processes are however never total - how do you handle this if you are from brazil?  

sten has headed off out of the door (in a bustle). 

yesterday he visited minty - he's up some jazz CDs from a friend of jacqueline's. some earlier than he usually likes it john coltrane (blue train/ giant steps), some eric dolphy, but some can too. 

horsemouth is not (physically) writing very much in his diaries and notebooks. he's started on his read, listened to, visited list for january. he's made some notes on his diet and on his walking. the little black notebook has not quite made it up into the diaries and notebooks box yet, the 2023 day a page does not yet feel natural and inevitable. horsemouth is writing it in cheap biro that may be a reason. 

this week the triple negative gig (wednesday 11th), maybe something with the mari lwyd (friday 13th). 

the reason (I have)

'being useful to others suddenly seemed to be of paramount importance' 

horsemouth is up early. oh yes he is. well, not so early. he's been slugging in bed all the way up to a 9am start. he really should try and roll it more towards 8am. it's not that he aims to be 'up with the lark' but he could do with not missing daylight. we are still in the dark half of the year - daylight is valuable energy.

meanwhile in porto (horsemouth's adopted home town) there has been flooding. it has rained heavily and giant mudslides have rolled down the hills in the centre (rolling the odd pedestrian down with them). waterfalls off the top of fontinhas (fon-ti-NYUSH) and down the hillsides (too steep to be developed). he thinks john will be fine (he's not on the ground floor and he's up above palacio crystal at the top of the hill opposite fontinhas. ze he's a bit more worried about (he's halfway down the hill). nuno moved out of town a while ago.  

meanwhile horsemouth is reading julian cope's repossessed -it has finally started to happen for him (again) - it was an engaging read but horsemouth will soon it will be done and can return to the reputable stuff. 

it's a while before horsemouth can return to mixcloud - so here's a mix from about a year and a half ago.