'unire la musica alle idee del proletariato e dei movimenti giovanili'

a clip from the start of angelo rastelli's movie nudi verso la follia. the film begins with an excerpt of don cherry's show at the 6th re nudo pop festival in 1976, at the parco lambro, near milan.

among the other musicians toni esposito on drums, giampiero pramaggiore on guitar (here with don and moki on italian tv) and moki cherry on tampoura (but you can't really hear her because the others are firing off into the heavens).

'the real merit of this document is as a  photograph of a movement that, as finardi says, after at least three years of illusion of uniting music with the ideas of the proletariat and youth movements, was now on the verge of an epochal change'.

the full movie is available on youtube. horsemouth continues his researches into an era he knows little about. 

wait let horsemouth check what day it is. 

it's the thursday. 

horsemouth goes off to sit in on a zoom meeting 4.30pm in the afternoon (decarbonisation stuff) to be followed by a consortium meeting friday (after tuesday's social housing regulation stuff). otherwise the communal endeavour stuff all rolls along keenly - they have taken on debt and are paying it off but do not yet have the rental income to cover that debt (but they will do soon). 

next week the management committee meeting. 

for the meeting this afternoon he will journey down through the sun fried streets and across the parched parks full of beautiful people. h_____y is, horsemouth has argued, the equivalent of montreal's plateau. 

he listened to david runciman making sense of joan didion's disquiet with the era. 

horsemouth is a vegetarian (here are some reasons why). he has been a vegetarian for something like 40 years now and does not regret it one bit.

'so you wanna be a writer...'

two years of outlaw bookseller. thank you dude (it has all been very enjoyable).  horsemouth is impressed with the gift and that both outlaw and bookpilled are making a go of it. 

horsemouth and sten have just had one of their kitchen conversations (not the one where horsemouth remonstrates about the kitchen being a tip but the more pleasant one where they discuss the news/ collapse of the tory party/ state of the world). both horsemouth and sten nurture ambitions to be writers - though neither is clear, horsemouth would say, as to where their talents lie and how best to direct them. 

horsemouth wakes up with a sore throat (and a number of mosquito bites).

yesterday a walk down through the burning streets of the city to the office of the communal endeavour to catch up with colin and participate/ observe a zoom meeting about the social housing regulation act and the current government enthusiasm for using the consumer standards model for this. horsemouth is not convinced that increasing the regulatory burden here will necessarily lead to better outcomes (personally he's firmly convinced that it won't but force majeure etc.). 

the basement was nice and cool (for once horsemouth sees the sense in it).

a lot of the impetus for this comes post-grenfell. instead of focusing on the governments failure to legislate to ban inflammable cladding as they promised the coroner they would do after the lakanal house fire (which in all probability would have actually prevented the 72 deaths at grenfell) we have the misdirection onto the quality of housing services the residents of grenfell experienced before the fire. 

this is the pseudo-problem the current legislation is designed to fix. 

at the grenfell inquiry their inaction had to be explained when faced with the  persistent complaints and safety concerns of tenants. housing worker attitudes were taken to be the problem  when a discussion of the limiting of resources made available would have more clearly explained the situation. 

really and truthfully the poor services social housing tenants receive derives from their being labelled 'chavs' and social failures - the housing workers working with them only reflect and enforce wider societal attitudes.

horsemouth suspects that when the next (labour) government gets in they will add their own legislation on top of this. 

after the meeting horsemouth wandered back up across the park (and very pleasant it was too). about a four and a half mile walk there and back all told. 

thursday and friday horsemouth goes for further zoom meetings in pursuit of  social housing decarbonisation money

naima karlsson (grand-daughter of moki cherry) picks some tunes and is  interviewed (briefly) about one hour in to this show. there's a good discussion of  an improvisatory turn (and there's some nice music). horsemouth will give it another listen when his head is more in tune with it

SOND - the 'embers' (the fall of another year) and after that the 'u-aries'

'immense depths of thought in expressions of common speech; holes dug by generations of ants.' - squibs I, baudelaire from intimate journals.

and so here we are. horsemouth is in his bed (he's sitting up in bed). outside there is glorious golden light coming from leyton (and probably leytonstone beyond it). he has his coffee but he will need to recharge his cup after this sentence. 

cup recharged.

well it looks like september in the city will be glorious. 

this is by way of consolation for upcoming winter (SOND - september, october, november, december, the 'embers' and after that the 'u-aries'). but for now september doesn't belong to it - it belongs more properly to the summer. temperatures edging up to 30C, the young ladies wandering around in appropriate clothing (pardon horsemouth he's a filthy old letch). 

yesterday afternoon horsemouth sat outside in the shade and read for a bit (j.m. coetzee's waiting for the barbarians - an uncharacteristic work because it's not ostensibly about being a writer). the spine on horsemouth's king penguin edition (so probably a slim 'b' edition) is broken and the textblock has fractured into sectors held together by dried glue so that he has to be careful not to spill out the blocks of pages. that said his reading of it goes well (p.41). 

in theory coetzee's book lifts something of zbigniew herbert's report from the besieged city (nope horsemouth has got that wrong, it is in fact based of cavafy's waiting for the barbarians, but the sentiment is similar).

'too old to carry arms and fight like the others- 

they graciously gave me the inferior role of chronicler'

later horsemouth was in victoria park to see enza. they sat out in the golden sunlight and talked. they drank some italian non-alcoholic drink that tasted of almonds (it being a work night), horsemouth failed to catch the name of it. horsemouth had brought tangerines but they didn't go well with it. eventually (growing cold) they set off for a walk managing a half-circuit before the locking up of the gates chucked them out onto the side streets. 

horsemouth is planning out his activities for the week. minty is off for a number of early morning excursions (going for a wander before the day warms up too much).  horsemouth would like to join up but that means addressing it early doors. he has some meetings he must attend on zoom.  thursday he goes to meet colin. friday he has a choice to make. saturday howard comes to visit. 

 

drac's back

horsemouth wakes up. he slept well.

he is back in his bed in his shady basement flat in sunny hackney. 

in his absence his room had filled up with flies. he slept with the window open at night and they are mostly gone. 

once he had got home (walking back over from hackney downs) he had a quick chat with ian and then headed up london fields on the off chance (sunday, bright sunny day) that there was someone about. 

hackney was beautiful in the sunshine (as were the people). 

there he bumped into stipey paul, lisa, and lise and sat around drinking and chatting. horsemouth wasn't into discussing anything deep and heavy and so he rolled the discussion in the direction of zoltan hound of dracula and race with the devil  - the two classic, have motor home will have shocking horror experience movies. 

horsemouth had two whitstable bays and then wandered home. some indian dudes had over-catered their party so there was some free food (thanks dudes). pretty much as soon as it went dark he headed off to bed (getting up at 11pm for a shower). 

it's a greyish and cool morning. the bbc weather shows blazing sunshine all day and all week (and possibly immobilising hot temperatures - he sees a 31C in there). sunrises from a quarter past six, sunsets ending at a quarter to eight. we roll in the direction of the equinox. 

he checked the colenso road book box on the way over to london fields (nothing special).

it is a monday morning and most of horsemouth's friends will be off to work. friday a birthday party in the park. horsemouth will endeavour to get in as many visits to friends as he can in the coming few weeks. 

p.s. he's had a quick look but can't tell if his sphere girl with the golden eyes edition is the dowson translation. 

the girl with the golden eyes (and the dying poet)

ernest dowson is poor, drinking way more than is good for him and not eating correctly - but at least he's in paris (and hanging out with paul verlaine (who is frankly even more fucked up than he is)). he is there with the abstemious o'riordan. he has finished translating balzac's  the girl with the golden eyes (horsemouth should check his copy when he is back to see if this is the translation he owns). 

now the genius of balzac's short novel lies in the opening chapters eulogising the hard-working, multi-tasking we would now say, citizens of paris. veritable universal men capable of doing every task and trade. living negations of the division of labour. 

horsemouth plans to travel back to the city today. there has been a train strike (hell there have been two train strikes by different unions - friday and saturday), there seems little point in being out the door too early, best to let normal commercial operation re-assert itself (financial tragedy that it is). the unions are correct - the railways are not unprofitable to the private companies running them (but they should be), these companies are simply farming the subsidies. the structures of the industry a labyrinth designed to obfuscate this. 

once back in the city horsemouth will be available for meetings and such like. 

currently we are in the RAAC crisis - it has been known for years that rapid autoclave aerated concrete can become unsafe over time and that many schools, hospitals and public buildings were built using it. as the government moves towards the exit door (and not during the 13 years of its rule) it has decided that it is a major issue that must be dealt with now (ten seconds before the schools re-open). 

everything seems permanently on the point of falling apart (or to have fallen apart already and we are into the 'pretend it hasn't happened' phase. 

yesterday a bottle of beer with his brother before dinner. (in a bit probably breakfast).  

a grey and foggy day ( the embers of the year )

it's a grey and foggy day out there.

good morning! good morning! good morning!

it's 50 years of  a live supreme. carlos santana and john mclaughlin attempt to take heaven by storm. today the anniversary of the release of hergest ridge as well. 

'in complete helplessness barely wrote two pages...' - franz kafka 1914

on his visit to hereford horsemouth bought a stash of decent pens (black hi-techpoint V7s), these are the kind of pens he used to use for work, and his preferred writing and drawing means. maybe this will encourage him to physically write and draw more. broadly since the pandemic he has drawn/ written with whatever cheap biro/ pencil etc. came to hand or could be scavenged (and his diaries bear the scars of it). 

to write horsemouth often needs to read (he needs a project). he has a number of books ready to go or moderately commenced (the ernest dowson goes well)

we enter the embers of the year (september, october (sic.), november, december. we are into autumn (soon enough we will be into winter). in general horsemouth continues to find the weather in september pretty decent. from here on in about a third of the year remaining. 

horsemouth's brother arrives at 3pm ish (having dropped his eldest off in oxford). horsemouth returns to the wen at some point soon (he has much of september off).  he has a number of (zoom) meetings. 

from the summer solstice to the autumn equinox (after the golden age then what...?)

we are three-quarters of the way from the summer solstice to the autumn equinox.

out here it is a misty morning with a heavy dew upon the trees. there is a reliable golden-ness to the sunshine. the swifts are flying about. horsemouth has seen some rabbits. 

today a visit by relatives. saturday horsemouth's brother arrives. sunday or so horsemouth returns to the wen for a little while.

horsemouth takes refuge in cyclical time.  

last night horsemouth watched an appreciation of john carpenter - there was the usual chat about they live being a documentary of reaganomics. the truth is that the early stuff is the good stuff (horsemouth would find it difficult to pick a movie where it all goes to pot - but to pot it all goes). 

the crime drama horsemouth has been watching with his mother has finished (leaving ample set up for series three). there are (of course) holes in the plots (she was banging on the door for ages but none of the neighbours saw it or mentioned it?).    

horsemouth walked down to the post-box to post some mail and then over to a house in the village to deliver some eggs. earlier in the day a visit to hereford. he bought  alexandre kojève's the notion of authority in a verso hardback (ten squid) in the oxfam. he had an enjoyable wander round the back streets (it's a pretty town in many ways). 

'there comes a moment, with the contradictions of history ultimately resolved, when this teleology itself comes to an end. the end of history thesis...'

what is this teleology?

'an immanent teleology that guides the dialectical movement of negativity, the very force of ideologies of progress.'

all the above able summary of the end of history thesis from françois terré's introduction to the french edition of the book (in hegar weslati's translation). it is a strange book for  kojève to be writing,  a discussion of the sources of authority in the era of marshall pétain. 

there is a piece on the pandemic horsemouth would like to review but it is from 'across the tracks' - he will take another look at it. 

the consortium meeting for the collective endeavour has been delayed by a week (the better to assemble it).