isn't this supposed to be the summer

'so as to make use of my leisure periods in this foreign country, I feel like writing a short memoir about what happened to me during my last trip to paris, from 21st june 1821 to ** november 1830...'

- stendhal, memoirs of an egotist.

it is a fragment. abandoned. he started writing it on the 20th of june 1832. it was written over the next 13 days. 

there is a match up with the times we are about to enter. horsemouth will return to it then. 

doris lessing, erich auerbach, both discuss stendhal's character. both discuss his relationship to the times and to the pursuit of happiness. 

horsemouth has listened to music off an actual CD

this is probably the first time he has listened to music off his CDs in about 3 years (possibly more).

ok no he was listening to musicians of bremen stuff while he had the hi-fi set up in the green house. 

he had not remembered that his double CD of geechie recollections and sweet earth flying by marion brown actually starts with geechie recollections. he was surprised when it came on first. he has a drawer full of CDs that he brought soon after he came to the wilds. his current plan is to bring more (and then there are his records!!!). 

right now he's listening to dave webb's techno dub show from new river studios from off the internet. 

he has inflicted CDs of musicians of bremen volume three and volume four  on one of his neighbours. time will tell how that goes down. 

ok it's a grey morning with rain forecasted for later. (isn't this supposed to be the summer). 

causality is a funny thing (the self-mythologisation of the horsemouth)

causality is a funny thing - if horsemouth were confident his watering the garden would cause it to rain should he water the garden?

what happens happens. what caused it to happen is more difficult to say. 

ah. horsemouth has just remembered the bin (R). excuse him for ten minutes. 

on his way down to the bin he spotted a squirrel raiding the strawberries. he therefore decided to pick some.

but what caused him to pick the strawberries? was it remembering the bin, or seeing the squirrel?

horsemouth is waiting on a DO135 this will permit the main fuse in the house in london to be changed for a safer one (one without asbestos fire-proofing) and thus the meter to be replaced with a possibly more accurate smart one. 

horsemouth suspects that the clock has run out on this and he will now move out before all this can be achieved. 

he has been for a walk on the common and later he will be off bell-ringing (which progresses slowly).

horsemouth hasn't self-mythologised himself for a while. 

today not a bandcamp friday but go on buy something by musicians of bremen anyway. 

it's the morning horsemouth doesn't feel to bad after two games of pool last night and a bit more progress with the bell ringing. 

geechie recollections (tokalokaloka day two)

'clearly outlined, brightly and uniformly illuminated, men and things stand out in a realm where everything is visible...'  - erich auerbach, mimesis, chapter 1. odysseus' scar. 

we roll up towards the solstice. not much change now. 

sunrise 04:55

sunset 21:25

ok it is raining out. horsemouth would not have done the watering of the garden had he realised it was going to rain. (or maybe he would have done just for something to do). 

he's taken the eggs down to the crossroads and taken the (R)ecycling bin down the drive. 

tokalokaloka tokalokaloka

horsemouth saw a mole scooting across the drive. it made it across and then hid in some leaves. he wishes it luck (as long as it doesn't dig up his potatoes). it was a curious creature (it was probably the first time horsemouth has ever seen a live one).  they can certainly motor when they put their minds to it. 

tokalokaloka tokalokaloka

he's not sure where his reading of auerbach will go. but it is well written. horsemouth has read (somewhere, he knows that isn't very helpful) that auerbach did not have his books with him when he wrote this.

there was sun earlier (but it's due to be a rainy day).

geechie recollections (tokalokaloka day one)

marion brown's geechie recollections - recorded today and tomorrow 1973 at intermedia sound boston. (horsemouth has no idea which tracks were recorded on which days or if there are any unreleased tracks from the session. there should be a tokalokaloka pt.1 but it isn't on the album).

so what do the titles mean? 

once upon a time (a children's tale) has that 6/8ey african percussion thing going on (but also a curiously charles mingus horn chant).  

karintha (lyrics by jean toomer, narration bill hasson). come to think of it as he listens to it horsemouth is reminded of mingus. 

buttermilk bottom - an area of atlanta (now demolished). 

introduction well it's an introduction 

tokalokaloka (pt. 2) once again horsemouth had not noticed that there's no part 1. toca in spanish is to touch, tap or play. loca in spanish is crazy. horsemouth guesses it is a mnemonic for remembering a drum rhythm. 

tokalokaloka (pt. 3)

ending by leo smith. well it's an ending. 

listening to some more leo smith at the mo. it's bloody great! horsemouth has only done the first track (improv trio) thereafter the band is augmented by more trumpet players and then by charlie haden on bass. 

a wednesday. that makes it a 'take the bins down' day (R for recycling horsemouth believes). 

iconoclasm (the serenade is dead)

'... iconoclasm need not be loud and messy.' - john williams

‘(the) slow cancellation of the future’ - raymond williams in border country. 

colin conflict has died. (horsemouth can honestly say he never met him, unlike every chancer trying it on on the door of a benefit). 

above the song they were born to write - an almost perfect piece of anarcho-punk. it captures the sheer doom laden romanticism of the moment - post the miners' strike, post ronnie lee, post pacifism and post CRASS. 

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we are 3 weeks from the solstice. horsemouth should be coping with a rent rise but he was already paying more than that to shift some arrears so no change for him. this morning a phonecall to check all that out. 

roughly it is costing horsemouth £9.4k a year to keep his room in a shared house in london (and to pay his share of the gas and electric) so really he should hurry up and get shot of it. 

really horsemouth kept it on because initially he thought he was going back there, then he was having fun participating in the various decarbonisation schemes, and finally he thought he could time it nicely with mr. ian moving but it was not to be. 

7.35am and horsemouth is on his laptop. it is rainy day outside. he has just been out to feed the chickens. he has been over to the garage to take the milk over to the fridge there.  he never hears the milkman come. 

'I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end'

'I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end' 

- richard brautigan, trout fishing in america.

great line (but not quite right for this time of year). 

roger is off on his boat and out to the islands.

islands where nobody lives any more. 

where the briars have overwhelmed the fields. 

he's been injured (ruptured tendon?) so he's out of practice and not match fit. it's a shakedown cruise where you try to find all the problems before you undertake a more serious passage.

horsemouth has been watching mantan moreland in king of the zombies. (his first movie of the month). 

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today the chicken enclosure is getting strimed (so no unleashing the chickens until that has been done). 

yesterday horsemouth had to pause in his reading of han kang's human acts because it just got too depressing. he's nearly done. he may have to re-read it horsemouth has read the vegetarian  by her also (that was great too). 

why is he telling you all this? (the pervasiveness of autobiography)

horsemouth has been wittering on about the pervasiveness of autobiography

'I think covid has born many memoirs. also the current shit show that is the modern world is leading lots of people to grasp around desperately for some sort of salvation, and so books on ‘how my garden saved my life’ and other such topics (although most commonly this one) are in abundance...' replied chloe.

covid was certainly a big part of it. the chattering classes confined in the domestic realm. horsemouth experienced covid as very transformative  but horsemouth thinks the autobiographical turn goes back earlier. 

the thing that made lockdown possible was the internet, film streaming services but also social media.

once there was a notion of privacy and of private life. instead now there is a constant performance. the life of the writer is recruited into the work in the same way as it was formerly excluded - ok you know about kafka's life and loves because max brod didn't burn the diaries like he was supposed to, but how much do you know about kubin? or werfel? or milena jesenka? or indeed brod himself? (people from the same scene as kafka but whom fate didn't promote to glory to the same extent). 

and indeed how would it change your understanding of their works if you knew more about their lives? 

writers used to be busy behind the proscenium arch of the novel, anonymised, understood through their works. now their works are understood through them, through their lives recreated in biography. similarly for musicians. 

it is good that gardens are saving people's lives and sanity, but when in voltaire candide is shuffling round his garden it is a measure of hard-won wisdom but also of defeat - faced by the horror of the world (and who can blame him) candide has retreated into private life, into his garden. but this retreat is not a good thing. it is not a victory. 

horsemouth is enjoying the garden. he has just seen the first pea pod of the season, he has eaten the first few strawberries, the flowers are out on a few of the runner bean plants. his garden is behind those of his neighbours (he is just much less skilled). he has, however, realised that he has planted the onion seedlings out incorrectly and is going to have to do that again (oh dear). 

horsemouth has been out to unleash the chickens and in a bit he will go out and unlock the abbey. 

so why is he telling you all this? he finds it very reassuring to write. he began (he thinks) on a holiday in spain in about 1990 - malaga, granada, seville, cordoba, ronda, he began out of loneliness but also out of a determination to go and see. 

then there were the work diaries and commonplace books (look horsemouth here's a free book you can write in while you visit all these august institutions with their well-stocked libraries). 

he kids himself that it is publicity for his musical and cultural products. he hopes that you find some use in it (but he would probably do it anyway).