august the 8th (the pleasure of creating a harmonious whole)

grange hh · Time

so it looks like the next musicians of bremen  recording campaign will begin 8th of august - when howard's work has finished and he's had a week off to recover. here's the current version of time (if time was a lie). howard was wondering what theme he's whistling here and will doubtless take it down when he's found out. any ideas? (horsemouth realises as he types this that this is not much of an incentive). 

of course time isn't a lie. of course time isn't a lie. it can lie heavy. or it can flash past your eyes like the memories of a drowning man, it can tap you on the shoulder when the party is in full swing. 

outside it's a beautiful morning (so beautiful horsemouth thinks it might be safe to get some of his clothes washed - he brought spare clothes stuffed in his guitar cases). his dad is already out on the table outside sat in shorts, drinking tea and doing the crossword. there's a lot of birdlife round here (horsemouth's parents feed the birds).

horsemouth went for a walk on the common and at some point he ran up the drive from the road (his parents live halfway up a hill) for exercise. 

last night horsemouth was carrying on reading freya stark (both the coast of incense  and a winter in arabia). 

there was a disagreement on an expedition and her editors are trying to make her take out events and her reactions to them. the debate has spilled over unhelpfully. 

'it is a curious thing how any personal feeling vanishes and only the pleasure of creating a harmonious whole remains...'

this is of course one of the major pleasures of songwriting. songwriting as processing.  

'I agree about the delight in detail for its own sake -  a pure form of happiness; I think too that it is a mistake to think one sort of work intrinsically superior to another.'

today. breakfast a walk on the common. some reading. probably a walk with his mother in the valley. then more reading and farting about on the internet.  bed. 

the grateful nation and the poisoned chalice of health

good morning my fellow babylonians. what a day it is, was, and will be!

we edge towards the end of the month (and peak over the edge into july). 

horsemouth has been reading freya stark's a winter in arabia online (thank you archive.org) and very good it is too. he also watched a documentary where she is carted half way up into the mountains in nepal on mule back to be questioned by someone who clearly hasn't read her books. a cheerful old stick she responds with some well-meaning generalities.

of course it was freya stark who visited the valley of the assassins thus returning to us wisdom's alternative to war (kill the ruling class before they kill you). curiously horsemouth is only now making the connection with ninjitsu.

a winter in arabia is interesting because she stays in one place with some other brits and (like the locals) gets sick all the time. she boils the water (she still get sick) 

matt han(d)cock has fallen. but not when it would have mattered, not when he was being  fucking useless and leaving  the nurses and doctors without PPE but a year and a half later he was having an affaire (ok ok he got her appointed into the government but he's a busy man). mysteriously the surveillance camera in the minister's office (yes that's right,the surveillance camera in the minister's office) seems to have accidentally turned on. 

it will now be all his fault. (and not boris's for leaving him in post for a year and a half).

the poisoned chalice of health has been passed on to sajid javid (or live evil as horsemouth often refers to him in an obscure miles davis themed joke). but see boris has had to spread out the ministerial posts beyond his supporters (the seven dwarfs) and invite an enemy in the front door. sajid will of course be eager to please and will end lockdown for boris (er. irreversibly - so following the science (the third law of thermodynamics, the law of entropy)). 

the grateful nation might not be so grateful when grannies start dying even though they've been jabbed. the disease still kills mainly the over 50ies (so that's reassuring says horsemouth the over 50). 

ellen mcilwaine the guitarist from awesome early psychedelic rock band fear itself   has died, later she played some awesome stuff with unison tuned slide guitars. you can hear she's put the work in studying indian music. 

 

'while tragedy collected... visible to all'. (haunted by sickness)

RIP jon hassell.

is the winter of 1937-38 and  freya stark is lost in the middle ages. 

(horsemouth has been dipping freya stark's the coast of incense  aided by the page headings. 

'what has chiefly remained with me from that winter, apart from the beauty of the valley - pictures that lie deep in my mind, is the intimacy with a world so strange and remote: it amounts almost to an annihilation of time, for the then scarcely visited smaller valleys of the Hadhramaut seemed to be separates by centuries rather than space from the life of Europe: I thought constantly of some illuminated manuscripts, roughly painted with drapes sandalled figures and crowded backgrounds of towns, coming suddenly awake and living and moving beyond its frame: and the history of the middle and even the dark ages  will never again be mere history to me, since I have lived in it and known what it has been...'

the book she will write about this will be called a winter in arabia, (,which horsemouth will attempt to find online and read, hoping that it will be like carlo levi's christ stopped at eboli. 

but soon, as she puts it, the background to our lives will come alive and war will begin.'while tragedy collected... visible to all'.

the other impression she received are now far more familiar to us.

'the other impression that remained was far less agreeable, for it was the feeling of being haunted by sickness, a pervasive, intangible presence in everything one ate, or touched, or did. my companions, who did not share my pleasure in the medieval aspect of life, felt this even more than I did: the succumbed one after the other, and so did I, and we were hardly ever all well together... the winter passed like a balzac novel, its events unrolling slowly in an atmosphere of dramatic squalor far more intense than their apparent smallness seemed to warrant.'

horsemouth likes this section and will type in more when he gets the chance. 

yesterday. a walk on the common and then later a walk with his mother down by the abbey, by  the village hall (playground freshly tarmacked), and along up the river.  (and the they had to walk back).

today a rainy and grey morning (but everything is very green and is growing apace). we are still at midsummer (though it is difficult to believe) and firmly in the bright half of the year. 

the freya stark was horsemouth's last reading of the evening (while he listened to his mixcloud mix of five months ago). earlier he had been reading harry de  quetteville's piece in the torygraph.

harrry (de quetteville is an old Brittany name) has noticed that there are rather a lot of pesky europeans still in the UK and that they are applying for residency. there are rather more of them than the government thought, not the 4 million of home office estimate but more like 6 million. good (says horsemouth) who as you know likes foreigners. the article is uneasy in tone between celebration and torygraph panic. 

horsemouth needs glasses

horsemouth needs glasses. he finds the text sizes on things uncongenial. 

after a little confusion he's into blogger this morning. he is typing this on his dad's spare laptop (a little lenovo thing - and very nice it is too). 

horsemouth's friend (richard wildhare) put on a series of films in hereford. 

I am a cliché is about poly styrene (and her daughter). the sex pistols, the clash, horsemouth can hear they are good but they don't really do it for him. x-ray spex (poly styrene's band), on the other hand, really do do it for him, because in addition to being exciting it is also smart. musically it is not smart (but it is very well made) but thematically in terms of the lyrics and the art work it is. 

poly suffers from mental health issues and misdiagnosis of those issues (and her daughter suffers because of it). they join the hare krishnas. the daughter is taken into care. eventually after much pain, and a comeback gig, the little boat with a candle containing poly's ashes floats off down an indian river. 

white riot is a film about rock against racism. again there is a focus on design but it also emphasises printing (those posters won't reproduce themselves). again there's great courage (it is difficult to remember how dangerous and apocalyptic  those times were). the main guy is very articulate about it, that ordinary people got to make history. 

at  the film showing horsemouth and richard met john rose of pink drone. vinyl was exchanged. 

outside it is a cool grey morning. in a bit breakfast. lots of rain is predicted for the coming week. he's been for a walk on the common. it's looking very lush. 

 

back from the gig

well he's not entirely back. horsemouth plans to hide out at this parents for a bit. 

so how did the gig go?

it went well horsemouth thinks. he didn't play particularly well (he seemed to be cursed with bumble fingers) and his between song patter was adversely affected by senile memory loss (for instance he simply could not remember the name of the reverend sabine baring-gould).

otherwise it was good. (and they paid him - thank you sproatley). he opened with satan (your kingdom must come down) and ended with a request from richard for the devil song.  he got in when the faun met alice, worldes blisse, the werewolf from the first and third albums, on broadbury down from the new album, gentleman john, legs from his other songwriter collaborations (with rusty moore and duncan tangy respectively).  he attempted to end with karen dalton's something on your mind (which the woman from the other  band haress very kindly said suited his voice, he has to thank her too for howling along (quietly) during the werewolf).

of the guitars the hummingbird copy got a lot of love, the hohner was a bit quieter but it sounded really nice on something... (he really should try changing the strings more often). 

richard wildhare  (his planted stooge in the audience) called for the devil song  and horsemouth obliged. he'd prepared a fragment of amarach  but it wasn't going so well that horsemouth was inspired to get it out. he'd been full of plans to take only 1 guitar and bring the banjolin (and get in a version of high rise strutter's ball) but in the end he bottled. 

thereafter haress played a most excellent set of folk shoegaze (with a foot operates shruti box). apparently there is some footage somewhere (if he can find it he'll give it to you). 

he thanks sproatley, the people at the venue (the babar cafe), the soundman, steve, richard, stass, gilly, moira and steve for coming and the guy called alex on their table who bought two CDs. 

the next night 

horsemouth went out to richard's showing of white riot (about the activities of rock against racism) and I am a cliche a film on the life of poly styrene (and her daughter).  these were very good. richard is showing them again tonight and horsemouth will probably take the time to discuss them tomorrow. 

Gigday! (finance and the problems of autobiography)

 'from love one can only escape at the price of life itself' 

notes a somewhat forlorn freya stark in her autobiography (the coast of incense - autobiography 1933-1939 which is largely compiled out of letters and diary entries). her visit to the hadhramaut (the south of saudi arabia) ends in disaster when she comes down with measles. this results in pneumonia (as it often used to), which results in heart trouble. she has to be airlifted out and spends the best part of a year convalescing. 

as a child horsemouth has measles (which resulted in pneumonia). this left him with dodgy lungs (hence his desire to avoid an encounter with coronavirus). he remembers looking at the coal fire (and coughing at the smoke). 

by 1935 freya is mostly recovered and visits iraq. on a page headed finance and the problems of autobiography (page headings! another luxury of meta text -  another page is labelled a writer's problem) she tells us;

'it is the most difficult thing in writing an autobiography, to determine how much of one's private feelings one must explain...' 

Gigday. 

to get to the gig horsemouth will head off one-ish. he may head off earlier (he often gets 'itchy feet' when he has to travel). a walk a train a tube another train (from paddington station) a change at newport (remind him not to get out at abergavenny) a walk down from hereford station to the venue. in truth he would have gone up to hereford to visit his folks (and richard wildhare and stass) at some point over the summer anyway - this just brings it forward. 

there is a slightly cheaper route via worcester (but it takes an hour longer). there is probably a route via birmingham too (ditto).  

he will probably hide out at his parents for a couple of weeks until the school term is over and then return to the seaside towns. then himself and howard can get on with their recording campaign for 2021. 

there will probably be a slight break in his blogging for the next two/ three days please bear with him. 

it looks like the builders are back in next door so he would not have been able to sit out in the back garden anyway.

a small minded act of revenge for brexit (the warring states)

horsemouth is up. sten is up too. outside it is a bright sunny morning. horsemouth however is wearing a jumper and jeans and is wrapped in a sleeping bag. he's waiting for the day to warm up and his headache to vanish (glass of ricard before he went to bed while watching ninja movies). 

these films are set in the sengoku or warring states period of japanese history 1497-1615 (named in analogy with the warring states period of chinese history). the japanese state was having difficulty asserting its authority over the feudal lords (who were, true to their name, doing rather a lot of feuding). 

tomorrow horsemouth goes up to hereford to play a gig. (remind him to empty the flower vases before he goes). the next night a friend (richard wild hare) is doing a film showing so horsemouth will go to that. after that horsemouth will probably go and hide out at his parents for a bit (at least until howard is available to do some recording).

he has decided on what songs to play (if not what guitars to take). he has checked out train times. 

this year, for this recording season (mid-july and august),  horsemouth thinks the plan is to record some guitar duets just using the zoom recorder and the microphones available in the style of bert and john.  (rather than importing it into the computer and doing loads of airbrushing, adding beats, keyboards etc.). it all depends on time and stamina (and lockdowns and travel and suchlike).

sten keeps asking him when will there be a fall of the house of fitzgerald II.  horsemouth does not know. there was a song (but it seems to have stalled).  

yesterday horsemouth was, if not actually sunbathing, at least, out in the back garden (the builders haven't been around for a while). later he went for a walk and plucked four cherries off the tree by the waterworks on lea bridge road. on the marshes there's plenty of rocket out now. it looks like it will be a good year for the damsons.   

he listened to an interview with paul orbital on podcast (you see he almost wrote radio there) by martin ware of the human league. paul recounted an interesting near death experience (perhaps that's what it takes to wake you our of mere habit into actually living).