'... I will write in spite of everything, absolutely, it is my struggle for self-preservation'

 ' I have no time. general mobilization. K and P have been called up. now I receive the reward for living alone. but it is hardly a reward; living alone ends only with punishment. still. as a consequence, I am little affected by all the misery and am firmer in my resolve than ever. I shall have to spend my afternoons in the factory. I won't live at home, for elli and the two children are moving in with us. but I will write in spite of everything, absolutely, it is my struggle for self-preservation.'

kafka wakes up to the arriving horror of the first world war. 31st july 1914.

kilvert - nothing til lammas.

'in the forenoon I was at the quakers' meeting house in lombard street, and in the afternoon at st.paul's...'  - james boswell, 31st july 1763. 

the writers are busy writing. 

soon boswell's time in london (for this time) will be over.  until then he is a busy bee. 

the makers of iris  have run a switch on us - they have iris murdoch singing the lark in clear air at various points in her life (as kate winslett, as dame judi dench), and in particular when she was supposed to be giving a talk, one of the early signs of the onset of alzheimers, in fact, in real life, on that occasion,  she sang the silver swan (orlando gibbons). this is similar to the moment when julie christie sings through bushes and through briars  in john schlesinger's version of far from the madding crowd (that's not the song she sing sin the book, but it is better suited to the meaning of the film). 

like many irish tunes the lark in clear air is based on the marriage of an older tune the young taylor/ kitty nolan with new lyrics provided in belfast by sir samuel ferguson and a new arrangement. 

the jazz vinyl collecting hobby underwent a strange expansion during covid and now, as the claims of the economy reassert themselves, it is dying back. horsemouth is intrigued by people who have enough money to search out the first press of a record and the most recent audiophile edition also. he is intrigued that people would have a FOMO (fear of missing out) response to these and believe in some way that jazz records can be used as 'a store of value'. (sorry people, this is madness).

it does, however, fit in with his rereading of attali and thinking about the political economy of the music industry. 

summertime by j.m. coetzee continues to go well. the academic goes around interviewing the people who knew the poet  'john coetzee' (who is dead already) - they pretty much all thought he was a cold fish, and they pretty much all doubt that there is anything to find out by interviewing them. 

'what of his diaries? what of his letters? what of his notebooks? why so much emphasis on interviews?'

'... I have been through the letters and the diaries. what coetzee writes there cannot be trusted... in his letters he is making up a fiction of himself  for his correspondents; in his diaries he is doing much the same for his own eyes...' 

of course what kafka wanted preserved of his writing  (the most concentrated product of his labours) and what max brod preserved of him are wholly different. 

today a grey day and a journey into town (probably). the chicken coop still seems to be standing despite the absence of an electric fence to keep the sheep off. (maybe it was never necessary, maybe horsemouth's dad just liked having an electric fence).  

'when they didn't take pictures'

'I wonder how people used to remember when they didn't take pictures...' - chris marker (as quoted at the start of robert kramer's point of departure). 

howard has been to visit the moki cherry exhibit at the ICA. (myk also horsemouth believes). yes there are pictures (certainly from howard's visit). horsemouth is vicariously living off them.  

when they didn't take pictures? that is not so long ago. mobile phones it is only with their arrival that everything being filmed and recorded begins to happen. 

“before, you had people gentrifying neighbourhoods, now, with remote working, you can gentrify countries.” -  digital nomad working remotely in portugal

that said, look at the photo the observer chooses to illustrate the article with, it is beer o'clock at sunset on a terrace  in lisbon. it is the golden hour again. the world looks perfect.

someone has broken up the years since 2010 into nostalgia (for which horsemouth reads 'fallout of the 2008 financial crisis and austerity'), , 2016 (aka brexit) and plague (for which horsemouth reads 'plague').  'are we traumatised or what?' asks justagirl on twitter.

(p.s. covid is on the rise in the west country as people jam themselves down there, it is not 'over')

anyway horsemouth therefore goes to read the history of the last 15 years (and makes prognostication of the next 15 years) as,

austerity - brexit - plague - (climate crisis)

on this day in 1914 kafka is writing fragments.  

in 1870 kilvert is still on holiday in cornwall 'this morning we met two girls smartly dressed and driving cows to market with parasols up.' 

in 1763 boswell and johnson 'took a boat and sailed down the silver thames... we landed at the old swan and walked to billingsgate, where we took oars and moved smoothly along the river. we were entertained with the immense number and variety of ships that were lying at anchor. it was a pleasant day and when we got clear out into the country, we were charmed with the beautiful fields on each side of the river... when we got to greenwich... we walked about and had a good dinner.' 

this is how people remembered things when they didn't take pictures.

the coetzee (summertime) is going well. 'john coetzee' (our fictional character) has entered the university system - he will eventually become an academic and poet sufficiently noted to have researchers investigating his life after his death.  he (john coetzee) has achieved some of the immortality he was looking for (sadly the women in his life are not going to have much positive to say about him). 

we move towards lammas day. it's a bright sunshine-y morning, after yesterday's debacle of off/on rain he's unprepared to take a bet on the weather (it predicts rain this afternoon and over tonight).  

'thirteen years of tory rule...' (mysterious automata)

good morning! good morning!

'then, as now, UKania is at the fag-end of thirteen years of tory rule: the regime in place no less discredited, its economy flagging still more visibly... '

and now? we wait...

the new NLR is out. it features four articles originally published in italian in the journal il contemporaneo in 1963 covering books, films, politics etc. and featuring the usual suspects of the time peter wollen, raymond williams, eric hobsbawm and ralph miliband. there will doubtless be much to say on neo-realism and its influence on the new wave of british directors. (horsemouth would be shocked if there wasn't)

this is the sort of thing horsemouth likes. it enables him to demonstrate that he is at least aware of the existence of other countries, other cultures, other languages. 

otherwise horsemouth has been reading j.m.coetzee's summertime in which he gives a character called john coetzee an especially rough time. john coetzee is a cold, unfeeling, klutz - he takes a cousin  out for a drive and the car breaks down, an ex-girlfriend says he seems autistic and to regard people as mysterious automata,   he is a vegetarian in the midst of apartheid carnage (how futile is that?). 

an academic attempts to patch together 'john coetzee's life' into something usable.

vegetarianism often crops up in coetzee's other fiction and non-fiction. horsemouth has been a vegetarian for the best part of 40 years now. it never occurs to him to think about it.  

horsemouth started summertime without realising that it ends with the death (or at least the end of life care) of  john coetzee's father. (that may be a little tough). horsemouth had read it before but he didn't remember it, there's another coetzee round here somewhere he thinks. 

great. when horsemouth got up the sun was shining and he went around the house on a watering mission. now it is raining (though softly).  (and it has just rained again)

horsemouth has published his films, gigs, books, events list for july 2023 

a film in italian, a film in german, two expats talking (spain and mexico respectively), lampedusa on the sirens. 

on this day in 1914 kafka is still near berlin in a writer's colony of sorts. 

'made jottings on the trip in another notebook. began things that went wrong...'  

on this day in 1763 boswell is writing letters to shore up his 'future' - 

'I have touched every man on the proper key, and yet have used no deceit.'

the kilvert doesn't seem to be to hand (has horsemouth left it somewhere? he's found it). 

when horsemouth went to post this the first time the internet went down. he then succeeded in turning off the wi-fi and it took him a while to get it restarted. he thanks the guy in stockport on the phone line. he felt a real sense of panic as he contemplated how difficult it would be to live out here without the internet.

far away is close at hand (scenes from provincial life)

some friends are going out exploring barnes and mortlake (the lands of doctor dee) horsemouth wishes them good hunting exploring the infinite city of the utopians. . 

meanwhile horsemouth is out in the countryside for the duration. yesterday (a sunny day in the end) a visit to the village (shopping, prescriptions) and the garage (newspapers). his father's death notice was in the local newspaper complete with the photo taken by horsemouth's estranged cousin. 

in his head he's hearing nimrod a lot. he thinks his campaign to desensitise himself to it is succeeding. 

his brother and family visited.  his brother's eldest had success to celebrate, the young have their lives to lead. they were somewhat delayed in their coming over, the young man had forgotten that he had to move out of the university halls of residence so there was some frantic packing to be done and they arrived in a jam-packed car.  some of this is now stored in the conservatory, some in the garage. 

to compound things it was also a flying ant day of epic proportions. just before his brother and family left they all headed down to the abbey. 

after midnight on christmas eve (when no trains were running) dave and geoff (two brothers) would set out on a graffiti mission. their most famous one was far away is close at hand in images of elsewhere on the siding wall as you approached paddington.  the first part is lifted from a robert graves poem.  

it was later lifted (again) by musicians of bremen for their sorrows of tomorrow.

of course horsemouth has not made the best use of the city during his times in it. he tends to skulk close to home (wherever that may be), what drove him off and round the city was work. horsemouth looks forward to his travel card at 60 (tinged with regret that he is in fact ageing and getting older admittedly) and re-discovering the city, going on more excursions etc. 

horsemouth has submitted the electricity and gas readings for the gaff. 

he has begun reading summertime (subtitled like a french novel scenes from provincial life) by j.m. coetzee again. he now knows he has read it before but initially he had no recollection of it. it begins with what are (ostensibly) excerpts from notebooks (1972-75) and ends with notebooks: undated fragments (whether these are j.m. coetzee's real notebooks or not horsemouth couldn't tell you).  these notebooks are (within the novel) from the lightly fictionalised central character john coetzee. later chapters are people being interviewed about their memories of him.

at the moment horsemouth has the boswell diary, a kafka diary and the kilvert diary that he could have recourse to for material using the 'on this day in 1914' formula. 

in july1914 kafka has been in berlin, by the 28th he was staying with friends (in marienlyst by the look of it) but, from his diary entries, he found it uncongenial.

'despairing first impression of the barrenness, the miserable house, the bad food with neither fruit nor vegetables, the quarrels between W, and H. decided to leave the next day. gave notice. stayed nevertheless...' 

here the sun shone as it made it's way over the hill opposite. now it is lost in clouds. a gentle rain falls. in a bit breakfast and then a walk horsemouth thinks. soon the end of the month books read etc. list.  normal service is being resumed. 

 

‘I just exist then later I try to remember and write some of it down’

said bukowski

horsemouth is up. so far he has thought about his dad's death but he hasn't cried yet (which is a first). 

the electric fence  round the chicken coop presents a problem, horsemouth has lost the spike that goes into the ground as the earth - he has probably buried it beneath the sods he cut to bury the bottom of the fence to stop the chickens tunnelling their way out - as a result there is no 'ground' above which the batteries can charge the cable so that it delivers an electric shock when touched. the shock is a reasonably mild one and is mainly there to discourage the sheep from rubbing up against the fence and knocking it over (or the rabbits from tunnelling under it). the main purpose of the fence is to stop the chickens wandering off and falling prey to the local fox (and to stop the local fox from getting in). 

the solution is probably just to buy another one or maybe it was never actually needed, it was just another 'project' for his father. 

yesterday a visit from an aunt and uncle - the uncle was a steelworker at one point, his aunt was a nurse. they spent a lot of time talking and than a little time lopping branches off the tree near the old greenhouse. the trees have grown up so much they have cut of the light to it. the main worry is that they will blow about in strong wings and smash a pane of glass. there are a couple of dead trees that will probably need to be taken down. 

today his brother and the family are over (sometime about midday).  his brother's eldest has just graduated (there are photos). it's a grey day (ok the clouds may part at some point). thereafter it is a run out towards the cremation/ the memorial service. horsemouth has been listening to nimrod again and trying to work out another piece of music to go with the service, he listened through to the starts of the other enigma variations but none of them really suited.  maybe he should ask his auntie jan.

his aunt and uncle suggested bridge over troubled water (a sometime favourite of his father) but horsemouth just thinks it is too emotional. it is very 70ies - it is very of its time. 

the milkman has been and horsemouth has put the bottles over in the fridge in the garage.  in a bit he will go out and water the tomato and cucumber plants in the main greenhouse (the one visible out of his window/ the one that still gets the sunlight). 

soon enough meter readings from horsemouth's london gaff. at some stage horsemouth will have to have a chat about the bills.  

ok the sun has broken through. horsemouth will go and get some more coffee and water the tomatoes. 

nimrod and the rubaiyat

today a bright clear morning. his mum is off feeding the chickens. horsemouth was up late (7.20am woo-hoo) after getting up briefly at 6am and deciding to go back to bed (this is progress). he snoozed a little yesterday afternoon too. his mum and himself had been for a walk up on the common (to the fussell bench and back). 

in the evening horsemouth and his mum watched the sixth commandment - the exceptionally bad ben has been caught befriending then poisoning old folks in an attempt to rob them of their inheritances. he has been found guilty and sent to jail.  he only gets convicted of the first murder not of the second. his sidekick gets off (but is that the sort of thing you would care to have on your conscience?). so justice (of a sort) has been done.

his mum and himself have been watching it throughout, even though it is grim. possibly because it is unflinching they have found it therapeutic. 

he listened to nimrod again. the celebrant has agreed to do the service. horsemouth has recovered dad's copy of the fitzgerald translation of the rubaiyat of omar khayyam from the driver's side car door pocket of the truck. horsemouth had remarked on it being there. it does not contain the poem horsemouth wanted - that was a mash up by mr.social control of various lines from the rubaiyat  and on ilkley more baht' at. horsemouth will endeavour to find it. but there is probably something there already in the rubiayat that contains his father's essential attitude. 

horsemouth's folks are not believers. they are secular humanists, rationalists of the dawkins, hitchens, variety. we therefore will have to do without the rest in peace and rise in glory  and hymns (though they could of course sing some if they wanted). 

today his brother's eldest graduates from university. his mum's sister and her husband come to visit. horsemouth goes to have a look at re-installing the electric fence  round the chicken coop. 

yesterday a visit to the village store, a hardware shop where they bought an incineration bin, and the forge garage.  at some point they will have to risk a trip to tesco to stock up on food. 

that music as prophecy is elusive

 '25 years. 25 years. 25 years of social researches' - hawklords, 25 years. 

horsemouth cast his eyes over eric drott's  rereading jacques attali's bruits (2015, critical inquiry).  drott is the author of  music and the elusive revolution: cultural politics and political culture in france, 1968–1981. 

arguably it is in the new musicology that attali has had his largest effect and drott, associate professor of music theory at the university of texas at austin, has done a great job in situating the writing of the book  at that particular post-68 moment in french politics and in tracking where the work has gone.

bruits was first published in 1977 in french by the french universities press (PUF). it was translated into english by brian massumi (with a foreward and afterwards by frederic jameson and susan mcclary respectively) as noise: the political economy of music (university of minnesota press, 1985). in 2001 a rewritten and re-edited edition was published in french.

it was this last edition (and the differences with earlier editions) that formed the basis of horsemouth's review on metamute - lost in translation (9 September 2004). 

it is attali's claim of music as prophecy and in particular economic prophecy that drives it forward. and all this through an era where digital recording, production, distribution and consumption has  changed what music is. drott is much more attentive to the political and theoretical situation of bruits than horsemouth was, he has found material horsemouth did not find. that said horsemouth was working with a limited wordcount and timing constraints - the tread he was mainly pulling on was that of adorno. attali had read adorno's philosophy of modern music (it says so in the bibliography in the 1977 edition of bruits) and horsemouth read attali's  repetition as the destructive repetition of adorno. he is much more attentive to attali's text and its theoretical bases (giraud, baudrillard, information theory, autogestion) than horsemouth. 

this leads drott to a better and more detailed reading of bruits 2.0 (as the drott of the time describes it) and how it reflects/ heralds and serves changes in both french poltics and music/ the political economy of music/ the wider political economy as a whole.

horsemouth went on to investigate improvisation (the important fourth stage of attali's schema and a key musical practice) via the work of derek bailey in his article first cut is the deepest  and he did it through the work of adorno (as reflected by ben watson).  

horsemouth is up early once again (curse it). his brother has gone back to london. tomorrow his aunt and uncle visit. thursday his brother, wife and kids visit (thereafter they are off to porto on holiday). they will be covering september mostly (to permit horsemouth to get off on holiday). 

horsemouth has been hearing cream's sunshine of your love over the tune of eric clapton's wonderful tonight (does that even work?). he wonders if anyone can explain this for him. kate bushes running up that hill has also featured heavily. his brother has suggested elgar's nimrod for their father's memorial service - horsemouth will have to listen to it lots to toughen himself up for it.