science fiction, rock music and the counter-culture ( in many ways a golden age)

huzzah! end of the month! horsemouth has made it!

as horsemouth often relates it was the bbc tv series time out of mind (17th september 1979) that introduced him to all this. in the middle of the documentary about michael moorcock there was a clip of hawkwind playing silver machine (and at that point, with the swooshing of synthesizers, horsemouth saw the light).

interestingly enough the IMDB entry for it claims that it features one jerry cornelius as himself.

horsemouth first saw hawkwind play sophia gardens in cardiff  9th december 1979 (his first gig).  he then went back to caerphilly to see his old friends and to see  the levitation tour 8th november 1980. 

horsemouth saw michael moorcock open for hawkwind (with a poem and then coded languages) later than the  sonic attack tour (winter 1981) so probably winter 82. 

he saw hawkwind on the sonic attack tour and on the choose your masques tour (colston hall 31st october 1982). broadly he parts company with them on the chronicle of the black sword tour 1985. 

bob calvert horsemouth saw at theatre space sometime in the early 80ies (80 possibly) and then again at the hammersmith clarendon (14th november 1986). horsemouth had made his way over there on his own (because he was a hawkwind obsessive) at some point he remembers seeing all the crusties from hackney arrive at the tube station.

he saw nik turner's inner city unit a couple of times round about those times. once with here and now at the half moon herne hill (1983 he guesses). he saw the lloyd-langton group a couple of times (once up at dingwalls). 

other than that horsemouth saw moorcock once this century at the new british library as part of a panel with john clute, brian aldiss and norman spinrad. he felt a little sorry for spinrad (who was clearly the 'new boy' in these august circles). by now we are moving into nostalgia. 

in 2013 he went with sean to watch the warrior on the edge of time tour. 

it was that point of contact between science fiction, rock music and the counter-culture. to horsemouth it looked like a way out. punk (and the sex pistols had played caerphilly in 1976) had been and gone (and was something for bigger kids). there was the mod revival and two tone. there was early electro-pop and germans with synthesizers (tangerine dream, kraftwerk). it was in many ways a golden age. 

today horsemouth is off to hereford. he will hunt out second hand books while leaving his mum to deal with the bank etc. relatives are coming over friday. his brother is coming up saturday. 

'cold and empty. I feel only too strongly the limits of my abilities'

who knew that the apocalypse was going to be so slow and expensive? this was the rhetorical question posed by the girl on the website. 

possibly ballard. came back the response from one of horsemouth's friends. (horsemouth had posted some ballard recently come to think about it).

yes. replied horsemouth, he likes to give that impression that he's a  a connoisseur of apocalypses.

horsemouth and zali (for it was he) then imagined the breakfast in the ruins scene of aldiss, ballard and moorcock sitting around in pyjamas, eating hard-boiled eggs and discussing the end of the world. 

zali imagined them in derry and toms famous roof garden (and beset by attack helicopters). 

'pesky critters' said moorcock unshouldering the afghani stinger knock-off anti-aircraft missile. 'where did that one crash?' aldiss gestured vaguely with his wine glass. 'not buckingham palace again surely...' 

heavily scaffolded this kind of fanfic, one reliant on the original creations of aldiss, ballard et al. and their public personas. if you were to 'file off the serial numbers'  (and disguise the original source material) what would to happen?

'pesky critters' said horsemouth unshouldering the afghani stinger knock-off anti-aircraft missile. 'where did that one crash?' zali gestured vaguely with his wine glass. 'not buckingham palace again surely...' 

probably a diminution of the piece's effectiveness. (maybe not).

virginia woolf writes of the difficulty in writing when you are starved of the resources to do so - she starts in the male oxford colleges (which being a woman she can only visit on invitation).  they feed her well and it is very comfortable (because they are rich). it is from an essays about essays series by david runciman. 

peter conrad (who also writes in oxford colleges) is out in belem in the lisbon of the 70ies, 80ies. up on the hills the ambassador's residences, down by the river the shanty towns. he goes down the hill to investigate and it results in the first memorable scene in the book (which given that it is about half way in is a pity). 

it takes more than material comfort to write (but nothing can be written without a certain level of comfort). it takes an encounter (horsemouth tends to shy away from these). or perhaps what the encounter shows is that conrad has not gone deep, he writes from exteriors but not from himself, 

'cold and empty. I feel only too strongly the limits of my abilities.'  remarks kafka this day in 1914. yesterday in 1914 he writes 'the end of one chapter a failure: the other chapter, which began beautifully...' 

yesterday horsemouth buried daisy the dog (go well little creature). they buried her with the things that related to her life - lead, harness, muzzle, bed, a squeaky toy, a tennis ball to chase. horsemouth hopes that he has buried her deep enough and that she has a good decomposition. the grave goods with her are mostly plastic and so will last forever. he hopes he has set an explicable  scene for the archeologists. 

last night the detective serial. 

today a visit to the village to post something off. 

films, books, gigs, events august 2023

books

- where I fell to earth; a life in four cities  (peter conrad) about half

- detached retina (brian aldiss) about half also

-  madder music, stronger wine (jad adams' biography of ernest dowson 'poet and decadent') started.

- diaries (kafka, as edited by max brod) 1914 and thereabouts

- kilvert's diary (1870) and end of boswell's london journal.

- torygraph money, reaching EPC C makeover column

- bhanu kapil’s 'twelve questions'

- don, moki, neneh and eagle-eye cherry and other visitors at the dome project at utopia and visions, moderna museet, stockholm, 1971 (museum website)

-  pink beams of light from a god in the gutter (gabriel mckee). an appreciation of the religious elements in philip k. dick's life (fits in well with the erik davis)

- NLR 'zombie economy' article

- letter to publisher einaudi and 'message from the emperor (mario tronti) LRB and NLR

films

 - the revelation of PKD (erik davis talk) and a number of others. outlaw bookseller's thoughts on UBIK

- survivors/ the good life (first few episodes as available)

- the deerhunter/ the godfather II (wedding scenes)

- elizabeth and the spy thing (terrestrial tv)

- performance by naima karlsson on the occasion of the opening of moki cherry’s solo show at galleri nicolai wallner (vimeo)

- R4 documentary piece on the architect/ philosopher cedric price 

- R4 world at one and BBC tv  doc. on net zero and decarbonsiation

- michael moore (not that one) and stansilao pugliese on carlo levi at the NY italian-american centre

gigs

- david webb (online)

events

fail to go to hereford river carnival, funeral/ cremation of father,  india is on the moon, visit to hay/ pub lunch in peterchurch, 50 years of hip-hop.

bye bye daisy (days of wine and roses)

well it has finally come to pass. daisy the dog has joined the choir invisibule. the house seems strange without her. there's no-one to bark at the postman (or random cars on the road). 

she was 14 (which is a good age for a dog) and had been slowing down into old age for a while. it was only after horsemouth's dad had died that they noticed how quiet she had become.

horsemouth thanks the vet for his efforts. she clearly responded to the steroids (a last walk down to the abbey and back) but in the end they were not strong enough to contend with the forces of death. 

she died quietly under the kitchen table during the afternoon while the business of the house went on around her. horsemouth and his mum put her into her bed and carried her out to the garage. they selected a spot to bury her in (up on the banking where she would run and play) and horsemouth has begun digging the grave. he expects to get it done and bury her later on today. 

rain this afternoon (so had better get on with it). grey day and not warm. 

a number of horsemouth's friends have liked her photo (he should probably have warned them she was dead).

madder music, stronger wine continues to go well. well not so for victorian decadent poet ernest dowson who continues to drink himself to death. the fortunate (or unfortunate) thing is that he finds writing poetry easy - you know his lines days of wine and roses, gone with the wind. here he is. an influence on t.s.eliot (and that's probably how people now know him). 

last night horsemouth and his mum watched a police detective thing (you know the sort of thing. honest woman detective contends with sexism and gets things done) that will take up the next few evenings. 

animals are blameless (humans less so)

'totally impressive reading list, which puts me to shame, and a pub lunch to boot. nice.'

horsemouth publishes and then discusses his books read and films watched list for the month.  he will share it with the wider world shortly (not that the wider world are interested). 

well it is an entire month in the countryside and horsemouth hasn't read all of them in their entirety. the gabriel mckee on PKD it was only the first 20 pages available on google books. the kilvert/boswell and kafka diaries horsemouth is just reading in the years marked as the dates come up (in an event to spread out the pleasures of reading them and to give himself something to blog about). the first three books in the list are recent purchases from hay (at great expense largely) and so he has been making an effort to read them (and will probably finish two out of three of them by the time the month ends). 

horsemouth had to say the pub lunch rocked (largely because he got in a sneaky pint). 

as usual when he started writing the list he was convinced he had read nothing but when he came to examine it it turned out to be a reasonable month.

over in texas it has been raining. this is good news. they have been stuck under some kind of 'heat dome' forever. 

animals are blameless (opines horsemouth). they simply do what they do as they feel it. human beings are considerably more complicated and may be held to moral account for their actions because they may be reasoned with. for these reasons it is a lot easier to love animals than it is humans. 

up on the common horsemouth met gareth (and his dog). him and his partner are renting a house near the village (having lived in london and having moved up from kent). they wanted to be further over and in wales itself. 

it's a monday. but it's a bank holiday monday. little will be moving. today is also the anniversary of the release of hergest ridge (horsemouth believes).  nope it's actually the 2nd of september - he'll do his encomium then.

“it’s like a goddamned conspiracy” (the birth of alice coltrane)

as you can see there has been a horsemouthfolk  blog since 2013. before that even he was on the redoubtable myspace,  serving up a similar mixture of disguised commentary on his existence and oblique fantasy (all allegedly in support of his music 'career'). for much of it blogs were either advertised on facebook or written on facebook using the notes tool and selectively copied over to blogger (as required).

so here horsemouth is. he is sitting up in bed (well slouched back). in his brother's old bedroom in the wilds of herefordshire. it is on the side of the house that gets the light in the morning so he tends to wake up early. he goes downstairs, opens the curtains, makes himself a pot of coffee, perhaps goes out and waters the plants in the green house. (in a while he will water the flowers round the house and over by the garage). 

there is a second greenhouse but it has become shaded out by the trees round it. (restoring it to light would be a major operation).

ok he's got a second cup of coffee (now he's sat up, semi-lotus). 

last night horsemouth was confusing mary shelley with sylvia pankhurst (imagining mary shelley a defender of ethiopia against italian fascism). he had been reading brian aldiss on mary shelley's frankenstein. this aldiss acclaims as the first modern science fiction novel (asimov claims something similar at some point).  aldiss also recommends mary shelley's the last man (horsemouth may have it somewhere). 

later he read a little of jad adams' madder music, stronger wine  about victorian decadent poet ernest dowson (apparently there's a dowson's wharf, or at least a wharf owned by the dowson family, somewhere on the thames but horsemouth cannot find it). 

this morning horsemouth wishes to compare mary shelley and alice coltrane - both the widows of famous men who went on to make their  the own amazing things. it is alice coltrane's birthday. 

yesterday horsemouth failed to make it out to the various weirdshire events at the hereford riverside carnival. (for this he feels guilty). 

today (hopefully) the fellers at the house will send him the electricity and gas meter readings and he can record them on the company website. 

ok breakfast. the weather today? clearish but not particularly sunny or warm. 

 

I used to be a werewolf (but I am all right NooooW)

film has emerged of horsemouth in a half-darkened (and half-padded) room. 'exterminate the brutes'  he mutters. 'my methods have become unsound' he utters. a loop by neglected american primitive guitarist max ochs plays - in a shadow play horsemouth attempts to retell watership down.

good morning! good morning! good morning! 

the sun has passed the cloud barrier and ascended into the heavens from its launching point on the hill opposite. since the unexplained death of the actual sun and its replacement by a network of local drone suns the main question has been how to generate as much electricity as possible to keep the lights on and the plants growing and how to increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to reduce the leakage of heat into space. 

of course preventing the rapidly de-industrialising planet from reaching net zero is now a priority (of sorts) but one that can only be achieved by radical new technologies and multi-national agreements (we're doomed so we are).  

plans are afoot to turn the oceans into a giant battery.

film has also emerged of erik davis lecturing the assembled masses about philip k. dick's (PKDs) exegesis and the 2/3/74 event. erik was the author of the great techgnosis - he tells a tale where he was about to do a lecture on that book and realises he doesn't have a definition of gnosis, he opens dick's exegesis, and there, on the first page, is the definition he needs. 

it strikes horsemouth that it will soon (2/3/24) be the 50ieth anniversary of the pink laser beams and the fish (the symbol of the early christians).

someone horsemouth knows gets published (that is enough of a reason to celebrate in itself). and they're reviewing  breathless (that too). but wait, there are a whole series of other articles (joy). later horsemouth finds erik davis on the rider-waite(-coleman) tarot in the magazine that publishes my friend (result)

today the unblocking of the sink. (horsemouth really should have attended to it earlier but it at least gives him the chance to talk the handyman - a friend of his father's). horsemouth (the impractical) will try and solicit an opinion on the fluorescent lighting while he is at it. if the whole unit needs replacing it is beyond him. 

I used to be a werewolf (but I am all right NooooW) strikes horsemouth as a good title for a song (he thinks he could use the riff from the rolling stones' 'I used to love her (but it's all over now)'. this would give horsemouth a second werewolf song (a werewolf sequel).