films, books, gigs, events september 2024

books 

- my life (edith piaf)

- goncourt journal, kafka's diary, kilvert's diary (as an when)

- yesterday morning (diana athill) 

- nlr: tom hazeldine, neo-labourism in the saddle and the gravedigger by romaric godin

- wislawa szymborska various

- lyrics moustaki's song  'sans la nommer' and edith piaf's 'la foule'

- GDN etc. articles on tory leadership election, 'labour, beware: britain’s housing crisis is driving voters towards populism' by john harris, 'ed miliband pledges to end scourge of cold and draughty rented homes'. 

- DT money section (whinging about net zero etc.)

- vintage guitar magazine muireann bradley interview

- howard slater 'is there an affective class?' 

films

- R4 'how smart is the smart energy system', 'the coming storm'

- the wave debb show (new river broadcast company)

- peter handke 'in the woods, might be late' trailer 

-  trailer for “I’m not everything I want to be“ on photographer libuše jarcovjáková

- katatonic silentio dj set

- outlaw bookseller, andy edwards, rick beato, 

- low light & blue smoke [1956] film featuring big bill broonzy

- owen jones meets peter hitchens (tigger and eeyore as a friend described it)

- "where the water meets". film by helen petts with violin improvisation by susanna ferrar 

- LRB podcasts on edith piaf and barbra streisland

gigs

charlie parr and two white cranes (thanks mike)

events

equinox, ganesha chaturthi, friday 13th, 20 years of 'lost in translation' publication day, washing machine is fixed, the 'embers' entered, anniversary of the first ever golden glow (from september the 1st 2015), tory leadership election, harvest moon, anniversary of the death of pharoah sanders and the birth of john coltrane. death of frederic jameson.

'on the last day of september'

 or october eve.

'reading before luncheon. reading that clever amusing book a week in a french country house...' - kilvert's diary 30th september 1870.  (this is a somewhat forgotten novel by adelaide sartoris).

what is october? 

well it is one of the (em)bers (SOND). we move (more convincingly) into the long dark tunnel that is the run down from the autumn equinox to the winter solstice and then, thereafter we are moving back up into the light. we are in the dark half of the year and will not see this light and warmth til near april. 

so how's it going with the tories?

'before the conference had even kicked off, a row erupted as kemi badenoch accused her right-wing leadership rival robert jenrick of playing “dirty tricks” by inviting others to “have a pop” at her. 

the former business secretary, seen as the most popular contender among tory members, warned mr jenrick’s team not to try to “stitch up” the MPs’ ballots, blocking her from progressing to the final round.' 

well indeed. this would be the sensible strategy (as horsemouth has pointed out before), to deny tory party members a vote on kemi badenoch by offering them jenrick and cleverley (aka. laurel and hardy) instead.

so when tugendhat goes out they will have to make a judgement about who his votes will go to - and then (gingerly) lend enough votes to the weaker candidate to overcome badenoch. as you can well judge this is a difficult operation. 

mind you it looks like she's getting her own back - it looks like the dirt is coming out on jenrick and cleverley (horsemouth wonders who could be releasing that?). now the young tory hopefuls were under strict instructions from the old guard to have a fair and clean fight and not further damage the party brand with a mud slinging competition - and yet look what has happened! 

horsemouth has compiled his read, watched, listened to, been to, happened list for september 2024

as usual he starts by thinking he's done and read nothing (and nothing has happened) because his memory is so poor but then he has to admit he actually got up to quite a lot. 

yesterday's filth (all sorts of vague resolves)

'all sorts of vague resolves. that much I can do successfully...'  - franz kafka, diaries, 29th september 1915.

franz observes a  fresco with a caption in czech, something like 'though dazzled, you desert the wine cup for the maid, you will soon be back wiser.' 

this is on ferdenandstrasse (ulica ferdindova). in 1919 after the fall of the austro-hungarian empire it will be renamed národní (the people) street. online there's a discussion of ferdinandstrasse based on the postcards available of it. this spills off into a discussion of the postcard itself (by 1870 it will be widely used across europe and kilvert will be hailing it as a capital innovation). 

'in the afternoon I couldn't keep myself from reading what I had written yesterday, 'yesterday's filth'  didn't do any harm though.' 

horsemouth took a quick look at an article on the book bildnerei der geisteskranken (artistry of the mentally ill). prinzhorn's groundbreaking study, the first of its kind, gained much attention in avant-garde circles interesting artists such as paul klee, max ernst, and jean dubuffet (who coined the term art brut (raw art)).

horsemouth's mum is away in birmingham (she went to the ballet last night with horsemouth's brother and horsemouth's brother's wife). she is back later on today so horsemouth had better tidy up.

elections and regrouping tories

'completely idle... pointless to complain...' - franz kafka, diaries, 28th september 1915. 

horsemouth spent yesterday evening listening to the webb dave show (most excellent). he will put up a link to it when it becomes available (until then here's this). 

'63 per cent of the commons obtained with only 34 per cent of the ballots—a record skew... there was no swing to labour. on the contrary, labour’s vote fell by half a million, from corbyn’s 10.3 million in 2019 to starmer’s 9.7 million. if labour’s percentage registered a tiny positive swing of 1.6 per cent, this was an effect of falling turnout...' - tom hazeldine, neo-labourism in the saddle, nlr issue 148 july-august 2024. 

meanwhile the tories are regrouping.

'I got elected 10 years ago and for most of that time I thought our politics broadly worked...' - robert jenrick. 

well they worked for you jokerman, the kept you elected and on £82k plus for a decade and beyond. 

horsemouth is anxious to add more red Xs to his tory leadership contest bingo card. their joint problem (as he sees it) is to keep the membership from being in a position to vote for kemi badenoch (she is way out in front with the members). keeping her off that final ballot has got to be their priority for any of the other candidates serious about winning (horsemouth can't see that the members can be denied a vote on the leader after the disaster that was the the sunak coronation). 

to achieve this requires co-operation between jokerman, cleverly and corporal clegg (an early test of their political skills). 

in a bit a journey up the forge by car in search of chicken feed. nathan arrives at 9am. horsemouth has his coffee. 

'you gotta move...' (let's draw a line under it shall we)

'he has just seen his mum off on the bus to the village. she has the mobile phone in he event of difficulties.' 

well that went well. 

horsemouth's tale

mum takes the bus into ewyas harold, shops etc. comes time to come back the bus does not appear. (meanwhile horsemouth, who is waiting at the end of the drive, is getting increasingly flustered that the bus is not appearing).

cue panic and lots of miscommunications on the mobile phone. horsemouth tells his mum there's not another bus until 3pm.  bus eventually appears mum gets home. 

what was supposed to be a confidence building exercise turns into a disaster.

the bus driver's tale

bus driver gets to pontrilas. the connecting bus does not appear. he waits (assuming it's running late or something) and he waits  and then he realises he is late and drives back up to ewyas harold. 

horsemouth's rationalisation

the village is too far for his mum to walk home from. but then there are later buses (at 3pm at 5pm). horsemouth's mum has friends in the village, there's a library, there are pubs that do food. 

thursday is the good day for travelling (because there are plenty of buses). sunday, saturday afternoon, tuesday, wednesday are essentially fucked with either no buses (sundays) or erratic services. 

the timetabled buses can be 10-15 minutes late because they are at the mercy of the connecting bus service (which is at the mercy of road and weather conditions on the drive between newport and hereford).

---------------------------------------------------------- let's draw a line under it shall we

anyway it is now the next day. 

horsemouth has been out attempting to learn bell ringing and went for a pint after (but then they were back early). his brother and his brother's wife come to visit late this evening. 

horsemouth has discovered an interesting change in the wave 3 of what was the social housing decarbonisation fund, 

'small social housing landlords (those who own or manage fewer than 1,000 homes) can access funding with fewer than 100 homes. for such landlords, there is no minimum number of homes. we expect such landlords to try to reach 100 homes, or to actively consider joining a consortium given the benefits this can bring, where this is not possible.' 

horsemouth will have to get in touch with his contact and ask if there is any mileage in this. 

elsewhere a discussion of the problems of matching a wind and solar electricity supply to the demand from electric vehicles and homes using heat pumps rather than gas boilers. (they are optimistic, horsemouth is not)

 

'there is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism' (in german and in catalan)

it is walter benjamin's deathday. he will die at 10pm.

he will commit suicide while confined in the hotel de francia in port bou by the spanish authorities. he will do this worried that he will be deported back into france and into the hands of the nazis. 

here horsemouth relies upon esther leslie's account of it (but he has left the book itself in london so he may have accidentally introduced some errors).

the rubble will mount up. there will be a tombstone.  there will be the inscription in the title on it 'there is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism' (in both german and in catalan)

for horsemouth another written-in-the-morning-blogpost.

'for the housing associations that now dominate the social sector and the local authorities that provide council housing, rental income is 15% lower in real terms than 10 years ago – a decline partly caused by rent caps – while outgoings are spiralling, thanks to the rising cost of basic housing materials, and the necessity of meeting new environmental and building standards...' - john harris, labour beware...

here you see horsemouth in his sympathy for the landlord mode. 

horsemouth is mainly worried about getting the houses done up to an EPC C rating by 2030 in line with government requirements. (this is a mere five years away peoples). 

the government's social housing decarbonisation fund (which offers to fund some of it) is starting up again (but under a slightly different name). the problem here is that to access the money the smaller housing co-ops need to form a consortium to have the minimum bid number of 100 properties (more they need to have enough properties to allow for some of the properties or some of the co-op's dropping out during the course of the project such that they have 100plus properties at the end). 

horsemouth's co-op has 12 properties it can contribute to this (perhaps 13 at a pinch). 

how would horsemouth describe a consortium to people? well. you know the way people rope themselves together to climb a mountain? that's a consortium. (he realises this is not the most calming mental image but it does capture the element of risk and the necessity of solidarity required). 

horsemouth doubts that a consortium can be assembled. this is because it is outside the usual experience of the management committees and members of the co-ops involved. given the small size of most co-ops it requires many to be gathered together and  thus there are multiple areas where things can go wrong. many co-ops have limited surpluses to devote to these sort of things, many co-ops have limited numbers of active members who can take responsibility for it (and if one of them becomes ill...). 

anyway the fund will open for applications in the week beginning 30th of september and will close midday on 25th november.

horsemouth's  attempts to learn bell-ringing will continue this evening. in a bit he will go down to the bottom of the drive to pick up the recycling bin (he has done it). 

he has just seen his mum off on the bus to the village. she has the mobile phone in he event of difficulties.

'there is not enough time for me to write all the letters that I would have wished to have written.'

'there is not enough time for me to write all the letters that I would have wished to have written.'            - walter benjamin's last postcard (given to henny gurland on this day in 1940).

'this passage, a scoop out of a seemingly endless and relatively homogeneous stream of detail, somewhere in the history of writing.' -  fredric jameson on karl ove knausgaard.

the way horsemouth has edited this quote distorts it. to quote him more fully jameson is saying he wished 'to situate this passage... somewhere in the history of writing' that this passage of knausgaard's  is 'a scoop out of a seemingly endless and relatively homogeneous stream of detail' that is not already somewhere in the history of writing' but needs to be placed there by the critic.

but having topped and tailed this quote horsemouth just liked the look of it. 

fredric jameson has gone to join the choir invisibule. 

but he has (hopefully) done enough to help us situate knausgaard's work in a history of writing already.

horsemouth has two books called a history of reading with him in the wilds - one by alberto manguel, the other by the less well known steven roger fischer. but he doesn't have one single unique book that claims to be a history of writing. 

he has instead various books on writing in various guises - alice w. flaherty's the midnight disease (on writing, writer's block and graphomania), creative writing: education, culture, community on creative writing courses and students, the ethics of life writing (ed. paul john eakin) on the perils of biography (and perhaps autobiography) and erich auerbach's mimesis: the representation of reality in western literature. he has terry eagleton's literary theory - who will soon be writing jameson's eulogy in the LRB. he has zeraffa's fictions, he has eco and carriere's this is not the end of the book. 

he has also numerous diaries and journals and collections of letters from writers (rilke, kafka, chekov, montaigne, rousseau, abram tertz, bunuel (with the assistance of carriere), madame de sevigne, durrell, jefferies, clare, kilvert, the goncourt brothers etc.) - for how else would the diaries and journals and letters have been produced if the writers of them were not writers? 

and how would these books have been produced if their writing had not been kept. 

horsemouth's  current reading in this field is diana athill's memoires of her childhood (and very good they are too).

and yet he is often stuck for something to read.  

horsemouth has read volume one of knausgaard's 'autobiography' (if that is what it is) but jameson has only caught up with him on volume six (the main preoccupation of which is the effects upon his friends, family and himself of writing the previous five volumes).  

here the usual pattern there is the golden hour of the dawn when the sun shines horizontally from the horizon but soon enough it is up in the clouds and the wait for the rain begins. horsemouth has been out to feed the chickens and water the tomatoes. the big question is will the chicken feed last out until the weekend. 

he has remembered what kind of a day it is - it's a wednesday. it's a deliver some eggs and take the bins down the drive kind of day.