I’m getting into the habit of waking up before my alarm like I know, even when I’m asleep, that I have to get up. It doesn’t matter if I get to bed late, it still works. I wonder if it’s my responsibility gene? I’m still not sure if it’s a good or a bad thing. I wonder if being awoken by a screaming siren right next to your ear when you are in deep sleep is healthy. It’s fascinating how something from outside your sleep can find its way into your dream. I also wonder if the story in your dream, the sequence of events, is as long as it takes to tell it. In sleep there is no time, you could live a lifetime in another world or only a few fleeting seconds.

A sesh with Arktik Lake Tony in Sydney to start the day and then to Brooklyn to speak to John about one of the tracks I played on and listen to two new ones. There’s always music being made by somebody, it’s fascinating how some gravitate towards making it and others to listening to it and then there are those that hear music and it makes them want to dance. It seems so powerful in so many ways, happiness, sadness, observation, political messages, surrealism, and love, love, love, either getting it or losing it. What would we do without rhythm and melody, lyrics, and the ability to tell a moving story in song? It’s odd that it’s not supported better by governments, perhaps the budget has gone on all the false beards in the opera and all those chairs that the musicians need in classical music.

Today I ate the last tin of Heinz baked beans, two lots brought over by Mohamad and his family when they borrowed our ex-flat. I call it emergency comfort food, quick fix, nostalgia nourishment (although nourishment is pushing it). I used to come home to escape school dinners (that’s lunch in American) and every day I would have a tin of spaghetti hoops or tinned spaghetti bolognese. It was the time of ‘What does vegetarian even mean?’ (39 years later). I hadn’t tried an avocado till I went to Australia, even though I worked in a restaurant that served that old English classic, avocado prawn. Haha.

So Olivia arrived back tonight, I was speaking to Sarah in Texas about projects and I got a message that she had landed. The airport in Porto is quite close to the city and she was soon here, walking into a place that has had two weeks of renovation since she was last here. I managed to pass the cosy test, but there’s still at least another week to go. We have no door handles, better that than no water.

Music today has been Dylan’s latest album Shadow Kingdom (2023), a re-imagination of the distant past by an 80-year-old and it’s great…and by the way, it’s a soundtrack album. It’s recorded in an intimate session on a soundstage in Santa Monica in 2021 for your eyes as well as your ears. I have the feeling that I don’t need to see him do it, it’s some kind of distraction, it’s great as music for the ears, the eyes don’t help.

Music Of The Daze