Is my temporary filling starting to crumble after just two days? Please no, my next appointment isn’t until August 30th. I’d eat on the other side, but there are at least four teeth missing, so it’s not that easy, I could be chewing for hours. It’s one way to lose weight. Health, staying healthy in mind and body is essential but it would be so sad to be older and simply talk about ailments all the time. It’s why this daily writing tries not to be an obituary page because contemporary artists and all kinds of heroes are dying every day, people I have followed most of my life. It might be best to leave those essays to someone else, someone who doesn’t write every day. I’m working on staying alive, I also have a sore arm after a tetanus shot, narrowing down the ways to die.

We have new owners of the Archive space. Out of the blue, our current owner (Nuno), the man we hired the place from, sold it. He called us in Texas to tell us, we were so disappointed, were so happy with him as a landlord after the last one and suddenly he was gone with new landlords to meet. What a surprise it was to find it was two young sisters who were our new landladies, one a Liverpool supporter and talking of support, totally supportive of the cause. What a relief, they want us here, they love the project and want us to stay for them, for us, and for culture in Porto.

The second-hand furniture store delivered a cabinet, a small stereo stand, two mannequins, and a ridiculously seventies fake orange fur blanket. One of the mannequins had a missing hand, the other hand cracked. We went back to the shop and talked them into giving us two hands in good condition from another mannequin. I put them together in the front room, screwed the torsos on the legs, attached the feet to the bases, and the hands into the arms, and realised that mannequins like this look even weirder when they’re not in a shop, they’re tall too, I hope they don’t try and escape in the night.

I had a sesh with Jeff in Kent, Ohio tonight, a long one, catching up after three months. He makes interesting melodic music with synthesizers that I sat and listened to before we spoke, after which we fixed the world.

These are the good people that are on my radar that have died since the month of my birthday, it’s hard to keep up:

Sinéad O’Connor, Tina Turner, Tony Bennett, Randy Meisner – The Eagles, Rita Lee – Os Mutantes, Gordon Lightfoot, John Giblin – sesh bassist, Jon Povey – Pretty Things, Francis Monkman – Curved Air/Sky, Pete Brown – lyricist, Andy Rourke – The Smiths, Astrud Gilberto, Tony McPhee – The Groundhogs, George Winston, John Waddington – The Pop Group.

Music today has been Billie Holiday’s classic Songs for Distingué Lovers (1958), the first album I loved by her. Oddly, it was recorded over three days in January 1957 but wasn’t released till 1958. She died aged 44 in 1959.

Music Of The Daze