Early sesh with Bob in the Boston area today at midday and scattered seshes throughout the day with Mike in Chicago and Noel, Samantha, and Xavier in England. Then there was the first game of the football season, Burnley/Man City, champions vs champions, 0-3. A trip in between to find a takeaway for dinner to find a city swarming with people, a hot day, and a shorts and T-shirts convention. I suppose every city in Southern Europe is packed with tourists in August, and maybe in this one there’s relief that it’s not scorching or scorched. That familiar light breeze seems to keep the temperature bearable, and so far there has been no fire threat in the area. After seeing the devastation in Maui, I can only feel sorrow for the people there and luck for the people here. What a tragedy some must suffer out of nowhere.

So Sixto died, Robbie Robertson died, Sinéad’s funeral. It’s summer, but it’s grim out there. War, coups, political turmoil. One wonders how to channel it all. It reminds me of the Stiff Little Fingers/Undertones conversation. One lot saying how could you not be writing about the troubles, the other saying, that’s not what’s needed right now. It reminded me of an idea I had about the rise of punk in the seventies. England’s dreaming said JR, but in fact, the response to the trouble and the dark place people were in showed that they weren’t dreaming at all. No one could respond to misery with active and beautiful pink imaginations, grey reality was in your face. On that point, what was one of the most popular magazines of the time? The Face, so England was dreaming stylistically, fashion was expression but not everything in that magazine was homemade and safety pins. Where was the cash for the dream of looking cool?

I ran into our recent ex-landlord and the real estate agent in the street today. I asked them if they could help find us some affordable storage close by. They said they would, and we hope they can. We need an address for The Archive to go to before we can book the transport (and the funds, of course).

Olivia went to buy foam today, not from the sea or the coffee shop but to put in the windows to stop light entering from the music room to the sleep room and also to help with the sound jumping around, reflecting off glass and flat surfaces. I dusted, haha, it’s a big problem with electrical equipment. It attracts dust to the components, and it gets inside and things stop working. We have an air purifier which is supposed to help, we’ll see.

Music today has been Elysian Fields – Once Beautiful, Twice Removed (2022). They are categorised as “art rock from Brooklyn” with two main members, Jennifer Charles (vocals, instruments) and Oren Bloedow (guitars). They have also been called “noir rock”. Mellow Mazzy Star or Cowboy Junkies sound, but darker and further away from alt-country.

Music Of The Daze