Packing my Library. In a reversal of my favourite essay by Walter Benjamin images from the Performance Foundation Archive before it moves: “a relationship to objects not emphasising their functional, utilitarian value but studied and loved as the scene, the stage of their fate”.

The last time we saw Welch & Rawlings at Hammersmith Apollo in 2011 Sam Cam sat by us. You can’t be selfish with taste. Last night we were treated to a concert of such virtuosity and roots soul it was obvious why Mavis Staples would cover ‘Hard Times’. The banjo better be on it.

Mimetic contagion. I’ve been off here while completing a manuscript, ‘Savage Lair’. Two weeks ago I lost a heavily green-edited copy @Tate during a visit, but thanks to their brilliant team was reunited with it today. In the meantime I’d replaced it with something quite familiar.

‘Cow/Deer’ @royalcourt tonight follows a tradition of work inviting us to think about how the creaturely life of the country (as in what is ‘contra’ to the city) might be conceived through performance. Wycherley’s Restoration revival in 1956 was itself a study of rural innocence.

Watching Dead Centre at work tonight @royalcourt in ‘Deaf Republic’ reminds me how rarely theatre touches technology as anything but a prosthesis for effect. Here it is somehow nurtured from within the demands of a searing narrative on war, resistance & listening with our hearts.

After Arles summer Martha Wainwright brought us back to London & Cadogan Hall where Rod Melvin joined her on piano for a gorgeous version of Vaughan Williams’ ‘Whither Must I Wander’. Woke up Chelsea encoring her 20th anniversary show (of course) with ‘Bloody MF Arsehole’. Nice.

Les Sauveteurs at the local pool know how to end the swimming season. For tonight’s playout they follow the slack-key Hawaiian standard with a beautiful version of La Llorona, a Mexican ‘weeping song’, of a woman’s spirit that wanders the waterside seeking her lost child. Adieu.

Mariology is rife in France and especially so during Assumption Day ‘le quinze’, and this weekend when everyone has taken what the Spanish call a ‘puente’ to extend their celebrations in the pool. The night sky in Saou last night rang to transcendent strings, now Pop in the pool.

Les Sauveteurs always end the pool-day by playing us out with ‘Hawaii Hawaii’ from John Taaroa. The French way is to leave counting blessings that la canicule (36) brings a flat 1 Euro entry to safeguard all. But a spirited kid is having none of it and is politely shown the exit.

Our neighbour ErikM was performing with Paul Collins tonight at the top of Poet Laval in a programme of electronic music that sampled Trump’s ‘Drill Baby Drill’ and closed at sunset under sturgeon moon with a deeply ‘idiosyncratic’ (as Erik would put it) take on local birdsong.

The Ciné Labor in Dieulefit has always had an informed audience, not least when local filmmaker Coline Serreau was premiering her work. Romulard & Juliette deserves its reputation and the Hollywood adaptation of ‘3 Hommes et un Couffin’ doesn’t deserve to eclipse its predecessor.

I’m not sure the French quite have ‘vacances du chauffeur’ but it felt good tonight stepping away from the library, cooling off in my favourite pool high-up in Eyzahut, then dropping down to the ‘Ciné Labor’ to watch the annual projection of their remarkable agricultural archive.

Frankie Valli is getting on but he would have enjoyed Saou ‘Bal des Pompiers’ tonight. An exquisite rock-face village in Drôme hosts its annual shindig in style, a cross-generational delight, with the local bars & cafés pitching in, while the river into the forest bubbles away.

Weekend-off to sort some Truinas vinyl. New respect for these two well-worn albums after reading David Hepworth’s marvellous account in ‘1971’ of their simultaneous creation within a few days of each other, in studios yards apart, with shared musicians and Joni Mitchell’s piano.

When Ewan Forster helped me move my archive from @kingsartshums a month ago we agreed to meet again in Arles to see it on its way. Our rendezvous was early at my favourite Rencontres venue, the Monoprix, where amongst the produce rises a superb show ‘Father’ from Diana Markosian.

More hidden histories of site, a serial critique of the cultural quotidian, now being posted on Insta at ‘alangoeshiandlo’ with walk-ons to camera that say small things about what Jean Luc Nancy called the ‘insignificant everyday’. While archiving in Aries I have been warming up.

On the 135th anniversary of van Gogh’s death, it’s not surprising to see the demise of the ‘Café le Nuit’ in Place du Forum, Arles. It’s long served over-priced food on the back of its painter’s reputation. We love the cheaper Constantin round the corner (with cheeky placemats).

The keen intellectual spirit of the Arles Rencontres has always been @ActesSud who have excelled themselves this year: a fascinating, morbidly marvellous basement show from the Catalan theorist Joan Fontcuberta on the gesture of pointing and the indexical nature of photography.

While I have been archiving in Arles, Erin & MyArtBroker appear to have topped a million views for our conversation about Chaïm Soutine & his pastry chefs. It’s lovely to do some ‘numbers’ but equally touching to see an ex-student receiving 6470 ❤️ for their own take on my work.

The archival impulse is everywhere in Arles. The intellectual presence of Hans Ulrich Obrist at LUMA, the ever-present commitment to the ‘amateur’ image-hoarder of the Rencontres, the Photo Booth for all, I always feel wanted, welcome & at home in its fierce ode to recollection.

Limited to 17 witnesses every half an hour by far the most sought after ticket in this year’s Arles Rencontres is Nan Goldin’s ‘Stendhal Syndrome’ in the exquisite Eglise Saint-Blaise. We were there before the sun cleared the roof & the Ovid inspired images were a sumptuous joy.