Today I counted the surfaces of glass in The Archive, there were 122, not counting the front windows. All of these were filthy, and now the painting is done, they had to be cleaned. They haven’t been cleaned for five years and consequently, some of the panes of glass made the cloth black with dirt after being wiped. I’d started off with glass cleaner a few days ago, but soon realised that the panes had to actually be cleaned with soap and water first. So I started in the morning and 12 hours later, I had mainly finished, there were some spots around the front door that I couldn’t reach, so we are going to get someone to clean around there and the front windows which are even more filthy as they pick up all the pollution from the street, but they’re too high to reach for me. Something happens when a place is cleaned, the air itself transforms, and suddenly you can breathe better after the room has settled from the dirt being disturbed, the swirling invisible grime gone, the rooms come alive, awakened from the misery of grit, dead skin, and cobwebs.

That’s about all I did today, it took all day, it was a spontaneous decision, I got up and decided I’m going to do it. But first I called AAE Andy in England, we’ve been playing phone tag for a couple of weeks, but we finally got to speak today. There’s a list in my calendar of things to do, deadlines, and desires. I hit the wall with two deadlines last night, Arktik Lake and Blueburst short promo spiels, I did it, tick. Now there’s Matt’s demo, a record in exchange for Mikko who found me the latest 22-Pistepirkko album, GoFundMe thank-yous, a MailChimp mailing list update as we no longer have Instagram, and we can’t post photos regularly as little bits of pictorial progress information. Having said that, there is always the In Deep Facebook page where Olivia has been posting some before and during Archive renovation shots.

At six o’clock I spoke to Sarah in Texas, pre-planned as everything has to be these days, I have to schedule an appointment to make a cup of tea. When I am finally pushing up the daisies it will be on cue and the last breath will be a punctual one as the calendar dictates, the time and place for that day, pre-organised. I hope it’s a Wednesday, the day I was born.

Music today has been the Nick Drake Fruit Tree Box Set (1986), nice to be able to play four CDs in a row by him as I’m cleaning. The vinyl version is in storage in England, the CD version I brought with me when we first moved to Portugal, limited luggage, I picked Nick.

Music Of The Daze