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  A building at night
  or, on a rainy, grey afternoon.
  A yawning dawning; lonely morning.
  
  Footsteps haunt the halls — a solitary, walking percussionist, playing to no-one in the askant, blue flickering light of TVs and laptops streaming . . . whatever.
  
  If ever there was an of-this-time hermitic archetype, the Janitor is surely it.
  
  Amongst people but alone, caring for space that no one else cares for — or that no one else has to. The role conceived so that no one else should have to assume it. What necessity? What invention? I ask (already knowing the answer).
  
  The Janitor knows each corner — memorizes the nooks and crannies; the shapes of pipes; the location of light switches; the lock for every key. Jangle jangle jangle. The particular tone of these florescent lights — that gets the mind humming . . . And, in the absurd repetition of basal manual labour, the mind goes wandering. The space of reminiscence. The space of longing-for. You remember right?
  
  To move
  through
  sound.
  
  A Janitor’s non-didactic manifesto
  declaring . . . what?
  
  Just everything.
  
  The mind whirls.
  
  Beauty collides with loneliness and careens — SMACK! — into banality. The heart lurches (why am I reminded of heart-break? I ask (already knowing the answer)). The jaw drops. ABBA in the supermarket! Before birth. That poor seagull. Slippery dreams and swirling cascades of memories — FLUSH! along the pipes and ventilation systems of the building — the body, the being of The Janitor.
  
  And if The Janitor is also an exceptional poet, an exceptional artist? Well now . . . we don’t have to speculate. It is so.
  
  As all exceptional artists must, Gunnar Gunnsteinsson lays down tremendous truths — magnificent and startling — in a kind of complex musicality I am unable to properly relay.
  
  I’m not sure the world is ready for this
  beauty
  
  this glorious pain
  
  But, amen, let it come.
  
  (I believe in a better world; I really really really really do. . .)
  
  
  — Katrina Niebergal, Rotterdam, January 2023
  
  Includes unlimited streaming of Gunnar Gunnsteinsson - A Janitor's Manifesto via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. ... more

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