Hey, wait. You really did it?

22nd of August has passed well long ago, but there hasn’t been a single blog since. Documenting the fine trip I experienced and the scrolls I pasted, I present you this awaited personal diary of mine.

 I opened the front door of the garden with a slight creek. Rain was everywhere, making every solid surface at ground level melt into the massive sludge of mud, grass, but mostly water. My scrolls were well packed in the backpack, along with mtn 94 and the stencils, crushing any doubt of possible water damage dealt by the Sky. A few steps until the large brown doors slammed behind me – I was finally inside, just a notch wet of the downpour I had caught on the way from the bus station to here. The balcony hadn’t changed munch since the last time I had made my canvases and stickers here – a few cardboard pieces left on the floor and some color on the ground were the only reminders of the small body of work I had put out that day. Small indeed, when compared to the stuff I had planned for today. In fact let’s count it up. My once wild dream of 100 scrolls was far too ambitious, as for the very first time of wheatpasting it’s impossible to put that many up by any chance. And it was raining. The huge number truncated down to the delightful 5 of each kind, having [bli:p], stand-art, artwork’s the only mirror worth having, You and me, boring’s the new interesting and depth lies within the viewer, summing up 35 scrolls in total. With the rain still daring my patience every time I looked over the ledge, I started working. Scroll by scroll, song by song (Mostly Kasabian – bass harmonized with the weather incredibly) I was moving slowly to the milestone of half, then to the finish, when the white balcony door opened and an awaited face popped out from the corner, greeting me and my work, hung up on the clothes stand just beside of me. One of my partners for today's’ spray was a student of art, able to rate my work with an eye of the experienced. An irreplaceable skill worth having, when hitting spots all over the town (As for this kind of pasting, placement is as important as the messages carried out with them). A little bit of chatting, spraying, song listening and eating – the hours had passed, getting us near the time we ought to get out of the house. It was too dark to see whether it was raining, or not, by I thought I heard some splattering, as I packed everything up (Brush, Glue, Glue can, scrolls, cans and a bit of money for those small road expenses, but no stencils of my pieces, which played back greatly, when the you&me stuff was unpacked) and left the house. It was about 11 o’ clock, and the rain had stopped, making the bus-waiting much more joyful. In a matter of 20 minutes I found myself in the city center, along with my mate. Our task was simple – we need to get to the third member of our artsy crew, get the keys to the flat we’re crashing, go there, wait for the end of the night shift she’s working, meet her up at the flat, get the glue mixed in, pack the bag lightly, leaving only glue, brush and scrolls in it, get the city smashed and then crash at the flat. A few missed buses at that nightly hour and the discouraging rain, who left as fast as it appeared, left us a bit bored and wet, but we made it to the flat safely, passing the few hours with three things - A ‘Saturday’ magazine (Entertaining stuff), de Montesquieu ‘Persian Letters’ (Didn’t get far though, found my joyful mood way too jolly for such rather heavy literature) and a book called ‘The Joys Of Smoking’ (Most definitely creepy thing, Google it up if you dare). In a few hours time our group was complete, as the third and final member of this not-so-much-graffiti-experience crew arrived at the flat. ‘I’m tired, are we doing something or what?’ were one of the first things she said to me. Only one more thing to be done – suddenly everybody was concerned of the state of my preparings, asking me to show the scrolls I had previously made. Lots of unrolling and idea getting actually got one of the ‘artwork’s the mirror’ and ‘bli:p’ up on the girl flats’ walls. To test the skill of gluing, as some might say. (The funny thing is the flat wasn’t the property of any of my mates’ – it was owned by the friend of one of the spray-helpers, Ruth by name. She turned out to like the door piece I had made and just asked me to do the entire collab of every scroll I’ve got on one of the walls. Fun.) After that we finally left. There is so much to say about the trip we had, but let’s not take too much of your time.

 The flats’ location was, if not in the heart of the center of the city, then a few minutes walk from it. First piece we slapped on was the ‘artwork’, a few blocks later another one was pasted on a white column and a [bli:p] slapped over a ‘please do not park your vehicles against the gates’. As later explained, no pictures of these were taken, so the only thing you’ll see, when passing through the area, will be a glue stain with some white, torn paper on it. Exploring the many great spots out there continued, as many pieces of ‘stand-art’, ‘depth’ and ‘[bli:p]’ were pasted all around the area, not leaving the slightest chance of me remembering nor the exact location of each of them, nor the order of me pasting them. I’m just glad we decided to take photo’s ‘on-the-spot’ at one point, as our route back home wasn’t even remotely near to the one we took, when left the house. I guess my favorite was a street sign I transformed, using a bit of agility to get onto the electricity box, then getting on a small ledge over the corner, finally  slapping [bli:p] over the first name, making it a [bli:p] street. Censorship by ones’ looks on the do’s and dont's. How awesome.

 I have pasted the economical creativity blogpost, documenting the [no]fears we experienced, the people passing and the whole concept of the things you might want to think about, when pasting w/pastes, but I guess you’ve already seen it, as getting those precious photos from one of the helpers is taking a hell of a lot time for me.

Next morning we terribly overslept. In fact so hard there was nothing to be rushed for anymore, so I went down for a packet of milk and some corn flakes. Of course, as any criminal, I returned to the 15 scenes of crime again, and found almost every scroll torn off by the early street cleaners and/or angry people. The few ones still up there were some artwork’s and the „high” spots I hit – the both street signs. I guess a movement of hand to tear off the wet poster still classifies as something to be done by the people cleaning everything, but a little agility required to get onto an electricity box is not. I mean – if police is not doing it’s job good enough to get the guys on scene, the street cleaners are top-notch here in Latvia. I can only be proud to have such awesome people around me.

 The pics we got should be inserted here... If there were a lot of them. Our logic of „We’ll be returning the same way, don't worry” got us pretty fucked. Now how sad is that...

Cheers.