SinDee brings light to a dark stairwell in two evenings

26 October 2026 · 19:20 · SinDee

Zurich – 26 October 2026, 19:20. Third-floor landing of our building, sitting on an upside-down paint bucket, roller in one paw, tea in the other. Second evening, last wall.

A stairwell like a cave

Our building has five floors and one stairwell, painted long ago in a brown that nobody chose on purpose. The bulbs are weak and the walls swallow what little light there is. My neighbour from the second floor is eighty-one and walks it with one hand on the rail and one on the wall. Last week she told me she counts the steps because she can't see them. That was enough.

Evening one

The landlord said yes in one phone call, as long as we paid for the paint. Fine. Yesterday we washed the walls, taped the rails and rolled on a first coat of warm off-white. Two neighbours from the fourth floor came out to complain about the smell and stayed to hold the ladder. A boy from the ground floor painted the lowest stripe, very seriously, with his tongue out.

Evening two

Tonight: second coat, and one thing I couldn't resist. Along the edge of every step, a thin line of pale blue, the blue of lake ice in March, so your eyes find the stairs before your feet do. No mural, no cats, no signature. Some walls just need to help.

Why my jukebox list is all helping songs

People ask why my songs are "Help!", "Lean on Me", "Stand by Me", "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and "Fix You". Simple: on the farm by Baikal nothing got done alone. Not the hay, not the roof, not the winter. You helped, then someone helped you, and nobody kept score. These songs sound like that to me. Tonight my phone played the list from the paint tray, and when "Lean on Me" came on, my neighbour hummed along on her way up. She didn't count the steps once. The list is on the CatJuxe if your own ladder needs a soundtrack.

The bill

Four tins of white, one small tin of blue, two evenings, six sore shoulders, one landlord who now says "our stairwell" as if it was his idea. Worth every drop.

A wall doesn't have to be beautiful. Sometimes it just has to show you the way.

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