When The City Becomes Your Enemy
Sometimes i wonder why the hell i am living in a city. I grew up in lower austria, in a rather small town, with my own garden, with woods in a short distance and neighbours i knew since i could walk outside.
In the last few days i became unnecessarily aggressive towards every human being. Why? I dont know, lack of sleep, lots of stress, just stuff. I could scream when i try to get out of the subway when a bunch of schoolkids try to get in at the very same time. same goes for the subway station itself. Noone will let you out, because they NEED to get in right now and who the fuck cares about manners anyways? Today i got mad enough to push a girl outside who wouldnt let me get out of the subway before she rushed in like a monster was after her.
I have new neighbours.
They are loud. Until night. First i thought i should just listen to music more. I still heard them. Then i thought, fine, ill go into the bedroom, close the doors and read a book in there. I still heard them. Every fucking day. Yesterday i freaked out and screamed loudly that its totally stupid to vacuum clean an appartment after 10pm for fucks sake. Today they have kids over there. Loud kids. Jumping up and down, screaming and punching the poor walls. I wonder if i should knock on there door if they keep up this volume until 11pm. Since i live here, i made sure to turn down the music before 10 pm, and not do my laundery at late night, nor scream or do something else that might disturb the rest of the people here. Obviously my neighbours think differently. What should i say if they open the door?
version a: “Hi. i am your neighbour. nice to meet you! would it be possible to make the kids calm down a little? its a bit late, and i have to get up really darn early. that would be so nice and sweet of you!”
version b: “Hi. i am your neighbour. make your kids shut the fuck up, or i will call the cops. you can be as loud as you want until 11pm, but then shut the fuck up. mkthx.”
version c: “i hate you.”
I knew that the empty appartment next to mine wouldnt stay empty forever. But i hoped for people who would understand that others might want to sleep. They dont even greet me when i meet them outside, and i stopped doing greeting them after i tried it a couple of times.
Sometimes i hate to live in a city where everybody forgets their manners because of the great safe anonymity it offers an individual. Maybe i am just too old fashioned, or i am really not the right kind of person to live in a city. Maybe this anger will fade as soon as i had enough sleep again, and finished stuff. Who knows…
(BTW. no, its not PMS. thank you.)
d.) place your speakers adjacent to the wall separating your appartments and play some nice music. Special treat while kids are over there: songs about killing kids or suicide. Once the parents knock on your door approx. 5mins later, act surprised and say you thought good manners were no longer a prerequisite!
Use Merzbow.
Works every time.
I have never ever attempted to give parents tips on how to raise their kids. Firstly, if you don’t know them (nor the child), it’s hard to tell, for example, whether ignoring the screaming and sobbing of the toddler they are determinedly dragging along is the right or the wrong thing to do. Maybe they know what they’re doing. And if they aren’t, they are idiots and won’t listen to a stranger’s advice. I figure I’d only risk making them angry and encouraging them to abuse their child even more.
Iside my house, I’ve been fortunate to never be disturbed by noisy children other than infants, and I don’t complain about screaming infants as a matter of principle. It’s their nature, and they already do a good job of annoying their parents, so they don’t need my help there. Anyway, that’s what headphones with good sealing are there for.
Merzbow doesn’t work if you intend to sleep. But once I had to use his ‘Cycle’ at full blast to drown out the noise of a birthday party in the flat above mine. The music they played was so bad, my act was definitely one of self defense and fully justified. After a while the police finally arrived and shut them down.
The great thing about Merzbow is that no one would realize that’s a CD playing in your stereo. If you turn it up loud enough, people won’t be able to determine where it’s coming from, and they’ll never suspect that nice, quiet guy could be pushing a running washing machine filled with scrap metal down a flight of stairs, while throwing glass bottles filled with screws into a running jet engine.
So, what could Daniela do? Here’s a suggestion: there are two ways, the light side and the dark side.
Doing it the Jedi way consists of talking to them in person and politely informing them that unfortunately the walls between your respective residences are insufficient and not up to the task of protecting your well deserved sleep from the merry noise pollution of their cute kids. Now if this works, all is well. But if they don’t take it well, they’ll know who you are, they’ll know where you live, and they’ll think you’re an asshole that they have every right to annoy.
The Storm Trooper method costs you some karma points, but is less risky: Find your lease contract. In there should be the ‘rules of the house’. Take it with you to the office. Xerox the page where it says how much noise you’re allowed to make at which times of the day, twice. Use one of those funny yellow highlighters to mark the relevant section in both copies. (Using a yellow one is important, because, as the other colours are never used for highlighting text, no one knows what they are really there for and I’m sure that bored coworkers occassionally, in an attempt to find out what they’re good for, stick them up their arse after office hours.) Make sure to leave no fingerprints. The first copy goes on the black board in the hallway. If this doesn’t help, the second copy is slipped under their door. If this doesn’t help either, unfortunately you have to do something inconvenient: you have to become a nasty tattletale. That is, write a formal letter of complaint to the managers of your house and have them intimidate your neighbours. In a perfect world, this might help, but it really is just preparation. You see, next time you feel the urge to break into your neighbours’ apartment with a fire axe, which you would subsequentially use to chop their heads off so you can fill their fucking throats with molten lead, instead you call the police. And because you’d already given the offenders three warnings and done everything you could do, the officers (provided you apologise to them for their inconvenience) will be sympathetic and cooperative and so nice they’ll make you forget you’re going to hell for all of this.
All you need is this little mantra: going to hell after you’re too dead to care the slightest bit is much preferable to perpetually being in the real hell, which is, of course, other people.
Hi Daniela, I recently read a book on “How to survive living in Austria,” which mentions briefly about the law that states you have to be quiet after 10pm. What a great idea. Evidently the morons next door to you seem unaware of this little piece of Oesterreichisch legislation. Hmmm. When the teenager next door to me starts with loud music or revving the car, I go outside and confront him with a very angry face and yell at him, retaining as much composure as possible. You may have to call in Obi Wan as your only hope… either him, your landlord or the late night Gendarmerie. Good luck Daniela and dont let the buggers grind you down.
+1 on Merzbow.
Autechre’s Gantz Graf works very well too.