Thumpa, chinka. Thumpa, chinka. Thumpa, chinka.
Bob Marley. Over and over again, that’s all I hear. Thumpa, chinka. Thumpa, chinka.
It’s the guy downstairs. The overpowering stench of incense fills our entryway, stifling my nose as I unlock my door to head up to my apartment. Gee, Bob Marley, incense… you figure it out. This is confirmed by the powerful coughing heard minutes later.
I remember talking to him when I first moved in. I’m sorry, is my loud stereo bothering you? That was his single moment of concerned. Don’t worry about it, I said. We get plenty loud up here ourselves.
Ten o’clock in the morning: thumpa, chinka. Four o’clock in the afternoon: thumpa, chinka. Midnight: thumpa, chinka.
Sometimes he’d mix it up with a little Grateful Dead, a little Phish. All I could think was, for crying out loud, could you not be such a stereotype?
Sure, sometimes my own occasional parties would get rowdy and we’d be playing loud music (or singing loud karaoke) until one in the morning. After that, I would always try to keep it down to a dull roar. He, on the other hand, was intolerant of any noise I made and would thumpa, chinka me in return.
He would never call the police though. Gee, I wonder why.
My final days in this place, for whatever reason, have led to an increase in the volume from the floor below. Maybe he thinks I’m already gone, as he saw my roommate move out at the end of December. Maybe he thinks I’m still too noisy and feels this is proper retaliation.
What he doesn’t understand is that I like ambient sound; I like any sort of musical white noise. I could never live in the country, in complete silence. While I might not be much of a reggae fan, I would rather hear the rumble of bass than every little creak of the house. When he parties until three o’clock in the morning, I fall to sleep like a baby with the rumbling of his muffled stoner rock below me.
This is nothing like my last apartment. Our television was up too loud, the cops were called. We laughed too much, the cops were called. We breathed sideways in the wrong direction, the cops were called. Did that stop the person adjacent to us from blasting the best of Madonna at nine o’clock in the morning? Of course not. My guess is the neighbor below us didn’t get a taste of the Material Girl on the diagonal.
At my current place, although constantly inundated with noise pollution, I have always been free to listen to industrial noise at all hours of the day. I could rock out to White Zombie, I could bounce around to Twin Cities electropunk, I could wallow in the despair of The Cure. Me and the burnout, we had an unspoken agreement of obnoxiousness. I hope my next neighbors will agree to similar terms.
After all, noise can mask a lot of things. Would I rather hear Bob Marley than sex? Probably. Although I imagine that if someone came to me to complain about the volume, replying with, “I need it to mask the screams” probably wouldn’t go over too well.
Delicate balance, that it needs to be. I suppose it’s a skill I should develop quickly.
But back to Mr. Melody Maker. Could he mix it up a little? Stoners like Pink Floyd, too, right? I could deal with a little bit of the dark side of the moon once in a while. Perhaps a bit of freeing the mind with Hendrix would be in order. Or even on the modern side of things, there’s no shortage of stoner rock. Relying on the same small circle of musicians? Isn’t that enough to drive one insane? Buddy, do you want me to burn you a couple of CDs?
I have an exceptionally wide taste in music, sure. Slayer, Genesis. Wumpscut, Liz Phair. Sunn 0))), TATU. I don’t expect that from others. Just because I enjoy complex progressive rock as well as simplistic jangly pop doesn’t mean I will play all of the above for anyone in earshot. But it also doesn’t mean I will only play the same stuff for the same set of people. Everyone likes some degree of variety.
I feel like just tossing some discs under the guy’s door. Hey, pal, open your mind and open your ears. And for the love of god, can we please cut it with the thumpa, chinka already.
Of course, all of this getting to me is too little, too late. It’s been a year, and now I’m leaving. Had I more time on my hands, you bet he’d be musically enlightened by the time I was through with him. Instead, it’s farewell. Thanks for the comfortable rumbling for the last twelve months, however stagnant it may have been. Hopefully the next folks to live above will be as tolerant and appreciative as I have been.
Now hopefully I’ll be granted the courtesy of finding new neighbors with which I can coexist in this same sort of dysfunctional, music-obsessed environment. If not, well, maybe we can just invite the cops in for some karaoke.
Pass the dutchie,
–gloomchen
