“You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.”
― Wystan Hugh Auden
My very nice neighbours are wonderful and very busy people. The once living at the end of the hall got a baby a few months ago. I did not care much about it; in fact, I could not even hear it cry. Happy me. Then Covid came. The nice lady living in the apartment in front of mine plays the violin. Which is a marvellous instrument, especially when used to play the very same songs every day. Twice a day. But always in a different time frame so one could never plan accordingly. Because of the virus the new dad decided that the hall is the safest place to walk with a baby. This brilliant idea, which fills me with joy, has survived until today: now I can hear all the improvement the baby makes in the speech department every step of the way! The crying, the screaming, the different sounds… everything! and this from just the other side of my tiny tiny and maybe way to thin apartment door – while she can listen to the sounds I make while going to the toilet, brushing my teeth, masturbating, something like singing to the music I listen and so on.
My neighbour from above is a 50-soemthing year old woman, trying to revive her youth. Which is a fabulous thing. I love to listen to her and her friends running around in high heels, drinking and screaming and singing (to the music you only listen to when you are drunk and the only bar still open is the one full of touchy grandpas) until 4 in the morning on a work day. She has a nice pull out couch which makes a great sound each time she pulls it out or in. A very practical way to communicate to me when she is done sleeping. She usually vacuums on Sundays and she has been trilling in her apartment for weeks now. She must now have one of those amazing walls with holes which were so modern in the 70ies. I love the neighbour next door, an older man with long unwashed hairs, always smoking weed in the hall or in his apartment, where he opens up the window only to smoke cigarettes so that I can get the smell of good old tobacco in my apartment every time I open mine. It is very considerate of him; I do not pay so much rent to get fresh air in a city.
And as I sit here on a fine rainy day, with closed windows, listening to the pleasing sounds of the violin interrupted by the joyful sounds of a little child, the occasional thunder-like bump from above and someone astoundingly coughing in the hallway; I smile. I smile and think of the enjoyable night I am going to have tonight when I am going to listen to metal as loud as my speakers can get. The neighbour downstairs will understand.
Aromatic deception 