I've got noisy neighbours. Actually, the little old lady who lives upstairs is very quiet, (though deaf as a stone, so when she watches TV we all watch TV together) but she has rather horrible relatives who nearly always get into screaming shouting matches with her when they come over (and don't get me started on the horrible grandchildren... a six year old girl clanking around in high heeled shoes...Italy!@%)*#%!!)
Now, when I was a very small child, my parents did the same thing. They screamed at each other, and it terrified me. I remember having a cupboard-cabinet thing I used to climb into whenever they did it.
Also, I'm an Anglo, which means we don't really express our feelings... at all...ever.
So the sound of someone screaming in anger still terrifies and discombobulates me very badly. I've worked out a method of dealing with the shouting neighbours involving Vivaldi and my very, very good Bose computer speakers. They are very loud.
The loud neighbours have learned that when they hear Vivaldi's Concerto Alla Rustica for strings in G, (presto) that, "Hilary wants us to stop shouting." It works a treat.
~
2 comments:
You being both a writer and a painter might benefit from Schopenhauer's recommended reading:
From "On Noise":
Finally, as regards the literature of the subject treated of in this chapter, I have only one work to recommend, but it is a good one. I refer to a poetical epistle in terzo rima by the famous painter Bronzino, entitled De' Romori: a Messer Luca Martini. It gives a detailed description of the torture to which people are put by the vaious noises of a small Italian town. Written in a tragi-comic style, it is very amusing. The epistle may be found in Opere burlesche del Berni, Aretino ed altri, Vol. II., p. 258; apparently published in Utrect in 1771.
Having some Italian blood myself and my husband having both parents born in Italy - we can be a pretty lively household. Someone could be on the phone and at the other end of the house a conversation is going on and the person on the other end of the line is wondering what the fight is about.
It can sound even worse when we are throwing barbs at each other in jest.
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