Stereotype

I’m from Brasil, you know, the noisy country, and I live in Switzerland, the silence country! Yeah, stereotypes!!! I have the noisiest neighbor ever and he is from here, from Switzerland, the silence country!!!

This devil, I call him devil because he really looks like one even though I guess I never saw “the devil” face-to-face. At least I hope so!
Anyway, about stereotype… he really looks like the devil. He is tall, very tall, he has his head completely shaved, and his eyes are not in the horizontal position as “normal”. His eyes are more inclined to vertical position, having this mad expression. He is very very white man, with a ring on his nose and he has a body almost like a body builder.

Sometimes, unfortunately, we pass by each other when we are on the staircase of the building. It is just a 2 floors building, 2 apartments by floor and we live on the top floor. When there is no way I can avoid him, I just look down, take a deep breathing and go on. I really fear him! More than I fear dogs for sure. And I’m a petite woman, and I can feel that he is coming down or up just because of his shadow. Once he was 3 steps up on the stairs and when I looked up, oh God, I really thought he would smash me just with his devil looking!!! I got shivered!

But this guy doesn’t annoy me because of his appearance of course. This devil guy, who I share some walls, loves to play atabaque!
Well, he would love to play, I guess! He beats the poor percussion instrument like crazy for hours and hours interrupt. I do love the sound of a well-played Brazilian-African instrument.

I go crazy at home. I tried earplugs and it doesn’t work for me. I complained to the real state from where I rented the apartment and of course they didn’t do anything! Here in Switzerland you complain to the landlord or to the real state office.

I think I need to go to some music school… Maybe I can find a percussion teacher who likes a good challenge!!

However, sometimes, I think that my lovely neighbor doesn’t “play” his atabaque for music pleasure. I think he uses the instrument to get in some trance or to meditate purposes. I’m saying that because it has the same beat over and over and over again for hours and hours. There is no variation over the theme whatsoever! It is just the same sound for hours and hours and hours like a very refined torture technique.

Why I think that? Well, he is beating on this poor thing for like 2 years or more. He didn’t change the beat or the rhythm of that since then. I can’t believe that somebody could be that bad musically speaking as he is, if he is really playing, anyway. I think is very frustrating when for more than 2 years you don’t get any improving over something you do almost every day!! It is not a perseverance, oh no, it is not!
Over more than 2 years and he is still in a phase where he should buy a “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Atabaque”!

As a result of that, I woke up yesterday, Friday, very early, with a wonderful serenade, being very sarcastic of course! The beating sounds lasted until late afternoon and because of that I got a terrible headache and the beat is still beating inside my head.
Almost 4 AM and I’m going to take my dear Tylenol PM and sleep for sure. Until what time I really don’t know, but I can ask my dear neighbor!

Well, I just know that stereotype is something very dubious and as I can attest it is also so untrue.