when i rented my place in august, the lady was like: yeah, it’s like trendy around here, and your upstairs neighbors is very quiet. She is an old lady, and her husband passed away two years ago.
so i signed right away. i don’t care about the trendy thing. i don’t go out. No, i always have something new to read.
but, one month later, the lady moved. And my quieter appt. has transformed itself into caisse de son for the new neighbor. He is like 20ish, and like to party. That’s all I can say.
I mean, I remember how it is. Partys are following each other, you meet new people, have a couple of beers, drugs. I get that. I have been there. But I realize now how not tolerant I have become.
so, a few days before i would go join my family for Christmas, people started to open beers upstairs. I know because I could hear them. In these old house, the noise travels very easily.
so, as i was saying, the party was starting. i was like talking to myself, trying to be reasonable: `come on, you’ve been there. It`s Christmas after all.` My new neighbor has been quite noisy in the last months, but i did want to cause trouble.
At 3:30 in the morning, I could not help myself. I was so mad. I told myself I would not say anything right now, but next time that he will be as loud, I would call the landlord.
Then, I realize that my tolerance for my neighbor’s noise is really close to sedimentation. Each time he disturbs me, there is another layer that augments the previous one. If i had thought about it, it would have been interesting to note whatever thing I was doing each time he disturbs me. His presence, the ways he wals with his heel, and the loud music he puts on at 11:30 pm would have been a random and uncontrolable thread from which I could observe what I was doing, thinking, eating, watching, listening. In other words, this young man, without knowing it, would have become the rhythm to which I would have taken fake ethnographic notes of what student life is…
So, my question is, because there must be one: would that be appropriate to be led, in an ethnographic work, by random association of things and events that are out of control from the anthropologist?
