I’m always afraid of talking to my neighbours. Not in a socially inept kind of way, but in a kind of “am I going to find out something I don’t want to know” kind of way. That fear’s gotten worse over the years, and has been heightening post Trump’s election, because very realistically, it feels like some people think it’s even MORE okay to say certain things.
And I’m not sure what to do with such things when they’re said: last night I met one of the neighbours that I’ve seen frequently enough. I usually see him at night, coming around from the alley, smoking a cigarette… tonight he saw that I was loading amplifiers back out of my car and asked if I was coming from a gig, so of course we got to talking. And within the five minute chat he’d mentioned “those blacks” “faggot Europeaners” and how his son had inherited his big mouth from his bitch ex-wife. In context, he was using the above to say that Primus had a fat bass sound, that he didn’t like the Beatles and that his son was one Hell of a singer, but obviously, because I’m a white male with long hair he’s happy to use the above more “colourful” metaphors.
And what do I do with that? In many contexts I’m able to slowly bring up my own associations and I tend to drop in my Nigerian friend, my Muslim whatever, the two guys I played at the wedding of… you know, he didn’t say things lke “man, I’d dearly Love to kill me some niggers” – he sprinkled casual unthinking racism, homophobia and misogyny into the conversation – and so I can just sprinkle on back that you’ve managed to insult a number of communities that, despite appearances, I’m a part of…
I know plenty of people who’d have picked a fight, but you’re not going to win a battle that way unless it gets physical, and even then, you’ve lost the war. I believe that ingrained stuff like that only gets pushed down by exposure and time… and if you don’t have the ability to provide either of those things, almost anything else just makes it worse.
I felt around the edges. He’s a drummer, but massive kit drummer. No way he’s driving into the city with me to the open mic or anything like that. No way we’re going to hang out and jam. In addition, he’s a drummer by default – add the stereotype that he WAS a Hell of a guitarist (name drop name drop name drop) but he cut his left hand’s tendons eight years ago in an industrial accident. We talk about the physicality of the guitar, the passion that goes into playing it, he talks about how beating the Hell of out of his drums… you’d THINK that would satisfy or at least scratch the itch, but you can see he’s still craving the old output and he’s not getting satisfaction from that most physical of instruments. There are references to screams and scratching, scraping and shredding. He looks like a strangler as he remembers his guitar.
He’s 47, bitter, angry and hurting. You don’t pick a fight with that, and tonight, as we stand in a cold November night with hands full of amplifiers and a guitar on my back, I’m not winning heart or mind – it’s not the right hill – and I KNOW this. I just hate that I don’t see a hill that I can invite him over to – and he’s got a kid, and he’s got friends where he’s comfortable talking about those blacks, faggot Europeaners and his bitch wife so he’s like a cancer cell or an infection and he’s had decades to spread… which is NOT how I’m supposed to think about people.
