April 29th, 2009
Opening up the TV to talk to the people that live inside
My window faces a section of the building in which I know no-one. And I never intended to meet them either, because it works well this way. We are close enough to wave, close enough to talk even (if we did so loudly); but we don't ever acknowledge each other's presence as the neighbours in my own corridor would do, saying hello or waving or stopping for a chat. There's an unspoken convention that assures a strange sense of insular privacy on either side of the chasm, in spite of the fact that I have occasionally caught a glimpse of some unwitting person in his underwear. Generally the curtains will be drawn when modesty is required, so what happens in each window when it is open is usually simply like a random scene on a TV that someone else has left on on in the background while I go about my daily life. It seems as though the same convention exists from their side, because I have never glanced up to find anyone looking at me. (Not since my first week here in 2005, and that fellow has long since left the building.) This disconnection from one another is such a comfortable convention that I often feel free to sleep with my curtain open, because we do not exist to each other as people with names, just as moving elements in scenes; and as long as there is nothing out of the ordinary going on, you can be sure that no-one is staring at you.
Tonight, though, they were playing some kind of heavy rock music, and although I couldn't hear it properly, I liked what little I could make out, the rhythm and the bass notes, and I knew if I didn't go there at once I would never find out what it was. I would have to talk to them.
So I crossed the bridge to the other side...