Tuesday, April 3, 2018

so, they gave us both n4s.

i'm to stop opening the windows in the hallways and stop propping the doors open. we can talk about that later. for now, i can deal with that.

she's to stop smoking in the unit.

my n4 is bullshit. i have to presume that hers is, too - but it is at least true that her habits are interfering with my enjoyment of the property, and fairly substantively, in the form of contact highs and nose bleeds. i just spent yet another day barely able to get out of bed because i'm too tired to move. i'm hoping the rain saves me, over night...

i haven't seen her n4, i was just told that she received it. so, i don't know exactly what it says. i know that it's almost impossible to follow through with this kind of threat, so i'm not holding my breath. but, i overheard her talking about it on the phone, and she's at least upset by it - so i've got a good starting point.

windsor is cheap. she seems to have a job doing something overnight. what she wants is a place where she can chain smoke marijuana and listen to loud music. because this area is so cheap, she's better off renting a townhouse - maybe with a friend or two. she's just not living an apartment-friendly lifestyle...a desire for gratuitous drug use & loud music really requires renting or buying a house....

so, they've at least done their due diligence, in promptly responding to my complaint, and we'll see where we are with this at the end of the month.

for right now, i'm going to let the air turn over with the rain and focus on the rebuild. i'm fully expecting to need to continue taping & tarping, but we'll see if i can back to setting up the studio tomorrow or maybe the next day.

let's aim for getting through 2015 as a transition point.
but, i mean, i don't make rock music.

i'm not a rock musician.

i'm an experimental/classical composer.

so, if you want to work out your fantasies about sex, drugs & rock 'n' roll then you're going to need to find a rock star, first - and that person is not me.
in my existing discography?

i'm stone cold sober through every nanosecond of it.

i have never recorded a single part drunk or stoned.

sorry.
(i'm not actually going to sound like lou reed because i don't write or record folk music. but you get the point)
i just kind of need to get this point down.

musicians don't actually do drugs when they're recording. they might do drugs between recording sessions. but, a musician trying to record something on drugs is going to probably be out of tune, out of time and unable to creatively approach much of anything.

drugs don't make you smarter. drugs don't make you more creative. and, drugs don't make you more productive, either. what drugs do is make you dim-witted, uncreative and slow to react.

you'll end up making trash that sounds like lou fucking reed at his worst.

go ahead and look into it. ask your favourite musician: have they ever recorded anything stoned or drunk? if you have any taste, the answer is almost certainly that they haven't - or, if they have, that they wish they could go back and fix it.

sorry.

so, this is the real importance of getting the smoke out of the recording space. yes, my health is important - &, yes, my gear is important. but, i need to make sure that my recording space is free of outside air contaminants; otherwise i'm not going to be very useful when i'm trying to multitrack guitar parts, or play a drum fill in 17/8.
i should be rebuilding for the next few hours, at least.

i took advantage of a lull in the smoke to start rebuilding the apartment. i'm pretty sure i have the bedroom secured, so long as nobody smokes in the window; i've rebuilt the space so that everything is on the other side, and it's a more rational construction (closer to how i wanted it in the other apartment), so i'm happy about that.

what really happened was that it rained, which freaked me out a little, and made me realize i'd have to flip the living room around, too. so, i rebuilt the bedroom altogether. and then i started rebuilding the living room...

the rain was the best possible thing for the air quality in the unit, so i'm excited about more rain over the next few weeks, and a possible return to seasonable temperatures mid-month. it was so clear in the unit, that i thought maybe the letter had succeeded in modifying some habits.

it was about 3:00 that the illusion lifted, as a plume of smoke came up behind the closet - where i was setting up my keyboards - that was powerful enough to knock me out.

i now have that entire area tarped over, and i'm back to the waiting game, to see. i'll have to give it a week or two to see if that's enough...

i can't have my gear sitting over a smoke plume. i mean, my health is concern enough. but, if it's powerful enough to get me stoned, it's powerful enough to damage electronics.

as to the mechanics of this, it must be fairly exotic. occam's razor suggests that it seems like what is happening is that somebody is hotboxing the closet - that there are multiple people smoking in the enclosed unit with the intent of preventing circulation. but, there's no functional ceiling in the closet; the truth is that it's a dumb place to hotbox, because it's all just pluming out upwards.

another possibility is that she might actually be burning herb as a part of some kind of ritual, which just sounds like a waste of drugs, but explains why the cabinets are such a recurring problem. she may have some kind of shrine under there or something, and she may keep moving it because i keep blocking off the air with tarps.

whatever the source of this is, it's not a single individual smoking. it's either somebody burning it like incense, or it's multiple people burning large blunts at the same time. and, when it comes up in these waves, it hits you like exhaust from a bus or hot air from a hand dryer - if you're standing in it, it's like taking a deep hit on something. and, it's knocked me out, now, several times.

it's maybe easy to understand why the tape isn't working in some spaces, then. this isn't just a run-of-the-mill smoker. this is a smoke machine, of some sort. and, i'm going to need tarps or serious renos to resolve it.

i'll know by the end of the month whether i'm able to stop it, or if i'm going to need to seek a way out of the lease, with proper compensation.