It comes to something when you can't play your own guitar in your own living room at seven in the evening - not through speakers, but just acoustically and quietly - because you fear your neighbour will fly off the handle and come storming round and yell at you to stop.
Hard, too, to deal with someone you'd hoped would be on your side telling you that you need to change your behaviour - i.e. stop playing your beloved guitar in your own home - because your neighbour's been there longer than you and has more rights and you shouldn't upset him.
I know there are laws about 'reasonable noise' and that playing a guitar acoustically early in the evening is entirely reasonable, but set the law on him and I'd then be dealing with a neighbour with a grudge, which could be much worse.
So I'll spend my evening quietly writing this blog instead, while waiting for my plans to get the hell out of here come to fruition.
I didn't realise how regularly I pick up my guitar through the day and play it. But I do now that I can't. It makes me sad, angry, frustrated - and ready to turn it all into a song...
That's the wondrousness of songwriting - it's like alchemy, a way of turning complete shit into a thing of beauty, hopefully even with some kind of universal message. How I love being a songwriter - and how I hate the threat of having it ripped away from me by some loser who's got nothing better to do than hammer on the walls and make his neighbours' lives a misery.
'You can hammer on my wall but you ain't gonna hammer me down'... Well, it's a start... and it's the truth!
Hard, too, to deal with someone you'd hoped would be on your side telling you that you need to change your behaviour - i.e. stop playing your beloved guitar in your own home - because your neighbour's been there longer than you and has more rights and you shouldn't upset him.
I know there are laws about 'reasonable noise' and that playing a guitar acoustically early in the evening is entirely reasonable, but set the law on him and I'd then be dealing with a neighbour with a grudge, which could be much worse.
So I'll spend my evening quietly writing this blog instead, while waiting for my plans to get the hell out of here come to fruition.
I didn't realise how regularly I pick up my guitar through the day and play it. But I do now that I can't. It makes me sad, angry, frustrated - and ready to turn it all into a song...
That's the wondrousness of songwriting - it's like alchemy, a way of turning complete shit into a thing of beauty, hopefully even with some kind of universal message. How I love being a songwriter - and how I hate the threat of having it ripped away from me by some loser who's got nothing better to do than hammer on the walls and make his neighbours' lives a misery.
'You can hammer on my wall but you ain't gonna hammer me down'... Well, it's a start... and it's the truth!
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