Thursday 12^th October 2006

Living in student accommodation is a music-enjoying person’s nightmare.

There are people above, below, left and right of me, and, according to the laws of probability, it’s a near-certainty that their musical tastes and circadian rhythms won’t correspond exactly with mine.

Now, I’m sufficiently conscientious not to want to piss everyone surrounding me off with loud Elbow tracks, but sadly, quite enjoy turning up the volume and appreciating said pieces in an environment of total musical immersion.

The issue is that I have no idea how transmissive my various boundaries are. I was faintly relieved to hear loud music coming from next door when I left my room the other day, because the fact that I could only hear it as I left mine implies, by what I hope is correct application of the laws of reversibility to sound waves that, if I can’t hear her loud music whilst in, she can’t hear mine. However, without being a complete weirdo and knocking on the doors of all adjacent rooms whilst leaving loud music on in mine, I can never perform a comprehensive version of this experiment. It is also fraught with danger because, inevitably, whilst pressing my stethoscope against an adjoining wall or ceiling in the room of one poor sod, another poor sod will come down and knock on the door in the hope of eliciting some peace and quiet, and end up thinking that I’m a weirdo who leaves loud music on in his room in spite of not being in to enjoy it.

I cannot see a way around this problem apart from to continue to listen to music of varying volumes with a paranoia approximately proportional to the sound pressure in decibels.

Or perhaps I should buy some headphones.

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