HUMAN WRECKAGE

Gimme Some Peace

During my teenage years, that curiously stunted era of developing into some sort of being vaguely resembling an adult, all my mother ever said to me was, “TURN IT DOWN!” I resolved that I’d never devolve into a psychotic crank like Mom. Just who in their right mind would prefer Julio Inglesias and Engelbert Humperdinck over Johnny Rotten and Joe Strummer? Contemporary living has been a stern tutor, teaching the tyranny of noise - however one may define cacophony. My stereo and Mom’s yelling aside, the seventies, in retrospect, were a much quieter time.

Generally, the ceaseless urban roar is an artificial construct. My neighbourhood, like most, is transitioning; the din is dense. The City of Edmonton actively encourages population density in order to increase its tax base. Basic, essential services are expensive. For example, the City did not spray for mosquitoes last spring. That pesty saving to the municipal budget ranged from a quarter- to a half-million dollars. My ward’s alderman bet his seat on bats and dragonflies. Additional federal and provincial funds literally just drip down into this developers’ paradise, more of a trickle would be welcome. Single homes are demolished so two may take their place. The grinding engines of heavy trucks and heavy machinery are constant. The paradox of progress is more motors and municipal expense as ageing infrastructure is upgraded to accommodate increased volume (pardon the pun).

A casual chat with the neighbourhood community league president the other Saturday was especially disheartening. He figured the noise of transition was sustainable for another decade, at least. I thought, “Great, fanfare enough to see me out.” Variations on these strident, gratingly harsh sounds are everywhere now too, aren’t they? Alarming news, angry punditry, mad social commentary, politicians talking up to the lowest common denominator, a myopic world screaming to be heard; my God, what some people shout about when they use their cells as walkie-talkies - hire a lawyer, sell the stock or get a prescription, I don’t care to know one way or the other, just stuff a sock in it (and your anxious little dog too).

Edmonton had been hit a violent storm one evening about a week's previous. The type I’d expect in July or August, heat generated and frightening. The window blinds were up and so the various rooms of the Crooked 9 flashed electric blue, the colour of vacuum tube television screens. Thunder cracked like dominoes tiles on an oak table. Double-down slams! Nature’s noise was real and welcome, a refreshingly glorious star cameo.

The shrill background whine to modern life is omnipresent. The noise, beyond the freeways’ roar and emergency sirens, is visual too. Cities are not assembled Lego kits, out of the box and done. Ta-da! Rome was not built in two millennia. My town has proved particularly adept at botching its footprint on both sides of the North Saskatchewan River. Commercial architecture is boring and repetitive, newer low-rise buildings look cheap. Boulevards and planters are weedy and infrequently manicured because maintenance costs money. Bridge refurbishments and light rail line extensions are better really, really late then never and so the city’s primary colour is a sort of Halloween orange: traffic cones and pylons, striping on barriers and safety vests, detour and reduced speed limit signs. Pyramids of fill, gravel, sand, clog narrow streets. And there is litter, there is always litter; a recent informal survey indicates that disposable masks rival some of Canada’s most beloved corporate brands underfoot. Can I buy one thing, just one thing, without a logo on it?

I’m unsure when I decided that pretty much everything around me disturbed my peace. I can’t pinpoint exactly when life got louder. Audio annoyance must be a function of ageing. Mary Reilly, Mary Reilly, I have become my mother; but not, you know, in the Psycho sense, just more irritable. And poor Mom, if she only knew that the discordant chords of the Clash and the Sex Pistols would now register to her ears as sounds sweeter than birdsong.

I wish our recently deceased Queen Elizabeth II had been schizophrenic because everyone and everything would’ve had to shut the fuck up for a second blessed minute.    

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of cranky complaint since 2013. The novella Of Course You Did is my latest book. Visit www.megeoff.com for links to purchase it in your preferred format.