…the invasion of the high sanctuary from above marks a transition in the affairs of the artist. Unless the force is stopped, it can mean the death of art as it can mean the death of everything else the artist values and needs… The artist, devoted though he must be to the development of his art, can no more ignore it that he could ignore a storm blowing in at his study window and scattering the pages of his work in progress. His move must be to shut the window against the storm. Still it will not leave him alone. The lightning strikes his house, and it is his obvious duty to save his manuscript and put out the fire. The blitz is not what he asked for or what he wanted. Since it has come, he must take arms against it, and end it as soon as possible by opposing it. Then he can go back to his work, if he survives. – Hemingway: The Writer as Artist by Carlos Baker, Pg. 259

While I obviously have never faced anything like Robert Jordan did in For Whom The Bell Tolls, the sentiment of the above is the same. These past five or six years have seen me just trying to survive so I can finally get to a place quiet enough and settled enough to write again, and I hope I’ve finally found it. One needs much more than time in order to create.

Two weeks ago we moved to a new apartment, 20 minutes from our old place. Moving, no matter how near, is always a huge undertaking, and we never would’ve done it unless it seemed absolutely necessary, which unfortunately it did. That has been the same time and time again throughout these years, each time due to having horrible neighbors, with no consideration for anyone else but themselves.

The photograph above is of the view from our balcony, which looks out over a beautiful, dense natural area – a small remnant of what central Florida was before all the bulldozers came to play. This is indicative of the calm I need in order to write, and so, with that backdrop, I’m very hopeful to once again return to the thing that means the most to me. (We have already had to call the cops on a neighbor here, who was allowing their dog to bark uncontrollably at all hours of the day and night, but fingers crossed that is the end of it.)

The last time I was able to really focus on writing was back before the 2016 election, before abject fear became a part of every facet of every day in this country. There is a threat that this may happen again, but only time will tell. Back then, I was living in San Diego, in a small apartment on Texas Street. The first mistake came when we moved closer to the downtown area, to a fancy building on Broadway. Little did I know that it would be filled with drunken party girls coming home at two in the morning, their voices echoing off the atrium and infiltrating every single room of our place. Soon after, my beloved cat, Ashford, died, followed weeks later by a terrible accident, which left my mom with a broken shoulder. And not soon after that, the management of the restaurant that I was working at, with people whom I had come to regard as family, decided to torpedo the place.

It was through that series of events that we decided to move back to Chicago. After great struggles to find anyplace affordable, we settled on an old brick two-story building on the far north side. This was the summer of 2019, and when we moved in all seemed well. We were on the first floor, with a deaf woman living below us, and our landlord and her family above. For a short while, it was great. I got a job as a barista in a local cafe, which roasts some of the best coffee I’ve ever tasted. Soon after, the deaf woman left and was replaced by a middle-aged couple who were crazy. I don’t mean they were a little eccentric or annoying, but certifiably crazy. The husband was psychotic, and would have psychotic breaks often, leaving the police to come on numerous occasions, several times taking him away to an institution. But he always returned, and they would scream at each other at all hours, hurling insults at four in the morning which woke me from a sound sleep. It also turned out that the landlord’s daughter would have screaming fits, and that the next door neighbor was the loudest talker I have ever heard, leading us to be assaulted from above, below and on the side. My nerves became worse and worse, and my body stopped functioning properly, causing me to have to quit my job. And then came Covid.

Already the worse for wear, unable to find quiet for more than a couple minutes at a time. (This is not an exaggeration – did I mention that various members of the landlord’s family would practice the piano above us? Playing the same song or portion of a song over and over and over?) These circumstances, coupled with the great unknown of a plague descending upon the world, with the most incompetent government that we’ve ever had, led me to have more and more physical issues, deteriorating on a daily basis, losing over 20 pounds from my already underweight frame. Many days I barely had the strength to do anything, yet all of the noise continued unabated. I’ve never felt so trapped in my entire life, and would’ve felt so even if it not been for Covid.

After two years there, we were able to escape to the Western suburbs, very close by to where I grew up. The apartment complex was full of beautiful lakes and trees and again there seem to be great potential. For the first month or two things were quiet and I went about trying to rebuild my self, with minor limited success. But there was some success, at least until we got a new downstairs neighbor, who blasted thunderous bass music, smoked so much pot that it came up through the vents and caused us all to choke and our eyes to burn, and watched TV at an extremely loud volume at three in the morning. Again the cops were called, again noise complaints were made, with the complex eventually starting legal proceedings against him. But again we were trapped and my brain was almost never in a place to create. I did regain some weight, however, but continued to suffer from lack of quiet, my body at one point creating horrible acid reflux to the point of being unable to speak for a month, using an app to communicate. Again, the only option was to flee.

So it was then that we came to Florida, just over a year ago. Another nice complex, another few months of quiet…and then new neighbors appeared below us. Again the pounding bass music that no ear protection can block, again the waves of pot smoke so much so we couldn’t use our balcony or open our windows on most days. Then the parties, and again the cops were called and noise complaints made. I should say that none of these places that we lived were cheap or in bad neighborhoods – just all filled with trashy humans. The people above us also liked to party, and the people next to us had a child that would scream at his video games till one in the morning – a six-year-old nonetheless. Again, I was able to get little writing done here.

And finally we’ve made it to our current apartment. I sit here in the midmorning, with our cat beside me, both was listening to the birds and squirrels in the trees outside the window, and I pray this quiet continues. I’ve survived years of noise, but certainly not unharmed. Let this be the place, please, where I can finally get back to writing. My words will never change the world or be on a bestseller list, but those things don’t matter. What matters is the process, of being able to do the work, of creating something out of nothing, of giving characters life and allowing them to breathe and exist. That is what I want to do most, and that, I hope and pray and beg, will happen again.