Open Windows Of The Apartment Complex example essay topic

Living in Dallas for a summer with my best friend Mike, I had an opportunity to live, and pay bills all on my own. We lived on the second story of an apartment complex that had been built in the late sixties. Ten-foot-high chain link fences, to keep non-residents out, or to keep the residents in, surrounded it. The plaster on the outside of the apartment buildings was coated with a thin brown sheet of mud, and the numbers on the doors, that consisted of little more than two sheets of plywood, were falling off. Our apartment was little more than a living room connected to a kitchen, with a window.

We shared a bedroom and a bathroom. The walls were opaque yellow, with a tint of green. The apartment overlooked a laundry complex downstairs, and you could usually see the hustle and bustle of everyday life sitting at our one window. Mike always liked to work odd hours, leaving me at the house often alone, watching television. At ten in the evening, I once again hear noises that resemble music, with acoustic twangs from some sort of an instrument, and a singing voice that grows to a high tone, cracks, stops and starts singing once again.

This is a reoccurring event, and always at strange hours, such as five in the morning or midnight. I hear the mixed sounds drifting up to the apartment from the laundry complex below. Upon prior investigations, I have discovered the source of the sounds to be a person, but the noises continue to make me curious. I wonder, what makes this person always go into the laundry room at such odd times, and what is the person doing? The musical sounds could be floating out of an old tape recorder, as it is of decent artistic quality, though scratchy and impromptu. However, the sounds are too close and candid to be recorded, so obviously, the person must be creating the music instead of listening to it.

This time, when the sounds reach my ears, I turn off the television I am watching, and decide to fully investigate. I wander over to the open window and peer out across the apartment complex. My gaze wanders into the squat, peach-sided laundry room below, a thirty-three degree angle from where I stand at my window. The slatted window of the facility frames a hunched over human figure. The figure is sitting on a silver metallic sink, which when I position myself in just the wrong way, reflects a single naked light bulb's rays at a blinding angle into my eye. The figure wears plaid pants, and has long blond hair.

Because of the slender girth of the figure's shoulders, I guess the figure is female and about sixteen. She is dimly visible, with her back to me, and plaid covered knees poke out from a crossed style of sitting that is reminiscent of the stance of a meditating yoga master. Of what seems to be an ocher-colored guitar, only the fret board and a half-circular wooden portion stick out on either side of her body, and the figure's pale left arm moves up and down across the instrument. As her arm forms isosceles triangles at his side in a sweeping motion, and plucking sounds echo, I can only assume this girl and her guitar are the source of the music.

The laundry facility is acoustic; the tinny sound of dryer doors opening and shutting, and the thudding of tennis shoes bouncing in a dryer usually accompany time spent in my apartment. The cavernous laundry room echoes the girl's sounds up to me, and almost certainly, to the hundreds of other residents. The seemingly endless stream of sound lilts stutters and stops, but never completely. Her scratchy yet soft voice sings words or phrases that are not decipherable, logical, or even in recognizable English, because the distance between us muddles her sounds.

Somehow, without words, the music is increasingly intriguing. Tonight the voice sounds like a montage mix of twang baritone, Charlie Daniels, and vintage Bob Dylan. I wonder if the girl is aware of the universally open windows of the apartment complex, acting as conduits to take her sounds into each resident's home. Her seemingly accidental concerts could actually be contrived. Perhaps the girl desires to play for others without having to suffer their opinions as well. At sixteen, the girl would be awkward and uncomfortable dealing with constant criticism.

The laundry room allows her to perform without the pressure. She loves her music, and abhors attention, but nonetheless wants to share her harmonies with others. From that angle, performing in the laundry room seems quite ingenious.