The Music Of This Street

In my apartment I am constantly being confronted with the pluses and minuses. Single bedroom: plus. Two bathrooms: plus. Freezer the size of a microwave: minus. Shower that shares a wall with a sleeping roommate: minus. Neighbor above in high heels: minus.

But recently, I discovered the two greatest plus of them all. And funny enough, it isn't even in my apartment.

People talk about the music of a city. The garbage trucks, the traffic, the shouts and hollers of pedestrians, car stereos. But I have found myself living in the apartment afforded the most music of all. Real music. No on in this apartment plays an instrument, and it isn't the apartment below me blasting theirs, it is the real, live pianist living in the building across from mine. His windows look directly into my own, and he is a he.

I found out last week when I awoke and opened the shutters. Putting on my slippers, wondering what combination of people might be present in the dining room, I went into the kitchen for my morning cappuccino. Seated at the table, not sour at all (at least not yet) was Giudy, hunched over her computer, oscillating between her thesis in a word document and the online social networking site we all know and love. She was playing music, a concert pianist, or at least I thought so. I complemented her music choice and instead of smiling politely and thanking me, her face contorted into a kind of grimace, the kind that says simultaneously, what on earth are you thinking and oh you like that? cause it's doing nothing for me.

"It's not me," she said, "it's the man across the street." I looked up and out the open window, to the one adjacent. Now I could tell. Clearly, this was no MP3, it was a live person, playing some wonderful piano cantata. "You don't like it?" I asked, slightly disgusted that she could be such a Grinch. "It's impossible to study when he plays, and he always plays in the spring and summer. What a nuisance." (Here, I paraphrase, and would like to note that her criticism was not so well mannered indeed it included several expletives, but seeing as no appropriate translation exists from Italian to English, I feel her point is better served in the way I have described it.)

I couldn't believe it. I can't believe it. How could someone dislike the sound of a piano, an uncomplicated, wordless tune? Here she was, practically in agony over the sound of a baroque masterpiece, and I felt I should thank this man. How could she call this a disruption? Live, free, moderately low-volumed music. I made my cappuccino and made a hasty exit, afraid that her colorless, repugnant attitude could be contagious. Back in my room, I threw open both windows.

Today finds me with windows flung open wide, reclined on my bed, looking out towards his window and up to the sky. I awoke at 9:30, relatively early considering the late hour at which I finally switched off the light last night. It was to the sound of the music, drifting through the shutters, not waking me but rather invading my sleep, pervading my dreams. When I rolled over into this realization, I opened the shutters immediately, to allow the music better entrance to my room. A nuisance? Never.

He plays daily, and for hours on end. Sometimes slowly, encumbered. Perhaps it is a new piece, I imagine. Sometimes quickly, expertly, as though he wrote the piece himself. He rarely loses his place, or stops abruptly, and each time he does, so too does my heart. Has the concert ended? When will the music return? It inevitably begins again, and I've usually stepped out by the time he finishes, an easier acceptance than having the music end on me. Today I heard the beginning as well as the end of the concert.

These private concerts, as I like to imagine they have become, are something I will miss greatly. This, and Friday evenings. Downstairs and across the street is Chet Baker, the restaurant, not the man. Every Friday evening, they arrange tables out on the terrace and serve dinner in front of a live jazz band that plays for no less than four hours. Somebody explained to me that the restaurant's namesake lived for a number of years in Bologna. Though only once a week, this concert lights my block ablaze. I love the music, followed by the applause. I love the applause as much as the music, because that too is live. It is in appreciation. It isn't Giudy's disapproving ear, and it isn't my roommate's boyfriend screaming "ENOUGH!" out the window, like he did today.