Notes over Broadway…
I start my mornings early, before the city has fully remembered itself. A little writing, a lazy breakfast, and my La Corbusier lounger angled just right in the corner so the big windows can spill the first light across the room. There’s a softness to New York at sunrise, as if the whole city has loosened its grip for a brief moment. The glass towers glow pink, the traffic hasn’t yet found its teeth, and even the pigeons seem slower, less conniving. For a few quiet minutes, I sit with my pen, my plate, and the light.
But then, of course, the city remembers who it is. It stretches, yawns, and clears its throat with the first bus down Broadway. The honk of a taxi follows, sharp and self-important, and then the pigeons pick up their percussion, flapping and scattering as a kid laughs from below. And just like that, the concert has begun.
Straus Park, tiny as it is, takes the role of conductor. Its benches fill with the usual cast: a man with a folded newspaper he’ll never read, a woman making her coffee last longer than the conversation, a child chasing pigeons with the doomed determination of someone who refuses to accept the laws of nature. This little triangle of green has no business holding court the way it does, but it does. It becomes a stage, a meeting place, a kind of accidental theater for the neighborhood.
And then today, something extraordinary: a woman in the park began to sing. Opera. Her voice rose up, so pure and strong it made the air itself feel sacred. Notes slipped between the buildings, bounced off the glass, and came curling back in waves. Straus Park became the Met. My neighbors leaned out of their windows as though summoned. Across the street, the balcony crowd settled into their seats like box-seat ticket holders, their wine glasses glinting in the sun. I wondered if the saxophone player from last week was somewhere nearby, plotting his comeback, rehearsing the opening to his next symphony battle.
The percussion from across the way was subtler: the low hum of air conditioners, a dog’s bark snapping like a snare drum, the faint rumble of the subway vibrating underneath their floors. Did they wonder about us too, staring back across Broadway, trying to imagine our lives behind our windows? Maybe that’s the real magic of city living: we are each other’s audience, half curious, half unseen, stitched together by sound.
As the day drifts into afternoon, the tempo changes. Straus Park quiets, its benches holding only a few stragglers, and the neighborhood softens again. The opera notes linger, even as the city moves on to errands and groceries, to phone calls and subway rides.
Then dusk arrives, and the real choreography begins. Windows flicker on in sequence, like sheet music being played note by note. Some blaze bright all at once, others ease into their glow, improvising. Shadows move across the glass: someone pacing, someone cooking, someone folding laundry. From the outside, you don’t need details. Just silhouettes, gestures, fragments of other lives unfolding in rhythm with your own.
By the time the sun sets, the buildings themselves are the performers, each lit window a story. Some remain dark and quiet, pauses in the score. Others reveal scenes—a family dinner, a solitary desk lamp, two people leaning close. The city doesn’t quiet at night; it just changes instruments. The morning gave us buses and horns, the afternoon gave us footsteps and chatter, and the night gives us light and shadow.
That’s the thing about New York: it never really sleeps, it just shifts genres. From my window, I get to watch the whole symphony. Today, it gave me an aria in the park, a soprano who turned Straus Park into a grand hall for a few luminous minutes. Tomorrow won’t bring jackhammers—those wait until Monday. Tomorrow is Sunday, and Sundays carry their own promise. The music is slower, more meandering. Church bells braided with playground laughter. Bagel lines wrapping around corners, each conversation rising and falling like its own verse. Dogs tugging their sleepy humans down Broadway, tails keeping the rhythm. Maybe even that saxophone player again, sneaking his way into the score.
That’s why I love weekends here. Each one arrives like a curtain rising, never the same performance twice. Today, an opera. Tomorrow, perhaps a lullaby or a jazz riff. Whatever it is, I’ll be here in my lounger, pen in hand, windows wide open, waiting for the music to begin.