When New York Plays You Like It Knows You…

Somewhere down below, a lone saxophone player is in the park, spilling notes into the New York City night like secrets he knows you’ll never repeat. The sound drifts slow, deliberate, curling through the heat of summer air and breaking it apart into something easier to breathe. He’s not playing for tips. He’s not even playing for an audience. He’s playing because the music has nowhere else to go but out.

It fits here. Just around the corner, the legendary Smoke Jazz & Supper Club hums like it’s been keeping the neighborhood’s heartbeat for decades. In this part of the city, music doesn’t stay indoors—it slides out onto the sidewalks, rides the breeze, climbs fire escapes. It finds you. It follows you. And even if you weren’t a music lover before, it’ll turn you into one without asking permission.

The city plays along, whether it means to or not. The M60 exhales at the corner, its brakes sighing into the downbeat. A cab horn stabs at the air, quick and impatient. Somewhere out of sight, a motorcycle rumbles—low and menacing—like it’s working through its own blues riff. All of it folds into the night’s arrangement, a chaos that somehow resolves itself into rhythm.

Up here on the 11th floor, the windows are all open. The breeze comes in like a familiar touch—light, but sure of itself. I’m curled into my favorite corner of my favorite chair, a Le Corbusier lounger that feels less like furniture and more like an accomplice. Around me, my mid-century modern stage: lime green carpet the color of grass, teal sofa, abstract art, and shelves lined with the kind of books that carry fingerprints from past lives.

The only decision tonight is whether to draw a bath—Epsom salts, bubbles—or stay here and let the music hold me exactly where I am. The bath can wait. The music has its grip on me now.

I’ve been away from New York for a long time—not just in distance, but in tempo. Out there on the road, walking across America, the beat was different. My soundtrack was wind across empty highways, the crunch of my own footsteps, the occasional kindness of strangers punctuating the silence.

Now I’m back, letting the city’s soundboard tune me again. The tempo here is faster, sharper—but I’m finding my place in it. Not fighting to keep up. Not getting swallowed whole. Just stepping back into the song like I never left.

And tonight, with the saxophone wrapping around the corners of my thoughts, I can feel it—something stirring ahead. Not an ending. Not a neat bow or a curtain call. The music isn’t closing out the night; it’s leaning forward, teasing the next measure.

There’s a new adventure out there—just past the edge of this melody, somewhere between the last note I hear tonight and the first one I’ll hear tomorrow. And when it comes, I’ll already be in rhythm.