The city is at the tail end of a precedent-setting three day heatwave and all I can play on my piano with both hands (besides Christmas songs, and I'm sick of playing those)  is Scarborough Fair.

After the umteenth go 'round, I'm thinking that my neighbors must really love me for this--but then again the sounds of merengue and party chatter are so loud in the apartments above and below me on the weekends, I could probably keep this up well into the wee hours of the morning and no one would notice.  If you make too much noise on the Upper West Side, you can be fined up to $350--even if you're just honking the horn on your car.  Ditto for other tonier areas in the city, like Grammercy Park.  Not so in the ghetto, where people tilt gigantic stereo speakers from their windows to blast everything from Hector Lavoe to Malcolm X's most incendiary speeches.

Frankly, I love it.

I love it when somebody's sound system in their car is so loud and bottom-heavy it makes the whole street throb.  I love it when I come home at the end of the day  and everyone is selling all kinds of food in the street and they're yelling whatever they have in sing-song. I love it when little old Latino men break into song at the top of their lungs out of nowhere and sway and strut as they walk down the street, their arms outstretched.  And I love the sound of children everywhere, at all hours of the day or night, laughing and playing.  It makes my life feel like the 1930's-style MGM musical they couldn't even begin to imagine. So many different sounds, so
  many kinds of music. So many open windows. Now I know.  The buzz I always feel is really a dissonant cacophony of feeling that resonates in me, reaching its apex in my Southern self.