In owning this house for the past year it has started to become like a living extension of myself. Short on brains, but with doors like eyelids, people moving through it as buzzing nerve endings, the circulatory system of water in the pipes. I pay attention to small noises, the clues of our inner workings. The scuff of a visitor’s foot on the steps, a pooling of light in the backyard from an uncurtained window, the muffled underwater murk of a radio playing.

It is 3.30 in the morning and a noise has woken me up. Ting! Ting! Ting! I tune my ears in the dark, play an aural 20 questions.
Is it coming from inside my apartment? No.
Is it coming from inside the building? No.
It is a metallic noise. Is it coming from the grocery store behind the house? No.
Is it coming from the neighbor’s? No, it’s closer than that.
Is it, maybe, the steady beat of rain, falling on a drainpipe? No, because now the sound is becoming more complex, there is the steady metallic ting, but also richer noise, more depth, different rhythms.

The noise is coming from the back of my house. The noise is coming from my own fire escape. Someone is playing my house like a drum, they are playing my fire escape like a percussive instrument, some solo instrumentalist, in the middle of the night, is on my fire escape, beating his music out against the flats, the spindles, the handrails. I am too awed to be pissed.