There’s a mug. A Blue coffee mug so dark it’s almost black. It’s been a frequent resident of the window sill since 2009. It’s not a very important mug, as you can tell. The lacquer is chipped in some places, and there’s a paint stain on the handle. A spiderweb-thin crack runs up the side. Still, on mornings like this, the mug is filled with liquid. Steam rises over the edges as the owner surveys the world outside. 

It’s a dirty, gray city skyline, offset against the rusted red paint of the fire escape. The owner finds music to it. There’s a heavy bass, made up of rumbling vehicles and ongoing construction, punctuated by car horns and the screaming couple from two floors down. The bitter coffee in the mug is just a soft tenor accompaniment to the rest of the noise. 

The mug and its owner are residents of the Glory Heights Apartments, an inappropriate name in their opinions. The owner finds the cracked wood on the floor of their studio apartment annoying when it catches on their fuzzy socks. The mug isn’t particularly fond of the lack of insulation. Though they may not like the apartment, they both love the city. 

The Composer, as the mug refers to its owner, needs the noise. They need the rhythm the city provides, and the sound of doors opening for First Friday. The mug likes to watch the Composer, and the Composer likes the city, so the mug likes the city. Today the mug has been filled twice with black coffee; it’s a working day. The city holds its breath as the Composer begins. 

The mug never sees the Composer start with a single note; it’s always three. A crash on piano keys, like the car crash on 5th and West the mug watched the other day. Today they choose a high note to follow, a falafel cart being unhooked from its tow. The song starts and stops, traffic on one-way streets, as the Composer marks what sounds right on sheets of manuscript paper. They keep this up all day. The Composer writes, the mug watches and listens, the cracks on the floor continue to catch on socks. 

The mug often hears things before the Composer does, its spot being pressed up against the window pane. It can tell when the soup lines open up at the local church by the sounds of old shoes and thin coats rubbing together. It knows when the nail salon opens because the owner always pops open the plastic sign with a forced crack. It knows when the Lush store on the next block has opened its doors because there’s always a rush of people moving to the other side of the street to escape the smell. All of this is just more music to the Composer and more marks on a page. 

Doors open and close, lights go on and off, people yell and scream. The high school three blocks over lets out for the day and teenagers smoke pot in the park next door. Strollers filled with dogs or children are marched over bumpy uneven pavement, and a girl clutches her pepper spray a bit tighter while walking through an alley. The delivery boy cycles through a group of pigeons who couldn’t care less and the drag queen takes a smoke break outside the club. A Vietnamese grandmother runs her restaurant’s kitchen through her mere presence and a few loud words. The mug takes it all in, happily steaming away on top of the upright piano. The Composer’s niece refers to it as a ‘cowboy saloon piano.’ 

Occasionally, the Composer takes a sip of the slowly chilling coffee, but mostly, they stay on task. With each new noise, there’s a new note, a new refrain or chord they have to capture. There’s more scratching on the paper and the pile grows on the bench. It’s not a symphony or a song, there are no lyrics that can describe what they want to expose. It’s simply a city. A city of music overseen by a blue mug with a cracked side and a paint stain in a fourth-floor apartment over a convenience store. 

As the light fades out, construction stops, offices close, traffic picks up and dies again. The mug listens to the streetlights fizzle on and buzz. The convenience store owner downstairs yells “Hey, kid!” as the same college student arrives after her library shift and picks up a microwave meal. She always comes after ten, with slumped shoulders and a heavy backpack. He always tosses a free bagel or banana in her bag when she checks out. She works too hard if the bags under her eyes are anything to go by. The mug hears him talk about it after she leaves. 

New noises take over the day, softer ones. Cars whoosh by quietly. Doors close, and pedestrians chatter as they go in and out of bars. The steady thump of music spills out of clubs filled with people trying to forget the day. The Composer tries to take in all these new sounds, the decrescendo of them, the petering off of sound as the night takes over and the city falls as silent as it will ever get. The coffee in the mug is now freezing cold. They can wash it tomorrow. For now, they close the piano, put down the pencil and stand from the bench. The mug hears their back crack as they go to shower. It must be hard, it thinks, letting all the music flow through you. 

When the mug first arrived, it thought the Composer bled black. That the music they tried so hard to recreate was only translatable through the act of opening a vein. The sounds were so holy to something that had spent its short life on a department store shelf listening to mindless rearrangements of the same notes that it didn’t understand how making music was doable without that sacrifice. Now the mug knows better. The Composer writes with a pencil, a lifeless piece of graphite that is their method of worship. The mug understands much more now. 

The mug knows the composer, knows the city. It knows that the small, fourth floor, corner studio apartment with the cracked floors and nonexistent insulation is a church. The Composer is its priest, the music its praise, the city its God. The mug itself sits in the window, a prophet and disciple, sometimes steaming, sometimes cold, always listening.