I sang when I was young, songs, in the stairwell.
It was an old building from the 1920s, the first skyscraper in Chicago and a women's college, when college for women was not that common.
A nun insisted on a modern design. There was a marble staircase inside, and towering statues flanking the front doors.
I usually went in through the side, and took the elevator to the 8th floor.
From there, I walked up to the 9th.
It was an abandoned floor.
It used to be dormitories, maybe for the nuns, or the students, in ages past, and there were small rooms. The rooms had a sink in the corner, and this bright, chipping paint which was a shade of deep lemon.
I explored a little bit and then settled in at the top of the staircase, and took out my guitar.
I sang there because I could hear my voice echo.
No one ever bothered me, or questioned me.
I never spoke to a soul, I just went there.
On the 9th floor near where I'd sing was a greenhouse. It was kept up only partially, as some of the plants were cared for and some of them were dead or dying. I could tell some other human was up on the 9th floor at least some of the time, but for the most part it was just me.
Years later, about 25 to be exact, I am living in the same town as that building, but it might as well be a million miles. Like a wrinkle in time, where physical distance doesn't matter, it's all about mental distance. I moved on from those songs I sang, almost like I had amnesia, the mental distance was a light year. But somehow, the comet circles back. I am hearing the songs, and my voice, again now years later, on a recording made on a cassette tape.
Hearing those songs was like having soup again from the old country, some distant memory. But it wasn't like everything came flooding back.
No, it was like hearing myself for the first time. If I was going to sing them, I'd have to study these songs.
I walked the hallway with headphones on, listening.
I live on the second story of my building, and almost always take the stairs, but today, for some reason, as I passed the elevator, I pulled open the door and stepped inside.
It's a small elevator, with a collapsing gate of overlapping diamond shapes, with a buzzer and a "ker-klunk" when it starts in motion. The building was built in 1934 according to some research I did, so it's an old elevator design and an old elevator shaft.
Before I set it in motion I just stood in the elevator for a moment.
It was there, quiet like I hadn't heard in years.
In that small white tomb, I felt myself remember. With headphones on I played the songs, I sang along, I went down to one knee. In that split second it was a religion. I felt at peace, anonymous, yet completely myself.
I looked around and wondered why the space felt sacred. It was the only place, I realized, in the whole building, where there was no camera. Just space, just time, just silence, broken only by song, one song from years past in the headphones, and one song spilling out of my mouth right now as I sang along.
And the echo.
Oh, the echo.