It’s 3 a.m. and I am riding my bicycle home from a another night at work. Getting to see the city asleep is an extremely rare opportunity for me, so I am relishing in the moment completely. Downtown Birmingham is completely different this time of morning.
The traffic light I am at turns red. The silence dances all around me, this never happens in the city during the day time. I throw my head back and look around for a bit to enjoy the moment. I just watch as the flashing colored lights and shadows play together on the sides of the buildings. Then the traffic light changes.
*Green*
Click click click …I cycle through the gears I now have a tempo. My own steady breathing provides a bass line. The sharp buzz of my tires on the street rounds out this musical piece amazingly. My ride home now has a soundtrack. I look around at one point when something odd catches my eye. I see light where there shouldn’t be light, and I hear another piece of music where there shouldn’t be.
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There is this private little art studio setup on the sidewalk. There are empty tubes of paint strewn everywhere and a canvas is setup with several flash lights shining towards it. In the middle of this there is an artist. He has a tablet in one hand and a brush in the other, his face itself is a portrait of sheer and total concentration. He is bent over his his canvas painting one of the most amazing paintings of my hometown I have ever seen, and that not nearly enough people will ever get to see. It is a shame I didn’t have my camera with me.