Sound check
A boombox on the pavement, the neon over it, and a street that is a stage for one song.
- Where
- A side street, Hong Kong
- When
- What lit it
- Shop signs, and one speaker
- Reading
- 1 minute
He sets it down under the signs, kneels, and turns it up one notch at a time until the street answers from the other side.
The street is narrow and the signs lean over it from both sides, so that at night it is roofed with light: a noodle bar in pink, a pharmacy in green, a mahjong parlour whose sign has lost two of its letters and kept its glow.
He plays one song a night, never the same one, and never says which it will be.
I turn it up until the street answers. Then I know it is loud enough.
Nobody gathers. People walk slower, that is all, for the length of one song. A delivery rider stopped at the corner and did not get off his bike until it was over.
The boombox is from a flea market and needs eight batteries. He says they last for about forty songs, which he thinks is a fair number for anything.
Then he turns it off, and the signs keep humming as if they had been part of it.
Photo: Pexels
