The hills are alive....

Sometimes, when I walk home a bit later than usual, around 8 or 9pm, there is a flute playing over Cerro Alegre. I can't pinpoint the location. It must be coming from somewhere higher up on the hill, because the sound seems to be falling down from the sky. It is eerie and beautiful, these strange little unaccompanied melodies. The air at night now is crisp and clear, because it is autumn, and the notes of the flute match those qualities. The flutist never seems to play songs, just little snatches of melody, 8 bars, 16 bars, pause. Then another, unrelated, it seems. But never a wrong note. It makes my thoughts unclench and my mind goes dreamy. I begin to think that there should always be someone playing the flute on clear autumn nights when the stars are out, and Valparaiso's lights are falling into the ocean.

At home, there is an entirely different kind of music. Far less poetic and ethereal but it makes me just as happy. There is a man, who I have never seen, who lives directly below the floorboards of my room. The entrance to that floor of the building is on the street above on the hill, not in the Pasaje that I enter from, so I will probably never meet this person. I am guessing that he is young because of his voice, and because he has a prediliction for some sort of car-racing video game (although you never know, some people don't grow out of those). In any event, Sr. Downstairs Neighbor loves to sing. He has a very nice voice. He sings ballads, mostly, but sometimes pop music or the occasional musical score. And what I love is that he doesn't sing the way most people sing when they are puttering around at home--halfway, one lyric here, another there, with half a voice. Sr. DN puts soul into his singing. He sings as if he had an audience of 50 people. And he'll give what deserve to be called concerts. Sometimes he'll be singing away for an hour, or more. I like to listen, and I like to think about the other listeners propped up on other beds or leaned over other tables. It is an anonymous community, the singer and his audience, hidden away in cubby holes, blind to one another.

Outside, on top of the hill, the flute is cold and beautiful and still. Inside, the lone ballad singer is the warm heart of the building. And down in the plan at the base of the hill, in the Plaza Anibal Pinto, a man bangs on a homemade bass drum while a girl dances with a tambourine and 6, 7, 8 people play on panflutes and mouth-harps, and the rest dance.