GENTS CAFE X GAGGIA | This article is part of the “Over an Espresso” series—an invitation to slow down, brew an espresso at home, and let reflection surface.
The rain wakes me again. It hasn’t stopped for days. It falls hard on the roof and harder in my head. I lie there and think about the walk to the station.
I go downstairs, where the morning radio’s already on – its soft hum filling the corner of the room. I weigh 18 grams of coffee, grind it, tamp, and pull the lever. It pours out all golden and syrupy and slow into my espresso cup.
I look outside and watch the ripples across pavements and rooftops – ripples through my heart – and wonder if the rain will ever end.
I take the first sip of espresso.
The sound from the radio rises and spreads through the air like wandering smoke – a saxophone blowing long and slow, a bass guitar answering, and drums keeping a steady beat.
Suddenly, I’m somewhere else.
I follow its melody, up and down, in and out, with the beating heart, opening and closing, softening and hardening, as it does.
The rain – an annoyance no more than a few minutes ago – has a sudden rhythm to it. The day has a sudden pulse, and I’m all in on it. Because music does that. As does any art. It moves us from one state of being to another, so instantly, so sharp.
It’s not perfect. It’s like an extension of the eternal human flaw, that floats above us and threads us all together, like one unbelievable heartbeat that’s irregular, imperfect, strange, and beautiful.
A song can take us places where it aches to go again. A word can articulate an era of our life we’re yet to live. A painting can reveal the child within us that the world has tried to shame. Why? Because we know them, like they know us – our common human struggle and imperfection between us.
And we’ll try to grip onto it – try to understand it – and squeeze all the juices from it when it comes. When it’s as potent and tangible as a freshly squeezed blood orange in the palm of our hand. But it’s so fleeting – and when it’s gone, we might spend our lives trying to find that feeling again. And if we do, it’ll likely be in the most unexpected way.
And it’ll be sharp and true.
Because art doesn’t have to be under the mirage of music, or paintings, or dance, or words. Sometimes a long stretch of road can give life purpose. I’ve heard people speak words like poetry, who leave me feeling completely different about the human condition. I’ve felt seen and stripped naked by a single touch from a stranger on a bedroom floor.
Hell, even a walk in this rain – that I still hear beating above me, behind the music – puts life into the perspective of a million years with a single droplet that sinks long and deep into the dirt from which we all came from and will return to again.
How is that not art?
I take a final sip of espresso. No longer tired. Full of something that wasn’t there before, that’s still floating out of my reach, that I felt for a brief moment. Suddenly all in on the day. Suddenly moved.
