You climb the last flight of stairs and push open the door and the rooftop is the only place in the city where you can see the whole city. Every other floor looks at the building across the street. The rooftop looks at the sky. The rooftop is where the building ends and the air begins and the air has no landlord and no lease and no noise complaint. You stand on the rooftop and the street is far enough below you that the street becomes a sound instead of a place. The honking and the shouting and the sirens become one continuous hum and the hum is the city breathing and you can hear it best from up here because up here is the only place where the city cannot reach you.

The Beatles played their last concert on the rooftop of 3 Savile Row in London on January 30 1969 because the rooftop was the only stage left that made sense. They could not play a stadium because the screaming had replaced the music. They could not play a club because they were too big for clubs. They could not play a television studio because television had made them into something they did not want to be. So they went up. They climbed to the roof of their own building and played to the sky and the sky did not scream and the sky did not ask for autographs and the police came after forty two minutes and told them to stop and they stopped and that was the last time the four of them played together in public. The rooftop was not a stage. The rooftop was the last place that had not been ruined by what success does to music.

Faith Ringgold painted Tar Beach in nineteen eighty eight because Tar Beach was what the rooftops of Harlem were called in the summer. You spread a blanket on the tar and the tar was warm from the sun and the stars were above you and the city was below you and for one night the rooftop was a beach without water. Ringgold painted a girl lying on the rooftop looking up at the George Washington Bridge and the bridge was covered in lights and the girl was dreaming of flying over the city and owning everything she flew over. The rooftop gave her the dream. The ground never would have. You cannot dream of flying when you are standing on the sidewalk. You need to be high enough to believe it is possible.

In Detroit in the nineteen sixties the rooftops of the Brewster Projects were where Motown happened before Motown had a name. Diana Ross grew up in the Brewster Projects and the kids sang on the rooftops because the rooftops had the best acoustics in the neighborhood. The stairwells had reverb but the rooftops had volume. You could sing on the rooftop and the whole block could hear you and the whole block was your audience whether they wanted to be or not. Smokey Robinson and the Temptations and the Four Tops all came from those buildings and those rooftops and the rooftops did not charge admission and the rooftops did not require an audition. The rooftop just required the courage to sing where everyone could hear you.

You stand on the rooftop at night and the city is a grid of lights and every light is a window and every window is a life and you cannot see the lives from up here but you know they are there. The rooftop is the only place where you are alone in a city of millions. The rooftop is the only place where the city becomes beautiful because the rooftop is the only place where the city becomes abstract. From the street the city is concrete and noise and garbage and rent. From the rooftop the city is light and geometry and distance and the sound of something too large to understand. The rooftop does not solve anything. The rooftop just gives you enough height to see that the problem is bigger than your block and knowing that is sometimes enough to go back downstairs.