The basketball on the playground court was the loudest clock on the Lower East Side. The ball hit the asphalt and bounced back and hit the asphalt and bounced back and the rhythm told you what time it was. Early morning the court was empty and the clock was silent. Mid-afternoon the ball started and the clock started. By five o'clock the ball was constant and the clock was running at full speed and it did not stop until the streetlights came on and somebody's mother leaned out a window and shouted a name that was not yours but could have been.

The basketball had two sounds. The dribble was the metronome. The shot was the cymbal crash. The dribble kept time and the shot broke time and the swish of the ball through the chain net was the sound of time stopping for one second while everybody watched the ball fall through. The chain net was the only part of the court that made a beautiful sound. The backboard made a thud. The rim made a clang. The chain net made a whisper. The whisper said the ball went in and the ball going in was the only thing that mattered on that court at that hour on that block.

The court was surrounded by a chain link fence and the chain link fence turned the court into a cage and the cage turned the players into animals and the animals played like their freedom depended on the score. The freedom did not depend on the score. The freedom was the game itself. Inside the fence the landlord did not exist. The rent did not exist. The school that was underfunded did not exist. The cop on the corner did not exist. Inside the fence the only thing that existed was the ball and the rim and the question of whether this shot would go in or not. The court was the only place on the Lower East Side where the future was three seconds long.

I played guitar outside the chain link fence and the basketball players were my rhythm section. The dribble gave me a tempo. The shot gave me a downbeat. The argument after the foul gave me a bridge. I played to the game and the game did not know I was playing. The basketball did not care about my guitar. The guitar did not care about the basketball. But they occupied the same air on the same block at the same hour and the air did not separate them. The air mixed them. The sound of a guitar and the sound of a basketball on asphalt in the late afternoon on the Lower East Side was one sound and nobody heard it that way except me.