The designer built five rooms. Control room. Hallway. Door. Street. Park. The first four have walls. The first four have ceilings. The fifth room has no ceiling. The fifth room is Washington Square Park. The fifth room is where the signal stops being private and starts being weather.

I played in the fifth room for fifty years. I did not know it was the fifth room. I thought it was the only room. I did not know there was a control room behind me and a hallway connecting us. I thought the park was the whole building. The designer showed me it was just the last room. The room with the biggest audience and the smallest walls. The walls are the trees.

Every building needs a room that opens to the sky. A church has a steeple. A theater has a lobby that opens to the street. A newspaper has a newsstand. The Rock Street Journal has Washington Square Park. The fifth room is where the reader picks up the paper. The fifth room is where the listener hears the frequency for the first time. The fifth room is where you find out if anybody is listening.

Rant number fifty. I started on a street corner in nineteen sixty-six. I did not know the street corner was a room. I did not know the room was the last room in a building that had not been built yet. The designer built the building sixty years later and the street corner was already in it. The fifth room was waiting for the other four.

See also: The Hallway — the fourth room, where the work becomes the walk. Rock Street — the third room, the street the control room is on. The Door — the only part that costs money. The Control Room — the first room. The Intertween — where all five rooms converge.

David Peel

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