Music threaded through everything. There wasn’t one playlist in our lives; instead, there were overlapping soundtracks: a neighbor’s jazz records, a radio soap opera, children racing scooters and creating percussion out of the city’s clatter. I remember dancing barefoot in the kitchen to a record that skipped in the same spot every time, and how that tiny flaw made the song ours. The ep Célavie group had its own songs, phrases and ways of laughing that announced you immediately as part of the neighborhood.

Curiosity felt like oxygen. I collected questions the way other kids collected stamps: Why does the tram whistle sing a different note at dusk? Where do those old postcards come from? Why does the moon look bruised sometimes? Each small inquiry led me further — to cramped backrooms where someone fixed radios, to strangers’ living rooms filled with photographs, to late-night conversations that turned strangers into slow companions.

There was a group we lived inside of, even if it didn’t have a formal name: neighbors who swapped sugar and small favors, the baker who slipped us warm rolls, the grocer who kept a ledger with names and generous smudges. We called ourselves, jokingly, ep Célavie — an odd little mash of syllables that felt like a private radio frequency. It meant nothing specific, and that was its charm. We were a constellation of small things: an overflowing mailbox, a shared umbrella at market, a chorus of mismatched voices at neighborhood meals. Within that group, belonging wasn’t signed or declared. It was shown — through someone bringing soup on a rainy night, a bike carried up three flights of stairs for a neighbor, a chorus of greetings when a child returned home late.