This article was initially published on Medium

When I first moved in I got quite a shock. It had been quite a bumpy ride already, and I almost didn’t arrive where I was supposed to. To be fair, I didn’t know where that would be either.

The shock was the emptiness of it. It’s not that I expected something, I guess it’s just the fact that I expected anything. Maybe a glimpse or perhaps just a colour on it? The cold air and the greyness of it also surprised me. It may sound silly, perhaps you are accustomed to the feeling — but it was a big change for me.

Regardless, that didn’t matter. I embraced it. I gave it all one could: the entirety of time – the past, the future and the undivided present. And, maybe unexpected, the echoes of the empty room didn’t last that much. It’s surprising how little you need to feel the warmth, actually. We made it work, even if not really working.

Still, we needed to fill it up, right? The emptiness is perfect to flower ideas but it serves to be filled. Have you ever moved? You can try to bring things from the other place – but a new home is a new home, it doesn’t work like that. Thank God. We needed new things and we went shopping.

It’s funny how it works. A bunch of different things under the same roof and we call it “identity” or “style”. Being bold is good, I guess we weren’t enough at the time: we stuck with white and black. Safety is always an option but we never know if it will pan out. Yet, it was a way forward.

Maybe it was us or the structure but there was some pending things from the move. I admit it – it was probably me. Still, what can I say? Identity is a function of time in the end; and the once empty room became a home.

I grew up in a certain way and it turns out that some of the pending things didn’t stop me from calling it a home. I know it’s not for everyone, I’m not judging. But I do want to say that it becomes like an eternal evolving orchestra: tons of moving parts, maybe more than one should, but beautiful if you can hear it.

The symphony was in the smallest things. The quiet whispers in the corridors, the creaks in the floor that you could make in specific points that you already had memorised, the constant drip bringing new life into this system. They weren’t imperfections anymore, not to me. Every sound and every quirk was an essential part of the home, and I was fortunate to be there.

This concert hall had been a private stage for long and enough crescendo and descendos had passed: it was time to open it up. Well-intentioned and with a lot of care we take out the old dusty list of pending things. No stone left unturned, no nail unaccounted and every knot reviewed. The imperfect home became a house. It was open for the world. It had a new movement.

Now, in this new house, I find myself retrating from the songs. It’s not that they are bad. It’s just that, in the quiet and loneliness of the late nights, I miss the rhythm of the dripping tap, the subtle heartbeat of the first melody.

In the silence, there’s a new emptiness, not unlike when I first moved in. Except now, I know what’s missing: the sweet symphony of imperfections.

What will you miss when it’s gone?