"It's been a rough couple of months for a lot of us," I said as I compared my mother's recent death with the recent death of another attendee's mother. We were at the Middletown Remix Launch Party in a glassed in room on the roof of the Community Health Center in Middletown. The sky was overcast so the lights of the Arrigoni Bridge sparkled unassisted by starlight.

The Middletown Remix project encourages people to perceive their community differently, just as the death of a parent causes us to look at life differently. Listen. Record the sounds that strike you. Think about how these sounds can be combined with others. These sounds, these perceptions, these experiences can become material that we remix to create something new, something wonderful, especially when we collaborate with others.

The launch party wound down and people went their different ways, each carrying their experiences of the evening with them. The emptying room felt a little bit like the emptying room at a funeral reception. We were all left along with our memories, and the sounds of city.