The First Table — Share a Flat White

A small act, a slow idea — one coffee at a time.

By Rafi Mercer

I fuel my thinking with a flat white.

It’s a small ritual that keeps the engine warm: a steady hand, milk folded into espresso, heat meeting calm. I drink and I think — always.

It’s my habit and my craft. I listen to rooms, to the way light sits on a table, to how a record unfolds in space.

I’ve spent years in luxury sound by day, learning how shape and material change what the ear believes.

Somewhere along the way I started hearing differently — less as noise, more as design.

 Listening became a way to move through the world, and Tracks & Tales is simply the map I began to draw so I wouldn’t forget the route.

I didn’t set out to write any of this.

Truthfully, I never thought I’d write like this at all. I’m not the type to announce a novel or draft a manifesto; I’m the one who lingers after the last track, notes the geometry of the bass in the corner, and files the feeling for later.

But a friend sat me down — a kind friend, the sort who knows when you need a nudge — and said, “Just start. Write what you hear.” So I did.

Page by page, city by city, a quiet atlas emerged: places where music matters, rooms where attention is the décor, corners where the air itself carries a story if you stand still long enough to hear it.

My day job has been a study in detail. Luxury sound is less about price and more about proportion; you learn to respect the centimetres between drivers, the honesty of a cabinet, the consequences of glass.

It taught me the discipline to listen before I speak. It also showed me that most of us don’t lack taste — we lack time. We rush past songs that could hold us together. We scroll through the very thing we came to feel.

So I made a promise to myself: I’ll write the world as I hear it. I’ll slow down. I’ll let the rooms talk.

And if I can do that with enough care, maybe others will slow down too.

People often call listening a luxury. I think they’re right, but not in the way they mean.

Luxury isn’t always money; sometimes it’s attention.

A minute spent properly is worth more than an hour spent elsewhere.

The miracle — the hopeful part — is that this luxury is oddly affordable. A coffee’s worth of time can change what a day sounds like. A coffee’s worth of belief can change what a project becomes.

That’s what Tracks & Tales has been built on so far: coffees shared, in person and in spirit, small gestures that say “carry on; this matters.”

So here’s my thinking out loud, unvarnished and honest: if you’ve found something here — a line, a room, a way of seeing your city with your ears — and you’d like this atlas to keep growing, you can buy me a flat white.

Symbolic, yes, but not trivial.

It’s how I’ve kept the rhythm steady: one cup to write the next page, another to finish a city, another to verify a venue so the map stays trustworthy. It’s not patronage; it’s participation. You’re not tipping a busker; you’re fuelling a cartographer.

And if you want to buy more than one drink — well, it will help. It keeps the ink wet, the ears open, the lights on.

I’ve watched and heard the world differently to most because I was taught, early, that sound is not just heard — it’s held. Rooms hold sound the way a hand holds water: imperfectly, beautifully, with a little spill and a little shine.

That’s why I write about architecture and bass notes in the same breath. That’s why a city page starts with weather and ends with a turntable.

There’s a thread running through it all: give attention a home and it becomes culture. Neglect it and it evaporates.

I think I have the skills and the mind to help change how we hear — not by shouting louder, but by tuning better.

The plan is simple and stubborn: more cities mapped carefully; more venues checked and cherished; more essays that taste of places; more rooms where strangers can listen as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

I’ll keep doing my part — early starts, late edits, the occasional stubborn sentence that finally lands — and you, if you feel like it, can meet me at the coffee line and say, “Keep going.”

A flat white isn’t much.

But enough of them, placed side by side, become a table.

A first table, perhaps, where names are remembered and stories begin.

If you’ve read this far, you’re already at that table with me. Thank you for listening — truly listening.

If you’d like to help, buy a flat white. If you’d like to help more, buy two. I’ll turn them into pages, and the pages into places you can step inside and hear your life anew.

Cheers

Rafi Mercer