NEW YORK – Near the Brooklyn Bridge, just north of the South Street Seaport, a piano sat alone, East River water lapping at its legs. The keys were rotten and broken, but against the backdrop of the Brooklyn Bridge, it was almost majestic, like it was climbing out of the water to declare its supremacy over the rest of us.

I snapped a picture and spent more time than I’d like to admit researching its origins, which remain elusive. Was it an art installation, and if so, who made it? Why did no one sign it or claim it, and was Banksy secretly resuming his New York residency from October 2013? Was the combination of an intense fog and a long week producing hallucinations?

There was something joyously child-like about the way that New Yorkers interacted with the piano, climbing on it like a jungle gym when the tide was low, or even tentatively tapping a key, looking behind them as if to ask an unseen parent for permission to touch it.

One woman even ignored a high tide, and the perils of questionable East River waters to film a video depicting her attempt to make the nonworking piano sing once again.

I continue to debate whether it was an intentional public art installation, whether someone had actually thrown a piano into the East River, but then realized, intentional or not, something about way all of the elements fit together: the river, the bridge, the gray sky, and the incongruous piano, made it just as worthy as anything I’ve covered that was funded, curated and claimed.

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