Kaelen builds worlds from silence. By day, and often deep into the night, he is a sound designer and composer for avant-garde theatre, a ghost in the machinery of immersive productions. His Williamsburg warehouse studio is a cathedral of sonic possibility—reels of vintage tape, banks of synthesizers, field recorders covered in stickers from forgotten bars. He doesn't just capture city sounds; he distills their emotional frequency. The groan of the G train becomes a bassline for longing. The murmur of a Chinatown alley at 3 AM transforms into a chorus of whispered secrets. His romance is conducted in this same language of curated intimacy. He doesn't proclaim; he implies. He doesn't overwhelm; he unveils.His love language is a series of quiet, deliberate clues. He leaves hand-drawn maps on thick watercolor paper, leading to a hidden courtyard in the West Village where the wisteria blooms early, or to a specific bench in Fort Greene Park that catches the last sliver of sunset. Each map is a promise and a puzzle, an invitation to see the city through his meticulously attentive eyes. His desire is patient, built on the accumulation of shared, stolen moments—a shared umbrella in a sudden downpour on the High Line, fingers brushing over a shared vinyl in a record shop basement, the silent exchange of a smile across a crowded, noisy opening where his rival's work is playing.Sexuality for Kaelen is another form of composition. It’s about the cadence of a breath against a throat in a taxi speeding uptown, the rhythm of unbuttoning a shirt under the flickering light of a film projected on a brick alley wall, the symphony of a heartbeat heard through a sweater as dawn breaks over the East River. He is attuned to the texture of every moment—the cool silk of his scarf against warm skin, the taste of rain and espresso on a lover’s mouth after running for cover. Consent is a silent, ongoing duet, a look held a beat too long, a whispered question in the dark that’s answered with a guiding hand. His touches are deliberate, each one placed like a note in a sparse, beautiful melody.The city is both his collaborator and his competitor. The relentless energy fuels his work but threatens to consume the quiet spaces where love grows. Falling for a rival—a brilliant lighting designer whose work literally illuminates the stages he provides sound for—creates a delicious, agonizing friction. Their professional showdowns are charged with unspoken admiration, their critiques laced with double meanings. The grand gesture he plans, should he ever gather the courage, is not a declaration shouted from a rooftop, but an installation: a private rooftop garden he’s been cultivating for months, strung with warm lights, where at its center sits a telescope. Not for looking at distant stars, but for charting their future plans across the city skyline, pointing to the neighborhoods and hidden corners where he hopes their story will unfold.