A Pigeon in the Subway Station

As I arrived at the Music Under New York spot at Union Square I found Clovia, the homeless lady who likes to paint on clothes, sleeping on the bench. Her huge cart was by her side. She had a coat and a couple of bags she painted hanging from the cart, and she was wearing a matching painted ball cap.
As I started playing she just kept on sleeping.

A girl by the name of Emily stoped to ask me if I can help her – she needs to get a musical saw in two days… She is playing the role of Juliet in the Shakespeare in the Parking lot production of Romeo & Juliet. She portrays Juliet as a 13 year old kid who plays the musical saw… so far Emily has been using a regular carpenter’s hand saw but she would like to graduate into a professional musical saw.

Saw joke of the day:
A lady set on the bench to listen to my playing. She then approached to talk with me. Then she said: “I’m gonna stay for the next cut” 🙂
She returned to the bench and listened to one more song.

Clovia, the homeless lady, woke up. She came over to say ‘hi’ and to apologize to me that she didn’t come to say ‘hi’ to me before. She had seen me at Times Square, but was in a bad frame of mind so couldn’t be social. She told me that her brother just died. She was scared that if she talked to me she was going to burst in tears, and she was surprised she didn’t. She spent some time with her family in DC, where her brother was. I asked her how come she doesn’t just stay with her family in DC. She said “DC is so boring!”
We talked about how the DC subway is much cleaner, and about how they just started hiring musicians to play in the DC subway. They actually PAY musicians $200 to play for a couple of hours in the subway!

Sleepy Lester, the harmonica player, walked by and said hello.

Pat the painter who sells his reproductions up stairs in the Union Square park stopped to chat. He gave me one of his reproductions, titled “Moon”.

A pigeon got into the subway station. She didn’t know how to get out. She was flying all over, trying to land on the ground but immediately scared away by passers by. She finally perched on the lighting fixture above, in front of me. She stayed there for a whole song. I kept looking up at her while playing. It was nice having her there.
When the song was over I looked up again, and she was gone.