Green Streak of Color

As I started to play in the subway today, two Nortenos playing guitar and accordion waved ‘hi’ to me on their way to playing on the #6 train. A guitar player carrying his gear nodded ‘hello’ as he passed by me.

A teenager leaned against the column in front of me and listened to four songs. He clapped his hands for me after each one.
“I wish I could give you something, but I don’t have any money”, he said.
Saw Lady: “Don’t worry about it – I appreciate your enthusiasm”.

A gentleman set down on the bench and listened to a few songs. He had a large, gold-framed collage of Barak Obama with him. He told me that he is a percussionist. I asked him if he made the painting he was carrying and he said yes. “So, you’re a percussionist and an artist”, I said.
“I’m a ‘collartist'”, he said – because he makes collages. He sometimes sells his artwork upstairs in the Union Square park, but now he is on his way to Brooklyn, to deliver this collage to somebody who is buying it.

Saw Joke of the Day:
I was playing ‘The Swan’ by Saint-Saens.
Lady: “That was originally written for musical saw, right?”

The lady who wears her hair in a braid stopped to say ‘hi’. She was drinking a soft drink in a purple container and she wore a purple shirt, so I said to her: “Your drink matches your shirt. You coordinate what you drink with what you wear” 🙂 When she answered I noticed that her voice was still hoarse, like it was the last few times I saw her. She said she is going for surgery on the 6th – a biopsy. I remember when the doctor told her that her hoarse throat is nothing but a reaction to the weather…

Will and another MTA workman, who usually see me at the Times Square station, were on their way to pick up some equipment. They wondered how come they haven’t seen me for a while. “Did you go to Israel again?” Will asked me.
It’s so nice how people I meet in the subway actually remember things that I do…

Photographer: © Chad Rachman

Arnold, the messenger, stopped by twice on his way to making deliveries.
A man playing guitar played an arpeggio as a greeting to me as he passed by.

Will & his friend returned and Will asked me when I’m going to be at the Staten Island Ferry terminal. He wants to bring his grand kids to see me there and ride the ferry.

A lady with crutches told me that she travelled for four hours on a bus from the Catskills to get to NYC. She lives in a valley but wants to move up to a mountain and open an inner-child center. She will be 80 years old in July.

A young lady told me that her father in GA is a fan of mine… He bought my CD over the Internet.

Welf Dorr, the saxophone player of the ‘Underground Horns’ band, was on his way to playing at 34th street. He told me that someone saw his band in the subway and invited them to Egypt, to play for a wedding. They were in Cairo for three days recently. The sister of the bride, who was from Libya, paid for him and his five band members to go to Egypt and play at the wedding.

At 3pm Heth & Jed, the guitar players, arrived for their permitted busking spot. Jed had a green streak of color in his hair. It used to be blue but it washes off, he said. Heth said the menacing hip-hop dancers who used to terrorize all the buskers at 34th street disappeared. Heth & Jed played at 34th street twice now and there was no sign of the dancers. He thinks the dancers finally pissed-off the police and got kicked out. The dancers are now performing by the library at 42nd street. This is great news – may be I could return to playing at 34th street now.

On the platform below a duo of guitar and violin were playing.
The music continues on.