Deserted Circus Music

Busking at the St. George ferry terminal in Staten Island is something I do only once a month, because getting a busking permit there is very difficult.

The tall gentleman who has been doing the Central Park Halloween gig with me for years (he plays Dracula while I play a witch playing the musical saw) stopped to talk to me as he was waiting for the ferry boat to Manhattan. He told me that he raises pigeons. He has ‘tumbler pigeons’ – these are Victorian birds which were raised not to fly but to roll over the ground. In races, the longest a pigeon rolled is 300 feet, he said.
He showed me his ring – it’s a Free Masons ring. It looks like a regular ring, but the stone set in this ring flips over to reveal the Free Masons symbol on the other side.

A girls said to me: “Your music sounds like a deserted circus”.

The Christian missionary lady who hands out flyers outside the terminal hall came to say ‘hi’ and to ask me when I’m going to visit Israel. She told me that she applied for ‘Aliya’ (immigration to Israel) but got rejected because they don’t allow Messeanic people. But now she heard the Israeli immigration law got changed, so she will apply again.

A guy heard me play ‘Winter’ by Vivaldi on the musical saw. He told me Vivaldi was a priest and he had red hair and was six feet tall. “He must have stuck out back in the 1600’s – people were not six feet tall back then”, he said.