Introduction

New York City, as we all know, is a funny place. Specifically, one's location of domicile is an ever-present conversation-piece, and New Yorkers know the ramifications of every answer to the question "Where do you live?" Classical musicians, on the lower end of New York's vast range of wealth, currently live as near to the hubs of the Upper West Side and Lower Manhattan as affordable: in Brooklyn, Queens, and Washington Heights/Inwood. Many of us live in shared apartments. And, inevitably, we spend a good deal of our normal days on the subway - if we could only practise our scales and arpeggios while commuting, being technically in shape would never be an issue!

For the past six years, I have been living this life. The unavoidable routine of the subway - faces with similar expressions at similar times of day with similar sorts of problems each day - gets broken every once in a while; the dipping-below-the-surface-of-the-reality-of-where-we-are-actually-going-in-the-end, sometimes becomes an inextricable part of that reality, for better or for worse.

This blog is dedicated to a few of those moments, that struck me momentous enough to write about at the time. Let's get playing!