Subway Notes II: $11.50 and Counting. I'll be professional yet! April 28, 2009

To Whom It May Concern;
or,
Dear Diary,

It's been over three years since I last played in the subway and wrote about it here. That time, I had spontaneity, self-respect, and joy to share, or at least it appears thus in the rosy glow of the distancing past. Tonight, wilted skill, decrepitude, and eccentricity characterize my role as subway violinist (not too far from the truth, some might exclaim, but if they exclaim so I'll not include it here!). I play a hard-time-befallen needy has-been violinist, or, to put it more acutely in the past, a once-was, in Myriad Production's web-serial Intersection (Season 1, end of episode 12). My character "had it together" once upon a time, as the expression goes, but has been too strongly touched by the misfortunes of life to "make it".
I "got the gig" yesterday, through my last summer's subletter, an aspiring actor/writer who revels in an enormous vocabulary. It doesn't pay; but, being for a web series, "has the potential to be good promotion, and will be with nice people, mind you it's at 10pm downtown, to be after dark, and outdoors." What does a violinist of my sunken position wear? In a flurry of e-mails and phonecalls, we strike upon on mismatches: a scarf wrapped around my head, absurd knee-high socks, dishevelled hair, and, unlike the aspiring and successful Sound of Music's von Trapp kids, un-tailored drapery as a coat-substitute.
My moment of on-screen glory comes just after the lead roles' date falls apart - having bid him adieu, she enters the subway in evasion, then re-emerges from a different exit at my busking-place, and, in a gesture of externalizing her wish for good in the world despite things having gone awry, she places a kindly dollar in my supplicating violin case, and crosses the intersection.
I accordingly selected Kreisler's "Love's Sorrow" as repertoire, playing it many times throughout the shoot (along with whatever came to mind during soundless shots). From my playing, I even earned a little over $2 from those who didn't notice the camera at a distance - but perhaps it wasn't just the playing... Buskers, take note! A new, though immoral-if-planned, technique is at hand. Since each shot of the video-taping was repeated several times, the star returned to my case between filmings to retract her donation. Whereupon, incensed by her audacity, a good-natured biker passerby unscriptedly exhorted her to return it to me, and tossed in two dollars as my recompense, - ere we could convey the reality of our fiction. Of course I was humoured, especially having not intended to collect a paycheck tonight; still, I felt a twinge of chagrin at deceiving my uprighteous, charitable and pitying benefactors, who acted to help right the wronged. Fortunately (or, unfortunately, had I been a true busker) - my location in front of the 23rd street NRW station, at 11pm, was not really suitable for earning a living. Or maybe I just wasn't doing a great job of playing...
In any case, as is New York life, within two hours my state of being transformed, from fakely busking, to having worked (ok, volunteered) with several lovely and talented people, and cruising swiftly home - not in the insufferably "patient" late-night subway, but along the Hudson in a convertible Maserati, (one of only 90 with a Ferrari engine, as its enterprising owner imparts). You see, one of the cameramen/directors worked 'til several years ago as a professional banker ... and since he lives further uptown than I - if Westchester may be considered uptown -, dropping me off barely rerouted his way, and certainly was the ideal transit solution for me. Busking as a downtrodden character in an unkempt costume, as well as experiencing the high life in a convertible's whirlwind along the Hudson, are both more foreign to me than perhaps they should be - yet both were wafts of exciting and exotic adventure, blurring fiction with reality - one creating the other - through empathy and imagination and situation. Donning of characters and roles nearer to us than we think, while never forgetting our own - this is an artist's profession.
There is also something naturally magical about playing Kreisler for any appreciative person who cares to listen, whilst taking in sights and sounds, and enjoying excellent company - and then travelling under open skies on a warm summer's night with the wind in one's hair. And, wondering at the chain of events and interpersonal connections that precipated it all would be never-ending - academically, I expect to conclude with a platitude: "The unexpected is never expected, and that by definition!".
But, in an academic-paper-rhetorical-question-opening style of conclusion: Subway Performance #2, The Sequel - Flat Post-Opening-Night Syndrome? Nope, not at all. I think I'm just getting warmed up - please stay tuned!