Porcelain, Iron and a Violin

18 September 2007
New York City

This evening on my way back to Brooklyn in the 59th Street subway station walking from the N to the 4, I saw a mysterious man playing a violin. He played delicately with a silent dignity and deep-rooted passion.

As he played, he stood below a sign guiding the subway riders to the 6 train, a cloth between his chin and the chin rest of the violin. The bottom of the finger board was worn through the varnish. He had large strong hands that fingered the notes with passionate zeal.

I stood for a moment to listen, with no idea of what he played and no idea if it was played correctly. All I know is it sounded so serene, so out of place in the filthy subway under this rotten city, the clangs of iron, shuffles of leather and rubber on concrete and the echo of subterranean hurrying.

I stopped mid stride in the stairway just behind the musician’s promontory looking up at him playing so elegantly – no tuxedo, no orchestra, no conductor. The sweet melody rolled from the bow and glided along the round edges of the porcelain tiles, it curled around the stainless steel handrails that guided 10,000 passengers before. The music rode away through the darkness; over the debris, grey dust from electric motors and big heavy brakes down the tracks into the forgotten memories and lost souls of the travelers before it.

And, moments after my pause and reflection, became just one more traveler, wanderer under the city. We all have these moments of zen and loss of hostility, moments of reflection and of profound simplicity, we stop to look around and just think about being and other people’s being. Well, not everyone, but many people.

Here again, I am reminded of the city’s energy, its contradictions — how I want to leave but I know I will regret every step away from the city I have grown to love, a strange place I can call my home. In as as much as New York is just another city, it is like no place else, for good or ill.