Every once in a while God has to intervene to insure I take a break. A break from my thinking, number crunching, reading, reading, and reading to enjoy the simple pleasures of life.
This break was at Park Street earlier this week. I was taking a connecting train at Park Street station reading one of my non-fiction tomes as a source of motivation and inspiration. A sparse collection of commuters waited on the outbound platforms as we had all just missed the last train by a hair.
I lifted my head to notice a well-dressed, bespectacled man in his sixties with a guitar. He seemed out of place. Like he should have been the head of a hacienda in peru or something. Other commuters began to notice as well. This wasn't the typical "artiste."
His warm smile and small stature made him look (behind his microphone) like he was about to begin a spelling bee championship. He carefully brought his fingers to his guitar and paused right before his large fingers touched them, as if to warn the strings of what was about to come.
As the first cords echoed against the subway walls like a nostalgic love story he had more of my attention and more than a few commuters'. When his seasoned alto voice accompanied his playing, more heads turned to watch and I found I just couldn't get back into my book. I was hooked. Soon, as the platform began to fill, more heads turned toward this grandfather-figure as he delved into his ballad ..mi entrega....
Soon a burly white guy in his early forties put a few coins in the guitarista's case. Then a young man puts in some bills. Then a woman and her young daughter. And
another, and another. I wish I could have put in some money. However, he was on
the middle platform and I was not. Funny enough, my wallet was empty anyway.
I wanted a CD. Arrgh. I couldn't help but smile as the old man played, and soon about sixty commuters were smiling or/and staring in awe as he belted out his song. It was like falling in love for the first time.
Finally, at the end of the cresendo of his song, he received a resounding applause.
Twenty years taking the Red Line, and I've never seen or heard an ovation like that.
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2 comments:
I wish I could have been there. My most memorable memory of Boston street musicians happend last summer when in Cambridge Square, there were five 'concerts' happening simultaneously and all very good. I will be in Boston in July and perhaps I will see the Red Line's mesmerizing minstrel. I hope so.
oops! that was Harvard Square.
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