Subway performers

Although I have started bringing my journal more often during my daily commute so that I can work on my manuscripts, I still bring my iPod so that I can listen to it when I can't write. I like listening to one of my playlists when I'm walking to the train or the bus stop, when I'm switching trains, or when I'm standing on the platform to wait for a train to show up.

(Side note: I know that everyone on the blogosphere refers to the unfinished manuscript as WIP, as in work-in-progress, and I've done it too a few times in my responses to other bloggers. No offense to anyone, though, but WIP always makes me think of that 80s' song by Devo that I never liked, the one titled "Whip It". Except instead of a guy whipping some woman's clothes off like in the music video, now whenever I see WIP I think of a bunch of writers whapping each other's manuscripts with pens or laptops. Side question: Why do I think these things? I have no idea.)

More often than not a subway performer will be singing or playing an instrument nearby, with a small box or an open instrument case for people to put dollar bills and change into it. Many of the subway performers I've heard are not very good, but they are very loud. Some will play or sing along to a CD player, so that the sound on the stereo is louder than their voices or their instruments. It's difficult to ignore them, because not only will some of them use microphones but they'll also blast their music through speakers, so that the sound fills up the subway tunnel. I try to turn the volume up on my iPod so that I can drown them out, but it's impossible; it's irritating because listening to music is supposed to be relaxing but I feel anything but relaxed when listening to them. And of course, more often than not, the day that I'm stuck listening to a really bad, really loud subway performer is the same day that the train is running late, so that I end up having to wait twenty minutes instead of five or ten for the train to show up.

Some of the musicians are weird; they'll talk into the microphone as if they're having conversations with people who aren't there. One guy kept pretending to be talking on the phone (though he wasn't actually carrying one); he'd say something like, "Hello? I can't talk right now, I'm trying to sing my song."

But every once in a while I'll hear music being played or sung that makes me stop and turn. It makes everyone stop and turn. And we'll turn to see whose rich, clear voice is filling up the subway tunnel, and we'll want to know if the person singing is really singing or just singing along really softly to the radio (which some people, incidentally, do, and they still expect to get money for that). And the person really will be singing beautifully, and it's a relief to hear that person after all the time spent trying to ignore the bad singers who sing off-key or screech into the microphone or yell at people who listen but don't give them money. The person who sings beautifully keeps singing, even when the noise of arriving or departing trains drowns him or her out. And for the most part, people stay quiet, listening to that person, and some of us will even venture forth to drop change into the performer's box.

There's an elderly Asian woman who performs at one of the Red Line stops; I used to think she was playing the violin or the cello but when I looked closer at her instrument I realized I was wrong. I never figured out what instrument it was that she was playing; all I know is that the way she plays it calms me. When I drop money into her little box she always looks up at me with tired eyes and a smile.

I look at the rats running around on the tracks below, and the trash scattered on the ground because people can't be bothered to actually use a trash can even though there's always one nearby, for Pete's sake, and I try not to inhale the smell of cigarettes from someone smoking near a No Smoking sign. And I think that performer's music is the one thing that's beautiful in that place. She's been performing on the Red Line for years.

And I wish I could thank that musician and the few others like her for giving me a few minutes of peace each day through their music, because it almost makes up for all the other times the loud, obnoxious musicians  make whatever stressful workday I'm going through even worse.

Talented or not, I think that subway performers have guts; they spend hours performing in subway tunnels every day, and many people do ignore them; most of the time people aren't applauding or praising them when they finish their songs. But they keep performing anyway. They keep trying.