(May, '03)
Easter
Sunday can be boom or bust for a busker. The advantage is that it's in
the spring, which is prime-time; the disadvantage is that most shops
are closed. You might think that it would be a total loss for
us, since everyone gathers with family, but that's late-morning
into early-afternoon. Later in the afternoon, many of these
families like to be out and about, especially in pleasant weather,
looking for coffeeshops, ice-cream parlors, public parks, sites to
see.
Following a prolonged, brutal winter such as we've had, most
everyone is eager to be outside, and buskers are no exception.
I had made a deal with harper David Bishop to stay out of Newburyport
on Sundays, and so drove to Salem, even though I knew many shops
would be closed. To my amazement--and embarrassment, though no
one was with me to know of it--the two coffeeshops were closed, as
was any street-minstrel's best friend, the bookstore.
But the air was crisp, which makes the instruments ring effortlessly,
and I enjoyed an hour under the sun engaged in what we in the trade
call "practice." What little I made seemed to all come
during three riffs on Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring,
played and replayed as a nod to the day, with as many variations and
segues into and back out from other songs as I could imagine.
The only people I recall seeing were a young woman hand in hand with
a small boy looking very tired as they passed, barely taking note of
me.
With so few people to hear it, the music stops itself before long,
and so I packed up, counted out $4.50 in tips, and went to the other
end of downtown, away from my car, to see if the third coffeeshop
might be open. When I reached it, I heard a voice behind me,
calling. When I turned, I said hello to the woman with the
young boy.
She asked for directions to the train, and I was able to point to the
sign at the end of the street. When she asked if she could get
a train to Lexington, I said uh-oh. She looked, underneath
shades, Hispanic, while her accent was something else. But she
had no problem understanding my explanation of the convoluted plan
that has all trains on straight lines to Boston and that if she and
her son wanted to go home, they would travel in the shape of a
V and need a meal along the way.
She threw her head back: "Why do Americans make it so hard to
get from place to place?"
Clearly a rhetorical complaint, but I chose to answer it
literally. "We do everything for the car here. We build
roads instead of rails."
"So where can I get a bus?" Uh-oh... I glanced at the
boy, age three as I would learn, patient and quiet, though he looked
tired, hungry. She waited for the answer to the question while
I hoped she'd ask another.
"Sorry, but the buses are like the trains, straight to Boston,
straight out, only slower and more stops."
"A cab?"
"Well, that'll be direct and quick, but very expensive."
"How much?"
"Oh, I never take cabs, but that's 45 minutes. Has to be
$40 at least, maybe $50 or $60." She seemed to nod her head,
considering it, and so it occurred to me that I might cover my day by
doing her a favor. "I'll take you there right now for
$20."
She protested that she didn't want to impose on me, but I reminded
her that I had come to play for no audience, that her $20 would be as
much or more than I would have made on such a day. That was all
she needed to hear.
Since my car was at the other end of downtown, I suggested she and
her son take a nearby bench and give me 10-15 minutes. When I
drove up, she was on a cell-phone, and I wondered if she was calling
in the number on my car's plate. With or without the number,
she told her husband who was somewhere in Salem attending to
business--what kind of business happens on Easter Sunday?--that she
had found a ride back to their motel. They, a family who had
lived all their lives in Vienna, were staying in Lexington for a
week, up from New York City where his Austrian-based company had sent
him last September for a year.
Conversation began with the comparison of Europe's
preference for public transport to the
hit-the-road-and-fender-for-yourself-Jack design found everywhere in America outside of a few big
cities. Oddly, I agreed with her complaint while thoroughly
enjoying a conversation that her European-caught-unawares predicament
made possible. We were still leaving Salem, slowed down by some
stop signs before we hit the highway, when our car-talk took an
unexpected turn. She stopped in mid-sentence:
"You have a shift!"
"What?"
She tapped the top of the stick with her finger. "This is the
first manual transmission I've seen since we came to
America. I didn't think they existed here."
I was still at a loss for words, even though this has long been one
of my pet-peeves: The idea that automatic transmissions make
driving too easy, accomodating drivers who will do other things--such
as cellphones--because the actual control of the vehicle is
automated. I've heard estimates that anywhere from just two
to eleven percent of American vehicles have standard
transmissions.
She told me that the ratio is just about the reverse in Europe
because the automatics are much more expensive. She didn't
know why, nor do I, but all I can think of is that the less
fuel-efficient automatics are taxed so high as to make standards the
norm.
Never got to explore that with her because her phone rang, and she
held it toward me so that I could inform her husband that we were
halfway to Lexington and she would be home in 20 minutes. And
because I was much more intent on another subject:
"Are there many street-performers in Vienna?"
"Everywhere."
Recently I've thought of emmigrating to Europe where I might make a
living as a busker. "So I'd just be another act in
Vienna?"
"And in Prague, Budapest, any city in Germany or France, anywhere
in Europe. And a lot of them play Celtic music."
"I would have thought that in Vienna they'd play waltzes."
"And a lot of them do, but there are so many of them. Even in
Prague and Budapest...
"And Brussels and Amsterdam?"
"And Copenhagen and Stockholm."
"So I should stay here where the odds are better?"
"I don't know about that. You would have some competition
in New York."
She likes New York, big and bustling like her native Vienna, and no
car required as there are trains and buses to take you in any
direction, direct too, most anytime you care to go. And she
finds New Yorkers friendly in a "European way," by which she
meant direct, while away from New York we strike her as either overly
polite or strangely evasive.
"That second part is one reason why you see fewer buskers over
here. Has the war had any impact of how we treat or talk to
you?"
"No, but it is amazing how little Americans know about their own
country--"
"You mean how little we know about what our country is doing in
other parts of the world..."
"No, it's beyond that. That much is already known in Europe
before we arrive here. What's amazing is when we make any
reference to history, to American history, and draw a blank."
"When I taught, I frequently had students who couldn't
distinguish between the Revolutionary and Civil wars. In the
80s when we had so much tension with Japan over imports, students
would condemn Japan as a communist country. College freshmen
I'm talking about--"
"Well, I'm talking about their parents. Very friendly, and
very intelligent in most other ways, but when they hear
'Austria,' they hardly know if it's in Europe or Africa, or
even if it's one of those big west states. They just know
that it's not here or California, and so it must be
underprivledged. No matter how friendly condescension is,
it's still condescension!"
For all of her heat, the boy made no motion, no complaint, just
stared out the window as if the scenery along the most horrid highway
ever to scar the earth was all brand new--which to him maybe it
was. As if on cue, I turned onto the exit leading to the
towering neon sign of their motel. I could think of only one
line to express sympathy and close the conversation:
"I'm a street-performer. I thrive on condescension."
She reached for her pocketbook, and I told her to forget it.
She shook her head, and I said "call it ten." Shook her
head again and handed me a twenty. "Thank you for letting me
get all that off my chest," she said.
So there
I was in Lexington on a Sunday afternoon. As soon as I put my
communist Honda in non-American gear with my $20 fare in hand, I
recalled that I had been looking for a sandwich and a cup of coffee
when I was hailed from Vienna.
Into downtown Lexington I drove.
And as soon as I reached the historic green and saw the tour busses
parked along Massachusetts Avenue, I remembered that this year's
Easter fell on the three-day weekend created by a state holiday,
Patriot's Day. Downtown Lexington with its wide sidewalk and
benches and tables and chairs outside a few cafes was bustling.
My car was in the first parking space I spotted.
Played about two hours, and did very well--with both the
Viennese-infused performance and the generous American response to
it. Nice conversations between songs, as well, some with
tourists up from Connecticut and New York, others with locals
expressing a taste for period music.
Just as I emphasized Bach's religious themes in Salem, I made sure
to play and improvise on the few revolutionary themes I know, and
several more that have that flavor, especially the old stand-by
penned for Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man Hornpipe.
The highlight of the day came when the final notes of a ringing, yet
heartfelt version of The Rights were effectively--may I say
ironically?-- erased by a cellphoner who passed within three feet
in front of me, eclipsing me from the view of at least a dozen people
who had stopped to hear.
That tune ends with an emphatic two-note tattoo that I like to nail
while hopping forward on one foot, taking a simultaneous bow.
(Yes, I take that move from a Montreal band called Bard I caught at a
festival very long time ago. It's called "the folk
process.") On this occasion, I turned the hop into a first
step right behind the cellphoner, put the recorder to my ear and
followed him about ten paces, silently, but imitating every gesture
of his left arm and hand--and there were many.
My impromptu audience had started to applaud, sensing the last note,
but fell silent for this routine, as or more captivated by it than by
tune which had caught them. As soon as I turned back to them, I
put the recorder back to my mouth and played My Country 'Tis of
Thee while returning to my stand. That piece of mime I
learned from a Boston street-clown; the song was spontaneous.
Those dozen or so folk who were holding their breath were both warm
and generous in response. I was most grateful for the woman who
broke the tension by telling me that she would refrain from using her
cellphone until she was out of my sight.
"What a revolutionary idea!" I chided her.
Or was it resurrection?