Tonight the music seems so loud / I wish that we could lose this crowd / Maybe it’s better this way / We’d hurt each other with the things we want to say (I want to say SHUT UP!!)
What is it about this song?
Everyone thinks they can sing it, for one thing. For another, it’s a common choice for street musicians; I think I’ve heard it all over town, under- and above-ground, and in other cities. Today, I was crossing town and walking through Grand Central Station, and I heard it — because you can hear it from a long, long, LONG way away. A subway musician was playing Careless Whisper. A saxophone was wailing loudly, and I was filled with dread as I got closer, having to keep listening whether I wanted to or not (I didn’t). Turns out, it was a young black woman wearing a teeny black cocktail dress and very high heels, playing a sax. She’d hung a small iPod — the shuffle, I believe — on the microphone, and it seemed to be providing all the other musical parts. In other words, she was playing accompaniment to recorded music. Just her and her sax.
And boy o boy was she overly emotionally expressing herself. She was working it, squatting, waving her body around, leaning forward, leaning back, contorting her face around the mouthpiece. If it had been any other song, I might’ve just laughed (not out loud, just in my head) at the silly over the top-ness of her act. But that song. Oy. Anything but that song.
Theater! Kids! Can! Be! Hard! To! Take! In! An! Enclosed! Space!
One of the only things I miss (and really, just partially) about my old job is the daily exposure to New Yorkers during the commute. The New York stories have always been among my favorite posts to write (which is not to say that the NY stories were always pleasant experiences). Now, I’m in the subway three times a week, tops, and the rides are not very long.
But today I had to go way down to the other end of this island, so I had quite a long trip in the subway. Going down was quiet and quick, and I expected a relatively similar trip home, since it wasn’t rush hour and the train was pretty empty when I got on.
remember the Master Thespian, on SNL? ACTING!
But then, at the Penn Station stop, a thundering horde of THEATER! KIDS!! ran into my car. In their Very! Excited! (and Loud!) Way!
Oh my god! They were just So! Very! Excited! And SHOUTING! And once, a group of them broke into SONG! It wasn’t at all like being in an episode of Glee. One of the chaperons was standing right next to me at one end of the car, and just kept shouting at the other chaperon, who happened to be as far away as possible. Then he shouted at her (and they had to shout very loudly to be heard over All! The! Excitement!) and whatever he said made her laugh her excruciatingly loud and piercing cackle laugh. I put my knitting down and covered my ears with my hands, trying to minimize the feeling of being assaulted.
Thankfully, they got off at 66th, leaving me 7 quiet subway stops to home. I let my hands down and got ready to pick up my knitting when a screaming clattering horde of Puerto Rican teenage girls ran into the car and even though there were only 4 or 5 of them, they were every bit as loud as the 15 Theater! Kids! had been.
I sat there thinking about the shared public space of a subway car. Yeah, it’s a public space, so you can shout if you want to, play music if you want to, do whatever, as long as it isn’t illegal. But it’s shared, which ought to mean that extremes are modified a bit – especially in a tightly enclosed space. We don’t eat smelly food in the subway cars. We use earphones for our iPods (usually, though that’s no guarantee that I won’t have to be blasted by your irritating music). We talk to each other in normal conversational tones, with normal conversational volume (or even a little quieter, if we can). Because there are Other! People! On! the! Train!
geez. I’m thoroughly enjoying the absolute silence of my apartment right now. I think I’ll knit. Yeah.
all aboard – ha ha ha ha – the crazy train
Maybe New York City mothers tell their kids about days like this, people like this. It’s not like I’m unaccustomed to some of the more colorful people one runs into in this city; we have our neighborhood schizophrenic who used to do push-ups in the middle of Broadway, and who once ran up and tagged me. There’s the schizophrenic who ‘lives’ in front of my office, the poor man you can smell before you even round the corner. There are drunks in the subway, not all that uncommon to see. Oh, and the occasional weirdo who picks up 2 reciprocating saws the workmen left untended, and starts sawing people on the platform. (That last one is really rare, I mean really rare, but it did happen at my subway stop so that makes it notable to me.)
But today was a real doozy. The trains were strangely empty; as we went along, there were always empty seats throughout the car. Weird, for “rush hour” on a normal week day. I get on at Penn Station, and the next stop is Times Square. Well, a totally drunk dude got on at Times Square. I wasn’t sure he was going to be able to stand up, or to stay upright in his seat. And I was afraid he was going to lose the contents of his stomach like the last majorly drunk guy I encountered. He wobbled, he wavered, he drooped, and he kept getting up and lurching around, back and forth. And he was right in front of me.
He rode along for 3 stops and then he got off, and I felt a wave of relief. For about 10 seconds. Another guy boarded, and he was happy! Like, really really really really happy – cackling and slapping his leg. Throwing his head back with his mouth wide open so we could see all 3 of his teeth, cackling. Then he’d jump up and down, then do this weird thing where he’d kind of squat and move up and down in a squatting position. Then he’d jump up! Turn around! Windmill his arms! Cackle cackle cackle! Maybe he was doing the hoky poky for all I know. Whatever reality he was in, there was a happy party going on.
Still, there’s something frightening about insane happiness, and he was so physical and all over the place. And – like the drunk – he was right next to me. What gives, drunk and crazy dudes?!
He finally got off at the stop just before mine. Today, apparently, I was aboard the crazy train. It’s not really all that much fun.
is he drunk, or a suicide bomber? how would i know?
Last night I had to take the subway downtown a little ways, and when I got into a car, the absolute REEK of alcohol literally made me gasp. Of course, when this happens I immediately begin to try to figure out which person is the drunk. Because I want to stay far far away from him. And it’s almost always a him. The last time I was trapped too near a drunk, he started vomiting and the car was so crowded, we were all just trapped, and on and on he went. Other times, the drunks are rowdy and big and loud, and kind of scary. Especially to me.
So, last night I grabbed a seat and started looking around, trying to ID him. I didn’t think it was the big guy sitting next to the door; he had a gym bag between his feet. I didn’t think it was the Sikh man standing, facing the door. Yeah, probably not him. (I know I’m being guilty of visual profiling!) No one looked drunk, but I figured it was probably the young(ish) guy standing in the middle of the aisle with his back to me. He wore work boots and a long jacket, and he had some kind of leather bag hanging down, which he wore under his jacket. STRANGE.
my subways
So that leather bag…..hanging inside his coat…..what’s that about? Who does that? Is he just some strange guy, or someone who was robbed once, so he learned to do that? Or is he some crazy subway bomber?! And that gym bag by the door, what’s really inside that zipped duffel bag?
Suddenly the question of whether the guy was a drunk was much less important.
Living in post-9/11 Manhattan, with the ongoing question of whether to prosecute the 9/11 suspects here, with subway bombings happening elsewhere in the world, with the occasional pair of murders happening (a double knifing on my own subway line a couple of mornings ago), you know? You pay attention in the subway. You get used to random bag searches; my assistant at work was routinely searched, but I’ve never been stopped. According to a story on Gothamist, “one rider said, “I feel the tension on the Metro. Nobody’s smiling or laughing.”" And that’s different from other days how?
To close on a much nicer note: Crow Kai-Mei:
Kai-Mei socks, madelinetosh sock in crow colorway
Isn’t that such a beautiful color, that indigo blue, with shadings from black to denim to lighter blue? I would never have thought to call it crow, but I guess madelinetosh was thinking of the blue-blackness of crows so I get it. To me, it looks more like denim but I’m no colorist. I’m only knitting these socks during my commute to and from work, so I get a few rows done at a time. At this rate, I’ll have one done by the time I finish my daughter’s wedding dress and shawl, but who cares! I’ll still have feet, and need socks, so there.
rainy thoughts on a rainy day
It’s cold and rainy here today – after the spring tease of a couple of weeks ago, this breaks my heart, as it does every single year. It isn’t really the cold aspect of northern winters that wears you down, it’s the long aspect. Maybe it’s the gloomy weather, but the following things have captured my notice:
* A 19-year old male committed suicide by jumping in front of a subway train in my part of town. It’s so sad, to be so filled with despair at only 19 years old. And do not judge New Yorkers whose quick response is to complain about the way that affects their commutes. When you don’t have a car and rely exclusively on public transportation to get you to and from work, or grocery shopping, or anything at all, you have a slightly different perspective. It’s very sad – it is – and now how am I going to get to work!
* I was reading a piece in the NYTimes magazine by the former editor of House & Garden, Dominique Browning, and she was talking about grieving the loss of her identity when Conde Nast closed the brand. She cited this line from Psalm 22:14, as the most eloquent description of pain, and I do agree: I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me. The tone of that line brought the work of Robert and Shana Parkeharrison to mind, whose work used to be one of my son’s favorites:
* And I’ve been thinking lately about the way our society has moved away – ever closer to entirely away – from the authority of institutions to the authority of individuals. In the process, it seems like the output of individuals is of much higher quality than ever before. This is just a note to myself, still unpacking the concept.
* Finally, even though all my knitting time is being assigned to the secret wedding shawl (hi Marnie!), a girl does need something to knit in the subway to and from work. That’s a good 20 minutes each way! So I started a new pair of socks for me, this time. I’m making the really cool Kai-Mei socks from Cookie A’s Sock Innovation book, using madelinetosh sock yarn in the crow colorway. As it’s knitting up, it looks more like denim, like your favorite dark pair of blue jeans. I’ll take photos asap, tomorrow maybe. Anyway, here’s the yarn:
madelinetosh sock, colorway: crow
not my kai-mei socks, just posted here so you can see the interesting pattern
[courtesy of reeniebeanie - check her out!]
Stay warm, stay dry, stick around.
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