To make myself feel better, I took the 6 downtown. When the doors opened at 42nd street, music poured in, it beckoned me out, despite the unpleasantly warm draft that accompanied it.
I cried. Like one of the eccentric characters I spend so much time studying and thinking about, I couldn't help myself.
The City, especially during the summer, is accustomed to street performances, but this music was more than a well-rehearsed act. It was sound so rich and cultural that it flooded my body, nourishing the sick, apartment-bound person I've been reduced to recently.
I think I cried because I felt that these men and their music were an act of generosity, unintentional perhaps, but generous just the same. Plenty of songs are catchy, even trashy ones. This music was more that catchy, it was captivating; the direct product of culture, irreplaceable, impossible to replicate, impossible to ignore. It filled ever terminal of the dank, hot New York subway station. Even as people rushed past en route to their busy lives, I knew it touched them all. It was truly generous, and that's why I cried.
This is them in times square:
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