April 30, 2005
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Free Falling
© The Author, 2005Thursday afternoon sanity and comfort enveloped me in the most unlikely place. Who would have guessed that such lofty inner peace could be found at Union Station? Somebody ought to tell monks suffering silence vows, head shavings, and rugged mountain living that they need only to happen upon a good street musician to soothe their need for a harmonious soul and connectedness to mankind.
To be sure, I am talking about good street musicians here—not the guy who daily assaults Red Line passengers with a nasal, a capella bastardization of “Under the Boardwalk,” frequently letting the harmony sag into a dreary, minor key version of the song. This is not the type of music that the aforementioned monks should feel at ease about, although I doubt a monk would get even half as annoyed as I do about it.
The type of serenade I am talking about is nourishing. It feels like getting a warm hug from someone wearing a soft t-shirt fresh from the dryer. You can inhale the music and it smells and feels like a mug of steaming tea. No matter what urgency pushed you on only minutes prior, suddenly you are awakened and alive and preciously present when a good street musician shares their magic with us lucky pedestrians. As corny at it seems, whenever I hear it, I am moved; my eyes well up with tears and I am suddenly aware of everything inside of me, which is so easy to become disconnected with during the course of the daily grind.
My mamacitta is in from Michigan visiting us this weekend, and Thursday I was eagerly awaiting her arrival at Chicago’s Union Station during the insanity of rush hour. I had just come from work, and I was tired and irritated at careless rolling suitcase drivers tripping me and cutting me off as I navigated my way to the Amtrak area. I was about 20 minutes early and the tea stand in the food court was calling my name.
I ordered a ridiculously overpriced ginger mint tea which furthered my agitation (I might as well bought an entire box of tea bags at the grocery store for the amount I paid to litter the earth with yet another paper cup), and I was about to head back into the bustle to wait for my mom, when a familiar chord drew my eyes to a guitarist. He was playing guitar and singing amidst a nearby landscape of food court tables occupied by commuters of all sorts.
I stopped and listened to him, sucked into an emotion wrought rendering of Tom Petty’s “Free Falling.” He sang for knackered businessmen nursing cool beers from plastic cups, letting the alcoholic fizz soften their bones before heading home. He sang for an Amish woman absentmindedly shoveling MSG laden toxic red chicken from a Styrofoam take-away container into her mouth. He sang for a beautiful Hispanic woman sipping a smoothie and running her hands gently over her bountiful, pregnant belly. He sang for a homeless man drifting to sleep on a pile of discarded Chicago Tribune’s. And he sang for me.
His voice lilted and dipped and brimmed with feeling and he played his acoustic guitar sweetly to the music of Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and Melissa Etheridge. Here, a beautiful black man with fuzzy hair peeking out of a worn blue baseball cap, serenaded commuters with songs that at that moment seemed to have the unabashed grit and the grounded dedication that is the general idea of the Chicago—The City of Big Shoulders. The musician conveyed a vague collective feeling of searching for something bigger than your reality, but not having the foggiest idea of where to find it. And somehow we all needed to know we weren’t alone in that.
Soon, a crowd gathered around the musician. A matronly black woman shushed an annoying blonde girl with a cell phone that was probably cemented to her pretty little head; everyone wanted to listen to this guy play. The tables were filling up quick so I grabbed a seat at a table occupied by a middle-eastern woman draped in a brilliant purple sari gently rocking her baby girl back and forth in a stroller.
“He’s good, no?” The woman asked me.
I looked around at all the ethnicities, ages, religions gathered around to find solace in this man’s music and smiled.
“Yeah. He’s really good.”
Where have you stumbled upon peace lately?
Comments (7)
Peace? never heard of it…I’ve always wanted to be in one of those cities like New York or Chicago and just listen to the street players…I’ve heard that some of them are really good. It would be a wonderful experience and it would be an eductaional experience as well. Peace Out and Take Care.
i’ve watched similar things happen in the subway tunnel in nyc, but frequently the commuters would be too busy to get to their nextdestination and push by the crowd of listeners impatiently. i always thought it was their loss and wondered if they regreted not having time to stop and listen to the muscians. enjoy your time w/your mom!
Seattle and Toronto, two of my favorite cities on earth, also happen to have some of the best street musicians and most appreciative audiences of same. Coincidence? I think not! And your ability to wonderfully capture and present in warm, colorful tones the gathered listeners is an art in itself. Peace indeed, and richly deserved.
I love Chicago stories like that. It’s so true. There are little places of almost small-town calm in the middle of the bustle. But I have to admit, I’ve never been around a street musician who anyone would stop and listen to. Everyone’s too busy rushing around–and at a place like Union Station, it’s really quite incredible that anyone would stop even if someone got shot! I can only remember when doing a story for the paper that I stumbled on a little park, sandwiched between skyscrapers, right on the river. There was almost no one there and the view was lovely. I’d say the park was the size of a postage stamp, but it had a strange feeling of being disconnected from the manic intensity around us. The only other place I’ve felt this was at a reflecting pool inside the Met in New York.
Have you read Stuart Dybek? He writes a wonderful piece in “The Coast of Chicago” about being jobless and hanging out at the Art Institute. He gets to know the art intimately and “Night Hawks” becomes a picture that defines his life. It’s a wonderful story. Yours remembed me of that.
Hurry over to my blog before I change it. I have CAT PICTURES! I’m sure you will enjoy them.
Lynn
I find peace in the pages of books.
I have 3 furballls–Buster, Monkey, and Took. One white, one black, one is gray tabby.
Missed your blog, so it was nice to catch up!
I used to profess assistantly at UIC and lived in Lincoln Park, so I was a regular train-changer in the Red-Blue Jack-Wash complex downtown. Occasionally, there was an a capella group on the platform that convinced me to skip a train or two on the way home. I’d find a relatively un-grimy girder to lean against and just float with it.
Boston can be an incredible town for busking, particularly at the Park Street and Government Center T stops and out along the Green Line. Occasionally, you find string quartets from the Berklee School of Music who are positiviely sublime.
As often as in music, though, I’ve found peace in folding origami. There’s something about taking a single sheet of square paper and slowly, deliberately, turning it into a piece of disposable art that can make all the world’s pecadillos go away. This is especially true when dealing with the humming insanity that often surrounds planes, trains, and automobiles.
I think of it as the portable peace of paper.
Take care,
brad
There is a guy I occasionally have to pleasure of running into on the 1/9 line. He plays acoustic renditions of popular songs from the 60s and 70s — the New York version of your peacemaker. I have intentionally missed my train before to hear more of him — his music is simply wonderful.