There was a man singing’ on the train.
I was coming home from a day of meetings at a co-working space in Midtown and was so struck by the amount of people walking between Penn Station and Port Authority. I found myself missing them, missing my commute, missing the community of the workforce. Maybe that’s unpopular to say at this fill-in-the-blank stage of capitalism, but I do. Sometimes I miss being part of that world.
I could hear the man singing through my headphones, somewhere behind the voice of the British narrator reading the last chapter of my audiobook. But as I watched one person, then another, then another, bring him crumpled dollar bills, bowing before him to place them in a cardboard box strapped to his backpack with three frayed bungee cords, I slowly removed my left earbud and began to listen.
Well, I dreamed I saw the knights in armor coming
Sayin' something about a queen
There were peasants singin' and drummers drumming
And the archer split the tree
I paused the book. His voice was weary. Thick Spanish accent. He kneeled on the floor with his guitar, heavily patched with silver duct tape, placed in his lap and wore a medical mask. The music clear and lucid, despite the filter. I found myself thinking of the first time I returned to the subway during the pandemic, how much I wanted to connect with the other riders, the stories our eyes told without words.
There was a band playin' in my head
And I felt like getting high
I was thinkin' about what a friend had said
I was hopin' it was a lie
145th, 168th, 175th. He sang while facing the opening and closing doors at each station stop, light pouring over his calm face. In my mind I could hear the mournful French horn that accompanies the Neil Young song. My eyes welled and I looked away.
There were children crying and colors flying
All around the chosen ones
All in a dream, all in a dream
At the stop near New-York Presbyterian Hospital, a muscular and stout woman with large blue eyes and blonde hair pulled back in a tight topknot approached him and pushed a wad of money into his cardboard box. The mounting bills crested the narrow top. She faced the doors, waiting for the stop, but as the train slowed she turned and in a perfect Bronx accent began thanking him.
“That was so beautiful, man, so beautiful. I’m so sensitive, so you know, I cry a lot, but you, you man, you almost made me cry. Thank you, man. Thanks.”
And then she disappeared into the station.
The loading had begun
Flyin' mother nature's silver seed
To a new home in the sun
He kept singing as the A train glided north. And when we arrived at Dyckman Street, he stood up, pushed the box into his backpack, and walked out the doors toward a path of glistening light toward the silver turnstiles. The doors closed, and the train took me home.
***
Thank you to Neil Young for such beauty.
Neil Diamond sang with a thick Spanish accent… if that isn’t New York, nothing is.
You made me wish I had been there crying as well. What a slice of life worth of reading and re- reading 🙏