1. Easter Monday

    0

    April 7, 2015 by admin

    After a lovely Easter weekend, the daffodils have popped and crocuses have opened wide in pastel purples and yellow. As yet budless tulips have pushed their leaves through the groundcover toward the warm sky. Waves of light blue chindoxia grow against the wire fence. The London plane trees, dressed in camouflage green, gray and brown bark at the base, rise to a sepulchral white tangle of bare branches. The forsythia has started showing tiny yellow buds.

    At the Imagine Mosaic, one guitarist is singing “Eight Days a Week,” while another stomps past me, complaining into his cell phone about the angry words just exchanged and the punch in the nose he left unthrown. Thus the early season jostling has begun for this lucrative site. I expect that soon these guitarists will work out their platoon system, as they do every year.

    Center stage was mine. I set up at the east end of Bethesda Fountain, turned my face to the sky and sang my heart out. In short order, some preteens came by and did the hula. Other little kids, sitting on the benches with their moms or sitters, quickly got the idea. After only 10-15 minutes, there was already $6 in my case.

    A mother from California was resting with her daughter beside their bicycles. They enjoyed the show the kids and I put on, eventually wheeling their bikes toward me to chat. The daughter had recently moved to NYC; this was mom’s first visit. They wouldn’t hula, but mom dropped a fiver all the same.

    Two women came by for a hula while a third took video. They danced to both verses of the “Hukilau Song” and put a total of $16 in my case, each giving me a bigger bill than the last. A couple of boys followed up with an energetic dance. A young girl stepped up when they’d finished.

    “Can I wear a lei for a selfie?” she asked, pulling a dollar from her wallet.

    “Of course,” I said, handing her a lei and stepping out of the way.

    “No, come back, I want you in the picture too.” Silly me, I thought a selfie was a picture of herself.

    At the end of my 90 minute set, I sat down to count my money and pack up. At $31.64, if history is any guide, this could well be the best day I’ll have all season. A 20-something walked up and handed me another dollar. And it just keeps getting better.

    Category Uncategorized | Tags: ,

  2. Tuning Up

    0

    April 3, 2015 by admin

    I’d been keenly watching the weather reports, waiting for a day such as today: bright sunshine, temperatures approaching 60. Strapping my tenor uke, with low-G tuning ratcheted down to F#, to my back, I headed out to Central Park.

    Not much plant life yet, the holly, rhododendron and juniper providing the only show of green. Clumps of snowdrops bloomed under a towering ginkgo and swept out along the path to Strawberry Fields. A guitarist played “Here Comes the Sun” from a bench. A big fat robin strutted his stuff on the lawn.

    The park, however, was teeming with human life. Tour groups clogged the paths as I wove my way down the hill toward the road, where the artists have set up a table to sell their wares. Nearby, a magnolia pushed up its fuzzy buds, and, at the road, yellow croci bloomed on an outcrop of Manhattan schist.

    Bethesda Fountain is still dry. I heard the wail of a saxophone. It’s Rakeem, to whom I tipped my hat as I walked by. John Boyd and his choir were hard at work in the Arcade, taking full advantage of the acoustics. The Bubble Man worked the plaza; he’d tied a grid of string on his dip-rope, so instead of one giant bubble, he makes clusters of bubbles that are lifted by the wind off the lake to the west.

    At my second location, a young woman played the viola, so I walked to location #3, where I hung my hoodie on the fence and set up in the sun for my 90 minute set. They are doing work at the Boat Rental behind an 8-foot fence hung with opaque green netting. It’s ugly, so I keep my eyes focused on the bare upper limbs of trees and the blue sky.

    A male couple, walking their dog, gave me the first dollar of the season. A little later, another male couple with another dog chipped in 50 cents.

    “Has this group got time for a hula today?” Sadly, no, yet one of the teen-aged boys tossed a quarter into my case as he walked by.

    “It must be spring,” announced a man to no one in particular, as if Mr. Ukulele, like robins and croci, were a vernal harbinger.

    Some chord patterns to the old songs took a while to recall. I kept repeating the songs until muscle memory kicked in. During “All of Me,” a 60-something Spanish man stood next to me and sang along. We sang it twice while his female companion shot video, then off they went.

    An Australian dad with a toddler on his shoulders, in a deft move, pulled a dollar out of his pocket for me. A lady walking by gave me a dollar too.

    Three high-schoolers caught the aloha spirit. To the strains of the “Hukilau Song,” they gracefully waved their arms and swiveled their hips. “Can we do it again?” This time I played “My Little Grass Shack.” People stopped to enjoy the show.

    As the teens walked off, a man who had been watching emptied his pocket of change. “You sure know how to bring out the best in people.”

    Category Uncategorized | Tags: , , ,

Newer Entries »

Archives