Posts Tagged ‘All of Me’
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Tuning Up
0April 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: All of Me, Here Comes the Sun, My Little Grass Shack, The Hukilau Song
