Justin

Employment

New Work Opportunity

After the markets crashed there were so many more subway musicians: fifty-something men whose close-cropped hair had disappeared under fezzes or down the drains of their showers. Not only were there more of them, but the collective mood of these "buskers" had changed to suit the times. For every cheery trio of Mexicans on guitar and accordion, blitzing the commuters from Queens with their syncopated, sped-up waltzes, there appeared four of five lone keyboardists or tenor sax players, instruments liberated from rec room closets in Scarsdale, who provided the definitive soundtrack to this special moment in New York. No one will ever forget the guitarist at Astor Place who played "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" all day long. Or the guy with the theramin at South Ferry.

They'd decided to give up--or forgo entirely--the demeaning hunt for potential sources of (diminished) income or jobs whose own expiration dates were approaching ever closer. The presence of each new musician in the subway was an invitation out of the house to the others: he exerted a camaradic pull, irresistible as a game of tennis, and contributed to a positive feedback loop predicated on the lure of performing. The insistent, daring therapy of it. The mental calculus must have gone something along the lines of: "After risking so much of others' and my own money unawares, why not? What is the big deal? At least I'd be aware of the stakes were I to take my tenor down onto the platform."

The danger of the platform! The horizontal, subterranean equivalent of a leap from 22 stories up rumbled by every seven or so minutes. Even more often during rush hour. Only the most erratic, the most demented of these new buskers dared position himself at the dangerous end of the platform, the one near the tunnel mouth from which the trains entered the station. These were the guys who didn't wear shades, whose eyes locked onto a magic ceramic tile across the tracks visible only to themselves. Not surprisingly, these men, some of whom were the best musicians, drew not quarters or dollar bills but rather a five-yard buffer zone of sideways glances. No one stood between them and the yellow line.