King Station - 4 p.m.

The first set of yellow dots I found was in a modern walkway adjacent to the actual subway station—-but it was full of construction equipment and a recycling bin. Guess I’m not supposed to play there.

When I found the right place, I liked it immediately. It was a warm little corner tiled in daffodil yellow, off to the side of the bottom of an escalator. It even had a little bench close by where someone could sit down. I was close enough to the trains to actually see them—which was a first. I found it inspiring. (Besides, I had my amp.)

When I started to sing, though, I realized the problem.

As soon as people got to the bottom of the escalator, they swung away from me and darted toward the train. Also, it quickly became clear that I needed to use discretion while meeting their eyes as they got off the escalator. Nobody wanted a singer-songwriter to pounce on them.

All of this added up to a pleasant performance environment, but not very much money.
At first, this rattled me. After several minutes of feeling like a piece of furniture (as I glanced empathetically at the bench beside me) I wondered whether I could actually stick it out in this location. Today I was feeling a bit insecure. A bit out-of-place. Superfluous. (Note to self: learn Elvis Costello’s "All This Useless Beauty".)

Then my eyes fell on the TTC’s promotional poster on the wall beside the escalators. It read "Achieve peace and tranquility. Take the TTC." It was illustrated with a lovely picture of bamboo.

So I decided to sing while staring at the poster.

While trying my best to achieve peace and tranquility, I sang "I’ve Been Busy", "Crossing My Mind", "It’ll Grow on You", "Complicated Things", "Einstein’s Brain" and "Room to Love". People looked my way and smiled, but few dropped money into my case.

Maybe I wasn’t achieving the perfect measure of tranquility?

Or maybe it wasn’t me at all…just the feng shui of the performance area?

Or maybe all was indeed well in the universe. (Second note to self: learn "You Can't Always Get What You Want".) Something must have been working, because regardless of how many people came by, next time I looked at my watch, I'd been singing for two hours at King Station.

Two friends visited me and donated. Another friend tried, but only found the performance area with the recycling bin.