Yellow Stickers

Tonight we travelled across town by subway as a family.

As we strode through Pape Station on our way to the trains, our daughter (who is 8) asked me where exactly I sing in the subway. I pointed out the yellow dots.

"You should just carry yellow stickers with you, Mom," she said, "and stick them down anywhere you want to play."

Good point, I thought.

If only it were so easy.

She didn't say what she thought of the actual yellow-dot location, which was beside a garbage can and stained with what looked like dried-up spilled soft drink. Nobody was playing there. At night, I never expect any busker to be singing in the subway, perhaps because I wouldn't feel comfortable playing there myself at that time of day.

At night, when all fears and insecurities are heightened, artists like me need flattering stage lighting. We need tea-light candles on smart bistro tables, the expectant hum of people listening. We need applause.

Tonight, like all the other travellers, our family hurried through Pape subway station on our way to where we were going. Over the course of the night we stopped at several stations, each of them dreary and without music.

I noticed how stark the lighting in the subway was...how sharp the angles seemed to be.

How silent it was.

It was a silence I'd heard at all times of day, at every station, after one song ends and before the next one begins. The silence is both a reason to sing and a reason not to. It calls me to fill the void with whatever beautiful sound I can create. But it also tells me, go home! Go to a place where someone will cheer.

I have taken the lack of applause as a given, accepted it as I would the lack of applause after a soloist's performance in church.

But like all other performers, I have sought applause since I was a tiny child.

When a song is met with silence, I look for something else to fill it. The loving affirmation felt at church, for instance, is so similar to a grateful smile of appreciation or the generous toss of a coin.

For a street performer, making music that most people consider unnecessary, the affirmation is intermittent, coming and going like a wavering signal.

When a busker finishes her set, the man at the nearby concession stand says "Did you do well today?" instead of "Great show!"

It's not a show, really. There's been no agreement. When the interchange has not been entered into by choice, but by chance, it's as if the interchange hasn't happened. People may hear the music, but most pretend they have not.

There's no escaping the silence.

So, if I were to carry around my personal set of yellow dots, where would I put them?