After the "Ridiculous"

It had been four weeks since I'd been out busking anywhere--the longest stretch since I started playing in the subways in October, 2004.

I was excited to be back at Pape Station, but I felt a little out-of-practice. Not only with the singing, but with my acceptance of the subway experience...my comfort with it.

I felt strange and out-of-place again, as if I hadn't ever sung there. I was acutely aware of the slight change in the performance space--the slight shift to the left to accomodate the new waste/recycling bin--which seemed to make the pedestrian traffic pattern just that much less advantageous. I was aware of the guitar I was using--not my usual one--and worrying that it was perhaps too quiet.

In fact, it probably didn't make any difference.

The subway is what it is.

People walk by.

Usually they say nothing. On Friday morning, though, in the hour-and-a-half I spent at Pape (not very long, especially when I consider that some buskers I know stay out for 7 hours at a stretch) many people said things.

One man said "Where have you been? I haven't seen you here for a long time." (This surprised me...I didn't recognize him and I couldn't imagine that he'd seen me often enough in that location to actually miss me. But he had.)

And another man (young, black, about 18) said "Ridiculous!" as he sauntered by, laughing, with his friends.

Not able to let this go, I called after him down the corridor, "Hey, do you play an instrument?" (Yeah, guitar.) "Then you try this sometime!" (Yeah, sure, lady.)

Later still (amazing how an hour can seem so long), a couple speaking a language I didn't recognize decided to discuss some documents of theirs while standing directly over my guitar case, only inches from me. (I didn't say anything, maybe because I knew they didn't speak English, but more likely because I was acting the way they were treating me...like a piece of furniture.)

They left.

I turned up the volume on my guitar. It didn't help.

I sang beautifully. It didn't help.

I confess, after Mr. Dreadlocks passed by, I considered packing up and going home. But I knew it was important to stick it out...to wrestle some value from this disheartening experience, even if all I went home with was a thicker skin.

I tried to focus on the positive interactions, few and far-between as they were. For instance, one man deliberately reached AROUND the foreign-speaking couple (also without asking them to move) to drop a dollar into my guitar case.

Later, at home, I was reading a book called "Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living" by the Buddhist nun Pema Chodron. She writes "don't expect applause", or thanks, for being fully in the world. Instead, she encourages us to be "inquisitive and curious about what comes through the door".

After the "ridiculous", when I'd returned home and felt less vulnerable, it was easier to shrug off the young man's rude comment...or if not shrug it off, at least not take it so personally. At the time, though, I was hooked. (In fact, I suppose I'm hooked by the positive strokes I get too, when people give me money or praise. If nothing else, the subway is a great place to practice letting go of expectations.)