Towards the end of my run on a sparsely populated “R” train tonight, a little girl peeped her head over the seat as I began to sing & inch by inch, body part by body part, made her way out to the middle of the train car where she; utilizing the space, the poles & the seats, created the most focused & inspired, improv dance creation I’ve seen in a long time.

I adore these kids

Today on trains there was the cutest, most animated toddler who kept me in stitches for my entire tune with his facial expressions & uber expressive hand & body gyrations. Only thing is every time I stopped singing his face got all scrunchy & he burst into tears. I decided to just keep on strumming & humming ’till the very last second when I had to hop off @ 42nd. God help his mom after that

Bye bye to another pair of busking boots … together we’ve had the most awesome collection of adventures 🙂

Tonight on one of my last runs on the “R” train there was a young couple sitting next to each other. The guy had his arm on the girl’s lap wearing a worried, helpless look on his face. The girl, she had a cap on her head & her head bowed and so I could only catch a glimpse of her face now & again. When I did it was obviously she had been crying a lot & was still in the throws of being very upset, in that place we’ve all been in where it feels there’s absolutely no way out.

I could tell the young man next to her wanted nothing more than for his girlfriend to be happy & smile again.  He appeared so powerless.Then I started to sing & she looked up for a second, surprised, & suddenly she caught herself not being able to help herself from grinning a huge grin. Just as soon as the grin overtook her face she remembered she was supposed to be sad and bowed her head once again, hiding beneath her cap. Despite the tears, her smile, that grin that appeared to have a mind of it’s own, kept popping out uncontrollably in response to the music. And her increasingly unsuccessful attempts at stifling it were akin to watching a cat dance with a ball of yarn, never quite being able to tame it.

By the end of the 2 minutes that it took for me to finish my tune, her smile had won. She had, in those 120 seconds, at least temporarily, lost track of why she’d been crying, why she’d been hiding. She was trying to remember but both her boyfriend & I watched as she struggled to recall the depth of the pain & rather failed. Right as I headed out the door to the next car I leaned down & whispered: “It’s going to be ok. Trust me.” She smiled.

~ It’s a busking thing ~

Here’s the deal NYPD – when I surface one hr early from the trains ’cause someone’s warned me of ‘Undercovers on the cars’ & you ask me / beg me for a song as I’m walking home. I’ll sing for you, but only in exchange for a VALID “Get Out Of Jail Free” card. Got it?  ‪#‎busk‬ ‪#‎thesubwaydiaries‬ #firstamendmnet