Experience 1 –

While scouring the subway system in search of subway performers, I encountered a violinist playing one platform over from me.  He was playing such vibrant beautiful music that, although I intended to anyways, I felt compelled to stop.  It was as if I had stepped into the grandeur of a concert hall.  The arched ceiling of the subway seemed to rise high above to vaulted heights, and the flickering lights seemed to turn into crystal chandeliers.  Yet, all the passerby were just passerby and none, not a single one, stopped as I had done to listen to his beauty in the ten minutes I stood observing him.  That being said, a few stopped to drop coins into his outstretched case.

This experience reminded me of a study that was done by an actual concert violinist who played in a subway for two hours, and yet only made a small amount of money.  Despite the quality of his performance costing fifty dollars a ticket or more, only one old man stopped to listen for five minutes.

This experience made me marvel at how talented some of these subway performers are.  I marveled even more so at how no one seemed to care.  It is amazing that people are so determined to get where they are going in New York City that no one ever stops, even for a free concert violinist.

Experience 2 + 3

Although these experiences were not conducted in my study, I wanted to include them because they were so significant.

I was walking through Grand Central Station when I came across a man playing about ten different instruments at the same time.  This man was playing these instruments in the same fashion that Bert did in Mary Poppins.

Another time, I was riding the subway when these two teenagers got on and put on a show back flipping and spinning around in the subway car.  I thought it was nothing new.  Then, they started doing all of it while flipping a flat-brim-hat around between the two of them and catching it perfectly on their heads every time one of them passed it to the other.

I wanted to include these experiences because they demonstrate how creative subway performs get.  And, how hard they work to perfect their acts.  I’ve tried flipping a hat onto my head and it usually takes me a few tries to do it normally.  Doing it all sorts of different ways why doing back flips at the same time is ridiculously difficult.