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Voila, She Danced
0October 17, 2015 by admin
When the sun was obscured by the dark, rain-heavy cumulus clouds, it was really cold. The button man sat under the dogwood tree with his hoodie pulled up around his ears. The brisk wind made it worse. The chestnut tree looked terminal, and the 4 little winter-burned rhododendron had been dug up; the brown circles of earth remaining were filling up with dead leaves.
When I got to center stage the wind had driven away the heavy clouds and the sun felt hot on my arms and face. As I set up, a monarch butterfly fluttered toward the lake. First it would rest on the warm bricks, wings slowly rippling up and down, like an idling engine. People approached close enough to take pictures. Then it burst into the air, no more than a few feet high, and continued its erratic journey. At this rate, Mexico seemed a stretch.
A pair of girls from Alabama gave me a dollar and danced the day’s first hula. One from a trio of Chinese girls danced the second, returning to her friends afterward to view the pictures they’d taken. They took more pictures of a little girl who did the next hula, and saw her mom put something in my case, then they walked away.
An Asian 20-something man, who had been watching from the bench, came over with $2. And I got another $2, from a half dozen Canadian girls from Alberta, “above Montana,” one told me.
The crowds kept coming, most in heavy cloths, many in hats and gloves. Yet in the sun it was glorious. As I sang, I lost track of who gave me what. People came up from the benches, little kids, old men. Someone had tossed in a fiver. One guy was a Finn. A 50-something man sauntered over and shook my hand, saying, “I like your enthusiasm.”
A 2-year old girl, Lola, sat cross-legged on the brick, elbows on knees, chin in hands, eye-level with my solar powered toy hula dancer. She was mesmerized. “She can’t hurt it,” I told a concerned-looking mom. Putting my uke aside, I asked Lola to sit next to me, while I took the toy apart and showed her the copper wire coil inside, and the magnet attached to a pendulum connected to the hula dancer’s arms. I left out details of Maxwell’s equations. Reassembling it, voila, the hula dancer danced, and so did Lola.
“Yay,” we both shouted at the end of the song. Her mom gave me back the lei and buckled Lola into her stroller, whereupon they strolled away. Listeners on the north side gave me $1. Listeners on the south side gave me 2. At the end of my set, I had $19.50. With Lola on her shoulders, Lola’s mom came back with something for me. I love it when I break 20.
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Center Stage
0October 16, 2015 by admin
Getting another late start, I decided to sit quietly on a bench and wait for the cowboy to go home. With the days remaining in the season growing ever fewer, I wanted my time at center stage and, by God, I would have it. Chatting with some tourists sitting near me, I learned that the Boyd family singers were wonderful, and that the cowboy played all their favorite songs. Go figure.
I opened with “Making Love Ukulele Style.” As I played, I detected a twang in my low-G string, a wire wrapped item that hasn’t been changed all year. Experience tells me this string will soon snap. Upon examination, I can’t find any fraying, which usually begins directly over one of the frets. My challenge now is to finish the season, so I can change all the strings at once in January.
A young man stopped in front of me to take a picture. Unlike practically every photographer who’s pointed a camera, cellphone or iPad at me, this one coughed up a buck.
“Have you got time for a hula today?” Three older women talked it over, and one of them, Diane, started shaking her hips. “Do you know any birthday songs?” It was Diane’s 80th birthday. I put a lei around her neck and sang “Happy Birthday” while one of them shot video. “What about that hula?” the videographer called out. Diane was game and did a slow, yet stylish, hula. The women were from Dallas, where, I reminisced, I had gone ice skating at the indoor rink at the Galleria shopping center when the outside temp was 107. When they left, with shouts of Aloha echoing through the fountain, I found a crisp fiver in my case.
Two blond teenagers were encouraged by their mom to dance. During the intro to “The Hukilau Song,” brother and sister danced in unison, but with the start of the verse, sister went free-style, literally dancing circles around her brother. A laughing mom handed me $3.
A 30-something woman all in black walked slowly past me, and without breaking stride tossed 2 quarters in my case. By the time I got to the end of a breath-line in my song, it was too late to ask her to dance. A 40-something man gave me a dollar, saying, “Keep on playing, man.”
“Do you like ukulele music?”
“Not particularly, but I like what you’re doing.”
It was another great day for wedding photos. I counted 6 brides in my 90 minutes at the fountain. As is my wont, I broke into “The Hawaiian Wedding Song” every time a bride showed up. Rarely am I rewarded; most of the time the wedding couple doesn’t have a clue what I’m singing. Today, however, a photographer, 1 of 4 that were assembled to take pictures of a particularly large wedding party, gave me a dollar, bringing the day’s total to a respectable $11.50.
Packing up, Kate, who plays the viola for John Boyd, came by to ask if her friend on the alto sax, who had set up 180 degrees from me, with taped accompaniment, was interfering with me. “Not anymore,” I said, “I’m done for the day.” Fact is, I’d heard him between numbers, but not at all while playing, my measure of when buskers are too close together. “But thanks for your concern,” I added. “See you tomorrow.”
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Making Love Ukulele Style, The Hukilau Song
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Trading Places with the Cowboy
0October 15, 2015 by admin
The cowboy was back. I walked past him as he finished “What a Wonderful World” and started in on “Cherish.” As I entered the cool shade of the path, however, I changed my mind. I needed sun, so I went back to the fountain and set up on the west side. At this location, where I’ve never played before, I sang my heart out, with no success. From this vantage, however, I could keep an eye on the cowboy, and when, after 30 minutes, he packed up, I moved onto center stage.
A large family from Utah walked by. “Have you got time for a hula today?”
The mother asked the kids, 2 teenage girls and 2 younger boys. They shook their heads no, but mom said, “Well, I want to hula,” at which the girls changed their minds and joined mom. They did a lovely dance, graceful and expressive, especially the younger daughter who pantomimed riding a surfboard and getting wiped out. The father, minding the boys at a distance, dug out a fiver for one of the boys to give to me.
A Brazilian couple had watched the dance, but would not dance themselves. The man, 30-ish, asked me for a song. I sang “My Little Grass Shack,” and when I sang the lyric about the beach at Hōnaunau, I added, “and Ipanema,” which elicited a big smile and a $3 tip when I finished.
The afternoon was glorious, even when a roiling black rain cloud blotted out the sun for a while. It was good weather for photographers. At least 3 fashion shoots took place around me, and 3 bridal parties, including a Scottish wedding complete with kilts.
A 70-something in bicycle gear and an American flag bandanna on his head had been sitting on the bench, adjusting his handlebars and listening to me. After a few songs, as he prepared to leave, he walked up to me with a dollar, saying, “I’ve watched too many people pass you by.”
A trio of Chinese women stopped nearby. One put some change in my case and asked to take a picture, but that was not the end of it. A little girl had stopped to hula, and the sight had so amused the Chinese women that they assembled another $2 for me.
A man and woman, dressed in identical horizontally striped polo shirts, sat listening for about 20 minutes before tossing 2 singles into my case and moving on. Soon after, Thoth, the “prayformance” artist who moves into the arcade when the Boyd sacred singers move out, walked by in his loin cloth and face paint. Thoth is best remembered for being arrested a few years back during one of the many busker-sweeps ordered up by the Central Park Conservancy.
Toward the end of my set, a guy came loping down the path right toward me and presented me with a dollar. “I could hear you all the way up the path,” he said, pointing back toward the Boathouse. “It sounded really cool.”
At almost the same time, a man turned up the path and put his fingers in his ears. In case I didn’t get the message, he gave me a thumbs-down behind his back. I’d seen that same fingers-in-the-ears gesture from 4-year-olds, but wondered what kind of adult felt compelled to behave that way. An adult with the maturity of a 4-year-old?
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Cherish, My Little Grass, What a Wonderful World
