Posts Tagged ‘The Hukilau Song’
-
Love the School Groups
0May 30, 2015 by admin
Where the bulbs had been grubbed, a park employee was busy planting out cleomes and cosmos from flats driven in from the greenhouses. The plants were already 18-24 inches high and showing little white and pink petals.
A wedding party of 2 dozen or so was gathered at the fountain. As I got closer, I spotted Meta sitting unhappily on her bench while groomsmen and bridesmaids milled around as if she weren’t there. I kept moving toward my spot on the path. Barriers blocked the way to the Boathouse, forcing people to walk across the lawn to get there. Almost all the foot traffic was from west to east.
The day started with 26 cents from the pocket of a thirty-something. Shortly afterward, another young man emptied his pocket of change, then a third. A mixed group of high-schoolers from Louisiana, Kansas, and other exotic states, stopped to hula. Their leader reminded them that buskers, like canoes, are often tipped. Soon all those dimes and quarters were buried beneath a blanket of crumpled singles.
Another school group in blue tee shirts stopped to hula. A mid-teen girl said, “I don’t know how to hula.” I pointed to one of my props, a 4 inch high solar-powered plastic hula girl, and said, “Just move like that.” The hula girl had a hinge at the shoulders, so that when her rigid body moved over a magnet one way, the shoulders moved in the opposite direction. And so the girl, feet together, legs stiff, arms outstretched, mimicked the toy’s action.
I burst out laughing, stopped playing “The Hukilau Song,” and gave a quick demonstration. Now the girl mimicked me. At the end of the dance, the pile of bills rose still higher, with a few bucks contributed by the kids, a few more by their teacher, and even more by the principal.
Groups of kids are great fun. They often start out shy and reluctant (“Not me”), escalate to teasing (“But she will”), and end up negotiating (“I will if you will”). Pretty soon a handful of kids have leis around their necks and are off to the hukilau.
Meta walked by pushing her harp on wheels. “I lost the shade,” she said. For a moment I contemplated moving to center stage, but given the time I’d spent in the sun yesterday, I stayed under my maple, cooled by the breeze off the water.
After 90 minutes, I counted 19 singles and a few dollars in change, amounting to another fine day.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: The Hukilau Song
-
Another Slow Day
0May 15, 2015 by admin
The chestnut tree is in full bloom. The center of each floret on the spiky white clusters is hot pink. For the time being, this tree is a favorite for picnickers.
Meta beat me to the fountain again, so again I took up my position under the maple, facing the ugly green construction curtain that lines the path to the boathouse. There must be some kind of work going on among the rowboats, although I haven’t heard a hammer or saw yet. The website for the Loeb Boathouse says they will reopen the first week in May. Oops.
I didn’t have to wait an hour for my first customer. A man paid me a dollar for my picture. Random change from a few young men got me going, then a family from Utah stopped so their little girl could hula. With her elbows against her torso, she flapped her arms like a chicken. As I retrieved the lei I whispered to her, “You can smile, it’s ok,” but she remained stone-faced.
“Has this group got time for a hula today?” It was a high school group with a leader who looked like he wanted to stop, but, in the end, he said they’d already spent a lot of time with other musicians. I wandered away from my case to investigate my competition around the bend. An a cappella doo-wop group had set up there. Sandwiched between them and Meta, I would have another slow day.
A scruffy man, perhaps homeless, stopped and flashed a gap-toothed smile as I played. “Have you got time for a hula today?” He took a lei and danced expressively to “The Hukilau Song.” A woman walking by was captivated by the scene. After the man left, she came forward to reward me with a dollar.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: The Hukilau Song
-
Avoiding Zero
0May 14, 2015 by admin
On the lawns, under the flagpole, everywhere I looked as I walked to the fountain, were people dressed in yellow tee-shirts, sitting in silent meditation circles. On the back of the shirts was printed FALUN DAFA IS GOOD. Later in the day, with the exercise finished and the many groups dispersing, waves of yellow shirts passed by me, smiling or giving me a thumbs-up.
The day was cool and windy. Elm seeds piled up against the curbstone edging the paths. On Cherry Hill, a fuchsia-colored azalea vibrated with intensity, while closer to the fountain, the colors were a more muted salmon and white.
Meta was at the fountain. She called me over to give me the phone number of Jeff Croft, a colleague of Norman Siegel of the NY Civil Liberties Union. “He might be more responsive than Norman,” she said.
“He couldn’t be less.” For the moment, all again was well, but I’ll keep the number in case the Parks Department, or the tail that wags the dog, the Central Park Conservancy, shows its fascist face again.
I played under the maple, its helicopter seeds twirling down around my head. For almost an hour, no one stopped to dance, or noticed me at all. For long stretches, the only people I saw were the yellow shirts, a homeless man, and a middle-aged woman, sitting on the bench high on the hill behind me, taking the sun.
A gaggle of conservancy workers, in green shirts, walked by. One of them said, “Have you been displaced?”
“No, the harp was already at the fountain,” I said. “We buskers are self-regulating.”
Six well-dressed high school girls crested the hill. Finally, someone had time for a hula. As I passed out the leis I asked why they weren’t in school today. It seems they had won a day off by winning a trivia contest. “What was the winning question?”
“Actually,” one began, “we weren’t even there.” I inquired no further. Two verses of “The Hukilau Song” yielded 2 singles.
Shortly afterward, a jolly looking man, strolling with his family, added another dollar, to bring the day’s take to $3. I was happy to have avoided a zero dollar day.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Falun Dafa, Jeff Croft, The Hukilau Song
