An attractive, tall man in the skinniest black jeans I ever did see plays the violin as though he were an indefatigable virtuoso in a three piece suit. From where I am, I cannot hear him over the din of passing trains, though I can tell by the way the man moves with his instrument that his is a considerable talent.
An eager, bright-eyed little boy is closer than me. Close enough to catch the strains of Schubert melody pouring from the graceful wooden device and to have eyes widen in delightful response.
The boy stops his mother in her tracks and gestures for her to move her ear closer to him. I don't need to speak his language to understand what he is after. The little boy motions emphatically to the player, then to the money in the violin case, then back to his mother to speak a few words. The mother is only half listening to him until she realizes that the boy has not stopped pointing for several minutes.
The player smiles gently, almost imperceptibly, and inclines his head with his violin toward the little boy, who is enraptured. This man has brought beautiful order to the cacophony of sounds in the universe that exists under New York ground for the little boy and me. The boy is so taken with the music that he tries to leave the yellow toy school bus he had been clutching to his chest as a donation.
The mother stops him and scrambles to find money to give to the boy, which he then throws gleefully into the case, before he is hassled by his mother to board the uptown A express train.
All this was over in a matter of moments, but as I was boarding the train in the same car as the boy and his mother, I felt it a privilege to behold the intensity of focus that was that little boy's appreciation of art. Still holding the little yellow school bus toy, the little boy did not stop straining to see the violin player until the train was well on its way into the tunnels of another New York night.
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