From where he had stationed himself Frederick Ross could observe clouds of smoke and ash mixed with cinders swelling over the regiments of skyscrapers on Eighth Avenue, empty and desolate as craters on the moon, a mile away to the south .The debris of the fire settled in lean pillows over their naked floors, their rusted girders reflecting the occasional dull flicker coming from the flames. An effect, he speculated, which might also be explained by buckling through the action of heat. Indifferent to this dreadful parameter Frederick Ross stood in the shadow of the 72nd Street branch of the Manufacturer's Hanover Trust Bank and, numbed by stoic conditioning, played the violin. He was in his late 20's, tall, lanky and nervous, dressed in jeans and blue-green striped shirt, with a shock of dark curly hair that kept falling over his brow and had to be pushed back at awkward moments. A fair violinist at best. Leaving the New England Conservatory after two years only added to his difficulties . Musical ambition , the decisive factor, remained undiminished.
The music stand to his right held sheet music of works by Bach, Vivaldi and Kreisler, while his violin case, open on the sidewalk before him, held the spare change the public threw in his direction by . The top of the case, made from a leather-like, copper- bright substance, had been decorated in acrylics around its central bulge with a delicate fringe of flowers and leaves - the work of a friend, a painter enamored of media-mixing , co-worker at Patelson's, a music store at 56th St and 7th Avenue where Ross put in two days each week. She had thrilled to the challenge of executing a masterpiece on the surface of a violin case. Her enthusiasm had crested, then died away after enhancing the contours of its lid. This may, after all, have been wise : a tasteless ostentation, verging on vulgarity, could have been risked by an injudicious display of ornamentation. Frederick for his part would not have wanted anything to interfere with his proselytizing efforts in the service of high classic art.
Then again, like so many of the artists of his acquaintance, she may have merely been high on inspiration but short on determination. He was not ungrateful: the graceful suggestion of lingering embellishment evoked nostalgia and elegance, encouraging the fantasy that both violin and case had been rescued from some baroque villa, surrounded by vistas of cerulean blue sky and labyrinthine vineyards, in full view of the Mediterranean.
Ross may have been benighted, perhaps stupid, but certainly obstinate, to imagine that his devotion to the world's finest music was being picked up by the odd handfuls of heat-stunned pedestrians who, briefly, entered upon his performance space. Few were inclined to be generous even in fair weather. The squadrons of the work force, city office workers staggering wretchedly through thermal tidal waves to return to their ( at least!) respectable jobs in air-conditioned offices, were astonished to encounter Frederick Ross in rolled-up shirt sleeves, his sun-burnt face covered with a lather of sweat, functioning, so it appeared, on blind energy alone .Encouragement and appreciation were hardly to be expected : the reactions of the public veered rather in the direction of fear. What could possibly motivate this cheerless young man to labor with such ferocity out on this sidewalk Inferno ?
His dynamism did not inspire others, it only depressed them. Let it be granted that he may have rescued a few potential victims of heat stroke via his sterling message of mind over matter. Unlike the vendors of lemonade or hot-dogs, nothing he offered had to be paid for. He could not have been making more than $3.00 an hour. Quarters dropped into his case with the stinginess of beads of moisture sweated out of desert rocks. Nervy types gyrated past bent over the case ignored him counted his coins ambled down the street laughing.
The record states, however, that his efforts did not go entirely unrecognized. His transient gaze , lifting briefly from the score of the E-major violin concerto of the eminent Bach , took notice of several picturesque faces turned in his direction, all beaming admiration without a trace of dissimulation across the traffic heaving along Broadway in both directions. Four steaming jack-hammer operators naked from the waist up, their bodies slicked with water, black streaks of tar, and mud, , had silenced their machines through a wordless consensus at the same time to acknowledge kinship with the shy, bespectacled fellow proletarian on the sidewalk . Like them , he too despised the limitations of the flesh. Were anyone to ask for them opinion they would have concurred : Frederick Ross belonged to the fraternity of real men!
Fire engines hurtled by in spiked intervals. Others , bleating like scared goats, followed down Columbus Avenue soon afterwards, their message alarmed and shrill. More trucks raced uptown, speeding directly past him then turning the traffic island to continue back down on the other side of Broadway.
Ross surrendered: even he could now no longer withstand the combined pressure of weltering heat public indifference mayhem economic disaster nightmare. It was 4 o'clock. His earnings for the afternoon came to $10 ; a few dollars of pocket change to take back to the Lower East Side, with enough for a sandwich and soda at the lunch counter of the Ansonia Hotel. He enjoyed chatting with the Greek counter girl, known on occasion to drift into humming delightful folk melodies. Ross laid the violin carefully back into its case, draped a green, flower-print shawl over it and snapped the locks. Pedestrians glanced down at him sideways with contempt. They despised him for giving up. They had despised him for continuing. He was an easy victim, a foil for the ambient hostility and broiling tempers of the equatorial day.
Metal poles rooted in the sidewalks at this corner support a thicket of billboards filled with concert announcements . He read them with the obsessiveness to be found only in the incurable music fanatic. Although he affected to despise both Julliard and Lincoln Center as embodiments of all the forces in the musical establishment which, by his lights, were blocking his pursuit of a normal musical career, he experienced a vicarious, almost masochistic, excitement from the publicity spreads for famous concert artists. During the season he attended as many concerts as he could: street-wise musicians have no trouble in obtaining cheap, or free, concert tickets in New York City.
Resuming his promenade, he entered onto a spacious arena, the buildings and esplanades feeding into Lincoln Center Plaza. Arrived at the great fountain in front of the Metropolitan Opera House, Ross received further indications that the fire was not resigned to fading away quickly. A suspension of cinders defiled the spectrum of the waning day. Billows of smoke poured from some locale behind the Lincoln Center Bandshell, roughly in the direction of Roosevelt Hospital. A serious emergency, he reflected, taking traditional comfort in the relativity of all catastrophe.
Dizziness moved through him with the suddenness of a shock-wave . It had become imperative that he step indoors to seek relief from the intense humidity, preferably in some establishment with reliable air-conditioning. In this neighborhood the only real choice was the coffee shop of the Empire Hotel , across the traffic island at 65th Street less than a block away.
From the pulchritude of the hotel lobby Ross passed through a room filled with props more appropriate to a typical small town bar and grill. Against the mirror behind the saddle-soaped counter stood liquors bottled in moon-rock canisters. Formica paneling and screens reflected silver glitter. Wrought- iron chandeliers supported electric candles that dispersed a dull, not even sinister illumination. Below these lay a floor tessellated by hexagonal ceramic tiles resembling cracking mud flats. He descended into the restaurant-cafe and took up a seat at the counter.
The room was dark, cool , even chilly, though not uncomfortable. All the same it was only a matter of time before he would be getting up to leave: the atmosphere of the Empire Hotel restaurant quickly became oppressive. Slaughterhouse red leather upholstery covered the bench seats in narrow, confining booths. The less inhibiting coffee counter supported a clientele mixing Empire Hotel residents, many of them musicians on tour, with the transient snobs flocking to this neighborhood to partake of the aroma of its manifold cultural attractions. A raised peristyle in the foreground of the cafe terrace lay prone, gripped in the embrace of a great picture window. The window ruined the terrace: it gave one the odd sensation of being trapped on a Cinemascope screen. Hardly a pastiche of some cafe in Montparnasse; merely noisy and unsettling. Clients who moved onto the terrace, enchanted by the dream of savoring a hand-me-down European charm, found themselves paying for overpriced ambiance lacking even the familiar satisfactions of old New York.
Ross's discouragement could not have been more complete. He had to be a fool, he told himself, to want to continue to do battle with the City for a handful of pennies. His goal had been to raise enough money for one of his rare lessons from the gifted violin teacher he went to on Riverside Avenue, a genial 72- year old Viennese woman who had been in this country since the 30's. Up to that time he'd earned barely enough to take the subway back to the Lower East Side.
The waiters knew Ross and were friendly to him. One of them came over after a short time, slid him a free ginger ale, and counseled him not to lose heart. A dance concert at the New York State Theater was scheduled to let out at 6:00. Only tourists went to dance concerts in New York at the height of the summer. Lovers of the Fine Arts, for sure, and with money to burn! Ross thanked him. He already felt better and, despite his aversion to the setting, ended up staying there for almost an hour. The time passed quickly as he chatted with the waiters and the person on the right, a cellist who did not see anything odd or unusual about Ross's profession. Ross had learned that hanging around the restaurants in this area could be useful for picking up information about students, gigs, and other potluck musical work. The cellist did not have to tell Ross what he already knew: that he had the talent and the musicality, but not enough of the training and none of the discipline for a full musical career.
Frederick Ross walked back out onto the street at about a quarter to six . From the moment he opened the door he found himself being carried along as if through instinct across the rushing traffic . The facade of the ASCAP building stretches the full length of 65th on the east side of Broadway . Like a 20- story battleship smokestack , its central core squats atop a prognathous marquee displaying the enchiselled initials A.S.C.A.P. A procession of coarse-grained unsurfaced pillars concentrate around the front entrance, then split into chains marching away in both directions. Behind and between the columns on both sides of the entrance stand the metal tables and chairs of expensive restaurants. In keeping with the predilection to commercial overkill that has made us renowned among nations, name and decor proclaim these establishments to be inflated caricatures of European prototypes. To the right of the marquee one finds Fiorello. Cleo's , more elaborate, more cosmopolitan, ( which does not prevent it from being the more humdrum of the two ) , could be discovered further down the street in the opposite direction. Between Cleo's and the ASCAP entrance there used to be an unadorned sandwich shop which did a brisk business from office workers on their lunch breaks.
This location, in front of the sandwich shop but beyond the pillars and exposed to the street, was basically the only one in Lincoln Square with possibilities for street performers. To stand right in front of the Lincoln Center Plaza across the street or on the Plaza itself were out of the question : Frederick Ross had tried them ! Although he could not expect to be welcome in front of Fiorello's or Cleo's, he was actually encouraged to stand before the sandwich shop. Its' proprietor found his image, combined with his solid musical taste, good for business. Coffee was always on the house, and at least once a week, Ross found himself treated to sandwiches.
The audience from the dance concert had just begun to emerge from the doors of the New York State Theater. They fanned out onto Lincoln Center Plaza, descended its broad steps into the street in a doughy mass, then dispersed in the manifold directions available to them at this complex intersection. Among them a reliable percentage would cross Eighth Avenue, traversing the traffic island to cross Broadway and be serenaded by Frederick Ross as they wandered uptown.
His rejuvenated spirits translated themselves spontaneously into his playing, now more lyrical, electric, accurate. The wailings of fire engines had become sporadic, the din of traffic was in abeyance. At last he could hear himself play! Certainly he was producing a far better, more professional product than the tinny Bach heĠd been reduced to grinding out at the height of the afternoon heat wave. He opened up with the first movement of Mozart's 4th Violin Concerto, followed by the 5th. ( Already the choice was enough to reveal that his own opinion of his playing did not exactly correspond to his real abilities. Only virtuosos dare perform Mozart's 5th in public.) With the swelling of the crowds he might realistically anticipate making some money.
Frederick Ross had yet to learn that his fate was not the sort that makes for millionaires. Anyone engaged in the promotion of a craft on the streets of a large city can tell you about the deadly tightness of provincial tourists. Their numbers, combined with their remarkable appetite for getting rid of huge amounts of cash, conceal other less ingratiating traits . They descend on the commercial districts of the Big City, dragging along with them hosts of preconceptions about con-men and hustlers and beggars. They imagine themselves very clever in being able to detect them. For these minions the ambulant musician, the hawker of hand-made jewelry, the sidewalk chalk artist, even the hot-dog and pretzel vendors, are objects of suspicion. It is reasonable to surmise that the presence of this mentality will be found in roughly the same proportion among the mobs of visitors in every major cosmopolitan center.
As with the contours of their stomachs, there is a mushrooming tendency in their distribution curve around middle-age. Children and students will be attracted to street artists out of curiosity, while the elderly have their relative wisdom. All the same, despite its legendary glamour, one should not overstate the case for youth. All street artists have had the experience of being cut to the quick by some scrubbed, callow, insolent collegiate type racing through the quarter to rubbish a century note on alcohol, prostitutes, grass , cocaine , discotheques, fancy restaurants or other gilt-edged trips, sneering with contempt at the people who work or live there.
Frederick Ross was able to get in about twenty minutes of uninterrupted playing before the mutterings from the crowd crossed the threshold of consciousness: Get a job; Go back to school; Jackass; Bum; YouĠre hurting my ears! ;Squeak! Squeak! ; Ouch! ; Stop! ....
Insults had almost no effect on him. Even a hostile response was better than nothing.In it he recognized a genuine clash of values, a vicarious recognition. It was the stolid indifference that rolled past him in wavefronts of unbreakable solidarity that provoked his reaction of impotent fury. Anything giving true insight into the workings of the city's heart was being brutally rejected. Brought together by the dream of savoring the tart vitality of the great metropolis, this debris of provincial America swirled its ignorance down the street. They moved in unison, these congregations of slack bodies, sour dispositions self-righteous with mediocrity, impelled by some mindless shuffling momentum towards the horizon in both directions.
The restaurant terraces had begun to fill up. Distributed among their customers, like wriggling splotches of color in a dingy sea, Frederick Ross could identify the faces of music lovers, people who recognized him for what he was and acknowledged the value of his work. Some of them smiled at him in such a way as to indicate that they knew he was playing Mozart; although it quickly became obvious that this recent, more sophisticated clientele were as little disposed to part with their dimes and quarters as the boors, for whom he might just as well have been serving up meaningless noise.
Frederick Ross gripped his violin by its neck and hurled it through the air. It was a petulant impulse, beyond his control, like the rash action of the movie hero who slaps the cad that insults his girl-friend; or the pianist who bangs shut the piano lid and walks off stage in protest against a discourteous audience; perhaps somewhat like the slamming down of the telephone receiver at the conclusion of a fruitless discussion. Frederick Ross had not been a willing participant in the act; as he had not made the decision to initiate it, there had been no time for its prevention through inhibition or restraint.
Hard stares filled with shock and pain turned in his direction. Empty faces gaped wide, as intellects unused to reflection tried to make sense of this astonishing deed. Had they all just witnessed the spectacle of some crude individual trying to wreck a priceless musical instrument? A viola was it, or a violin? What was that thing he'd been playing on anyway ?
He's got to be one of those local characters you read about. That's how bad things have gotten in our own time. See how our glorious classical music is treated like trash!
Well, if you ask me, it's worse even than that. In fact, this individual is mounting his idea of a demonstration against the sanctity of Art! I would classify him as a public menace . There's a movement going the rounds these days: John Cage? ...Dada?... Deconstructionism ? ...?
I don't know what they call it , it's just uncivilized, that's what it is . What nerve! Someone ought to give him a good talking-too. He's ruining the, how shall I put it, the..uh.. "bouquet" of our delicious afternoon at the ballet! Such brutish conduct shouldn't be allowed to poison our refined pleasures, our cozy, insipid dreams, our gauzy fabric of soporific delight...
Hey, we're paying out six dollars for our goblets of wine, twenty dollars for the entrees, four dollar for each bowl of garden salad...I've been told you can buy a new car for the cost of some of those violins. But really, when you come down to it, it's the whole idea of the thing! If you ask me, he's out to destroy Western Civilization. Hasn't somebody gone for a policeman? I'd do it myself, but the Florentine pasta will get cold.....
No one passed Frederick Ross a quarter. No one offered him a sip of a glass of wine, or even a glass of water. No one told him of a friend connected with a group or orchestra that might have work for him, or of some place where musicians were needed at a wedding . No one in fact so much as spoke to him. Within the vapid faces that stocked the terraces on both sides , hostility and fear were focused, as if under the instructions of a film director, on him and him alone.
The violin had flipped in mid-air, landing belly-downwards. The fall had been broken by the arch of its bridge. The A-string had snapped. Otherwise it was undamaged. Those cheap factory instruments can be remarkably tough. Frederick Ross never brought his real instrument out onto the street.
He picked it up gently and, very carefully , wrapped it in its green flower-printed shawl. Then he placed it, lovingly, correctly, in its case. The tension of the horsehair of the bow was slackened, the bow then being inserted between the clasps on the velvet upholstery inside the lid. The locks were snapped in place. The music stand was folded, then dropped into the briefcase. His music was placed there also, alongside the pages of a copying assignment due in a few days.
To the couple sitting close by, at a table to his left, still staring at him with suspicion , yet into whose faces a predisposition for drowsiness had already begun to creep, he shook his fist and screamed:
"You'd let a man starve but you're outraged when he damages a wooden box!!"
They averted their eyes, from embarrassment.Perhaps from honest shame.
Frederick Ross collected his gear stiffened his body walked self-conscious exhausted yet proud five blocks in the direction of the subway entrance at Columbus Circle . He needed to return home quickly to wash up and prepare for the lesson he expected to give later that night. Provided the student kept his appointment.
Across the street, on an electric bulletin board fastened onto the wall of the Empire Hotel, the neon lights of the temperature display presented its opinion to the world: 94 degrees Fahrenheit.
Somewhere along Ninth Avenue, the clang of a fire truck . Return to Cities