A TALE OF TWO MORNINGS - Part One

or Why New York is the Greatest City in the World

Legendary producer, Joe Papp, founder of NYC’s Public Theatre, once said, “An artist responds to his immediate environment.  And there is no more immediate environment than New York City.” 

True dat, Joe.  

Joe would know.  In its over 60-year history as one of the nation’s first non-profit theatres, Papp and the Public had birthed everything from HAIR to HAMILTON with A CHORUS LINE sandwiched between, and so very much more in this great theatre in this greatest city in the world.

What’s that you say?  New York, the greatest city in the world?  What about…, and…, and…?

To be sure, there are many great cities.  And certainly, more beautiful.  But before you take up a pitchfork and storm the Empire State Building in defense of your own personal favorite, allow me to make my case.

Paris leaps to mind; the City of Lights, where beurre,  baguettes, and berets, join wine, women, and romance as the breath of life.  Birthplace of existentialism, where Jean-Paul Sartre described Hell as “other people.”  Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grapelli inventing gypsy-jazz in Montmartre.  The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre.  The food, the fashion, the women for whom the word chic was invented.  The Parks, the broad boulevards, the cafés.  The cafés, the cafés.  The ghosts of Toulouse Lautrec, and Edith Piaf, and Jim Morrison, all parked their Can-Cans there.  Notre Dame.  Our Dame.

There are others. 

Venice, like walking around a great medieval brain with its synapses of alleys and bridges and canals, floating two inches above the water even as it sinks three.  A masked vampire beckons from an alley at Mardi Gras, enter if you dare, walk out “changed.”  The insanely wealthy and powerful Doges ruled the seas and mercantile trade building a city so beautiful and romantic you feel as if you are “in love” even when alone.

San Francisco, where Tony left his heart.  Athens, Rome, Barcelona.  London-town, Vilcabamba, Cleveland.  Okay, that’s one too far.  Heck, even Pittsburgh, the city that birthed me, the Sirens of Three Rivers calling me back, this city of trees and hills and bridges boasts great sports teams, universities, and an even greater symphony.  Pittsburgh is a secret, a great city no one wants to know about.  Don’t tell!

But, all… all, all, all pale next to the sovereign island nation of Manhattan.  And I can prove it.  

Let me tell you a story. A tale.  A TALE OF TWO MORNINGS.  Two extraordinary mornings that could only happen in one city.  And that city is… 

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Morning One

I awoke one morning with a sense of purpose, a place to be; an all-day gig as audition pianist at 890. 890 is all the address you need. Everyone in the “biz” knows 890 refers to 890 Broadway.  890 is a rehearsal / audition studio, a rabbit’s warren of rooms of all sizes, some with windows that look out on brick walls two feet away.  You can reach out and touch the building next door, but still, a window is a window is a window.  The caché of holding your “reading,” your audition, your rehearsal at 890 adds cred to whoever / whatever project is paying the tab.  A new show, a hopeful “table-read” of new work, (destined to fail, unless it doesn’t), right next door to Ann Reinking and Gwen Virdon coaching new starlets to step into their Fosse shoes DANCIN’. 

Audition pianist is a tough gig requiring a very specific skill set.  One must be able to sight-read chicken-shit, magically connect page one to page three when page two is missing, instantly transpose three sharps to five-flats, cover a nervous singer’s ass when they’ve “gone-up” (forgotten their lyrics or lost their place in their arrangement), then, after saving said singer’s ass, suffer their evil stare as they pretend that you, the audition pianist, has fucked-up, not they, even as you have just saved their ass moments before.  The ploy fools no one. 

One must remain pleasant as six-hundred auditionees have shown up for the open “cattle” call, their line snaking around the block, all vying for two chorus parts.  To remain invisible to the Director, Producer, Musical Director, Choreographer, and Casting Director sitting at the “big-boy” table, smug in their power.  To speak only when spoken to.  To keep a smile even if they forget to include you in the lunch order.  And you do this why?  Because if you do it well, they ask you back or maybe even offer you a gig at the gig holding the auditions.  And it pays $25 an hour.  And you gotta make rent.  And… because you can.  You do it because you can.  Not everyone can and the good ones are valued.  And I was very good.

With all this to look forward to, I decided to walk to 890.  About four miles as the crow flies down the diagonal slash of Broadway; longer, through the park.  I was early, I had time, and it would be good to start the day with a walk.  A walk through Central Park, where young stars and models and junior executives run their morning miles before work, their high-heels in their backpack or dance bag, sneaking some life in before their daily grind grounds them up and grounds them down.

Shan and I were living at 88th and Columbus, a primo location on the Upper West Side one block from Central Park.  On this morning, there weren’t many others in the park.  A marine layer had come in and the world was made pointillist by droplets of water hanging in the air, pixels of suspended H2O obscuring and defining the world.  It was damp and cold and humid all at the same time.  I walked fast and as I snuck up on Tavern on the Green across from the Sheep Meadow, I heard drums.  These weren’t just any drums, not the overturned buckets that urchin buskers play so marvelously, hip-hop Gene Krupas that make more music on a five-gallon spackle container than many can with a full-on trap kit. No, these were BIG drums, insistent drums, making BIG ground-shaking booms.  Drums that called KONG! KONG! KONG! summoning the giant ape for breakfast.  I looked around so as not to be trampled.  But from what direction were they coming?  The fog and the water in the air made the sound come from everywhere and nowhere at once.  Then, through the vapor, the drums came into focus.

There, against the background of King Kong topiary, at the 66th St. entrance, were several lithe, muscled Asian men.  In loin cloths.  If one drew a straight line from them to Broadway one came to Lincoln Center.  These must be the famed Kodo drummers of Japan, opening at Lincoln Center this very same evening; and for a reason that only they knew, they’d brought their Brobdingnagian drums in massive frames to play in the fog for an audience of anyone.  For an audience of me.

Their bodies glistened with sweat and dew, staring straight ahead into an ancient distant now, mirrored in the eyes of the other opposite them, focused only on the drum.  And I, through a gift of timing, was being treated to their ritual.  And I didn’t even have to buy a ticket.

But this was New York, and New York waits for no man, drum, or drummer.  I took my reluctant self away.  I, too, had a drum to march to.

Continuing south, the park remained a mysterious wood.  No traffic is allowed at this time of day except for cabbies on the opposite eastern side of the park, and those dissecting it on the submerged crosstown east-west lanes.  The magic held.  There  were few people about, moving in and out of the fog, and those there were, were invisible to me.  And I to them.

Heading now for Columbus Circle I saw two distant people.  As I drew closer, details emerged, and the strangest tableau began to unfold out of thick air.

Two Andean men that I can now recognize as members of the Saraguro tribe of southern Ecuador / Peru stood at a public drinking fountain facing each other.  Mirror images of fierceness, the Saraguro are one of the very few tribes the Spanish were never able to conquer.  Because of that, the Saraguro maintain a blood purity that is distinctive, completely absent of mixed (mestizo) mingling.  They are taller than most South American Indians, with hatchet noses sharp enough to take a scalp.  Sloping high foreheads with eyes seemingly on the sides of their head; lizard like, they give the impression of being able to see something akin to 360.  They are handsome with thick, jet-black braids of hair past their waists, proud to the point of haughtiness.  These two were kings, but kings that had clearly spent the night sleeping in the wild.  And now, they made their toilet at this fountain, preparing for the day’s work.

Dispassionate, only their hands moved, toothbrushes in unison, up/down, up/down, up/down, mirroring each other’s actions.  Nearby, their hand-carved pan-pipes, drums and charangos stood sentinel.  The body of a charango is the body of a hollowed out armadillo, its stiff hide strung with animal gut.  I knew they would play well, but I could not wait around to hear it.  I had my own gig to do.  I needs must move along.

These delights and diversions had eaten into time.  I looked at my watch.  These were the halcyon pre-cellphone days when one still had to know how to tell time.  I’d lollygagged long enough.  I exited the park at 59th St.  

Many of the major subway lines converge at 59th, at the Columbus Square station.  A decision had to be made.  It was a crap-shoot now as the ordered chaos of strap-hangers moved with purpose trampling those that spun in a turnstile of indecision.  Each line had their advantages / disadvantages, impossible to know the unknowable caprices of the subway gods.  Would I take the red IRT Broadway line, the less dependable, (but closer,) yellow BMT Broadway line, or the blue IND Eighth Ave line, (faster, but a further walk on the other end)?  Then…

Then, this morning of possibilities threw another monkey-wrench bone into the machine.  All of these criss-crossing lines criss-cross in a maze of connecting underground tunnels; tunnels that allow the savvy New-Yorker to change lines and direction according to new information processed constantly, delivered over garbled speakers and a sixth sense given only to those that have paid their dues and their fares.  When is the express train slower than the local train?  Where are the construction delays?  Picking one arbitrarily, I opted to walk a long connector hallway trying to second-guess the unknown.  And I was rewarded.  

A crowd of people stood, mesmerized.  Hanging up-side down, suspended by some sort of hidden suction cup arrangement, Spider-Man hung from the ceiling, in a straight-jacket, working a Houdini escape.  An unprotected bucket stood nearby, unguarded, for the donations of passersby.  I stopped.  I wondered how quick Spidey’d get out of that rig to chase down anyone that thought to grab it.  Spidey heaved and grunted working his well-trained musculature; I knew he would do it, must do it, but alas, waiting to see him do it would not pay my rent.  Reluctantly, I pressed on into the Spider-verse of leading men and ingenues waiting for my own Houdini tricks at the piano.  All this, before 8:00 a.m.  I’d not yet had a cup of coffee.  It would be a good day.

This was a not untypical morning in New York City. And no other city I’ve lived in or visited has given the same. Next week, Morning Two, in my defense of my opening statement.

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I leave you now with a song I love doing, but alas, can’t find my recording of, so must defer to its author, the great Joni Mitchell.  Joni speaks of the “sweet chaos of New York City,” where musicians on the corner, “play real good for free.” Who am I to argue?  This love-letter to New York speaks to those instances when New York is sweet, its sights and sounds and smells and tastes all take a break from the madness to give you this kind of morning. A CHELSEA MORNING.

See you next week for the tale of Morning Two.