So it's a miserable week, but it's over. I get out of work early and get a free moment in downtown Philadelphia, and there's
a small, but fancy store in one of the more obnoxious 'shopping venues' in the city. The store is amazing, but primarily sells jewelry with a mix of art of sculpture. The shops are kind of a mini-mall, and like any mall experience, it's great for people watching, but rarely attracts great people to watch. I like to window shop, looking for special things for my other half. I love the art and sculptures, but know I'll probably never be able to afford any of it without divine intervention.
As I'm walking around, I hear piano playing.
Really, really good piano playing.
The entire 'mall' is basically built around a circular, very open area. I like the playing so much I break out my bottle of water and sit at a nearby table overlooking the open, central area.
There's a young guy there at the piano, and he's
doing it. What's impressive isn't how well he's playing or what he's playing, but that it looks
effortless. Just beautiful music... pouring out of that piano and filling every inch of the entire mall. He has his baseball hat open on the piano and there's already a couple of bucks in it. The clean, sanitized, phony as hell mall atmosphere is shattered... real life is spreading throughout the space. Watching people go by, everyone notices the same thing... it's as if the season of Spring is talking to everyone.
While he plays, I notice just a subtle shift in the background sounds of people chattering away and eating their afternoon snack... as if the music is giving them an excuse to actually stop talking and enjoy the flavors in front of them.
A somewhat crazy looking lady suddenly asks me, 'do you think that's appropriate?'
'Huh?'
She points to two teenagers who, in full view of a lot of people, are basically making out right there at their table.
I really just want the crazy lady to get away from me. I understand public discretion, but this lady apparently hasn't stepped out into a warm summer rain in many years, has forgotten how wonderful youth
really is, and ought to be thanking the gods that the young still respond to music that occurs in real time. Instead, she picks the creepiest looking stranger in the mall, myself, and just starts talking... go figure.
'I'm just listening to the music, m'am', I tell her. She wanders off. Good riddance.
I continue to watch the piano man. This guy's like an H.P. Lovecraft character. There's something... infectious in what he's playing. It's not quite like the scene in Shawshank Redemption, when Andy puts on the opera record, but the crowd is reacting without really being aware of it.
The reason I post this is the actual location where this all took place. You see, the floor of the ground level is a series of concentric circles. A decorative, sort-of-radial pattern of cut marble slabs turns the floor into a strange mosaic. I found a picture of the floor
here... just imagine that the piano is where the Christmas tree is. So inside a circle inside a circle there's this amazing source of this amazing music.
Above the whole thing is a pretty impressive, but awfully mechanical looking cupola... a picture is
here. The center is directly above the point where the piano was located. So you have marble from a couple of different places on the planet. Steel, with its own bloody and majestic history. The baked sand of the glass. A few thousand years of glassblowing, metallurgy, architecture, masonry, design, symbolism... and, of course, the piano with its own delicate mathematics vibrating the air to a specific set of patterns.
Overhead, a fast moving but gentle set of storm clouds blew by.
Eventually, of course, the security guard comes over and a few minutes later the guy hurriedly leaves, taking his bounty with him. All in all, he probably made about twelve bucks in half an hour... not a bad rate of pay. You would think that the mall ownership would encourage a musician to come in and play, but they don't.
As I left the structure, a slight rain fell. I thought about all those patterns focusing on one point where, today, some guy wanted to make a few bucks to buy himself a snack playing the piano. Patterns of metal, stone, even air. Glass and steel 'suspended in the sky' while patterns of carved marble lay beneath. All focusing to a center where a well played instrument sat just at the moment when a small storm went by overhead.
It's easy to believe that, even in this place and time, little bits of magic somehow bleed through whatever controlled and measured world we have created. These slivers of magic are small, subtle, and quick. You have to be still and quiet or you'll scare them off, or worse yet, miss them completely.
