Thursday, 17 October 2002 | Performer

Some of them are amazing. Tonight on my way home from work, I stopped to listen to one standing near a subway entrance at Union Square. He was playing a banjo, picking out a flood of crisp notes with quick, easy fingers. He was singing, high and low, a folk song that sounded somehow old and rural. He had a nice voice.

He had a drum tied to his back. His right leg was connected to the mallet by a wire, and another wire connected his left leg to a set of cymbals. He would move his heels in a reverse tapping of the foot, lifting his right heel to bang the drum, lifting his left to clap the cymbals, while simultaneously singing and articulating his banjo, performing the work of three or four people. It took me a moment to fully grasp the extent of his performance. When I stopped to listen, there were a few people standing there, scattered, ahead of me. By the time I walked away, he'd attracted a substantial crowd.

This morning I saw one of my favorites. He plays the acoustic guitar and blows on a series of narrow uneven pipes that are positioned on a metal rack in front of him. Sometimes he strokes the pipes with his breath, producing a sound something like a hand being strung down a piano, from the last key to the first.

He wears his long black hair in a ponytail and alters his facial expressions between happy and surprised. He seems to lose himself in his own music and forget that he's in public, which is something I really enjoy watching, perhaps because I doubt I could ever do the same. It drags me into the music as well, to see someone producing and being, rather than someone who just skirts over the surface and observes.