Write about a recurring public gathering you attended in a place you visited. It should be a very pleasant memory, and could be a baseball game or street fair, an outdoor concert or historical reenactment. Put yourself there by freewriting or clustering, allowing your mind to wander back. Write about the people you saw, the smells in the air. You’ll be amazed by how much you remember once you begin writing about it.
By the time my parents had left me on my own in New York City, I was already fiend. I quickly needed to figure out how I would manage funding my addiction to cigarettes in a city where cigarettes were 12-14$ a pack.
I lived right outside Washington Sq. Park and had the pleasure of being woken up every morning by the sound of a saxophonist playing in the park. Luckily, I was a fiend with a talent. I could play the violin.
People always asked me how I managed to work up the balls to just walk out into public, throw my case on the ground, and start playing music in front of hundreds of strangers. That was actually the easiest part. The hardest part was finding a place with good acoustics, where several people would pass by within the next hour, all while not infringing on the other ten performers in the park at the time.
Some days were great and some weren't. I figured out that the money I had made in one hour was directly related to the weather, time of day, and what day it was. On a sunny Saturday morning, I would make around 45-60 dollars in an hour. On a cold, windy Wednesday afternoon, I would make around 15-20$, not counting the bills that would fly away in the middle of a song.
Winter was about to roll around and I was about to find myself without a source of income. You can't bring your violin out when it's snowing outside because the cold will throw the strings out of tune and the moisture will ruin the wood on your instrument. I didn't really want to practice in my dorm because I felt it was both rude to the people of my dorm and also attracting to the people who wanted to come in and listen.
It was a Saturday, but it was a cold and windy Saturday. I also recall being incredibly hungover from the night before. I was out of cigarettes and I felt like my friends were getting tired of bumming them to me. So I did what any fiending, broke, hungover musician might do and took my violin out to the park. I also brought along some of my artwork to sell.
It was getting cold out, so the fountain had been drained and it became a great place to just sit and enjoy the view of the park. The arch had already been taken by a cellist, so I decided to walk out in the fountain and become the center of attention, literally. I set my case out and my artwork underneath it. I set up my sheet music as best I could on the floor and began playing.
Now there's something about playing the violin in freezing cold winds that makes your fingers go stale. Maybe it was the fact that I was nervous being the only thing those poor New Yorkers could look at. Maybe my violin was exact its revenge on me for taking it out in such cold weather. Or maybe it was the fact that I stopped practicing my hardest songs because of prior commitments. But I was starting to sound horrible. And a few people were leaving.
After ten minutes of stumbling through one of my toughest pieces, a man walked up, threw in a ten dollar bill and asked me to stop and give him my violin. A moment passed and I reluctantly handed it over, scared that he was about to show me up in front of these strangers. But he just sawed childishly at the strings and screamed at everyone, "It's not as easy as you think!" and then handed it back to me. I laughed as he took a bow, gave me back the violin, and left the fountain.
I don't know what it was, but my hands felt much warmer after that.
After I had finished, I went back to my dorm with 70$ that day and all of the paintings I had left with. It was more money than I had ever made paying in one hour that year.
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