More London Place

The first time I saw this piano, I walked right past... not because I wasn't interested, but because there was a rather rough-looking chap sitting there playing, and I wasn't about to get caught gawking.

I went on to stare at Tower Bridge for a few seconds. I swear I tried my best to find it interesting, but it just wasn't nearly as compelling as that character at the piano, so I turned and marched back the way I had come.

When I got there, the man had given up his spot on the bench to a young girl--not more than 7 or 8--who had brought her own sheet music and was playing a tune from her lessons while he and her mother looked on. After a few songs and a smattering of applause from the small audience (several other passers-by had joined to listen to the miniature recital), the girl walked off hand-in-hand with her mother, the people dispersed and went about their business again after the brief interruption, and it was just me, Neil, and the piano.

That's the man's name: Neil. I found that out as we talked. After playing a few songs he didn't know, we came up with one he did know... at least, sort of. Neil didn't know too much of the verses, but the chorus of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah is pretty straightforward. I'm not suggesting we should take the show on the road or anything, but for a first-time duet in the park, I'd say we fairly nailed that chorus.

I wasn't sure whether I should ask him about the swastika tattooed on his forehead... not because I was scared at this point, or because I didn't care, but because I wondered how many people couldn't help but ask him. And I wondered how often he was ridiculed, stared at, assumed about, avoided, poked, badgered, rejected or accepted based only on that tattoo right between his eyes. I wondered, in how many times and places could Neil could simply be Neil: a guy who, just like me, saw a piano in the park and wished he had spent more time playing music when he was younger.

I didn't ask. Somehow, as the two of us tried to master the chord progression of John Lennon's Imagine so we could stumble through to the part where we both knew the lyrics well enough to sing, it slipped my mind. Maybe the next time our paths cross (unlikely, considering I live some 3,6oo miles across an ocean), we'll find a place to draw it all out over a pint... or not.

One thing is certain though: given the chance to play the piano with one of London's true characters or stare at some bridge, I'll choose the piano and Neil... every time.
-adm

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You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope some day you will join us, and the world will live as one. -JL

adm // Aug 19, 2012 at 7:47 am