9 am and I'm shifting the weight onto my right leg at the Lexington station between Park and Third. What a dreary bleary day. I'm looking at the stooped figures stretched taut by undistinguished lives, the weight of their worlds, of smudge-faced kids and tired rents and rote mute sex - of grey cubicles of greyer departed dreams of hurried lunches at the office - weighing on their sagging shoulders, peering into the gaping tunnel mouth, waiting for the E train to come, to whisk them to oblivion, to their oblivious lives. I shuffled closer to the edge. Dark and dank and dripping. White haired men in their striped suits stand erect next to sinking middle-aged women whose caked faces stood immovable to the realities of time. A black man with neatly pressed trousers and a blue solid tie read the entertainment section of the paper while a Hispanic girl twiddled with her greasy stringy hair, her cheap rubber sneakers squeaking on the stained wet floor. Kids in baggy T-shirts and mothers in worn pumps and gay men in tight hugging jeans. And I'm standing with them, all tired people, tired of a morning with nothing to talk about nothing to smile about nothing to think about. Then this fella comes. All five feet four inches of him - brown skinned and dark eyes - throws down his case, leans against the dirty wall, scans the platform, and begins to play. Ode to Joy. Ludwig Beethoven stopped by the 53rd street station, lower platform, third section, and he was all about himself. He was all over the insolent refrain, the steady steps of major notes, the lilting cascading golden motif. But the fella pays no notice to Beethoven (cause he was just playing his song) and just keeps on playing the mellow yellow notes, a little vibrato here, a quick dash to an archipeggio, still andate but oh so sweet, so delectable in the curved womb of the subway. The violin was throbbing, casually spilling out thoughts of ecstasy and liberty and redemption and the tired people couldn't help themselves but to look up. The vacuous pupils brightened cause the day was brightened. Bent figures straightened because the morning was straightened. And Beethoven shuffled off cause in all his symphonies, all his blaring brass parts and timpanies and celloes and basses - in all of that - he couldn't compare, he couldn't comprehend the symphony that was before him; that of a gruff steady single violin, holding on to the rivers of melodies while the orchestra of a New York morning swelled to accompany... the screeching of the train comes haltering into the station, the pittering thumps of a thousand passengers rushing in and out of sliding doors, summer coughs and a crazy homeless rant, muffled sirens above ground and disparate laughs and earnest conversations below ground, elbows brushing against each other and shoes sliding and stomping and clackity-clacking on cement pavements - it was an earnest morning, a hopeful morning drowned in reality, bagel breakfasts and reheated dinners and the loneliness of watching re-runs and reality shows and late night talk shows. It was all a symphony of sounds and thoughts, come crashing together in this curved moment. Maybe living is simple after all.