On the Nature of Art

I rushed down the stairs. I made sure to keep my hands out of my pockets and ready to grab the railing should I loose my balance and fall, a habit of mine ever since I read about a man who died from slipping on the icy step in front of his house on a cold night (his hands were in his pockets to keep them warm and thus could not break his fall). I ruffled through the contents of my pocket for my subway pass and held it up to the card reader. In the distance I heard the rumbling of an approaching train while the card reader emitted an obnoxious honk in rejection of my pass. Try again, it ordered tauntingly. The same grating honk, my only reward for 'trying again.' I moved to the neighboring gate and held my pass up to its respective reader as the train screeched to a stop a tantalizing 10 feet in front of me. Finally, the reader accepted my fare, and I heard a cheerful 'ding' as the gates acquiesced.

I slumped into a seat on the train, a fifty year old man, surrounded by strangers going the same direction. As I felt the tension drain from me, I wondered if owning a car would aggravate my heart condition more than almost missing the train on a daily basis. I tried to meditate on the clack clack of the train moving on its track.

Suddenly a voice came over the sound system and jarred me out of my trance. "CENTral Squaaare," it proclaimed, in the theatrical manner of a ringleader announcing its star attraction, or perhaps a ghost beckoning me into a haunted house. The conductor had purposely deepened his voice, and held out each syllable of the destination. A group of convivial toursists tittered in the corner, and several grizzled veterans of the city rolled their eyes. I found myself smiling, along with many other riders, at the silly and outrageous conductor, who sounded like a child playing with a toy train set rather than a grown man, a member of a union, a professional working for time and a half.

Then I experienced a rare moment, when the traffic signal in my head turns green, and I have a thought that is both true and causes me to see the world in a new way. The conductor of the subway train broke rank and poked a hole in our somber routine. As city dwellers, we willingly fade into the shadows every time we set foot outside into the urban exterior. We put on our poker faces, revealing nothing, and hope we are not disturbed. The conductor's behavior was harmless, but profoundly out of step with convention, which is why it touched a nerve with everyone on the train. Whatever the reaction, not a soul was left unmoved.

In the end, people are social animals. Our deepest desire is to break through the barriers that separate us, to feel a part of a whole. Most people do this on a small scale, with intimate friends, lovers, and family. But when we do it on a grand scale, when we can reach out and communicate with a large group of people, in a way that is interactive, and visceral, we call this art. When we both lose ourselves and recognize ourselves in a piece of writing, music, or performance, or in a painting, both the consumer and the producer of art are really just trying to be close to everybody, all at once.

As I tried to parse my reaction to the conductor's outburst, I decided I appreciated it, for uniting my fellow riders and I in more than the general drift of our locomotion. In this, at least, he was an artist.