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Behind the Painting
I walked through Central Park on a warm Saturday morning, past the bubble man and the string quartet and the guy selling hats on the blanket and the girl in her quinceañera dress, hopped a fence, and sat down on a root to paint.
It was a hard subject, the light changing, rowboats drifting, trees a mix of buds, bare branches, and the first leaves of the season. I worked it and overworked it and gave a shout of excitement when the sun came around and cast shadows on the curving steel span.
Bow Bridge was an endless stream of people. Couples posed for engagement photos, or stopped to look out on the lake. Cheers erupted for a successful proposal. Another couple got engaged on the spot.
A girl climbed the railing to peer into the stone flowerpot. “Any eggs up here?”
“I love your drawing!” a kid yelled down from the bridge, forming a heart shape with her hands.
A playlist repeated on someone’s speaker for an hour or so, lite piano versions of the world’s most saccharine songs, Hallelujah, Can You Feel the Love Tonight, and Greensleeves, fine by me, but woefully out of season.
Eventually the music man moved on, and we were saved by a power trio on the shore of The Lake playing a perfect, jammy rendition of I Shall Be Released, close harmonies, tight rhythm, melodic guitar solos. “Any way now…any day now. I shall be released.”
I walked back through the park, descended down into the subway, boarded the train, sat down and started to write about my experience. A guy with a violin boarded behind me. He immediately broke into Greensleeves. Alright, maybe I’ll never be released.
