Accidental performance…. honest!
The most bizzare thing just happened to me right now. I live at the top of a five-storey block of flats, overlooking the T-junction of two busy main roads. Now my bedroom has a habit of getting very hot, so the occasion sometimes arises that I’m playing the fiddle in my bedroom with the window open. It’s a noisy street, and I live about sixty feet away from it anyway, so it doesn’t matter much.
One of those occasions arose this evening, and I was playing the Bukovina Freylech, a great Klezmer tune, by the window. Now I’m sort of in a different world when I’m playing, so it was only when I reached the final high D of the piece that I realized there was a denim-clad guy with a moustache standing in the street watching me, and quite possibly had been since I started playing.
He started clapping. I had to duck away out of sight to crack up, but when I emerged he was still there, leaning against a railing, arms folded, looking up at me expectantly! He was obviously expecting a performance. So… I gave him one. I played him a fast, flashy set of reels, bowed, he gave me the thumbs-up, and I went into a different room to crack up some more.
It was just… a very weird experience altogether. I had a moment of connection with, literally, a complete randomer on the street, through the Music, just because he happened to look up at the right time.
Has anybody else had a weird moment like that before?