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"I love coming here. They just let kids be kids."
- John Short (Age 7),
To ABC Eyewitness News Reporter,
Art McFarland |
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"When I was a child, I caught a fleeting glance,
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone,
I cannot put my finger on it now,
The child is grown, the dream is gone.
I...have become, comfortably numb."
- Roger Waters: Pink Floyd |
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| Air Guitar |
"Listen, listen closely. Don't you hear it?" David asked. "Not a sound," answered Davids father. "Not a single note. Nothing but the whisper of my own breath."
"Well, we'll try again tomorrow, dad." "Anything you say, David. See you in the morning. Goodnight."
"Why can't he hear what I hear?" David asked himself as the fingers of his left hand curled around the neck of his invisible guitar to form chords which made, when strummed by his magical right strumming hand, harmonies more beautiful than he had ever imagined.
"Maybe if I play in another key," he thought. "Oh, well, there's always tomorrow."
He closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep, listening to the lovely lullabies of his dreams. When the dream was fully formed, he found himself marching down the street strumming a delightful tune which, though he thought he was inventing, seemed well known to the boys and girls who joined him in the parade: the drummer, the horn section, the glockenspiel, the little girl who carried the magical keyboard that, unseen by many, was producing sounds normally heard only in the grandest of symphonies, the twin flutists and a six year old bass player whose instrument, though invisible to many, was at least five times her own size.
Joining the parade at Seventy-sixth Street and Central Park West was a young boy who effortlessly produced sounds from his mostly unseen trumpet, sounds heard but once before.
Though less than half the original size, this little trumpeter seemed a recreation in miniature of his namesake, Louis.
As David's dream parade proceeded in three quarter time, to follow the path previously pounded by a larger, longer and louder holiday march, dozens of child musicians joined in, each one adding their own notes which, though untuned and off key, combined to produce harmonies so pure, so splendid that the entire procession seemed at times to be marching not on city pavement, but on a cloudlike sound street which might retain or repeat the melodies in a tempo timed to the listeners' needs, enabling those who truly heard them to be transported, connected to a place, a time unreachable and unknown beyond music.
As the parade passed them by, most adults could be seen to think: "What are they doing? Where are they going? Why?"
David stopped for a moment to speak with a large and rather stern looking woman. "We are marching to the melody we made together."
"But I can't hear a thing," the woman replied.
"Then you will just have to listen to the music that is inside of you."
He smiled at her and gave the downbeat for the parade to start again.
As the children's parade moved down Central Park West turning out of sight at Columbus Circle, the very large lady found herself hearing a long forgotten melody from her own childhood:
Long ago, far away
There's a place I remember..
Think of loves you've never known.
Feel the love you've had.
See the love you let fly away.
Close your eyes, make a wish,
Turn around,
Hold a hand you haven't held for years.
First the start, then the end,
Turn around.
Now it's over, now it's just begun.
Long ago, far away
There's a place I remember.. |
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