One-Man Band
Author: Bill Roberts
A light mist doesn’t dampen the concert
under a bridge by the Seine,
pausing en route to yet another art museum
on this snappy cold autum day.
He leads the band, plays all the instruments,
alternately and sometimes simultaneously,
familiar French tunes, with violin,
accordion, harmonica, trumpet, clarinet,
flute, tuba – yes, tuba too! – and piccolo,
time kept with a bass drum he hammers
with busy left foot. Oh,
he sings softly when squeezing his
ornate squeezebox or
bowing his gleaming Stradivarius.
No one else stops for his concert,
beating us to the artwork.
I place a ten-Euro note in the maestro’s cap.
Using his entire mismatched orchestra,
he plays the American National Anthem
as we stride arm-in-arm into the cool mist.
This was in Paris in the fall of 2007, after a delightful lunch on a parked bateau on the Seine, an overcast and misty day. Art all over the city, in every direction, from the over-regarded Mona Lisa at the never-enough-time-to-see-everything Louvre to honest-to-goodness dirty postcards along the river. And one-man bands aren’t exactly novel either, but this guy was so good, so arresting, like the city itself, making us want to come back, again and again.
