Today on the bus, I heard Vivaldi’s “Spring.” Not on my ipod, not on the radio, but live. Personally, I can barely stand up on the bus without falling over even when using my hands, arms, and everything to hang on – the roads are bumpy, the buses stop without warning every time a pedestrian even looks like they might be thinking about taking a ride, and they are all manual transmissions that have their own quirky lurches and launches. But there he was, a student by the looks of him, fervently swinging his bow across those four strings. Vivaldi! For an added flourish, he told us as he finished the piece that as an artist, his true thanks was a heartfelt smile, but that he wouldn’t turn down monetary compensation if that’s what how spirit moved us.
For me, that bus musician summed up Bogotá in a violin case. Artistic, energetic, talented, charming, chipped, and slightly desperate but dignified nonetheless. That’s the city for me.
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