I can drag my feet and sing the blues

There are at least a thousand lives on the street at any given moment in New york City.

This is an addendum to the teeming masses:

I round the corner and there is the saxophonist. He's playing a variation on a jazz standard but who knows where his hands have been? A passerby watches and weeps to himself, letting only his woman by the arm know that he has emotions, to the rest of the world, he's as brittle and as hard as ice. The policeman strolls down. She's aware of the complaints against her kind, the boys in blue, and she doesn't want to lose her badge, but where else is safety? Where else, in this damn city, is security but with the police force.

Two men are smiling. They aren't facing the hate that they faced back home. Now they're just faces.

John Mayer is playing at the Beacon this very moment, Fuse is streaming the feed over its doors and windows. It makes the man standing and staring at the screens feel like he's missed the world. He has a family, but the pictures are in his wallet, and that's far away.

The young woman glides in her heels, she can't smile. She's been trained not to.

And the homeless man in the wheelchair gasping out pleas for his brothers and sisters to lend him a helping hand, almost a croon. It's common to see actors like him on the street. He used to be off-Broadway, he used to sing at all the functions, but like all actors, now he's just playing a caricature of himself.