BY THE WASTE SIDE
“Even Among the Wasted, the Soul Still Sings.”
1I ducked beneath the turnstile like I always did—quick, low, quiet. The cops didn’t care much on this side of town. 42nd Street, west side—Port Authority. The side they don’t show in tourist brochures. The air was thick with the scent of old grease, urine baked into the concrete, and that ever-present aroma of stale pizza and burnt sugar from the corner cart upstairs. Down here though, it was raw. Rats scurried, gospel singers wailed, and the tunnels carried secrets.
I moved like a real New Yorker—fast, steady, eyes forward, shoulder brushing the tiles to carve my lane. Stick to the wall and you only have one side to watch. That’s how we survive here.
The tunnel was long. Some say half a mile, but to your legs it felt longer. A winding intestine of steel and sweat, lit by flickering fluorescents and the soft groan of distant trains. The tile walls were tagged with names, confessions, and promises no one would ever keep.
And then I heard him.
Not saw—heard. A sound like honey melting on hot iron. It cut through the chaos like a gospel note in a courtroom. A guitar, crying and smooth, electric and raw. It echoed against the walls, bouncing off puddles and chewing gum and broken dreams. I stopped walking. I always did when the soul called me.
There he was.
Sitting on a red bucket, slouched like a man who’d lived too much too soon. Skin like polished mahogany, smooth and deep. High cheekbones, like royalty sculpted from rhythm. And though he looked no older than twenty, his eyes… his eyes were ancient. Like they’d seen cotton fields and spotlights, juke joints and jail bars. Like they’d seen God and argued.
He was high, that much was clear. Not loud-high, not liquor loud. Quiet high. Nodding. Heroin maybe. Whatever it was, it didn’t dull the music. His fingers glided over those strings like they knew the way before he did. Like they were remembering something he’d forgotten. Something old.
Then he opened his mouth, and the whole tunnel paused.
“This is a man’s world…”
The notes poured out low and raw, and something cracked in my chest. I could smell my grandmother’s living room again. Fried fish in the air, the thump of footsteps on wood, the hiss of a vinyl needle. My mother twirling with a drink in hand, singing like her life depended on it. She used to tell me about James Brown—how she saw him at the Apollo, how he bent the mic like it was made of clay, how he screamed like salvation was stuck in his throat.
And here it was again. Not on a stage. Not in a suit. But right here. In the bowels of the city, beneath rats and steel and the weight of the world.
I wasn’t the only one frozen. Strangers who were sprinting a second ago had stopped. They dropped dollars, change, coffee cups—anything they had. No one looked at their phones. No one moved. Even the rats by the third rail stayed still, their beady eyes fixed on the young man, as if they too remembered.
He didn’t open his eyes.
Just sang.
Just bled music.
The train came and went. Six minutes. Another came. Another left. People moved on, but I didn’t. I stayed. Just to hold on to that sound a little longer. Just to remember my mother’s voice one more time.
He never looked up. But he didn’t have to.
He wasn’t there for the applause.
He wasn’t even there for us.
He was there because his soul couldn’t help it. Because sometimes your calling follows you across lifetimes. Sometimes you get born again, but the music stays the same.
And maybe this time, he wouldn't be famous. Maybe no tux, no arena, no backup dancers or spotlight.
Just a bucket, a guitar, and a song so old it could wake the dead.
Some say there’ll never be another James Brown.
But I saw him that day.
He came back.
Not to perform.
To remind.
That the soul never dies.
It just takes the train.
The young man who reminded me of the Godfather of Soul in the the video below. Please click the link and let me know what you think. Godspeed.
"Sitting on a red bucket, slouched like a man who’d lived too much too soon." That line alone says so much about this gifted young man. Such a beautiful piece, Naz.
I especially love the reckoning that Brown was channeling through him, OR, perhaps he was channeling through Brown?