MUSIC ARCHIVES Cast In Concrete #7: Lenna Pierce Reminds Us Why the Worst Parts of the Subway System Should Still Be Saved
by Vijith Assar
Cast In Concrete tracks Vijith Assar as he records New York City’s street musicians.
Who: Lenna Pierce, d.b.a. Meaner Pencil
When: November 1st, 11:30pm
Where: C line, Nostrand Avenue station, Manhattan-bound platform
In fact, the last time I was here, JFK-bound on a quiet Saturday
morning a few months ago, I had the misfortune of stumbling across a
wall dripping with human feces before the poor soul on the MTA roster
who handles such things had been called in. There’s always a lot of
mysterious gunk floating around down here, but in this case the angle of
attack and splatter pattern left no doubt as to the horrors that had
transpired overnight. I’m certainly not above the humble poop joke,
especially when writing for the Village Voice, but the thought of a
human being reduced to such a degrading position because the city’s
delivery mechanism for poor people refused to take them home late one
night is actually still incredibly depressing to me.
Mercifully, the remnants have long been washed away; by Sandy if
nothing else, but deliberate cleanup also seems like a safe assumption
even for the line that was recently named the city’s worst. The best, as anyone from southern Brooklyn can tell you, is certainly the Q, after which the National Weather Service has named one of the as-yet-unborn storms from the upcoming season.
With God and the Voice’s readership as my witness, when they finally
get her up and running again, I will be buying cupcakes for the station
attendants.
Apologies to Lenna Pierce, since she is a terrific singer who could
handily dispense with more formidable foils than the one I’ve just
provided. You can hear her throughout the station; cops and MTA workers
on the unused MTA platforms upstairs are doing their damnedest to look
nonchalant about her performance, self-accompanied on cello, but I’m not
buying it, because this is just too beautiful. “I used to be a choir
girl,” she tells me, as though that should somehow be considered an
adequate explanation. She’s tucked away in a remote corner of the
station, surrounded by rats, late at night on a night when nobody is
taking the trains because they aren’t yet going anywhere useful, and she
doesn’t even have her hat out or her case open, and yet still the one
other guy waiting on the platform comes over to offer her his change.
She takes off her hat in order to oblige him.
Our meeting here tonight is prearranged — uncharacteristic for this subway recording series thus far, but possible thanks to your much-appreciated tips,
and understandable, I would hope, given the circumstances. Making this
happen was a complete pain, but the moment she opened her mouth, I knew
it was worth it. We’re actually functioning a lot more like a proper
recording session than usual, in that it is really starting to feel like
she wouldn’t be playing for anyone else if I weren’t here. She’s a
little worried that the cops might come shut us down. I am not.
That voice, man. It’s like something echoing out from history itself,
like it should be trained on weighty Celtic spirituals instead of the
inconsequential love songs that typically concern us mortals. The cello
all but disappears here, buried unceremoniously by the futility of
trying to keep up. Pierce is a thoroughbred chamber music expert who
decided to take the singer-songwriter route because the classical world
provides precious few opportunities to both sing and play at the same
time, which is unfortunate since she loves the synchronous vibrations
that come from resting the instrument against her sternum. “Hymn,” our
featured selection tonight, was actually a brand new untitled piece
until thirty seconds ago, but I insisted that I’d need to give it a
filename at some point. A fan at a show once suggested the title, and
she can’t think of anything else on the spot, so here we are. Pierce
later explains, “it’s the most intense” and “I wanted you to have the
freshest produce.” Her instincts here were correct.
For me this has all been a bizarre sensation, watching my neighbors
get flattened by the storm. Pierce has done this before, though. “I grew
up in Nebraska,” she says later, “so we are used to severe weather,
tornadoes mostly. A tornado comes down and it wrecks a few houses or a
small town, then all the neighbors come and help rebuild. Hurricanes
wreck whole regions so the devastation is more overwhelming and help
feels further away.” I suspect that’s also your illuminating backstory
for the curious anecdote she uses to introduce one of her other songs a
bit later on: “A girl started crying really hard one day when I was
playing in the subway,” she says, “and I didn’t know any songs to
comfort her, so I had to write this one.” Nobody bothered to build the
ark, but the great flood doesn’t care and shows up anyway, and then the
only animals that show up expecting to be rescued are the goddamn rats.
When we were done, I took the subway home — via a circuitous route
that barely made more sense than walking, but I was thrilled to have the
option again. I can only imagine how the full-time buskers who rely on
subway rush hours for their livelihoods must feel right now. Pierce says
this is going to be a rough month for her.
And the wait? Maybe there’s hope, even for the C line — entirely
reasonable by any measure, better even than some I’d weathered back in
the old days, when I wasn’t living in a federal disaster area. That’s
only counterintuitive if you make the mistake of thinking you understand
how these things work in the first place. Fact is, tragedies and trains
both come and go as they please, ostensibly following timetables that
utterly mystify the rest of us. New York has seen its share — for
someone, a small one on this very platform three months ago, now a natural disaster that has left us all stranded or destitute or worse,and some darker still such that even Sandy couldn’t wash them away. Anendless supply just over the horizon, but there’s really nothing to be done about it, aside from trying to make the most of the time in between. Good luck, see you next time.
In the hat: I donated ten bucks to the Red Cross relief effort instead, and I hope you will do the same.
[audio-1]
Meaner Pencil performs regularly at the Lorimer-Metropolitan
station. Since that’s still shut down, you should instead make plans to
go see her at perform at Vaudeville Park on 11/17. If you are nice, maybe she will let you name one of her songs.