No One Understands Me

The L train runs from Manhattan to Williamsburg. Williamsburg is the northern chunk of Brooklyn and understood home of the hipsters. It's a free thinking area, a place where young people live and enjoy denying everything mainstream. On the platform of the L train, bound for Williamsburg, you can expect to find many personalities. There are many thrifted clothes, cool haircuts, and this guy.

This is a street performer. I guess you would have to call him a platform performer, though. His performance is atypical. As you can see from the video, he adorns tights and a face mask, inflates balloons and lets out their air with a a squealing sound above his head while he undulates his body. Around him are various objects, all unrelated and seemingly useless but hinting at careful selection for ambiguity. There is also, most importantly, a small chalkboard on the ground in front of him that reads, "no one understands me." It was later erased and rewritten with,"I am worthless." The onlooking crowd watches him and laughs, questions, and generally feels uncomfortable. I think that's the point.

As we stare and question the reasoning for his performance, we are directly succumbing to what I assume is its goal. Whether or not this guy truly feels the calling for balloon wiggling is unknown, but I would like to think he doesn't. I think his decision to perform this way was more along the lines of, "I wanna do something really weird that people can't help but stare at." And it works. He was making some money too. His opened bag was bursting with dollars. Perhaps they came from people who enjoyed his spectacle or others who just respected him for his bravery. I saw a man donate some change and give the performer a fist bump. The fist bump seemed to say, "I understand you, bro."

After my initial indirect mockery of giggling, I look back on that performance with an increasingly positive mindset. Something about it made me feel really good, like it was ok to be ridiculously unique. Perhaps I should have given him a dollar.