I have a love-hate relationship with the New York City subway. On the one hand, I love how I can get wherever I need to go with just a swipe of my trusty subway card.
On the other hand…
There’s the rush hour crowd, the non-rush hour crowd that’s just as intense, the pushing, the shoving, the smell, the delays, the indecipherable loudspeaker messages, the ever-increasing price per swipe, the doors that close in your face just as you arrive on the platform. And, of course, the subway in mid-July, when your train car becomes a sauna on wheels. Like being trapped in a boiling pot of Grandma’s famous beef stew.
What if the subway wasn’t something to dread, though? What if it was… a work of art?
It sounds preposterous. But that’s exactly what James Murphy has in mind. The musician – you might know him as the frontman of LCD Soundsystem – has a “little idea” to transform the New York City subway into something beautiful, wondrous even.
Murphy believes New York commuters “deserve a little sonic gift on their way home or to work or wherever.” He wants to swap out the monotonous sounds of the subway turnstiles – which beep every time someone goes through – for musical notes. (Picture the soothing plink-plink of a xylophone.) That way commuters passing through the subway will together create a sort of symphony.
“Rush hour, instead of being a nightmare, would suddenly become possibly the most beautiful time to be in the subway…” Murphy says in a video introducing the project. “The turnstile has to make a sound. It might as well be beautiful.”
Murphy hasn’t received the official okay from the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority to go ahead with his plans. But I’m sold.
I can’t help but admire Murphy’s thinking, his commitment to making life a little lovelier one note at a time. We could all use more wonder in our day-to-day, don’t you think? A new way of looking at the most mundane of tasks, like passing through a turnstile or taking a ride on the sauna on wheels.
What do you think? Share your thoughts below.
