One of my hustles as an Unemployed Superstar is to work as a tour guide for an organization called Field Studies International.  A fellow blacktress hooked me up awhile back.  Its a cute gig.  I basically escort groups to the tourist traps of their choice.  Usually, I meet them around 8 am on a Saturday or a Sunday and then its a boat ride to the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island, followed by South Street Seaport or Chinatown or wherever else their time constraints will allow them to go. I cannot tell you how many times I've been to the top of the Empire State Building at night.   Every time is more beautiful than the last.

The groups are mostly high school students visiting from obscure parts of the South, chorales scheduled to perform at Carnegie Hall for their spring season.  Last week I had a group of 15 year olds from Alabama who sang 14th century Madrigals in costume.  The week before that, a chorale from North Carolina decided to sleep in and their chaperones--a few of whom were cattle farmers--came with us to see the sights.  I do this three or four times a week, but if I'm lucky this is the stuff that my weekends are made of.  They arrive in a flurry of activity. Most of them have never been to New York City. I have gasped with them vicariously more times than I care to remember as they look upon the Statue of Liberty, look up at the tall buildings, or look at the streets around them.  They ask the most outlandish questions ("Are there any houses in New York City, or does everyone live in apartments?")  and I usually manage to come up with a relatively saucy answer ("They're a lot like the one in 'The Cosby Show'")  so everybody's happy.

Mostly, I love listening to them talk.

A Southerner tends to drag their words in sing-song.  The effect is a slow gradual unraveling of a sentence that's easy on the ear.  I'm so fine tuned to Southern cadences, I can tell where someone is from after the most basic two minute chat.   I suppose its like living up here all your life and living in/visiting another region of the country.  You listen to someone ask for directions and you just know that they're from the Boogie-Down Bronx and not Do-Or-Die Bed Stuy.   Or maybe it's me.  It's a bigger part of my job as an actor to listen carefully, and accents are a fun device.

Or maybe I'm just homesick.
 
 
 

--QE