There was something awfully cinematic about the whole thing: sitting across the table from this learned man, in a diner where every customer looked like they could’ve been straight out of JD Salinger’s imagination. He told me his stories, and I took my notes, all the while wondering what conclusions any unwitting eavesdroppers would reach about him or us. What, after all, could possibly unite the naïve and disheveled wide-eyed kid in the NYU hoodie with the large, evidently-too-caffeinated-but-still-sophisticated middle-aged African American man?

Think back to your first week at NYU. Remember those Welcome Week best friends who you haven’t spoken to since? Remember when you had to sneak peeks at your map everywhere you went, playing it cool with your hands shaking? Remember your first “I Love New York” moment, watching the sunrise from the Brooklyn Bridge or having a stranger smile back? Think harder. Remember the first time you walked through Washington Square Park at night, mildly intoxicated on novelty or more illegal substances, and had your mind blown by the man with the stunning voice, singing all of your favorite songs in a way that seemed tailored specifically to say ”Welcome home.”? That man is Michael David Gordon. And he’s still around.

Michael was born in the Village to a blue-collar family – “Nurses, nurses’ aids, that’s who we are. My father worked for the telephone company, he was the guy hanging up wires, and my uncle was a doorman on Park Avenue” – all of whom nonetheless encouraged the arts in both Michael and his late brother. He graduated from the Fame High School for music and arts and took a baseball scholarship to college in New Mexico, but he got sick of the $300 phone bills his long distance romance was running up, and came back to New York to make it as a performer. Decades later, Gordon lives like a sitcom, with his now-lesbian-ex-girlfriend and her now-gay-ex-boyfriend in a brownstone house in Brooklyn. He sustains himself on theater, street music, and recording jobs (for Bud Lightand McDonald’s, amongst others)… “There are many ways,” he muses, “to cobble your living together.”

Gordon has been tied to the park for most of his life: “I had my first kiss in Washington Square Park. I was eight.” Thus began a relationship that’s outlasted many others for Gordon, a relationship that took new form when, on a warm Sunday in June seven years ago, Michael walked past guitarist Scott and harmonized with him on an Elton John song. They got to talking, and the two have been performing together ever since. As Gordon says, “I love making music live. It’s important – that back and forth. The longer I go on, the more important the live aspect becomes.”

“It’s interesting,” Gordon adds, “because the more technology we discover, the more people decide to be in studios, in their rooms, on their iPods. I’m interested in just the opposite – what’s it like to make music live with people, for people, to watch the communication back and forth.”

Buskers are an integral part of the New York experience. “The dynamic of making music live and people coming to hear you live outside – it’s a very specific thing and it’s really quite magical,” Gordon told me. He then went on to recount some of the stories he’s collected over the last eight years in Washington Square Park. For example, Gordon says, “We’ve had people on their way to Broadway shows not go to the Broadway show and just sit and watch us for hours, knowing full well that they were missing the show, giving up hundred dollar tickets. A couple of years ago a guy brought his fiancé to the park and asked her to marry him while he was at the jam. He said, ‘I knew if I asked her at the jam, she’d say yes.’ And she did!”

But romance aside, there’s no denying that the life of a performer is one fraught with insecurities and hardships. “It’s very hard to be an artist in America,” Michael agrees, “You’re either a star, or you work in a restaurant.” The last time he had what he calls a “straight job” was when he was a sophomore in college, nearly two decades ago. He relays an anecdote about his friend who had a job on Wall Street but “got bored out of his company,” and now sings in subway stations. “I have no problems with a straight world, if you will, but it’s just not for me.”

At the same time, he admits to being continually surprised by the generosity of complete strangers. Aside from money, he’s received live iguanas, pebbles, sealed panties from Victoria’s Secret, food, coffee, and hugs. “It’s amazing how much people will give when you touch just one chord,” he laughs. “It makes people feel like they’re a part of something. Society needs buskers. Society needs Madonna too, and all the people in between.”