"Subway Love" Will Restore Your Faith In Romance

The TL;DR of Max Stossel's Subway Love is pretty simple and familiar: "Chill. If you stop worrying so much about your next train connection you might be able to make a meaningful human connection." You know the drill. Rushing, worrying, the hustle and bustle of "modern life", closing yourself off = bad. Relaxing, ruminating, slowing things down, opening yourself up = good. But if you just left it at that you'd be missing out on a lovely film that is definitely worth watching. (For those of you still not convinced you needn't be miserly with your time, it's only 3 minutes 10 seconds.)

...we hardly wait with patience. You should see the frustration on our faces. 'How dare it not have arrived at this place yet... What we don't see is the tragedy at play. As the love of each of our lives is standing an arm's length away.

The poem is sentimental without being overly-maudlin and taps into a terrible secret all New Yorkers shamefully carry. That despite our collected, cynical exteriors, deep down we are human and sappy, and have all at one point dreamed of just this kind of moment on the subway. We dream of gazing into the eyes of a beautiful stranger, frozen in time as we rise above the noisy jostling of the evening commute. There is only you, the stranger, and the soft sway of the A train as it travels between West 4th and 14th Street.

Of course this doesn't happen. The oppressive heat, hot garbage smell, and crowding mass of humanity (who aren't even necessarily swarming because they're impatient jerks, though that is often the case — they're swarming because 4.3 million people ride the lines every day and there's only so much room) make it almost impossible to have a romantic moment on the subway. And if someone started dancing on a platform, frankly they'd be a-holes, because that chick's legs would absolutely hit someone.

New Yorkers aren't cranky — it's just that there's a reason we do the things we do. So while we dream of these amazing connections, the last time I met eyes with someone on the A train I discovered that he was furiously masturbating and had been staring at me for what had clearly been a while.

Still, it never hurts to fantasize, especially when the fantasy is as beautiful as the video below.

Images: YouTube; Giphy