By DIANE PHILLIPS

I ALWAYS wondered what happened to those singers, dancers, magicians, performers on America’s Got Talent who rise and fall in a heartbeat, the hopefuls who get standing ovations one week only to be summarily dismissed the next. What happens after the rush of adrenaline, the lights, the accolades and the news that someone else made it, but you’re going home. Do they wallow in ‘what ifs?’ What if I had played that last note better, or chosen a different song, or had worn a sexier dress, or smiled or danced or practiced more?

What if?

I can’t help but watch without wondering about the aftermath of contestants.

And then I met one.

His name is Alex Saidel though for the show, he called himself Alex Rivers, the Rivers borrowed from his favourite comedian, Joan Rivers. He’s a violinist. He had his moment. Season 17. He had auditioned a few seasons earlier, a terrible experience that dragged on for nearly 12 hours, he said, as contestants waited without food or comfort. But this time was different. With COVID protocols, the audition was virtual. Instead of leaving and waiting for the promised call that never came, he was told he made it--the last audition, the last day, the last hour and he was the last one--but he was in. He would appear in 2022.

Heidi Klum called him her “little love bug”. Howie said he talked a lot. Simon wanted to know if he was okay with their relationship because he criticized his choice of music but had heard enough to tell him to play something else.

Saidel got four yeses. The judges stood up, a standing ovation, though he honestly does not remember if all four stood.

Today he’s a street performer in Seattle. He’s okay with that. It’s what he did before he almost got discovered by the world and it’s what he does again four years later, after the fame he hoped would lead to more.

I was in Seattle on my way to a cruise donated by Royal Caribbean to the Bahamas Feeding Network. I bought a raffle ticket during last year’s fund-raising golf tourney at BahaMar and got the call that evening. “Are you sitting down?” the voice at the other end of the cell phone said. “You won! You won a 7-day cruise to Alaska on Royal.”

Six months later, I was booked and on my way, stopping to spend two nights in Seattle, a city I had never visited and may never have the chance to again. On a scale of 1 to 10, Seattle is an 11, though the homelessness was shocking.

So there I was, doing the usual tourist thing, Space Needle – a phenomenal work of engineering, the Chihuly Gallery & Gardens – blown glass art so stunning it takes your breath away. Then I hear the sound. A haunting, violin, compelling, begging to be listened to at closer range. There’s a message in it, intense. I know street performers are common, they are one of the attractions that make large cities tolerable. They help define the local culture. But there is something special about this one. I make my way closer, drawn to the sound of the violin like others are drawn to the souvenir stalls.

He comes into view. A youngish-looking man with a swatch of purple hair like a cap on top of an otherwise ordinary head of dark brown hair. His boyish, almost naïve looks don’t match the sound coming from his violin, a plea of some sort, an aching, a melody of anguish, heartbreak that gives way to a softer, gentler forgiveness. I sit on a low stone wall across from him, transfixed for moments that I do not want to end. And when I look up again and catch his eye, I see the standing poster next to him, Alex Saidel, AGT Season 17.

Finally, a jolt back to reality. My chance to ask those questions: What was it like? Was it the highlight of a lifetime – appearing before Simon Cowell and whatever judges were there that season? Did you get four yeses, experience validation, let down? Was it an emotional tsunami? A roller coaster that takes you to the highest high and drops you at the lowest low, waiting for you to make your way back on firm ground.

I always wondered, and here was the chance to find out -- if only the violinist would speak with me. I listened a little longer, then walked away, but something drew me back.

“Can we talk?” I asked him. “I would love to interview you.”  I told him that I write a column for a paper in The Bahamas but that thousands read it online. I appreciate that if I interrupt his playing, I am occupying time when he is not earning money. It was midday and not, apparently, a very good one so far. Only a few one dollar bills and a single five in the box by his feet. I drop in  $10.

“How long will it take?” he asks.

“Maybe 10 minutes,” I say.

“Okay,” he replies, “so long as it is not longer than that.”

“Tell me your story,” I say. And he did.

Early days

“I was quite a bad child. My mother didn’t know what to do with me. She was afraid my life would go nowhere.” His parents were divorced, Dad a relatively distant figure. But Mom was not willing to give up on finding something for her only child who failed to fit any mold.

“She always said I was like a bird that wanted to walk instead of fly.”

What she found was a violin.

From the moment he picked it up and cradled it under his teenage chin, he found his purpose. “It moved everything. I was disciplined, my grades improved. I was in the school orchestra. I was in the back, the worst player, but I gave it my all. I was committed. I didn’t know it, but I had needed something. And that was it.”

That was in 2009. And the violin has been his life ever since. In 2019, he decided to try out for America’s Got Talent.

First try-outs for America’s Got Talent

“You only see five percent of what goes on,” he said. “The experience that time was awful,”  he says. Hopefuls, hundreds of them, maybe thousands, piled into a large casino. “They scout millions and, in the end, there are only a handful. We waited for 12 hours, no food. When it was my turn, I gave it my all. They seemed like they liked it. They said they would call, but they never did. I went through a lot of depression. My ego was destroyed. I had given it everything I had.”

Recovering his self-esteem took time, but he put the experience behind him and went back to being a street musician. Nearly three years later, he was performing on the Vegas strip when he looked up and saw a sign that AGT was holding auditions for Season 17.

“I took the sign that was just above my head as a sign and I decided I would try again. This time COVID protocols were in place.”

The Second time at AGT

“Auditions were a zoom call,” says Saidel. “I was in my living room, playing for a camera and two men. Once I started playing, they said ‘We are keeping you.’ It was so different from the first time. There were people auditioning in their houses holding babies, holding dogs. Then they had me perform a second time, this time for just one man and they sent a contract. They flew me to Pasadena, California. They put us up at The Hyatt. I had never been in such a fancy hotel. It was awesome, especially the free breakfast. Everywhere it was glitz and glam. You got in the elevator and everyone knew who you were, that you were with AGT and they’d exclaim and swoon, ‘Oh, you’re going to AGT!’ All the glamour and lights and you feel so special.”

Behind the scenes was far from glitz and glam.

“In reality, where we were going was nothing like it looks on TV. It was like a big empty warehouse, like Home Depot with nothing in it. You see all the lights, the stage, the curtains, but each one is just a booth with curtains, little rooms that transform into what looks like a stage on TV. It’s just a curtained booth. I thought I was prepared for anything, but everything came as a shock. They tell you the curtain is going to open and you are supposed to peek out from behind like you see on TV. But when you open the curtain as if you were going to walk out on stage, you are facing a brick wall. They tell you to act scared or nervous. You have to act afraid, but being a seasoned street performer in Vegas, I wasn’t. They tell you to clap when you hear the horn. It was staged. They had me look at a piece of sheet music. I memorized what I was playing and I did not need sheet music, but they wanted me to look like I was nervous and needed it. They even wrote marks on it, like the chords. Everything you see on TV is nothing but individual booths that transform into a wonderland.”

If the making of the show is an unedited series of shots of audience applause, contestants’ nerves, and booths that will come together to look like a set sometime later, Saidel said the one element of authenticity was host Terry Crews.

“He was the real thing,” says Saidel. “He always made sure I felt comfortable. He was great. He made everyone feel comfortable.”

Finally, after all the shots of pretend nervousness, curtain peeking, pre-recorded applause and reaction that--once edite--will make up what we see on TV, it’s Saidel’s turn to perform.

“The judges sit like 50 feet away or more. They are way down low and we are on the floor up high that’s supposed to look like the stage. They look tiny. I go on stage and suddenly I felt like I was going to black out. There’s Simon Cowell right there, 50 feet or more away, below you,” he says, pointing, as if I could follow his finger and see TV’s number one sealer of fate myself. “Sitting right there, looking so tiny because they are down so low. You see it on TV and then suddenly it’s real and you are there. And then he’s talking to you, asking you, ‘What’s your name?’

‘Hi, I’m Alex. I’m a street performer.’

Simon said, ‘You’re a street performer? What’s that like?’

“I tell him. I tell him I saw the billboard and took it as a sign. Howie said I talked a lot and I should be a storyteller. I started playing and Simon stopped everything. ‘I like Alex, but I hate the song. I’m sorry, but I just don’t like it.’ “I left the stage confused.”

Saidel felt lost. He had no idea what to make of the response. He knew one thing – he was getting on a plane back to Vegas. But the door to the competition was still his to walk through. Two weeks later, AGT flew him back to Pasadena. With a new song he had practiced repeatedly and a self-confidence that was not eroded by artificial stage and sound effects.

He cracked jokes. Then he began to play.

The boy whose mother got him a violin to keep him off the streets got a standing ovation.

“I came back and hit a home run,” he says.

Heidi Klum called him her “little love bug.”

Sofia Vergara said he was very, very good. Howie Mandell said he talked a lot and should be a storyteller.

Four thousand ‘Yeses’

This time Simon was not critical of the song choice. He spoke few words

“Four thousand Yeses,” Simon said.

“I felt ecstatic,” says Saidel. “It was the validation I had been chasing. It finally happened.”

Saidel had his days of pure joy until “they chopped half of us out,” consoling him with the promise that he would be first up if someone became ill or could not perform and they needed a replacement.

“I thought with a standing ovation and all four yeses, I was going to go on and I wanted to go all the way to the end. But I crashed to the bottom. And the ones who got through, that’s what got me. Like the man who beat me was the man who sang, ‘More Parmesan.’ That’s when I realized this was not a talent show. It was a reality show, made for entertainment, not a search for talent. The producers are good at what they do--very good--but what they do is not about talent so much as it is about entertainment, creating a reality show that includes talent.”

Saidel is not bitter anymore, nor would he have been if he had lost out to someone other than the man who made it to the next round with a plea for grated cheese.

Being a street performer is a good life, he says. “I’m not tied to an office. I get to meet a lot of people. I can play when I want and go home when I want. I eke out a living. Besides, I like attention.”

I drop a $20 in the box. I kept him longer than the 10 minutes I promised. He smiles, insists on giving me a CD and, as I walk away, he picks up the violin and starts to play. The haunting sound fills the space and my heart.