SUMMER IN THE CITY: A BUSKER'S RHAPSODY

 

MYSELF AND AMAR

Finally, Sumer is icumen in! This 13^th Century Medieval phrase translates to “Summer has come in” and about my busking season, it too, has come in.  This week my buskspot was SHOPPERS ON BROAD, Regina SK Canada, where I spent as much time chatting with staff as I did with my passer-by consumers.  Pictured above is Amar, one of the many staffers who came out to chat.  And pictured below is my ACURA RDX, same location.  For self-psychoanalysis, my excuses for including my vehicle are to either show it off or to present that I am a very middle-class busker, not just a clochard with a guitar, or perhaps to admit that I am a faux busker.  (Hmmm.  A faux busker does not really busk, just pretends to busk.  I do go out and busk and so that excuse cannot be a valid one.)  As far as showing it off, just parking my RDX anywhere is showing it off!  I am and have always been an egocentric middle-class busker and I’ve the wheel toys to prove it!

BUSKING BESIDE MY ACURA RDX

Factoid:  Yes, I am a middle-class busker, but I fancy myself also to be a planetary busker.  Apart from Canada, I have busked with guitar and harp and/or pencil and sketchpad in The Netherlands, in Ireland, and in Morocco.  My long-range plan is to busk in as many countries as my paycheck will allow!   

Today I am going to present my latest song, about my very first buskation so many years ago in VICTORIA BC.  Here is my annotated, “A BUSKER’S RHAPSODY”:

A BUSKER’S RHAPSODY

[INSTRUMENTAL INTRO]

[CHORUS]

C   Am   F   G … (X3)                    C

Tramping all around this town these streets sometimes just get me down (X2)

Exhausting my capacity, searching endlessly for rhapsody

[On summer in July, slinging my 12-string and my son, Baron, packing his djembe, we tramped the streets busking in downtown VICTORIA BC.]

C  Em  F  G … (X3)                       C

Up the block is Devon

Who thinks he’s Bobby Dylan

Ever plunking his guitar

While bending out his blues harp

*[On this Victoria buskation, Baron and I established a daily ritual.  Every morning we lifted weights at a downtown gym, The Phoenix, and then we would go to Starbucks for breakfast.  En-route it seemed we always greeted the same buskers in the same order, who then became familiar strangers, so-to-speak.  The ever-friendly curly-headed Devon was the one we always greeted first.]

DEVON TODAY

 [INSTRUMENTAL]

Down the block is Christian

Who thinks he’s Ravi Shankar

Chain-smoking in a doorway

Ever plunking his sitar

*[Christian was a Quebecois, seated cross-legged in some doorway and smoking cigarettes, always commenting on the busker politics/gossip of the day.]

[INSTRUMENTAL]

Here comes Angelina

Who thinks she’s Ginger Rogers

Bopping ‘round her Safeway cart

Her beer breath on my folk songs

*[Without fail, at least twice a day Angelina, always smelling of beer, would stop by and dance while we played.  She was a bag-lady, having her shopping cart filled with lots and lots of rags, a bed for her German Shepherd, who (strangely) stayed put in the cart.  In the beginning, I was worried and embarrassed that any potential customers would think that we, Baron and Angelina and self, were a trio.  After several days of this same ol’ same ol’, I simply gave up and went with the flow.]

[INSTRUMENTAL]

Devon and Christian and Angelina

Such street folk are to me … my busker’s rhapsody (X2)

[INSTRUMENTAL OUTRO]

*[Meanwhile … busking in my home city of Regina a couple months later, Devon tossed some coins into my guitar case!  What a surprise!  The whole time we spent as familiar busking strangers chatting in the mornings in Victoria, it never came up that we were both from Regina!  Devon was 18 years old at the time.  Now he is in his ‘30s, a teacher, and married with two kids.  We have become quite close over the years and have done several bar gigs together.

Christian was a traveling busker.  We were only in Victoria for a couple of weeks, when he made a point of coming by our buskspot, bringing coffees, and saying good-bye to Baron and me, before he hopped on a bus for Toronto.

Angelina.  Before Baron and I departed Victoria, we made sure we connected again with Angelina, not just to say good-bye, but also to give her all the coin we made while busking.  We had kept all the coin in a big glass jar, and when we found Angelina, we gave her the big glass jar filled with coin.

A literary analyst could suggest that Devon, Christian, and Angelina are symbolic of the Devil (Devon), Christ (Christian), and an Angel (Angelina).  Rather than a "Disclaimer" I shall offer an ACKNOWLEDGMENT:  This is a work of non-fiction, and any similarities to persons living or dead, or actual events is purely intentional. I shall add that only one name has been changed.  Angelina's real name was Christina.  This writer thought that having both Christian and Christina was, in a literary sense, trite, and therefore changed that name, and that name only. 

These three especially, in that fugacious yet fruitful Victorian summer, are very representative of what busking continues to be for me – A RHAPSODY!]

[CHORUS]

DEAR READER,

THANK YOU VERY, VERY MUCH FOR READING MY BLOG!

Oftentimes I google "the ten best busking blogs" and this seems always the result!

A GOOGLE SEARCH HELPS ONE DISCOVER THE VERY BEST BUSKING BLOG -- MINE!