The Pursuit Of Happiness: An Essay On The Qualitative Values Of Buskingdom

Whilst freeze-wrapped in wintry surroundings, within a couple short months my woolgathering imaginings of my littoral busks, congruent with my bastardized phrases of John Masefield (the shiny white gulls clamouring in the cerulean sky; among the flung sprays and the blown spumes; where the wind's like a whetted knife) are soon to be real. After all, April showers do May flowers bring! My vagrant gypsy life is soon to begin again – I can almost taste the sea salt!

'Tis almost time to thaw, enhance my blogging webhead days, and dance into the Buskingdom of summer. And I need not remind myself that such dancing in the street can be a mix of magical maxixes and parlous pirouettes. Depending upon the hour of the day, in early aft and eve, most audience members will smile and applaud; but anytime aft midnight, some of those members will likely be drunkards, untoward and belligerent. (Ahh! Such are the adventures and vagaries of street entertainers.)

We all know that life is ephemeral, that the continuum from birth to death is but a fillip, 78 years for males, 82 years for females. And we know that the older we get, the faster it (life) flies. But do we know that those of us who yen to busk ought to go busk?

We, as sentient beings, have the gift of introspection. We are constantly creating and pondering some existential questions on the values of our lives. Is my life important? How can I contribute? What do I do that excites and challenges? Am I addressing my passions? Am I achieving excellence?

Eventually, some of us will decide that our pursuit of happiness can only be achieved by busking. (What began as a sidequest for me has resulted in a busking obsession. Is it possible for an obsession to be a source of happiness? Generally, in Psychology, the answer is no. But specifically in my personal fable, the answer is yes.) Those of us who have fallen into the obsession of Buskingdom, further our flight/freefall into a kind Hobson's choice, which is really no choice at all. We can only be self-actualized (truly happy) when we become buskers; if we decide not to busk, then we are deciding to keep our lives forever drizzmal.

And how is it that one is able to discover so much happiness while performing on the street? From a faux busker point of view, here are my faux sapient notions of happiness and street entertaining:

• Come Springtime all my infirm, gathered from the ponderous band life of equipment lugging and loading, magically fritters away, making way for the necessary walkative vigor seemingly enkindled by the summer sun on the sidewalks.

• During my band months in Winter, I always have to tog up; during my buskations in Summer, I can dress down if I so desire.

• Being a faux busker, I am seasonally incognito. The people for which I perform no nothing of my existence when I am off the summer swards and sidewalks. Busking, I think, would be too infra dig for most of my passers by, and to extrapolate this thought just a stretch more, a significant number of those pedestrians passing by consider me to be just a beggar with a banjitar.

According to a significant collection of folk, the streets in the summer of Buskingdom are but glut of beggars and ne'er do wells. This may be true. It is also true that this destination resort of Buskingdom, if ripe with buskers … is rich in happiness.