THE PERFECT GUITAR SLINGER: BUSKING 101

The Perfect Day:

Picture your world to be a windless and sunny day, a blue sky, a spottle of cotton-ball cumulus clouds, along with the continuous clink of coins providing the auxiliary percussion as your feverish fingers pluck and thrum the guitar strings.  A day such as this, along with other requisites, will allow your days of busking to be ever munificent. 

(Just remember that dark clouds and windy days are adumbrating to crappy coin returns.)

The Perfect Place:

Your buskspot needs to be a place of high density pedestrian traffic.  For example, any noon hour at a downtown open mall,  or anytime at an outdoor farmers’ market is a great place to set up for busking.  You just need to produce a peaceful and melodic song amidst the pell-mell and the continual colubrine of people passing through the market place.

(Just remember that a buskspot is not an evangelical bully pulpit.)  

The Perfect Costume:

Projective psychology suggests that you should always wear what you find most comfortable; any clothing you wrap yourself in will suggest an image you may or may not want to project.  Keeping your costume clean shall suffice.  Typically, cap-a-pie I am hatless with a Kennedy coiffure, looking through black shades, wearing a crisp white t-shirt, faded blue-jeans, and polished work boots.  Delusional, I am aplomb in my alterity.

(Just remember you don’t need to be campy; there is never a need to don a duck costume to be a successful busker.)

The Perfect Playlist:

A cappello works if you have the pipes of Perry Como.  Cacophonous singers like me need instrumentation, and preferably it is that instrument of the quintessential busker, a guitar.

Your perfect playlist should be at least a half an hour of tunes you are able to play with confidence, without the clunky of a music stand having music sheets clipped on the side.  While busking, simpler is always better.  Simpler is also symbolic of a transcendental spirit providing entertainment comfort in a somewhat chaotic surrounding.

(Just remember you don't to be a virtuoso instrumentalist with an interior list of  the latest pop songs; you do need to be steady and confident.)

The Perfect Reason:

For me the art of busking is both quixotic and pragmatic.  Quixotically, I love the notion that I can sling my guitar down any street in any city that I so choose.  I love the notion that I present a wind-swept road metaphor kind of guy that has the debonair of Cary Grant and the wanderlust of Rudyard Kipling.  I love the notion that when strangers look at me (sometimes down at me) they think I am a rather exciting protagonist in a predictably sad story.  I love the notion that when strangers look at me they see a reflection of their bildungsroman and boustrophedon selves.  I love the notion that when strangers visit me I sense a certain jealousy in their analog conversation.

Pragmatically, I love the notion that I can practice my guitar skills and get paid for doing so!  I love the notion that I can release my extroverted self onto the streets and into the ears of those passers-by listeners or conversationalists.  I love the notion that busking forces me to keep alert and ever aware in the physical surroundings I have chosen to ply my skill of busking.  I love the notion that I follow a rather strict regimen of food and drink and fitness mainly because I'm a busker.

(Just remember that busking is a physical art as much as it is a mental art.)   

The Perfect Finis:

(Just remember that the Above notions are MY perfect guidelines for ME.)  

However, I do believe that if you are a busker wannabe, just reflect on what I’ve written, and with practice, practice, practice, you will eventually be that bona fide busker, that guitar slinging boulevardier that you have imagined!