THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT BUSKING

BUSKERS, PETE AND NEIL (ANOTHER NEIL, NOT ME)

Music is the shorthand of emotion. –Leo Tolstoy

Busking is the shorthand of elation. –Neil Child

There is something about busking.  But what is it?

• IS IT THE MONEY?

Am I a beggar with a guitar? or a thrumming troubadour inspired by adventure?  Factoid: People think that anybody can be a busker.  Factoid: Anybody who has the gumption to be a busker can be a busker.  Factoid: A guitar-slinging busker is not a guttersnipe. 

Moneywise, my usual take is usual 25 to 50 bucks an hour, as long as that hour is at noontime or suppertime.  Busking during other hours means the take is thinner.  Factoid:  I am a faux busker.  I already have a good paying job and don’t really need the busking bucks.  And so I’m a bit of a hypocrite.  I don’t need the money and I don’t play for the money.  There is within me, though, a certain philosophical capital bent, and insisting that you get what you pay for.  I won’t stand on the sidewalk and thrum for nothing because of this work ethic philosophy.

Is it the money?  Nope.  Money.  means.  nothing.

• IS IT THE NOTORIETY?

Some buskers are hitting the streets to be discovered, seeking a certain recognition to move upward in the music industry.  Such buskers sell their CD’s out of their guitar case, and also in their guitar case display signs that they are open to taking gigs.  For these buskers, their sidewalk strumming is just another piece added to their cumulate musical emprise.

In my city, Regina, there resides the famous guitar-slinger, Jack Semple.  Googling Jack will show that he has been nominated for Gemini awards, won a national guitar wars contest, and had even played the lead in the television movie, Guitar Man (1994).   

In my city, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, Jack is a big fish.  He plays high-end gigs, writes musical scores for radio and television, and is known throughout our small pond. 

Rumor has it that Jack also renovates houses.  If Jack can’t make it solely as a musician on the Canadian Prairies, nobody can. 

Is it the notoriety?  Nope.  Jack has the notoriety.  Jack is a guitar genius.  I’m a tyro.  It ain’t the notoriety.

• IS IT THE PERSONAL GROWTH?

Wherever I busk is where I practice.  I practice only when I busk.  I never practice at home.  At every buskspot I’m paid to practice.  (I’ve long since realized that strumming while sitting on my keister on my comfy couch at home does not pay the bills.) 

Where I busk is where I burgeon.  I play only original songs and my buskspot is the absolute best place to thrum chords and think lyrics.  I strum and harp and sing only MY original songs when I busk, and when I gig I play those same songs.  So goes the saying, practice makes perfect. 

Is it the personal growth?  Yes!

• IS IT THE ADVENTURE?

Busking is just an autonomous therapeutic escape from my oftentimes mundane day-to-day regimen.  Strumming on the street I have the mettle to project my inner Bobby Dylan to the world.  Whenever I busk I imagine that I represent that stranger who comes to town, the guy who symbolizes the life everyone wants but lacks the moxie to live.  As a busker I fancy myself as that intrinsically and extrinsically motivated traveler who has the pluck to pluck.

Is it the adventure?  Yes!

For the most part, I busk in my home city and my province.  But I also busk in other Canadian cities and provinces, as well as other countries.  My dream is to become a planetary busker.  So far I’ve hit the street with my guitar or my pencil or both in Holland, Ireland, and Morocco.  Next adventure ... China! 

THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH ME ME ME: SNAP SHOTS AND SNAPPY TITLES

DARREN MAXIE'S "CONDO" (HIS DESCRIPTION)

Until this very last edit my snappy title for this blog entry had been, GOSLINGS AND HARES:  GUITARS AND HARPS.  Gaggles of squawking goslings and honking ganders are waddling alongside hopping husks of hares throughout Wascana Park.  The geese and rabbits are signals that it’s time to bring out the guitar and harp.  ‘Tis the season to be busking and any day I miss strumming I will regret later.

And then I changed the title to PRIDE AND PREJUDICE:  GUITARS AND HARPS.  My colleague and favorite grammarian, Cathy, always organizes Regina Public Schools (RPS) employees for the REGINA PRIDE PARADE.  Every year the parade marches right past my place – my perch being a high-rise balcony on the corner of Victoria Avenue and Rose Street in downtown Regina.  Factoid:  This year’s pride parade had record breaking turn-out with over 3,000 marchers and 100 floats, making this parade much more sociable and emotional than in years past.

PREJUDICE fits both the Pride Parade and the INDIGENOUS teepee sit-in taking place these days on the lawn in front of the Legislative Building in Wascana Park.  With guitar and harp and drum, Baron and I entertained some of the protesters for an hour or so.

BARON AND SELF ENTERTAINING SOME PROTESTERS

  This morning, however, my blog title, THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH ME ME ME:  SNAP SHOTS AND SNAPPY TITLES seems more apt.  (I’m a snappy title guy.  If I cannot come up with a snappy title I cannot write the essay.  This literary restriction has been with me always.)     

Like William Wordsworth, the world is too much with me.  I’m off contract and on summer vacation until September and certainly have too much to write about.  Summer happens and I’m lost and caught up in everything (it seems). An English idiom suggests that a picture is worth a thousand words.  Over twenty thousand words worth (pun intended) coming up!

Marching in the QUEEN CITY PRIDE PARADE this week:
 

THAT'S CATHY ON THE LEFT HOLDING UP THE BANNER

REGINA PUBLIC SCHOOLS DIRECTOR, GREG ENION AND HIS DAUGHTER, ASHLEY

Among the bloat of summer buskers … 

ANOTHER BUSKER

THE BUSKER'S BOWSER

And so I'm busking at the VALUE VILLAGE MALL and another busker comes by, we chat, and he leaves his dog behind while he grabs a bite to eat.  The passers-by, my potential consumers, of course think the busker's dog belongs to me and ... continue to give me the gears about giving the dog more water.  (The temperature was 31 degrees Celsius/88 degrees Fahrenheit and the dog had no water.)

On my morning run around Wascana Lake I see the workers have been draining the swamp: 

Speaking of draining the swamp, my favorite political picture for the week:

WOULDJA LOOK AT THAT!

At the BUSHWAKKER BREW PUB this week:

GUITAR-SLINGER, TRENT LEGGOTT

SELF ON THE BUSHWAKKER STAGE

BACKSTAGE WITH BIG AND RICH AT COUNTRY THUNDER IN CRAVEN, SK
(IT HELPS TO HAVE NHL SCOUT, BRAD HORNUNG, FOR A FRIEND!
HE INSISTED I JOIN HIM AT THIS CONCERT.)

BARON AND SELF ... BUSKING AT SHOPPERS ON BROAD

AT THE SCHIZOPHRENIA SOCIETY OF SASKATCHEWAN
(IT'S ALWAYS ABOUT ME ME ME ... WITH BRUCE MCKEE, PRESIDENT, ON THE LEFT AND JAMIE ENG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ON THE RIGHT)

This past week I received an award from the SCHIZOPHRENIA SOCIETY OF SASKATCHEWAN (SSS) for my volunteer work, which is limited to just two services: 1. I offer pro bono counselling services to any client referred by the SSS; 2.  I always strum and sing live for the SSS one hundred dollar a plate annual fundraiser dinner

Meanwhile … at a summer picnic I met up with Nathan Davis, one of my stage-mates at BUSHWAKKERS:    

SINGER-SONGWRITER, NATHAN DAVIS

At that same picnic I was BUSKING with my pencil:

MELODY AT THE PICNIC

HOPE AT THE PICNIC

THE MAD HATTER AT THE PICNIC

And I shall close this blog entry with a line from a sports article I read this past week:  

We don’t quit playing because we get old -- 
We get old because we quit playing.

Time for me to sign off and get out there playing!