EXISTENTIAL DREAD, EXISTENTIAL HEAVEN -- THAT'S ALL WE'VE GOT

BUSKING WITH MY BANJO

Hmmm … EXISTENTIAL DREAD.  Existential dread is that stark awareness that I am but a transient being playing my little-bitty part in a lambent light on a precarious stage.    
It is not by happenstance that I’m finally at the perfect age to reflect upon my life performance to date. My children are grown and gone; my salary, too, has grown and going, allowing me to behave in the most extraordinarily middle-class fashion; and all while, my silver-wrinkled brain is continually prompting me to channel Peggy Lee in wondering “Is that all there is?”

Yikes.

Could it be that I am suffering from some ACUTE EXISTENTIAL DREAD (AED)?  That feeling of such inconsequentiality in relation to my family, my work, never mind in my relation the cosmos?

Oh sure, I’ve fulfilled my evolutionary obligation.  I’ve procreated enough to continue the species; I’ve an impeccable work record both in the sweaty blue collar and crisp white collar industries; I’ve studied Astronomy and have read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History in Time and Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.

Or could it be that I am suffering from CHRONIC EXISTENTIAL DREAD (CED)?  That feeling created by monotonous stretches of meaningless tedium, a life-to-date of futile melodrama that I realize will end only when I end?

Adding some cliché, there is nothing more boring than watching paint dry.  Well moiling for years on pipelines comes close; teaching high school English literature for years, too, comes close.

Or could it be just EXISTENTIAL ANGST?  Simply that my life just lacks meaning?

Hmmm.  Contrived and certainly delusioned, I’ve managed to imagine meaning in my life, especially with regard to work.  (I’ve managed, too, to imagine meaning in my life with regard to family but this blog is NOT about my family.  This blog is about ME ME Me and meant NOT to replicate the oftentimes bragging shamefully family members and their antics displayed on Facebook and Instagram and other social media of ilk.)  My sweaty blue-collar years were mainly on the road, survey work on pipelines in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, and the North West Territories.

As an crispy-collared educator I did manage to escape the confines of high school, teaching Psychology at the University of Regina for 22 years; I did manage, too, escaping from the classroom  to design and deliver not just one, not two, not three, not four, but five innovative programs for the public school system, two being specifically related to young offenders.  I guess I am stating that I THINK I’ve risen above my bread-and-butter pedestrian teacher status to recognize the intolerable stalemate of middle class misadventures inside and outside the classroom.

Enough EXISTENTIAL DREAD – time for some EXISTENTIAL HEAVEN!

I’ve stated my case for liking my job.  Factoid:  I click my heels every day I go to work.  Saying this, I like my job a lot.  Liking my job does not mean loving my job.  Another factoid:  If I were not being paid to be at my job, I wouldn’t be at my job.

Now to busking.  I LOVE BUSKING.  Be it busking with my guitar and harp or my sketchpad and pencil, I LOVE BUSKING.

And just what are the reasons I love busking soooo much?  Firstly, I need to travel to get to a buskspot.  This could be a short-distance municipal busk or it could a long-drive national destination busk or it could even be a fly-across-the-sea busk.  Wherever I busk, I have to venture to seek adventure.  Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy, wrote that “All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.”  My going busking adheres to both stories.  And so I am a Canadian busker channelling Americana folk music while adhering to a Russian notion.  Like I said, I love it!

But even with busking there are limits to my love.  I would love to be a brutto tempo busker but I don’t like thrumming ‘neath the summer sun between 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock, and for sure I don’t like numb fingers and thumbs from the wintertime winds.

And I must mention hiking.  Hiking, too, forces me into going on a journey or being that stranger coming to town.  Hiking is heaven.  I glean such great joy in the actual hike, being the fresh air and the scenery to breathe breathe breathe in. 
And to employ my mixed metaphor, existential heaven: Sipping a beer with my supper in a pub in a faraway village or town after a long day's hike, is truly EXISTENTIAL HEAVEN.

I do label myself an EXISTENTIALIST because I’ve not any faith in any religion (though I referred to heaven only because I'm a Westerner and therefore more familiar with heaven than with other places referenced in other religions and ... being just as important, existential and heaven have that internal rhyme, a great literary device to employ for my snappy title, and snappy titles tend to attract readers); I believe as a human I’ve not a real purpose other than to procreate and continue the species (Evolutionary Psychology I guess); I believe, then, it is very necessary to assign my meanings to my life. 

At this point, in the autumn of my life, I’ve assigned busking and hiking to have significant meaning for my existential heaven.

LIFE IS DREADFUL, LIFE IS HEAVENLY …
THE IMBROGLIOS OF LIFE CAN BE FORGOTTEN SIMPLY BY GAZING AT A GIBBOUS MOON -- 

THAT’S ALL I’VE GOT.

Barking in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week:

 

MERLIN

 

MERLIN TOO

 

RIFT

 

RIFT TOO

 

BRIAN (NOT BARKING) AT WORK

ABOUT A BUSK: ABOUT MY BLOG

MY FRIEND, JASH

Some things are just publicly and politically awkward to put forward, to say, or especially to print.  Caution to the wind I shall sail away: 

Thrumming my twelve-string and blowing my harp whilst busking yesterday at SHOPPERS ON BROAD, my world was windless, the clouds in my azure sky cumulus and Simpsons-like: it was the perfect warm t-shirt temperature day until an SUV parked right alongside me in the handicap parking zone. 

There were two occupants in the SUV, both female and both having their windows rolled down.  They stayed put in this position for at least 20 minutes.  Typically, I choose not to intrusively stare at any of my consumers, but over a period of 20 minutes I more-than-likely glanced a few times, probably more than a 100 times if the facts be told.  Atypically I stayed on the entertainment task the whole time, because I thought they were enjoying my tunes.

After these imaginary 20 minutes of symbiotic harmony, the lady driving the SUV backed out of the handicap spot, and drove her vehicle right up beside me, inappropriately situated on the edge of the walking pad in front of the shop entry doors, her vehicle blocking the incoming traffic lane of the parking lot.  She was within five feet of me and any shopper entering or exiting the store.  All passers-by entering and exiting SHOPPERS had to navigate around her now illegally parked SUV.

Her window still rolled down, she nodded at me to come closer to her.  Usually when people gesture for me to come over to their vehicle, they offer me money, probably because they think it’s easier for me to walk to them, rather than exiting their vehicle and walking to me.

“What kind of music is that you’re playing?” she asked.

“I just play what comes to mind,” I replied.

“Well if anyone of my Indian family were to play your kind of music they’d be in jail!” She yelled.  (Her grimace was startling.)

“Pardon?”

“If anyone in my Indian family were playing your music they’d be in jail!” she (again) yelled.

Then she put her vehicle into forward and sped away.

YIKES.

This morning I can wool-gather and stretch my imagination on why she said what she did:

Because she decidedly did not bracket me as one of her “Indian family,” it could be she just did not like white guys.  She and I had never previously met.  She did suggest in nasty fashion that I was not Indigenous, and therefore I am believing she verbally attacked me (personally) because I was white. 

Factoid:  Stereo-typically, by physical appearance I represent all the trappings of my acknowledged white privilege, being tall (six foot one), good looking (Hollywood handsome), well-dressed (Lee blue jeans, Columbia boots, and Bugatchi shirt), and white skin (noticeably, undeniably white).

Because she mentioned that any of her Indian family would land in jail for doing what I was doing, it could be she was convinced that those members of her Indian family who would choose to guitar busk, would inevitably end up in jail.

Factoid: Many people confuse busking with panning, or to be more precise, are stuck in the notion that a guitar busker is simply a beggar with a guitar.  There are noticeably lots of Indigenous males hanging out and panning, not only at Shoppers on Broad, but at other venues nearby; there is a 7-11 right across the street, and there is a mall having a grocery store and liquor store just a five-minute walk on Broadway Avenue. 

Methinks she was reinforcing that stereotype, the idea that Indigenous people cap-in-hand, are rousted and jailed; whereas white guys like me get away with it.  She doesn’t know, obviously, that no matter the skin color, all buskers are generally stereotyped among those among the down trodden, stereotyped as those who refuse to work or cannot keep a job because of their frailty, being an addict or whatever other vice comes to mind.

Factoid:  She explicitly charged that I was not among those in her Indian family.  She knew this by my look?  No white-looking person can be of First Nation nor carry a treaty card? 

Because she specifically mentioned my type of music, it could be she just didn’t like my type of music, and she got so twisted over it that she decided anyone playing such music should be jailed.

Factoid:  I’m not a virtuoso guitar player, but having several years of thrumming and strumming and harping under my cowboy belt and buckle, not one person to date (save for yesterday) has ever expressed distaste, never mind disdain, for my music. 

And why am I writing about a First Nation lady yelling at me in racist fashion?  Why would I not just let it go?  Here’s my spin.

Factoid:  I am not presenting that I am a victim of reverse discrimination.  I am presenting that among some, there is hate and disdain for white people.  And I believe these remarks exuded directly at me yesterday, were from a person who truly hates white people, and more precisely, hates all the colonialism that white guys, such as I, seem too often to project.

Factoid:  I am not a delusional dull-wit with regard to my status on this side of the planet.  Like I said, I am tall and handsome and not terribly talented, but I am terribly privileged because I am white.  No matter my background or upbringing, I do present as being privileged. 

Factoid:  This woman who taunted me knew nothing of my history.  Her judgment of me was solely based upon my behaviour (as a busker) and my appearance (whiteness).  Unwittingly and angrily, she was expressing and representing her stereotype of me.  And now, wittingly and sadly, as a projective psychologist, I am writing about her.

Factoid:  This is a blog about busking and the psychology therein.  By selfish design, I am the hero in every story I write.  And never do I write as a gripe against a personal slight.  This blog does not hymn me – this blog humours me.  This blog is not a mea culpa, for being or for not being (whatever or anything).  

THIS BLOG IS A BILDUNGSROMAN, 

NOT A BULLY-PULPIT.

Marching in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this past week:

MYSELF DRAWING ANUP

MY FRIEND, ANUP

LALITA (ANUP'S WIFE)

#MYPENCILNEVERLIES