THE PENCIL PROJECT: ENHANCING PEOPLE’S LIVES, ONE PORTRAIT AT A TIME

 

AEDEN, A FAMILIAR STRANGER AT ASCENDANT MARTIAL ARTS

TAVIN, A FAMILIAR STRANGER AT THE BRANDT HOCKEY ARENA

Being a busker, I spend many summer hours on the street.  My busking accoutrements are simple: a twelve-string guitar and blues harmonica, and oftentimes a didgeridoo; other times and as often, a sketchpad and pencil for portrait drawing.  Because I spend so much time on the street I have become somewhat acquainted with a number of familiar strangers.  Familiar strangers, a social psychology phrase, are those people one seems to cross paths with during the same time frames every day with a rather disproportionate amount of frequency.  For examples, I am referring to those strangers standing alongside you waiting for that same morning bus; I am referring to those strangers sweating in that same gym during your noon workout; I am referring to those strangers sipping coffee in that same coffee shop where you socialize on evenings. Reflecting on this phenomena, I’ve determined there to be a behavioural social stratification help explain the roles these strangers play in my busking life.

Being a pseudo-academic writer, I’ve decided to stack these familiar strangers into six strata:  consumers, stragglers, pickers, panners, peddlers, and buskers.

(The following characters and events are real; the names of the characters are not.)

• CONSUMERS ….

Consumers are those passers-by who toss money into my guitar case as a gesture of their appreciation for the music I provide.  I spend a couple days a week busking at Shoppers On Broad where PATRICK is a frequent flyer.  Patrick, fortyish, offers enough snippets of information for me to confidently bracket him as being very middle-class.  He says he is early-retired because of a disability (his disability is not apparent).  Whenever he is in proximity he always stops to chat and always tosses a toonie into my guitar case.

Oftentimes I see NELSON when I am spending a Saturday busking in front of Value Village.  Like Patrick, Nelson always stops to visit.  Nelson is usually accompanied by two or three of his teenage children, who, too, are friendly and chatty.  Nelson and his kids always throw lots of coin into my open guitar case.  

• STRAGGLERS …

Stragglers are those who just seem to wander about almost aimlessly in downtown Regina. There is LINUS, who is noticeably overweight and noticeably noisy. Linus seems to spend his daylight hours meandering downtown Regina, screaming at cars, screaming at trees, and yelling at people with his repetitive rants.  I’ve been around him enough times to know that his rages are always about three themes: government, immigrants, and Indigenous entitlements.

And there is MR. BOND, a former youth worker extraordinaire.  Mr. Bond, once the quintessential metrosexual and super fit, is now unkempt and overweight.  He strolls throughout the downtown section espousing science fiction conspiracy theories.  The last time I listened to him, he was explaining his design plans for a compact submarine, which he insisted was “not that hard to build.”

Another straggler is the skinny and vascular DANCER, who spends many hours stepping lightly (and heavily) to the Def Leppard tunes pounding from his boom box.  When resting between his dances, Dancer is promoting to anyone who will listen, the restoring of Wascana Lake for public swimming and a plan for undoing the public health masking mandate.  Dancer, of course, is among those downtown protesters in both voice and sign insisting that COVID-19 is a hoax.

• PICKERS …

I am labelling Pickers, those who regularly pick through the garbage cans and other litter receptacles for returnable bottles and cans and other recyclables. The TWINS have been around for as many years as I have been busking.  Every half hour or so they are in Tim Hortons line after their tandem team sorting through the downtown litter containers and bins. The Twins are well over six feet tall, soaking-wet-with sweat skinny, and identically bespectacled.

Twenty something, SQUIRREL, ever shiny with her bright dyed hair, bobs and weaves and scurries from trash can to dumpster to recycle bins.  I have heard nary a word ever from Squirrel.

• PANNERS …

Panner is slang for panhandler, being those begging with outstretched hand soliciting for spare change. There are many panners plying in downtown Regina. Of them, C’MON is the most confrontational.  Always aggressive and intrusive, the ever whining C’mon sounds the broken record as he insists people donate money to his leg rehabilitation.  C’mon has the disgusting habit of rolling up his trousers to expose the abundance of open sores oozing from the calf and shin on his right leg. 

STARBUCK pans at Tim Hortons.  He has an uneven gait and a long and unkempt beard. Whenever a Timmy’s patron offers to buy him a coffee, Starbucks always states he is panning only for money to buy himself a coffee at Starbucks (hence the nickname I assigned to him).

• PEDDLERS …

Peddlers are those mobile humanoid vendors who sell directly to persons among the pedestrian sidewalk traffic.  LACEY sells beaded bracelets and MISTER MEDALLION sells leather patches and necklaces.  Both are generous to me, having tossed their wares into my guitar case.

• BUSKERS …

Buskers, my second favourite stratum (consumers being my first favourite), are of my ilk.  PETE, who hales from Ontario, between his strumming and singing crappy covers on his guitar, is noted for his bluster about his self-proclaimed past fast-life stage fame.  Sadly, Pete has a reputation for his body odour ripeness, and a notoriety for his limited song choices.  

In much contrast to Pete, is ALBERT, who is truly a talented and serious busker.  I have personally invited and shared the Bushwakker stage several times with Albert these past couple years.

And now to my point: Being a self-professed BUSKOLOGIST, I’ve an idea to help all street people, including of course, all of those mentioned above.

My snappy blog title, THE PENCIL PROJECT: ENHANCING PEOPLE’S LIVES, ONE PORTRAIT AT A TIME, shall, too, be my book title.  YES!  My plan is the offering to draw a pencil portrait for these "street" people, in exchange for oral autobiographies explaining how they arrived at their current condition.  And then to academically document this pencil project as an ethnography (an anthropological term referring to the participant-observer style of research), and to peddle the final manuscript until it becomes a bestseller.

Really?

Yes, REALLY! And here are my reasons why …

Where did my life go? I am 69 years of age.  My wrinkling skin is becoming less flexible; my platinum hair is lacking fresh pigment. Too, my body is suffering certain wears and tears that are noticeably taking their toll; my physical appearance is just an apparent reminder that my time is finite. Outwardly I project this. Inwardly, I reflect on this.

Hmmm.  All of us eventually succumb to this final truth of our mortality.  However, such a truth seems more urgent and offers more angst for those of us who finally find ourselves standing near the edge of the dock. 

Dear reader, if you are younger than 69 years of age, standing and waiting unwittingly in the line behind me, you may want to take heed.  Ahead of you in this queue is the unknown.  When sometimes your impatience encourages you to stand upon your tip toes, or sometimes encourages you to peek through the pickets, offering glimpses of what is waiting in the front for you, is not uncommon.  Such a fascination is the curiosity gap designed to continuously haunt us about the collective fate of our humanity.  

For further explanation I shall offer the maxim, To live is to suffer.  This is the skinny of Zen.  According to Zen, our suffering only ends when we end.

Whilst I’ve still time in my typical narcissistic fashion, I need to embark upon a project that first, enhances my life; second, enhances the lives of others; third, offers some notoriety toward my personal legacy.  Delusional, delusional, delusional I am not.  Is not every one of us capable of a worthy project and then writing a bestseller about it? 

My imagination is my inner life.  I can easily imagine starting and succeeding with the PENCIL PROJECT well within the time constraint I’ve left to live on this planet.  Such social projects are rather easy to accomplish, especially when compared to the more personal and pedestrian ones such as losing weight or quitting smoking.  

For a very intimate example, while I’ve still the breathing time, I plan to pursue my sporting of six-pack abs, another inner life imaginative. 

Indeed, narcissistic, this is my current fitness goal, and is certainly a time-and-age restricted challenge.  For anyone to actually attain a six-pack thorax is considerably daunting.  Just look around.  Such exhibitionists sporting such are very, very rare even at the gym, never mind the beach.  My imagined pencil project is likely far more to succeed than my imagined mid-section project, even though my self-history is proof that I’ve a penchant for both portraiture and personal fitness.

FACTOID:  I AM NOT A BRUTTO TEMPO PORTRAIT BUSKER.  I shall dispatch upon this pencil project just as soon as the weather permits, which means I'll begin in Spring 2021. In the meanwhile, this wintertime, I shall continue my pencil portraiture for persons as those (two) pictured atop this blog post.  I shall draw persons I meet in the places of sport, rather than on the street.

Keeping the maxim, to live is to suffer in mind –

I’ve not (yet) the desire for my suffering to end!