TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS: MY BRAIN, BY BODY, MY BUSKING

STRUMMING AND SINGING AT THE CONEXUS ARTS CENTRE

 The start of my snappy title was stolen, or rather, borrowed from the most well-known and enduring song of Randy Bachman (Bachman-Turner Overdrive, 1973). I should mention, too, that this same song title was employed prolifically by fellow Regina resident, Kevin Holness, half-back for the Canadian National Soccer team (1990-92, 1995-96), who named his local Regina team, TCOB (Taking Care of Business).  But I digress …

As everyone else, I, too, am taking care of business.  Today, selfishly, I am my writing about my brain, my body, and my busking.  And in a definite order of importance, shall my racing and writing thoughts begin!

• MY BRAIN …

Taking care of my brain I have always the urge to write.  Writing, I believe, is the natural extension of thinking.  As stated in the paragraph above, I am one with continual racing thoughts.  In delusional fashion, I am convinced that I have more control of these thoughts when I put them onto paper, rather than just be pestered by them all day long.  In this regard I am privileged and lucky.  I love to write songs (I am a local singer-songwriter); I love to write therapeutic scripts (I am a hypnotherapist); I love to write essays (I am a blogger).

For every season for every year, I have a singer-songwriter gig the BUSHWAKKER BREW PUB.  This has been the case for the last eight years.  To prepare for this and for my own personal amusement, I write original folk songs, lots of them, some even on demand.

For my private hypnotherapy practice, to induce my clients are into a state of trance, the scenes they enact are written mostly by me, whereas, the newly minted behaviour scripts are a collaboration of both my clients and myself.  In any case (pun intended), creative thinking, creative writing, and creative scripting are of utmost importance.  It is during a period of introspection after not having great success with any client, that I tend to re-think and re-create and re-write ideas and scripts.

For my blog, starting with a creative snappy title and closing with my Chaucerian Parade, and all the words in-between, are written by me.  In my blog beginnings, I used to write, without fail, one entry each week.  And now many years since, having now readers from 151 countries, I have become somewhat complacent.  Whenever a topic or a snappy title jumps at me, I write another entry.  The frequency now of such happenchance is usually bi-weekly.

• MY BODY …

I know that I have only one body for which I take complete responsibility.  Hmmm … my body my temple metaphor has too much that divine connotation.  Perhaps, more suitable (pun intended again) metaphor would be, with absolutely no choice, in this skin is the only place that I must reside.

In the 70’s and 80’s I was a swimmer (a miles of laps every morning all through my university years);  in the early 80’s I became a long-distance runner;  in the late 80’s I became a weight lifter; a decade into the 2000’s I became a Muay Thai guy.

And to follow up on these activities:  I taught swimming and high diving and scuba introduction for over 10 years; I have run a couple of marathons and many, many half marathons; I have taught weight training, and am presently teaching fundamental Muay Thai on my current education contract.

Swimming and running have been great for my cardio; weightlifting have been great for my physique my social capital.  Parallel to my having a master’s degree in psychology and people thinking I am intelligent, being a pseudo-martial artist people think I am tough.  And admittedly ingloriously, I very seldom dissuade others of imagining these two social perceptions.

Factoid: My privilege began at my birthday.  Now at a waning 70 years of age and reflecting on my life-to-death continuum, deservedly or undeservedly, I am lucky that I have been genetically gifted with a mop-shock of hair, a six-foot stature, 20-20 hot hazel eyes, and a singing and speaking voice that is basso-profundo.  And that is all I must declare about my physical presence.

• MY BUSKING …

Soon after the turn of the century I became a busker.  One summer day, July 1^st, 2003, my son, Baron, and I loaded our van and we drove west to Victoria, British Columbia on buskation.  We chose Victoria because two of my children, my oldest and my youngest, were attending the University of Victoria at the time.  Baron and I rented a small house on the edge of downtown and went busking on the mean streets of Victoria for one month.  Our daily timetable in Victoria:  On awakening, we would lift weights at the Phoenix club, after which we would eat our breakfast at some downtown hole-in-the-wall diner.  Then we would walk home (to our rental), wash up, and change into our busking duds.  Our busking schedule, by our design, was matched to that of the cruise ships.  Every time a cruise ship stopped, at least a thousand passengers would unload and walk and shop about the Inner Harbour in downtown Victoria.

Returning to Saskatchewan we spent some time busking in Kamloops, in Salmon Arm, in Medicine Hat, and in Moose Jaw.  I must mention that Baron and I have ridden that busking trail more than a few times since.  Busking has become a pastime passion, and my ultimate plan is to become a planetary busker.  I have a wanderlust, and not just in a Walter Mitty fashion. I have strummed my guitar on streets in the Netherlands, Ireland, and Morocco. And wherever I have strummed, I have also brought out my pencil, my persona changing to that of a street portrait artist busker.  I love both alterities!

I have bracketed this essay into three sections, My Brain, My Body, My Busking, and have presented them, for the economy of writing convenience, as separate entities.  Accordingly, they could be recognized as being disparate, but this is not necessarily so.  I do have that creative esemplastic literary power to make a case for blending them, for harmonizing them, and for in fact, treating them as being synonymous.  Ah, but that is another ship to sail, another essay to float.

In this essay I have presented that I am a martinet in my personal regimens about my brain, my body, and my busking.  And indeed, I am, but only when it comes to weight training.  My other mentioned actions are frequent, but not so over-fastidious.

In this essay I have also suggested that I am the quintessential Brainiac, the quintessential Beef Cake, the quintessential Busker, all of which I shall emphatically state -- I am not.

But I would like to be!