PSYCHOLOGY BUSKING a la wordswords: WITH MY PENCIL OR WITH MY GUITAR? THIS IS THE BUSKING QUESTION

CHRISTMAS AT THE CURE

Busking is ever on my mind, and since Christmas I have been contemplating busking more with my pencil than with my guitar this coming summer. I do love drawing people on the street. I have drawn people on the streets of Amsterdam and Dublin and Marrakech, and on the streets of smaller places and other places in between. To busk with my pencil or to busk with my guitar this summer? This is the question. I know that I am accursed for I am drawn to both, pun intended of course!

Marching in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week, are those who I have drawn over Christmastime, having their photographed visages as my guide. I much prefer to draw people vis-à-vis on the street, but in my Canada wintertime clime, this is too impractical. Being a brutto tempo guitar busker is one thing but being a brutto tempo pencil busker is one crazy thing!

Factoid: In wintertime I am a skier, a skater, and nary a busker.

I do love busking with my guitar and harmonica. I love being that Bobby Dylan wannabee with the messy hair and tightly fitting t-shirt and worn out jeans and kicking the pavement with my leather laced-up-to-the-top work boots. It has taken me lots of years to present this acquired and well-rehearsed look, and now I do believe that when I am offering this guitar-busking look, I am actually offering the real me, my real self who wants to be stuck in time with this road-theme, stranger-comes-to-town presentation.

Busking with my pencil presents another me, another stranger-comes-to-town me, a persona that appears just as carefree, but a bit more Bohemian. My drawing garb is the same as my strumming garb, but as a street artist I always pack along my didgeridoo so I can drone between dry spells. Now here is the difference. With my guitar and harp I am, as stated earlier, a Bobby Dylan wannabee. With my pencil (and didgeridoo) I am a busker of rarity, much more elusive and much more interesting than being the ilk of guitar buskers.

The guitar is arguably the most common instrument in the world. Not so arguably is the fact that guitar buskers are everywhere. Wherever and whenever I have gone guitar busking, there are guitar buskers everywhere. On the other hand, wherever and whenever I have gone portrait busking, I am always the only one doing so.

To me guitar busking is a much easier task than portrait busking. While guitar busking, I play whatever comes to mind, and forsooth am getting paid to practice my new songs, complete with the lyrics, the chords, and the riffs. Nobody seems to mind what I play.

This is quite a contrast to my portrait busking, where no matter how realistic I draw a person, the slightest of pencil errors sometimes seems to set off the person that I am drawing. Drawing portraits is to focus, focus, focus, whereas, strumming my guitar takes no focus whatsoever.

Guitar busking I’ve only one self-mand: Smile and give a verbal thank-you to all consumers.

Portrait busking I’ve two self-mands: My pencil never lies. People do not know what they look like.

Enough wool-gathering.