FEAR OF BUSKING: YOU KNOW IT DON'T COME EASY

KARSTEN

KARSTEN SYLVESTER MOLLER ANDERSEN (D.O.B. MARCH 11, 2018)

MY FRIEND, MARK CHANDLER

JEFF AND SHAY

Got to pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues,

And you know it don’t come easy.  (“It Don’t Come Easy” by Ringo Starr)

THE UNKNOWN ARTIST STRIKES WHILST ON MY PEE BREAK:)

And now for my theme of this blog entry:  It don’t come easy.  BUSKING DON’T COME EASY.

If you want to be a busker you do have to overcome certain fears, the main one being the fear of playing a guitar in public.  This would certainly be more angst ridden than Glossophobia, the fear of public speaking.  And for sure, public singing is cause for more distress than public speaking.   

This blog entry I will introduce my formula for guitar busking success, for reducing the anxiety prior and during the actual busking experience.  In a fight-or-flight response, this is my fight formula, my four point gradation for conquering your busking butterflies.  I mean, really, should we not be the product rather than the prisoner of our life experiences to date!

1. In trademark Nike fashion, JUST DO IT. Decide to go and sit somewhere and strum, but with your guitar case closed.  You are not busking; you are just strumming.  Just the idea of sitting somewhere, perhaps in a public park, and strumming your guitar will suffice to start.

2.  Follow a plan and EXPOSE YOURSELF.  Create for yourself a series of tolerable steps you can take to overcome your fear.  Not in flasher fashion, it is necessary to expose yourself.  Start by strumming in a public park.  Move yourself to strumming on some sidewalk elsewhere, some place that seems comfortable, preferably somewhere in the mercantile section, downtown so to speak.  Again, just strum with your guitar case closed.

3.  Endure your DISCOMFORT ZONE.  I know you will hate strumming in the park or on the sidewalk will not be much fun the first few times, but I can promise you will survive to tell about it.

4.  REPEAT, REPEAT, and REPEAT some more.  Once you’ve strummed a dozen or so times in public and your anxiety level is zeroth or considerably reduced, ‘tis time to hit the road and strum with your and open guitar case.   Don’t sing – just strum.  You do this often enough and your fear will become a reflex.

SOME PHOOEY FOR THOUGHT: 

• BE GOOD AT WHAT YOU DO … and if you simply are strumming, essentially, you are getting paid to practice!  You do not need a repertoire of any prescribed length.  Just strum, strum, and strum some more.

• NO NEED TO WEAR A DUCK COSTUME.  To dress for success is to dress in whatever you’re most comfortable.

• NOD IN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO YOUR CONSUMERS.   When busking you stand out among your fellow plebeians.  Always, always, always acknowledge paying customers with at least a smile and nod, though saying “thanks” aloud is certainly the best practice (pun intended).

Keep in mind that when you are a busker, you are your own Kapellmeister.  When you are a busker you get to do entirely as you want. 

Go where you want.   You can go just out your door, or down the street, or downtown, or even to another town.  I tend to thrum in my downtown neighborhood.  I busk at Shoppers Drug Mart on Mondays, the Italian Star Deli on Tuesday, and Value Village on Saturday.  This is when I’m in my city.

As a busker you never have to be blinkered into going to any particular place.  In summer I love to travel out of country and busk in places like the Dam Square in Amsterdam, the Temple Bar in Dublin, and the Jemma el-Fnaa in Marrakech.  (These are some city main tourist areas where I’ve been busking; I’ve not mentioned the hundreds of sidewalks and side-streets.)

Dress as you want.  You can dress for comfort.  When it’s cold, don in layers.  When it’s hot, doff the layers.  When it’s wet – don’t busk in the rain.  Your choice of busking accoutrements is up to you.

I always wear the same costume.  Cap-a-pie I’m always hatless.  In Americano folk fashion, I’ve messy hair, a pair of shades, a long-sleeved white shirt complete with a collar, faded blue jeans, and work boots.  Occasionally, depending on the weather, I might wear long cargo-shorts and sandals.    

Play as you want.   You can play instrumental covers or just practice your own.  If you want to sing, then sing.  You can even sing in the rain if you want.

Rarely do I sing.  This is what I do when I busk.  I make up guitar riffs and match them to my C or D or G or Am harmonica.  When I’m busking with my 12 string I am never without my harp.

Stay as you want.   Time economy is totally up to you.  Staying five minutes or five hours the choice is yours.

I’ve been known to linger in a busk-spot sometimes not longer than five minutes.  And I’ve been known to linger a couple hours.  The choice of length of time to stay is always mine.

It don’t come easy.  BUSKING DON’T COME EASY!  

Marching in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week is my Grand Trunk Troubadour band-mate, CORY BALDWIN.  This is Cory strummin’ and singin’ solo and pro bono at a retirement community.  He is channeling Hank Williams!

AN INSTANT INTERNET SUCCESS!

"KOOL-AID, KOOL-AID TASTES GREAT: KOOL-AID, KOOL-AID, CAN'T WAIT!"

VICTORIA VICTORIA!

PRIVATE PRACTICE COUNSELOR JIM

MY NEIGHBOR VENDOR, CAROLYN

MY FRIEND, ROD

Kool-Aid today is in direct reference to the 1978 cult mass-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana.  Jim Jones, the group leader, convinced his flock to commit suicide by drinking grape-flavored Kook-Aid laced with potassium cyanide, at least that’s how the story goes.  In what is now commonly called “the Jonestown Massacre,” 913 of the 1100 Jonestown residents drank the Kool-Aid and died.

Now Drinking the Kool-Aid is an urban expression that refers to any person or group who goes along with an idea because of peer pressure.   Drinking the Kool-Aid has mostly a pejorative connotation, as it will perhaps (or perhaps not) in this blog entry.

BRUNO

BRUNO PICTURE

Currently I’m considering quenching my thirst for dollars by drinking the Kool-Aid; more specifically, surrendering to the notion of drawing mutt mugs (see my blog entry, DRAW DOGS:  I’M A BOWSKER! June 22, 2014).

Factoid:  I’m a street busker.  I love drawing people’s portraits outside in the sunshine on windless days.  Dogs, I loathe to draw because they squirm too much.

Factoid:  In winter I’m an indoor-market busker.  Drawing live people inside is a joy but sketching animate canines inside or outside is a chore. 

Factoid:  Lately I’ve had this epiphany -- there is mucho dollars in pooch drawing, some big bucks in those barks.  And so drinking the Kool-Aid is proof I can be bought.  If the masters provide the pictures I will draw their dogs for a substantial sum.  Typically I charge ten dollars for a person, a ten minute quick-draw portrait.  However; for a pup portrait, because I’m drawing from a picture and likely to draw it at home, I will charge $25.00 (though I still will commit only ten minutes for the quick-draw).

Such self-negotiations and rationalizations prove that I can be bought.  Drinking the Kool-Aid, in mercenary manner, I shall attempt to chew on the bones of the mongrel market.  But alas upon reflection, I’m drinking the Kool-Aid elsewhere too.

Adhering to any social convention is drinking the Kool-Aid.  Everything from a hug or a handshake, aloha or adios, and adhering to professional and vocational and vocational etiquette is, too, wittingly sipping the Kool-Aid.

We are sipping Kool-Aid in the Western mainstream when we are settling down (colloquial expression), starting a family, embarking upon a career, adopting middle-class values, and embracing middle-class misadventures.  Natured or nurtured, we are ever submitting to drinking the Kool-Aid in our commitment to evolutionary and social fashion.  

Typically, if we want to live our lives forward and live a good and honest life, we need to be sipping the Kool-Aid.  Fundamental to live a life that is lived forward, we need at least a formal education and recreational exercise as a base for a life well spent.  To continue the species we need to procreate, and to procreate we need to recreate.  As a collective our species is amaranthine – as individuals we are finite. 

Yada yada.  Is that all there is?    

Comparison is the thief of joy (Theodore Roosevelt).

A Kool-Aid life is a life of social comparison, a life of following and keeping up with the peers.

However, every now and then there is yearning for more.  Every now and then we crave a lifestyle beyond that we are currently living.   And that existential yen is the consequence of existential dread -- is that all there is.

Ah … existential dread.  We are all on a life continuum of feeling insecure, envious, and discontented, some of us more so than others. 

And to liberate ourselves from the Kool-Aid libation, to exit ourselves from garrets dark and drear, we do have the power of escape into existential enlightenment.  To liberate ourselves from middle-class confinements, we have to imagine the life we want and then initiate the action to make it happen. 

Unfortunately, those same feelings of insecurity and envy and discontent from which we long to break, will have to be fully experienced and shattered enough to break the chains of life Kool-Aid addictions.  And I do not mean in Heavy Harry fashion.

(Remember the Heavy-Harrys?  Those “movin’ and groovin’ and being really, really, heavy” characters of the late 60’s and early 70’s?  The guys who thought they were so cool but were mocked by those that really were cool?

Admittedly, drinking the Kool-Aid is the necessary quench for some economic and social thirsts in everyone’s life.  But once you’ve had enough chow-down on the main courses, and after you have had a million after-dinner burps, then it is time for that sweet, sweet dessert -- your ice-cream dream.

My dream is to be a planetary busker -- 

I’m already licking my ice-cream!

KOOL-AID, KOOL-AID 

TASTES GREAT

ICE-CREAM, ICE-CREAM

CAN’T WAIT!

Those marching in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week:

STARTING TO DRAW RILEY

RILEY FINIS

RILEY PICTURE

 

MARCUS

MY PLACE AT THE MARKET

THE PENCIL NEVER LIES: THIS CREED IS MY COVER LINE

EDGAR

To begin I'll explain my (snappy) title:  My pencil always draws the truth, and my pencil never lies (personification) is my cover line.  I draw covers of a person’s actual visage (similar in sense to a cover band covering the original artist’s song) and all drawings are a collection of lines, including my pun of the one-liner creed.

My friend, Jack, who is also a portrait artist, offered me this gem:  People don’t know what they look like.  It’s true.  People don’t know what they look like.  For people with triple chins I tighten their jaw lines.  For people with hair that is thin I add volume.  For fat cheeks I change chubby to middling.  For frowns I draw grins.

ASHLYN

EMILY

The pencil never lies because I tend to draw what I think my models want to see; but enough of me and my pencil portraits!

In shaggy-dog story fashion I am switching themes according to three lines of late that have stopped me to reflect upon life and especially, my life.

• Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

• Your left hand is what you know; your right hand is who you are. 

• There’s a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in.

• Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth (Mike Tyson). This is a literal line for Mike but a metaphor for the rest of us (who are not boxers).

Always and whenever someone does get punched in the mouth it is an issue of relationships.  Relationships shape our lives, to the point of interpersonal relationships are what really control corporate America, financial and political affiliations relying upon human relationships.

Connecting to fellow humans is the foundation to a fulfilling life.  We, being gregarious beings, need to always seek and find our tribe both at work and at play.  Coffee times and lunch times, we tend to gather with our comfort folk, sit in the same seats and discuss the same ol’ tried-and-true themes.   

Recreation time we congregate with the same playmates, be they band mates on the stage or team mates on the ice, they, too, are those who have credibility in our comfort zones, the ones with whom we’ve rehearsed these same scenarios time after time.

In my line of work I only see people who believe they have personal problems.  As a hypnotherapist my bread-and-butter clients are mostly those wanting to lose weight and those wanting to quit smoking.  (Of course I’ve other clients with sleep and sexual issues and such, but I’ll focus just on the two to make my point.)  

These, not-so-strangely, maladies can be directly related to interpersonal relationships.  Of course, they always are presented as being physical health issues, but being obese and having a chronic cough are certainly health issues but have cause enough to also have impacted their social lives.  I believe that any new clients that I meet are so desperate that the idea of seeking a hypnotherapist is typical a strategy of last resort.

Nobody likes being physically fat; nobody likes being a smoker.

I do not have to get into the media admiration for the svelte and the fit; I do not have to get into being the outcast or pariah for the non-participants of the purportedly positive media trends.

From my professional point of view, food and nicotine addicts mainly want to change because they want to fit in (pun intended) socially.  Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.  For these clients, they are just sick of being punched in the mouth.  Their health issues are secondary.  I believe that if people were really thinking their health issues would kill them, they would change (everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth); whereas social issues, everyone knows, offer lots of ground-hog days, always lots of opportunity for redemption.

In shaggy-dog fashion I’ll switch themes again.

• Your left hand is what you know; your right hand is who you are. 

All guitar-slingers know this.  Lately I’ve been practicing percussion techniques on my twelve-string.  My guitar thrumming is limited when I compare my skills to those of my guitar buddies with whom I frequently share the stage.  I only thrum chords.  I only play chords, but I do have a frail technique that is akin and yet opposite to that of banjo players.  When banjo players frail they strum down the strings, when I frail I strum up the strings.  People in the know (fellow guitar slingers and guitar instructors) have stated that my strumming style is like a frail.  All state that my style is unique; no one else in my orbit has a strum technique even similar to mine.

(Now if I could simply add some credible percussion whilst I strum, I’d be set for the immediate time being.)

But one talent that I have that has most certainly enhanced my busking is the ability to blow my harp while I thrum my guitar.  (This skill will suffice to compensate my lack of right-hand percussion skills on the guitar.)  

Whenever I busk on the street or gig on a stage, I always have both guitar and harmonica.  I should say, I have my guitar and my three harmonicas (a C, a G, and an Am).  And how do I know which harmonica to play with what song?  It is so simple for me but is seems complicated for the masses.  Just the other day a customer at my favorite guitar shop was inquiring what harp to buy for her guitar playing adult son.  They really didn’t have an authoritative answer and so referred her to me.  I was flattered but it did confirm that even guitar sales people don’t really know. 

Factoid:  Few people who play guitar also play harmonica, never mind at the same time. 

Factoid:  Few people who play guitar can actually, too, play harmonica, and so it is little wonder few people know the nuances and subtleties of matching the guitar songs to the key of the harmonica. 

Factoid: Of course my argument is based upon most guitar and harmonica players are neither trained nor interested in music theory.  Any music conservatory student would know the chord and key relationships, but those strumming folk are few and far between in my busking and bar stage circle.) 

And here it is, my very own limpid guitar-and-harp chart complete with two mnemonic guidelines to show all you really need to know about matching a harp to a guitar, hopefully being the quintessential bailiwick for all of you Bobby Dylan wannabees:  

GUITAR TO HARP AND HARP TO GUITAR:  A MNEMONIC TONIC

IN ABECEDARIAN FASHION, HERE IS THE MNEMONIC TONIC FOR PLAYING THE RIGHT HARP FOR YOUR GUITAR SONGS:

KEY TO GUITAR SONG ... THEN THE MATCHING KEY FOR THE HARP
(MNEMONIC … GUITAR PLUS 4 … AND THERE ARE 4 LETTERS IN THE WORD HARP)

KEY TO THE HARP … THEN KEY TO MATCH THE GUITAR SONG

(MNEMONIC … HARP PLUS 5 … AND THERE ARE 5 LETTERS IN THE WORD, GUIT-R)

GUITAR KEY to HARP KEY (+4 letters)     HARP KEY to GUIT-R (+5 letters)

1           2          3           4                                 1           2          3           4          5

E          F          G          A                                A          B          C          D        E         

A          B          C          D                                D          E          F          G         A

G          A          B          C                                C          D          E          F         G

C          D          E          F                                 F          G          A          B         C

F          G          A          B                                 B          C          D          E         F

In summary … if you’re playing guitar in the key of G and want the harp to match, remember that the word, HARP, has four letters and therefore add four letters in abecedarian fashion (up four letters in the alphabet … G A B C) to determine that the C harp is the one to match.

Also in summary, if you’re playing a C harp and want to know the guitar key which will fit, remember that the made-up word, guit-r, has five letters and therefore go up five letters (C D E F G) in the alphabet to determine G as the key to match. 
*[And so ... up four letters from guitar to HARP ... and up five letters from harp to GUIT-R.]                                                                                                    

• There’s a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in (Kate Levinson Ph.D). 

At my age, as I reflect upon my life to date, I’ve decided that probably all of us need daily doses of wonder to discontinue our pedestrian fashions of being gerbils on wheels or rats in cages. (Rodent metaphors, disgusting as they are, best make my point.)  None of us will ever travel our unique and rather adventurous path unless we grope to find some cracks of light in our semi-darkened, starless and quaggy lifestyle.  

There’s a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in … 

is my new favorite existential expression!

Moving on from existentialism to those marching and skating in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week:

 

L-R: SELF, BRAD HORNUNG, DOUG SAUTER

This picture was taken by KEVIN GALLANT, former radio voice of the Regina Pats of the Western Hockey League (WHL).  During the WHL game yesterday, Regina Pats vs. Moose Jaw Warriors, I was in the company of National Hockey League scout, BRAD HORNUNG, and former maverick professional hockey coach, DOUG SAUTER.

 

BACKYARD HOCKEY RINK

Former Western Hockey League player, RANDY DUROVICK, who still has the hockey in his heart, constructed this rink for his grandchildren in their family backyard.