Busking Blues and Worn Out Shoes

Busking blues and worn out shoes.   I've been wearing out the tread on my hiking boots for a solid 9 months now in the great city of San Francisco, busking my fiddling heart out for a very diverse citizenship and an international onslaught of tourists.  I've learned a lot so far in this experience and the lessons learned continue to unfold themselves.  More then anything I have learned about being in the moment and surrendering to the flow.

Busking in itself is polite anarchy.  It stands to reason then that a busker's working environment is unpredictable and sometimes chaotic.  A typical 8 hour day for me as a busker is probably more in the range of a 13 hour day after all the trekking from one spot to the next,  looking for a peaceful/suitable place to play.  What seems to be an ideal spot one moment can be a chaotic mess the next moment.  Sometimes you can play through.  For instance, I've become very good at playing through the intercom announcements at the train stations.  Sometimes I even catch a rhythm with the announcements and perhaps it is sometimes even an intentional synchronicity with the train station agent when I finish a song and the intercom kicks on and I'm kicking off my next song as the intercom voice finishes the announcement with a thank you.  Other times though there is no ignoring a sonic interruption no matter what the cause.  A jackhammer for instance can put a quick end to a session.  Loud amplified music from above ground can get in the way.  Lawn mowers, pressure washers, boom boxes and other such noisy interruptions can also put a quick end to a session.

  Something that is more personal for a busker is when another busker interrupts a session.  What was a good spot for making music turns into an instant cacophony of awful dissonance.  This unfortunately happens all the time in the world of struggling musicians turned buskers.  The struggle for personal survival sometimes overwhelms any sort of honor code between buskers.  This is an unfortunate and unnecessary oversight by many unexperienced and/or careless buskers.  Some buskers don't stop to consider the "honor code" that exists between buskers.  I personally have been challenged to know when it is an alright time to communicate these ideas with other buskers and when the path of least resistance calls me to "exit stage left immediately" so to speak.  Sometimes I try to plant the seed for future cooperation between myself and other buskers.  I did that this morning when an electric guitarist set up around the corner from me, very much in ear shot.  I introduced myself and we had a conversation about busking ethics and I asked him for more cooperation in the future.  Other times I have had to stand up for myself, even confronting a 4 man a cappella group, more then once, who continued to ignore my busking presence in their own attempts to busk.  Often though I find it is best to just move on and view the moment as a nice opportunity to take a break.  I did that this morning.  After the conversation with my new busking associate, I went above ground knowing that this busker was after the exact thing I was after this morning.  Breakfast.  I wished him luck knowing that he would do well in that spot and would eventually enjoy breakfast as I was about to.  I went and got a cup of joe at the Bean and enjoyed a very tasty Cinnamon Danish from Eppler's Bakery.  These lessons in Zen Busking continue to reveal themselves as I allow my perspectives to shift and begin to see the bigger picture.  We are all in this quest for survival together.  Together we survive and together we thrive.