Oblivious but Hopeful

If necessity is the mother of invention, then negligence might be the mother of re-invention--or at least create the need for it. Only because I missed a deadline for a student loan at South Dakota State University did I need to put plans for a teaching career on hold. As do most young folk in small college towns after graduation or dropping out, I headed for a large city.

A dear friend had just left SDSU with an assignment as a VISTA volunteer to join an advocacy group for the disabled in Denver. When she heard of my blunder, she extended an invitation. As we frequently hear regarding athletes, Denver's mile high altitude is a condition that requires attention for any activity demanding on the lungs. Good news is that it doesn't take long to adjust. Bad news? I was utterly oblivious to this when Linda took me to a gathering of her friends my first night there. I joined a jam session for maybe 20 minutes before stepping outside for some air. Next thing I knew I was on my back on a front lawn looking up at Linda and a few Coloradan faces showing me right away that they had seen this before.

Naturally I wanted to contribute to her expenses, so I wasted no time reporting to one of those daily labor agencies downtown. The hours were brutal, the work backbreaking. the pay low, but I literally saw a way out by the end of the first day. In the late afternoon the bus returned downtown through Larimer Square, Denver's historic district, where we stopped for a red light. I couldn't hear the singer or her guitar set in an alley between two shops, but I watched her while she gained a few tips and exchanged pleasantries with passersby.

After a second day of eight hours of laying sod in some upscale mile-high suburb, I was looking for her, but saw instead a violinist behind a music stand in her spot. It was a much busier day, and several passersby had stopped passing, pausing to listen. The bus made a second stop, closer to the light, and there was the singer, her guitar case open for tips. From the quick look I gained as the bus pulled out, she was having a good day.

Day three was a Saturday, so I would have slept late anyway and wasn't foregoing any income. Also happened to be the much-publicized opening of the Wazee Market just a couple blocks from Larimer. Merchants in the shops had made every effort possible to stop the creation of an outdoor market. Too new to the scene to be aware of any controversy, I wandered down to Wazee with the hopeful attitude that most anyone has showing up on the first day of a new job.

Stay of Execution

No more that 15 minutes after I started--standing behind a tin cup that I could protect only by hovering around it--police arrived to issue a last-minute court order gained by the merchants. While the folks selling produce and crafts grumbled and packed up, there was one fellow with a better idea. With a grab of my collar that made me think I was on my way to jail, he pulled me out of the huddle of market organizers and sympathetic police. At the time, I was instinctively playing "My Country 'Tis of Thee" as a soundtrack for the closure.

Wearing African robes as colorful as any African flag, he spoke with an African accent in deep African tones: "Hey man, you wanna make some money?"

Somehow, I, a rookie, a greenhorn, felt that I was under some other kind of arrest. I followed him and his two large drums to the abandoned stage nicely tucked, for the acoustics, under one end of a concrete overpass. His congas immediately commanded the attention of everyone still within hearing. I took up my tenor recorder and began belting out "What do you do with a Drunken Sailor?" over his rapid, detailed beat, and the grumbling and packing ceased as marketeers looked, some taking seats in the metal folding chairs put out for the stage entertainment.

Sensing that we had cast some kind of spell, I took up the part of the Drunken Sailor, dancing, spinning, and pirouetting at the edges of the stage to lend some drama to the event. Even the police and market organizers seemed to enjoy it as faces lit up, the court order briefly stayed. No doubt many looked on in fascination at a pair as improbable as two refugees from a Herman Melville novel, a thousand miles away from and exactly one mile above the nearest ocean. But the music gained a few hearty ovations when Joe was willing to pause his drumming--something he was loathe to do. I dare say we prolonged the life of that first, ill-fated Wazee Market for nearly a half hour.

Thank Linda for that jam session that allowed me to get the fainting out of the way. And thank Joe for the 50/50 split that netted me $25 in very little time on my first day ever as a busker. Without him, however, I did poorly over the next two weeks.

Learning the Ropes

On my first weekday I arrived at Larimer Square to find the same singer/guitarist I twice had spotted from the bus, hearing her for the first time. Since I carried no more than a small knapsack over my shoulder with three recorders and a tin cup, she had no way of knowing that I was intending to busk. We exchanged glances, nods of the head, before I was about to find another spot. As luck would have it, she ended a song and called to me. She had been a busker long enough to read the intent written all over my face, and that day she had been playing long enough to take a break and yield the spot.

She said little, but what she did spoke volumes. After counting out a modest take of bills and change, she took a fistful of pennies and dumped it into my tin cup--all while maintaining the politeness not to laugh at my choice of cash register: "This is a Denver tradition. You'll see that there's about ten regulars who play here. So if we're in a spot for an hour or more, and someone else is waiting, we let them have it. Leave the pennies for good luck. Good luck!"

Weekdays, however, are more for practice than luck, and for me in Denver, 1977, was the added task of on-the-job training. I was learning to be a busker, which meant learning how to read faces of passersby, how and when to make eye contact, when to avoid it, when to perform a song, and when to blend into the setting, playing more to enhance its mood or atmosphere.

Before Joe collared me at the ill-fated Wazee Market, my first minute as a busker showed me that I needed a way to protect the cup. Either I would have to keep standing over it, inhibiting music that I'd rather accompany with motion, or pedestrians would, through no fault of their own, keep kicking it over.

From one of Linda's VISTA friends I borrowed a music stand, but that wouldn't look right unless it had sheet music on it, nor would that seem right unless I appeared to be reading it, at least some of the time. However, I couldn't sight read at the time, but that didn't matter because the stand did protect the cup. When I first started using the stand, I was embarrassed by the fakery, but I was soon playing combinations of notes I saw on the pages in front of me and turning them into new improvisations. And in time I would learn some of the pieces from start to finish. So the stand served a double purpose, and something borrowed became something bought.

And then there was the tin cup, taken right out of my camping gear. When I spotted buskers from the window of the daily labor bus, I saw musicians. When I became a busker I quickly realized that while some people spotting me saw a musician, others saw a beggar with a gimmick. The stereotype is strong and persistent, and so it makes as little sense as cents to reinforce it with shabby clothes, an unkempt appearance, or anything associated with begging. What object says begging louder than a tin cup?

At first I relished the clink and clank of tossed coins, was amused by those who made the cup a target, but before long I realized that some people couldn't resist making a game of me. Theodore Dreiser. in a memoir of his first visit to New York City, described his older brother, composer/singer Paul Dresser (an Anglicized name to avoid the anti-German hostility of the day) tossing penny after penny into the cup of a blind singer along Broadway just to laugh at the busker's attempts to thank him for every coin. Though he worshipped Paul, Theodore was mortified, and I vowed to never again play "Wabash Cannonball." But I must admit, pennies were worth much more in 1890 than in 1977. At any deflated rate, my cup was soon replaced by a somewhat larger but still small wicker basket lined with a pointedly hard-for-the-eye-to-miss, bright and quieting red bandana.

Took a while to learn the ropes, and the while included a day when my two-hour take was exactly three Good & Plenties and 37 cents. My singer/guitarist mentor arrived just as I was about to pack it in, and sensed my disappointment. She did offer consolation that weekdays are pretty much preparation for weekends, holidays and summer evenings, but she turned the subject quickly to the real purpose of busking:

"The most important thing we give people when we play is an unexpected moment in their lives. It's up to us to make it a pleasant memory that they will recall for a friend or relative who will see and hear you only through that description."

I emptied the 37 cents into her guitar case and returned home to a semi-literate pursuit of one of those popular pieces of classical music, J.S. Bach's "Joy of Man's Desiring." Any memory figures to be stronger if it has a familiar hook. By the third weekend these lessons and so many weekday trial runs began to pay off, if you can excuse the pun. Before I learned the difficult middle section of the Bach piece, I would substitute the Beatles' "With Love from Me to You." The familiar hook reinforced, I quickly learned why street-musicians are always so good with segues and the best have repertoires that are always ecclectic.

Nothing for Granted--Three Lessons

The very best buskers never take anything for granted. In hindsight I wonder if my best stroke of luck was being schooled in this within my first week of play. And it took just three lessons:

At the end of an evening as shops began to close I was about to pack up when a young couple, dressed as if they were on their way to an inaugural ball, he in a top hat no less, strolled into the alcove and paused to window shop. Instinctively--a word that demands frequent use in any busker's story--I took this as a sign that they had paused as much for me as for gift ideas. So I gave them my best, played stately rather than racy in keeping with their attire. Maybe they were pricing glassware, as I had time for a Bach Bouree, Gavotte, and "Joy" with the Beatles' midsection. Not another soul came by, and the last lights were turned out in the last shop to close. As I approached the finale, emphasizing notes so that there'd be no mistake that it was the end, they turned and walked out of the alcove, right past me without a glance. I was aghast, bent over as if I had been kicked in the stomach, looking at the ground and, without thinking, started to turn toward them with the intention of yelling some insult. Just as I turned, I saw his arm reaching back and down to the basket with three dollar bills.

The second lasting lesson happened in a crowd. In the same corner of the same alcove, as many as a dozen people had stopped to hear me. A few young fellows came by, one of whom stopped short, called to his companions and made a show of brandishing a bill out of his wallet. Then he stepped toward me, and I made the mistake of nodding thanks and bowing to him as I played. That was the set-up he sought for his punchline, loud enough for everyone there: "Ah, I changed my mind. You're not any good!"

It's a common prank, perhaps moreso in this age of reality television and shock radio. All the busker can do is avoid the punch of the punchline. Ever since that incident I have never acknowledged a tip--except from small children or from those either gray or naturally bald--until it is in the basket and out of hand. A busker has no choice but to let the wags attempt their jokes, but we do have a choice of audience. Those who pull these stunts are looking to steal that audience. Fall for it, and those who were listening are reduced to nervous laughter or, worse, pity for you. The music becomes tentative, self-conscious. Resist it, play through it, and the audience will reward you with approval. And the music responds.

That lesson is twofold. In addition to being made the butt of a joke, I had my attention drawn to the basket. Doesn't take buskers long to know that they are better off to ignore the contents of the case, hat, or basket while performing. Every now and then, however, we need to take a quick glance. Doesn't happen often--to me maybe twice a year--but some people will deposit trash to make you look foolish, or some political ad to make you look suspect, or one of those small religious tracts to make you look fanatical. Several marijuana cigarettes also appeared in my basket at different times during my stay in Denver and a week-long visit to Seattle, but that seems to be a thing of the past. Either that, or it's still the Wild West.

While those are rare, the third lesson concerns an incident that will occur--and reoccur if we're lucky--on any busy day. And it offers a counterpoint to the point of not allowing yourself to be the butt of a joke. There are times when buskers should and do laugh right along with people laughing at us, which I believe goes further than even Ecclesiastes recommends.

A very small boy delivered this lesson when, among a small crowd, his parents put a dollar in his hand and coaxed him to place it in my basket. The day was busy, business in all Larimer's shops brisk, and I had been at it long enough to have a healthy take. Healthy in more ways than one: My basket looked like heaping pile of lettuce, not a mere salad but a salad bar. Hovering over it, the boy was wide-eyed, and a dozen or more listeners were by then eyeing him more than me. They knew exactly what I was doing, but in him was anticipation. Then he piped up: "He's got too much money!"

Laughter was so loud that shoppers and clerks poured out of nearby shops to see what had happened. As much as I pride myself on my ability to keep a straight face--another busking requirement--I immediately joined in. The boy's mother returned with the dollar to the basket and a most unnecessary apology to me, during which time the laughter turned into applause.

Over coffee not long afterward, I realized that, had I played through the boy's remark or his mother's return, I would have ruined the effect. To use the theatrical term, I would have stepped on that "unexpected moment" for which my mentor told me to strive. The laughter would have been less, the applause none at all, and the music would have sounded absurd no matter what it was or how I played it. The lesson describes the key distinction between street-performer and stage-performer: They are in front of people; we are among them.

This distinction is better expressed by story-tellers in a scene from the early Fifties when television began to threaten them with extinction. A small boy wanted to make his weekly trek to the town library to hear a story-teller. His well-intentioned parents thought he might prefer to stay home with the new entertainment. "The television knows lots of stories," they boasted.

To which he replied, "But the story-teller knows me."

On the street, that translates simply into being approachable, satisfying curiosity, sharing a laugh, all kinds of things that are possible out of the footlights.

My Brother's Security Guard

For the remainder of my few months in Denver, I enjoyed many compliments and well-wishes from shoppers and tourists, many free cups of coffee, some bowls of soup, and an occasional pint of ale from Larimer shops. By far the most frequent remark was one of gratitude for the presence of a musician rather than "piped-in music," as people invariably called it. Never one to resist a play on words, I'd hold a recorder up and answer, "Well, I always pipe out."

One evening following a long coffee-break, I did not pipe at all. After dark, buskers are limited to places under street-lamps, and so the choices are fewer. In my favored spot was a 16-year-old cellist on a field trip from Nebraska with his high school orchestra. He had seen me playing from the window of a tour bus and, as history repeats itself, gained the idea.

Standing deliberately out of the cellist's sight, I had a security guard's voice in my ear before I knew he was there: "Never thought you'd be one to quit in the face of competition."

"Listen, if a cellist is going to come down here and improvise with Felix Mendelssohn and Scott Joplin, I'm glad to take a night off. Listen to this guy!"

But if my answer surprised him, he was about to one up me: "You people make my job a lot easier."

"Come again?"

"Oh, I like to listen, but it's always true that when any of you are out here, we get very few calls for shop-lifting or break-ins."

"Well, you're welcome. When do I get put on your payroll?"

He and I had been through this before, and he had done me as much of a favor, working me in the art of quick retort, verbal thrust and parry, as essential to a busker as to a stand-up comic.

"That would make you my competition," he quipped as he turned to make his rounds.

The cellist played for barely a half hour before one of those Rocky Mountain winds whipped out of the Flatirons, making it impossible for anyone to play. As he was leaving he mentioned that he had made over ten dollars, which I told him was remarkable for how few people were out.

More than any measure of gain, his last remark conveyed that sense of discovery that every busker knows: "I wish I lived here!"

For a moment he was stunned by my deadpan "I'm glad you don't!" When he got the joke I was thankful that, for one night at least, I could be an aspiring busker's security guard.

Generous and Exact

On most every day and night I had the busker's satisfaction of paying for lunches, coffee, beer, and most grocery and household items I might pick up on my way home entirely in one dollar bills and change, and always in exact change. Tips were always left in bills, never coin, and I instinctively understood right off why someone who depends on tips for a livelihood has to be a generous tipper.

On one particularly successful evening Linda took the bus to Larimer, timed to meet me when I called it quits. We walked out of a Larimer alcove and across the street to Josephina's, a new Italian restaurant that featured a jazz band after nine o'clock. We ran up a tab just over $27, a fair hunk of change in those days, and in more ways than one. On the waiter's tray I counted and stacked the exact sum, mostly in quarters. As usually happens--some exceptions I admit--Josephina's was glad to have it. Our patient and grateful waitress was relieved that the tip looked more like lettuce.

Larimer Farewell

With the approach of winter, I knew my days in the street were numbered and I'd need to find indoor work. Through Linda's contacts, I gained a VISTA assignment that would send me to North Dakota in November. For no monetary reason, I wanted to play a farewell in Larimer Square before I left, and with another farewell to attend on my last night in Denver, I managed a half hour of a chilly early evening.

Leaving my music stand, basket, and tenor behind, I hopped off the bus with only the soprano in the large inside breast pocket of a full-length Navy coat. With so few people out and about, I played all-out, both in tempo and volume. Within five minutes I felt a hand thrust into the over-sized pocket on my left side, and not long after that another on my right. Happened ten times, once with a muffled rumble of coins, before I put the recorder away, took a last look up and down Larimer, and walked toward the bus-stop.