The first time was like shouting into the wind. I felt invisible and unheard and I did stupid things. My hands were empty, would anyone listen to me without my drum? I lasted half an hour before my voice began to break. My tips were about what they would have been with the drum. I was catching ears, getting compliments, even during rush hour in a space people run past on their way to everywhere.

I know better. Acoustically I was in one of the best spots in the system. All I had to do was sing to the opposite wall, not ten feet away. We all do these things, we let little things throw us off balance and we work against ourselves.

This injury is akin to a final exam from the Universe, or that’s the way I’m going to look at it, anyway. It means it’s time to take my craft to the next level. I’m much more dependent on the drum than I realized, and it’s time to see how far I can go without it. It’s time for my art to be carried on the breath, my voice, and it’s past time to get my tinwhistle skills back into shape.

The next times were much easier. I tried out several spots, and so had some basis for comparison. I can still play most of the spots I used before. My take is about the same as it ever was, the only real issue is adding in repertoire. That is only a matter of time and practice. The list grows every time. Oddly enough, a lot of the songs I thought absolutely required a drum really don’t. Follow Me Up To Carlow, one of the bloodiest war songs I know, works just as well with just a voice. All I have to do is remember that I don’t have to fill the whole space, I just have to sing. The attendant in the kiosk at the other end of the space I was in made a point of coming across the station to tip me so I must be clearly heard over there.

Slowly my drum hand is coming back. I don’t plan on taking a drum with me to the station for a while yet, but I can work out beats and teach them to my partner, who is learning to play with me. I should be able to record again, and get everything in my head onto the hard drive. The album is back in the realm of possibility. There are definitely things I’ll never do again, but thankfully playing the bodhran is not yet one of them.

There are three goddesses who are the main inspiration of my trip. First of all, I’m going in search of Scathach, the woman warrior who gave her name to the Isle of Skye. From London I’ll be going to Inverness, and from there to Skye. Destination: Dun Scaith

There’s very little to be known about Scathach, her surviving claim to fame is as the teacher of Cuchullain. She apparently stood in a way in the place of Chiron to the warriors of Greek myth. Does that make a woman warrior as mythical a being as a centaur? Well, to some, I suppose it does, but most of us know better by now… I have been trying to write a song about her for years, and this castle, ruined and of dubious connection to her as it is, seems like a good place to cast about for clues.

Scathach, after all, must have had a lot more to her than simply teaching men to fight. What did she do to gain her experience? Her exploits had to be well known in her day. Is she another aspect of the Norse goddess Skadi, the hunter and skier, who also was known as the shade? Scathach’s name means “shadowed one,” and like Scathach, little is known about Skadi, though there’s more about Skadi than Scathach.

The second goddess is Brighid. I plan to visit her well and her sisterhood in Kildare. Erynn Rowan Laurie has kindly put a guide to getting there on her website. Brighid herself was long ago kind enough to give me a song, and I would like to give it to the well, and the Sisters, if they’ll have it.

The last goddess is Macha, whom I’ve written of before. The first song I wrote that I consider to be worth anything was my final project for a Celtic literature course. I was more than a little annoyed with a certain group of Ulstermen, who didn’t want me carrying a sword, and I was quite taken with another Irish tale related to the Tain, which explained why the men of Ulster were afflicted with birth pangs whenever their province was attacked. The short version is, Macha, the goddess of sovereignty in Ireland, a horse goddess who shares much with the Welsh Rhiannon and the Gaulish Epona, married an Ulsterman and got pregnant. Her husband got drunk at the races, basically, and started bragging that his wife could run faster than the king’s horses. She was forced to prove it. She won the race, had her kids on the finish line, and cursed the Ulstermen before dying or leaving, depending on the version of the story you read. The race was run at Emain Macha, so I’m going there as well.

There are plenty of other songs that I would like to sing in other places on this trip, but those three are the essential ones, and the core of the next album. Amusing, I guess, that the other two deities were more than happy to have me tell their stories, but The Shadowed One requires a wild goose chase way the hell up to Scotland to a place that may or may not be her home which might or might not result in a song. I don’t mind, I love adventures. If I end up cold and wet walking my way across Sleat in the middle of the night, at least I’ll have an interesting story to tell. It won’t be the first time I’ve done something of the sort, after all.

Screw this. I see the acupuncturist tomorrow, I see my doctor on Monday. That’s what clean credit cards are for, and I keep mine that way for a reason. I can pay it off next check and I need to get all the help I can get.

In the meantime, one of my Faire friends from my teens, one of the ones who can hold a part and has a brain, has come back into my life. She too has been battered by fate and come out the stronger for it. Perhaps we shall both rise again. I was sneaky, I gave her a CD of all the songs I’m learning. If they catch her ear the way they caught mine we may well have something.

I have a rough plan, and so many gifts. Most of all, I will not give up. I will grab the Universe by the throat and shake it till it gives me a way forward.

Setbacks happen to everyone. We all have to ask ourselves each time, “is this a crushing blow, or an opportunity for growth and applied brilliance? For me, the latter wins every time. Overwhelming odds call out my Inner Pixie and really, the other alternative leads nowhere.

Busking every day was one of those decisions that seemed like the right thing to do at the time, but turned out to be a big mistake. I took a break and went to the acupuncturist last Tuesday. Monday’s here and there’s no real change.

This is scary, but I have to turn my back on the spilled cups before me and look at the ones that are still full. I still have a voice, all I have lost is the frame around it. I have tools in the form of a yoga routine, various holistic and allopathic medicines, and body awareness to try and heal myself. Then there are the healthcare options to consider. Step one: If it hurts, don’t do it.

I asked Brighid today, as I do every day, what she wanted of me. As I looked up at her picture, quietly giving her space to speak, I heard a fond, slightly exasperated, “Well you could move my picture down so you didn’t have to crane your neck looking up at me.”

Duh.

Set her as low as I could. I still have to look up, but if I stand up straight and pull my head back–in short, if I stand the way my last physical therapist wanted me to, she comes into focus. Hurray for daily practice, and the gifts a simple devotion, repeated regularly, bring.

We all have a choice. We can do our best to dig our way out of our various holes, or we can let our problems consume us. It’s that simple. What is the first helpful action that can be taken? I’ve found that no matter how bad things are, if I just do that, the next move comes to me. When you’re in a trap, don’t struggle.

I’ve put my frame aside for now. I’ve given my partner a bodhran assignment: learn the drumbeat verbatim for one of the new songs I’ve written, and luckily, have a rough recording of. She’s a great dance drummer, and as a belly dancer I have heard her pick apart what the music “told” her body to do. She understands the basic concepts behind what I do and she’s capable of mastering them. More to the point, she wants to. She suggested this.

I’m going to bring in my small backpack and busking sign tomorrow and see if I can find a spot. How will I do in a BART station as a pure singer? My choice of spots will be more limited, but there are plenty of areas I can use, I think.

I’m going to the open mic at the Freight and Salvage tomorrow night. I’ve done a capella on that stage often enough, nothing much will have changed.

I’m going to continue to rest the stuff that hurts, and call either my healthcare provider or my acupuncturist again. I can’t decide which, I can’t afford to see both of them this paycheck. I’ll see the other one in the next few weeks, though. Daily meditation is also a must. I’ve been falling down on that the last couple of months and I need my subtle superpowers more than ever.

I’m going to continue to learn repertoire. Sadly, two of the three songs I’m working with demand a drum. The third one might stand on its own. Time to pick some others. I’m also going to spend some serious time with my tinwhistles. Damn, but they sound fine in a transit system corridor!

This blog entry was originally about balancing the optimum amount of busking time against the demands of my body. I figured that I could surely go back to one or two days a week no problem. As the week progressed though, I realized that the hole I’d dug for myself was far deeper than I’d imagined. I can still see the light, though. All I have to do is follow it.

Going Home Empty Handed

It happens every time. I put out my case and pick up my drum and people walk by me as if I wasn’t even there. I can’t help thinking “this is going to be the time I go home with nothing.” It’s a traitorous thought, always lurking, ready to come out like a bus stop cigarette.

Busking is a hard subject in the School of Life and this is one of the lessons. I’m actually getting good at this one. I remind myself that I’m not really playing for tips, I’m playing to get good at what I do. If I go home with nothing, so be it. I fall into the song, and I keep track of what’s going on around me. Does the spot feel good? Am I getting smiles? Tips? Glares?  Are there other spots to be had? Ah, that’s the rub, especially after work. There are a lot of us, after all.

Busking can teach non-attachment if you let it. Really, how can I possibly go home empty handed? The more I play, the better I get. The more I put myself out there the less important the judgments of others on my presence as a busker become. It is becoming easier and easier to acknowledge the smiles, tips, and positive feedback and let the crap roll off my back. Since I’m beginning to know my material cold, I can pay more attention to what’s going on around me and less on remembering lyrics and getting the drumbeats right.

Trip planning continues. The tickets from San Francisco to the UK are bought. I’ll come into London and go straight up to Scotland. London to Inverness by train is under a hundred pounds and the bus to Skye takes three hours. The hostel in Inverness is around the corner from the train station and they say they welcome musicians. I can get from any train station in the UK to Ireland for under forty pounds, so Ireland from Scotland will be cheap. I may have to change train/bus/ferry multiple times, but that’s why I’m packing light. Adventures make you late for dinner, right?

Busking is in many ways the bottom rung on the performance ladder. I don’t say that as a disparagement of it or any musician who does it. It is a great teacher. You get instant feedback, and you learn to handle hecklers. You learn what works, and what doesn’t, and you grow a thicker skin. Busking can make you fearless if you let it.

All the world isn’t really a stage, but there are a lot of areas available if you really want to make a spectacle of yourself. Busking is a great way of finding out where they are, and more importantly, where your potential audience is. Spots that are always occupied are good bets, but that’s only the beginning. A willingness to try out any available spot and the ability to evaluate it quickly is also something that sharpens with practice.

The ability to pack up and leave quickly can also come in handy. Where is busking legal and where isn’t it? It isn’t always possible to find out, and a lot of spots depend on the tolerance of the people who control access. The other day all the spots in and around the Berkeley BART station were taken. Now that I’m attempting to play after work, spots are harder and harder to find. I ended up on the outer corner of the UC Berkeley campus. I chose that spot because there was a convenient tree to stand under, I could be next to the sidewalk, but not actually on it, and I had a light and crosswalk right there. The light cycle gave me a chance to play to a given crowd long enough to catch ears. I wasn’t making much, even so, and a cop car pulled up in the traffic circle, lights flashing. I finished the song and began packing up. The lights went off, then the cop made a U turn. Was he after me? I don’t know. I never had to find out. But maybe busking is illegal on campus. This blog post has an excellent examination of the problem. In my experience, when I ask in person, I often get told no. If I just play, and move on when I’m asked to, I get to make a lot more music. Maybe someday a hefty ticket or an arrest will change my mind, but for now, asking for forgiveness rather than permission seems to work well, at least in the Bay Area.

Most of all, I think busking is a way of taking back our ability to entertain each other. More and more, we walk around with headphones jammed in our ears, or sit in front of screens and let ourselves be told stories. We don’t tell stories of our own. There are “legitimate” entertainers, and there are consumers. We all used to sing, and we all used to tell each other stories.

Street entertainers are part of a very old tradition and classing us with panhandlers and street people says something about us. The fact that we have such unvalued classes as street people and panhandlers is a statement in itself. We all have worth, and we all have something to say. We also have a responsibility to treat our audience with respect, and to expect respect from the people who pass us by. You don’t have to say anything to me, you don’t have to give me money. You don’t have to listen to me. I don’t even care if you acknowledge my existence, truth be told. But to decide that there is a whole segment of the population that is invisible is a loss for all of us. That “crazy” person shouting on the streetcorner didn’t get there in a vacuum, after all. By enclosing acceptable appearance and behavior within defined lines, and doing nothing for those excluded, we all have a crack to fall through. We all can become “worthless” and we have less latitude for experimentation. We have less scope to create art.

When there is no town square and no communal fire, where do emerging performers get their start? Where do we hone our craft and build our repertoire? You get one song at most open mics. I can have as many as I want in a BART station. Which songs get me tipped? Which ones get a smile? Which ones, in the right venue, get people to sing along? I plan to keep finding out.

An inexplicable thing happened a few days ago. I popped open a TARDIS that as supposed to be filled with pennies and found quarters. it reminded me of how often we mistake gold for dross in life, as well as confused the crap out of me. Unexpected messages from the past can be like that.

We were robbed a couple of months ago. Both laptops, cameras, and every bit of cash in the house. Including all my busking money, present and past, and the price and then some of an iPod mini I will be buying for the trip–because the particular means of saving I used to accumulate that much money is something that never stops. I’m already halfway there, as a matter of fact.

Oddly enough, they didn’t get anything of real value. All they took was money. Our backup drives were both there untouched, so we didn’t even lose our data. I’m in the process of replacement. We were given an iMac and some nonfunctional laptops, and my partner is good at computer repair and upgrade, and so we have, if not the same functionality we did before, more than enough to get us through. Most of all, we know whom we can count on.

The glass is half full, and this odd TARDIS trick just confirms that. I made that money back on the streets of Northern Faire in Black Point Forest. How the Doctor got it to me, I may never know, but I don’t care. It put me over the top of $500 out of the busking bowl and that is good enough for now. I feel fine about counting it, even though it hit the bowl in the 1990s. If I’d known then what I know now I’d have long ago saved all that money for just this purpose.

It feels like it’s too late, but I know better than that. We can only start from where we are and “coulda shoulda woulda” is unproductive at best. I have no time to waste. This is why I’m carrying my drum to work with me at least one or two days a week now–no, strike that–every workday, starting next week. It’s not always possible to get a spot, 4:30 PM is a challenging time to say the least, but sometimes I get lucky. And every quarter counts!

So, busking total from the Past: $42.62. $478.38 to go!

We all have such riches, things that we’re not even aware of! Things that make our lives better, that make our communities better places to live. I realized this this morning, lying in bed with my iPod. All it took was a notification email from the public library. One of my holds is waiting for me. My first reaction was “Oh no! I haven’t finished the two books I already got last week, and I know I can’t read all three before they’re due!”

Then it hit me. I have more books than I can read. For free—or at least, at the taxpayer’s expense. Collectively we have the wisdom of the ages at our fingertips, all we have to do is walk into the library. We have a plethora of beautiful buildings to keep this treasure in, and we have a staff of professionals to take care of it for us, file it in a way that allows us to find what we want quickly and easily, even access some of it remotely. I can place a  hold for a physical copy of a book literally from my bed, and sometimes, I can even check the electronic copy out and be reading it in mere seconds.

What a wonderful use of our collective power as taxpayers! I find this to be useful and enriching, but what I really love about it is that anyone, down to the homeless, can access all this information. People who can’t afford to buy or store, say, the latest Jared Diamond book, which is what I’m currently reading, and which prompted this tiny existential crisis this morning, can read this book for free and then hand it back in. Barring theft or destruction, that book will always be there and can be checked out again whenever we please.

I can’t recommend this book, _The World Until Yesterday_, highly enough, actually. I lost my tiny mind for a moment because I was afraid I would have to turn it in before I finished it. As if it were necessary that I digest that whole thing at once! What I love the most about it is that it expands my view of humanity through time. It makes me remember why I love archaeology and anthropology so much, and it is adding greatly to my perception of war and how it shapes our relationships with each other.

I was wrong, unfortunately. I had the idea that war was a relatively recent invention, and that warfare was a path we set our feet on when there was no more “away” to move to when we had disputes with each other. Sadly, this is not true. An archaeological site from 5000 BCE with 18 people dead from blows to the back of the head burst that bubble for me, as well as a reminder of the film “Dead Birds,” which I saw in school years ago. We have always had ways of treating each other badly for stupid reasons.

However, as I also learned in school, just because a practice has a long history does not mean that it must have a long future. We learn from our mistakes, and we can change the stories we tell. Change the story, and you can change your life. We always have a choice, and if there’s one thing I know about humanity, it’s that we’re the most adaptable, flexible species on the planet. We are worldchangers.

We are storytellers. Sit still, quiet down, and you will hear the voice in your head. You won’t be able to turn it off. And why should we want to? What we can do is become aware of it, and really listen to what it says, and then let it go. Like a river, the eddy is always there, but the water that creates it is different moment to moment.

I am a storyteller. I choose carefully, and lately a lot of the stories I tell are about war. How we idealize it, how we discover over and over again that it’s a lot easier to start one than to get out of one, and how it’s never worth the price we pay for it. Most of all, I tell a story of how we can evolve beyond it. War is never a good idea. It never solves the problem, all it does is change the circumstances. We have to fix the problems caused by the fighting before we can get back to the original problem, and many times we get so distracted by the process that we never do get back to that.

I believe that knowledge is an antidote to war. Diamond made me remember just how long history really is. Seeing the scope of it helps me see the way out of war. There have been some other excellent books written about war lately, and most of them I have been introduced to via the public library. Paul Chappell, a West Point graduate and a professional soldier, has a lot to say on war and how we can finally move beyond it, as well as Frances Moore Lappe’s excellent book Ecomind.

Above all, Diamond’s description of how small the worlds of the First Peoples who still engage in traditional warfare are made me feel so sad. It made me realize just how far we have come towards ending so many forms of injustice. I can hardly imagine not being able to go twenty miles from home for fear of being killed simply because I strayed into someone else’s territory. We have a long way to go, but I know we can do it. I know that I will never pick up a gun voluntarily unless it’s for food or recreation. I will certainly never have one in my house for personal defense, no matter how often I get robbed. Stuff can be replaced. A human life never can be, and nothing I own is worth killing for.

That brings me back to why I follow a bardic path, and I’ll leave you with a triad on this:

The three principal duties of a bard:
The first is to learn and collect the sciences.
The second is to teach.
And the third is to make peace, and to put an end to all injury.
For to do other than that is not usual, or becoming to a bard.

On a hot day, when you’ve just climbed the trail from Pan Toll Ranger Station to Rock Springs, a drink of the water, flowing cold and clear from the pipe, is to taste life itself. Even now, sitting at my desk with the sound of the rain outside my window, a wine glass of that water is all I need to taste the mountain and remember the water running down the rocky path, the cool air in my lungs on the day I drew water from that well.

A goblet of that water sits on the altar above me, next to the cauldron where a candle burns for Brighid. I’m thankful for so many things, for that Thanksgiving day when I filled my jars and had a family to share Thanksgiving dinner with. For the deer I saw on the mountain:

And from the deck outside the dining room:

I believe the world lays gifts at our feet every day. The more I say “thank you” for them, the more of them I notice. I’m not aspiring for sainthood here, this is most definitely a daily practice with an aspect of selfishness to it. It makes me feel better to do it, and so it reinforces itself. Beginning my day by going to work would be a lot harder if I didn’t start out by naming a few blessings, having a job to go to being pretty high on the list. When I had to get on a bike at oh-dark-thirty and arrive at work while it was still dark an hour later, those thank yous were sometimes what got me there. There was a time when I never thought I’d be getting on that bike when it was light, but now I do, and there’s yet another thing to be thankful for.

I try to turn my face to the light whenever possible. It’s hard at times, but the alternative is so much worse. There are so many things in my life that I would like to change, and so many of them seem immovable. But little by little, like that water wearing away at the rock below, some of them are shifting. Some of it is all in point of view.

Getting hurt at work has become a blessing. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I make less money than I did, but I work fewer hours, and my schedule is more flexible than it’s been in years. I make enough to live on–just–and that extra time and energy goes into music. Between BART stations and open mics, I am most of the way to a new album. At last night’s open mic, I was offered a gig. Date TBD and unpaid, but I’m farther down the road than I was last week.

I can’t quite see us ever getting out of Oakland and into that forest I want to be living in, but I can at least see the cracks in that belief. Who knows? The forest may spring up around us. I look for the trees that are already here, and see the houses among them rather than the other way around. I have acorn bits in the freezer and whole acorns in the kitchen waiting to be cracked. All were gathered from the streets of Lafayette. The beginnings of the food forest are already here. Olives fall from the trees in the Cannery in San Francisco, and plums dot the streets of Berkeley and Oakland every summer. Blackberries are everywhere.

What are you grateful for?

I understand why there are always buskers at Civic Center BART. Great tips, but a very gritty place. I think the best thing about it is that we’re all equals there. Literally every class of transit rider goes through there, from the sharp suits to the homeless. You have to be able to hold your own, because you’re on your own there, but people will talk to you, and they’ll even stand and listen. It is the only BART station where I’ve been able to hold any sort of audience.

Timing matters. Rush hour is rush hour wherever you stand. When the majority of the people are in commuterspace, everyone will catch the vibe and keep moving. Since I have a long corridor to catch their ears, they’ll tip anyway, and it’s a rare person who will stop. Midday, there are long pauses between the flow of people. Since there’s a public telephone and an electrical connection there, it’s a community resource as well and when the flow of people is low, people will use those things.

Yesterday it was like a community room. When I got there a guy was sitting there painting a design on his messenger bag. When I started playing, he gave me a dirty look and packed up. Then two kids came by to charge their phones and talk. They gave me a glimpse of community, as people they knew kept passing by. It didn’t hurt that they liked what they were hearing and told me so. It was valuable experience for me, learning how to make space to play while keeping up an intermittent conversation. Another guy set up panhandling down the corridor from me, and he also wanted to talk. In the end, I played him to sleep, which was a good feeling. He’d given me a catalog of who played down here and what he thought of them in the meantime, which was also an interesting window on the world. I also had another busker come up and tell me what was what. He was trying to intimidate me out of the space, and was a bit put out when it didn’t work. But this isn’t the first time that’s happened, and there is space enough for all.

Really, there is space enough for all of us, no matter who we are or how unusual we are. That’s a hard truth to hold on to in a world where life is getting harder and the pressure to conform has real teeth in it. You pay a price for nonconformity in any age, but lately it’s been getting steeper. There are more of us out on the streets, and the lines we are supposed to stay inside are brighter and clearer every day.

I think the price of staying inside them is higher, personally. The rewards of knowing who you are are much greater. The older I get, the more I see this. My closet may be full of strange clothes–but I like them. My house may not have a fashionable address, but when I step inside I’m home. My books surround me right now, the most interesting wallpaper I can imagine. And my head is full of music. All the time. The more I stand in those BART stations, the more the songs come back to me, like a flock of birds, coming home to roost, flying out into the world and perhaps resting in someone else’s head for a moment, or for longer. The older faces that tip me often have a secret smile on their faces when I sing something like “Bread and Roses,” or “Matty Groves,” and I know they remember too.

Where have you crossed the lines? What magic have you discovered outside them? How can you bring it back into the world?