Busking in the sun

The rains had stopped, the clouds had parted. I was walking on that wintry day, feeling good about the cold. The grass had turned green, the frost melting into morning dew. As I walked down Sidney Street, I noticed a musician, on an accordion playing a soulful tune. I contemplated the skill necessary to play the accordion. Like a piano, it is played with two hands, but more challenging as the two hand not only play different tunes but play keys of different types, also each hand playing in a different style. The accordion is a unique instrument. It sounds like more than one instrument. A guitar has one set of strings which can be manipulated using two hands. The violin is similar. The piano is also one set of strings which can be manipulated using two hands with keys that all obey the same rules. The accordion on the other hand has two sets of keys that look and work very differently from each other, and to produce the desired effect, one must play both sets, by learning their individual rules, in harmony.

So here I was walking down Sidney Street, feeling good about the fact that winter was finally here to allay fears of global warming, when I heard sad and soulful tunes from an accordion. I was moved, while also being reminded for some reason, of the 1970 Raj Kapoor movie, Mera Naam Joker. That movie told the story of a circus clown, spreading joy to the world while trying to fight sadness within. The accordion tells me a similar story, no matter what plays on it.

So, as I walked down Sidney Street that day, listening to the sad tunes from an accordion, I realised that winter wasn’t so much fun for the buskers. I passed Sainsbury’s where another busker was tuning his guitar, and I thought, was he tuning his guitar because he was about to begin, or was he waiting, pretending to tune his guitar, while privately lost in the accordion’s magical tune? I don’t know the answer, but the the accordion seemed to follow me like an apparition as I walked towards the junction with Market Street. If the tune really reached that far, it must have been influencing the guitar player in front of Sainsbury’s.

I kept walking in this dreamy state when I realised that the accordion tune started to get louder again, and I thought could it be possible that the surrounding atmosphere was playing tricks on me, or was my mind trying not to leave that faint soulful music behind? That’s when I saw the second accordion player in front of Superdrug, playing a very similar tune, creating a rainbow of notes, as if they were scattering music on the street like flowers before a grand procession, the grand procession of life that had sprung out of the woodwork on that bright, wintry day.

I was feeling sad, but in a good sort of way, because I was feeling strong too, because I knew no matter what happened in reality, the mind always found ways to find that silver lining over the edge of the clouds. I again began to feel that winter is great, when after travelling just a hundred metres, I came across another busker, this one playing a harmonica, and I noticed he had placed a hat in front for alms. It was a wide brimmed light brown fedora, kept with its top side up, but its peak depressed in the shape of a bowl where passers-by could toss in change. There was a tiny fur rabbit placed in front of it. The performer himself was a shrivelled man suffering from malnutrition whose tune could hardly be heard, and having acquainted myself with a harmonica recently I understood how much trouble he might have been having trying to play the notes where it was necessary to draw in air. It was a wintry day, and the air was quite chilly with a light breeze blowing with occasional gusts of wind.

I should have given him some change, but I didn’t being quite lost in my own selfish thoughts. The cold by then was somewhat getting to me as well, as I was trying to balance the light sweating inside my jacket with the chill near my ears and occipital bones of my skull. I had to return home and do some work, but I was sure I wouldn’t.

And this is exactly what happened that day, as I lulled myself to sleep with some left over Scrumpy Jack cider, while imagining the life of these buskers, out in the open, exposed to the harsh winter, some on drugs, and almost all on alcohol. Did they think about ‘the meaning of life’ while they played? I couldn’t quite imagine their metaphysical state of mind, but I was sure their daily desperation made them perform at their best, even if it were only to brighten the day of the passer-by.

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