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I went into the subway to perform my songs
with the naive notion I would get discovered. Little did I know I would be
doing the discovering. I'm a Taurus/Gemini. I
don’t particularly follow astrology, but according to what I’ve read, I fit the
profile. I’m supposedly stubborn and extreme. This tenacity might explain why
I’ve chosen and endured the life of a street-musician. Had I known in the
beginning what the past ten years would be like, I might have gone to law
school instead. Nonetheless, here I am. I once told a guy
what I did for a living, and the first thing he said was, “You’re a
‘busker’.” Busker? No, “street-musician.” The word occasionally popped
up, but I simply ignored it. To my ears, it sounded funny. I thought it was Old
English. Busker. I found myself sometimes uttering the word with a Cockney
accent. Not too long ago, I
was browsing the Web when, out of boredom, I decided to look up ’busker’. Sure
enough, several pages pertaining to the art of street performing appeared. To
my surprise, hidden in a random page, I learned that busker is derived from
the obsolete French word ‘busquer’, which means to search. I’m a searcher?
What is a street-musician searching for? Spare change? Seemed
like an odd word to designate what I thought was a straightforward pursuit. Looking back, I must
concede, I’ve been “searching” all my life. Whatever compelled me to become a
street-musician, came from an inherent tendency of
jumping from one extreme to the other in search of what works for me. In all
the time I’ve spent stubbornly pursuing my passion underground, I have also
sampled countless books, philosophies, disciplines - you name it - in search
of my identity. By now, with a pretty
good idea of who I am, why I’m here, and where I’m going, I feel I have
something to say. Also because we live in uncertain times and my fate as an
artist has yet to be realized, I figured it would be wise to record my soul.
Just in case. This is my story. |
