Haiku for you

Sunny day to busk
Walking through Public Garden
Crossing little bridge

Gaze into lagoon
See strange fuzzy-looking fish
Take a second look

Find it's a duckling
Relieved, as I was quite sure
That fish don't have feet

Houston, we have linkage

I just put up a few links of folks in the Boston area I've worked with...they're all nice people who make great music. Note the eclecticism of the list.

Amazing focus

So I'm used to mesmerizing small children, but the other day in the Public Garden, there was an eight-month-old baby in his stroller who not only looked more like Winston Churchill than most babies, but who had a facial expression of utter concentration on what I was doing, as though he only needed the slightest furthering of language development to produce a witty, yet accurate, critique of my technique and repertoire choices.

If you've ever sat in a meeting with a professor and outlined an essay proposal which said professor thought would be an excellent topic but wanted to make sure you took certain aspects into account, that was the facial expression involved here.

He and his mother stayed for at least half an hour, during which time she fed him, and he played with some type of Big Bird baby toy, all the while checking in every so often to make sure I was still playing to his liking. He laughed with a mouth full of pureed food occasionally, so I think I did all right by him.

Then again...

Standing in contrast to the previous post, I was busking in the Davis Square T station, and I played "Somewhere Over the Rainbow". A non-inspector T employee came downstairs from his booth, settled on the bench next to me, and said, "Play that rainbow song again."

Of course, I did.

Afterwards, as he got up to leave, he said, "You saved my sanity."

Saving T employees' sanity is a GOOD thing.

Behold, The Power of T Inspectors

Busking at South Station, a T inspector told me I had to move to the posted location, because I would be in the way of traffic. The posted location is about six feet from where I was, but there's a big giant fan in it. The big giant fan wasn't on, but I'd be equally in the way of traffic (i.e. not-at-all) in either location.

So a couple days later, I did an experiment; I spent half my time in the posted location and half in my preferred location. I made as much in the first ten minutes in my preferred location as I did in the previous hour in the posted location. I don't know why, but I've found this to be true in the past as well.

Subway busking would be SO much easier if anybody were steering the ship; as it is, the Transit Realty Authority (better known as the TRA) and the Metropolitan Transit Authority (better known as the MTA) are levying a burdensome tax...no, wait...the TRA and the MBTA have each told me that Performer's Area signs are the other's responsibility, so most locations that are supposedly kosher to busk in don't have signs at all. Alewife and Back Bay have shiny new signs, but those are the only places I've seen those particular signs.

I also discovered that, according to the rules, T inspectors can take one's permit at any time for pretty much any reason, so I really have to stop arguing with them, no matter how politely. I have an issue with the fact that one person having a bad day can take away half my income on a whim, but this is the life I chose, innit?