Boom bike

In my years busking in the Public Garden, I've learned to tune out all sorts of beeping horns, wailing sirens, cursing pedestrians and quacking Duck Boats.

Of course, there are also boom cars, which I usually notice peripherally while busking (I notice them far too often at every hour of the day and night on our street, but that's a different story). I heard what I assumed was a boom car, but it kept coming closer instead of continuing on. Suddenly a guy on a bicycle appeared; the bike had a boom box duct taped to the rack.

My first reaction was annoyance; this thing was super loud, and how dare he inflict his music on the rest of us?

My second reaction was a realization that I'm making part of my living inflicting my music on innocent passersby; do I really have the moral high ground in this situation?

My third reaction was yes. Yes, I do.

This was rather sweet

A young man tipped me with this poem he wrote, telling me I'd inspired him. I hope he doesn't mind my sharing it; I don't know his name. I took it upon myself to re-line-break some of it.

The Why of Art

Isn't it funny the nature of things
That one day can be a tragedy and on another
We may sing

Isn't it peculiar the things of nature
That it all works in perfect harmony
Disrupted only by malice of man

So I ask to you
What beauty is in intelligence
That it may ruin that which is devoid of computation

But in fact the beauty is in what we may create
For the nature of art, not unlike other things, is pure Beauty
But Art too is a thing of nature

So with our mind's eye we can create tragedy
Or shall we sing?

A thousand apologies...

...for spending June complaining about how cold and rainy it was. On the other hand, the few people who brave the Public Garden in triple-digit-heat-index weather are very complimentary and tip well.

Human nature might not be so bad

This happened a while ago:

I was busking in the Public Garden, as is my wont, when a man nearby collapsed to the ground. Before I could dig out my phone to call 911, one or two other people already had. The guy was conscious and trying to get up, but he was clearly disoriented, so a couple of nice motherly types were insisting that he lie down and wait for the ambulance, while three or four others stood around to kind of protect him from being stepped on, since he was in the middle of the sidewalk near an entrance where there's a lot of foot traffic.

What particularly impressed me about this incident was that the man was the type who makes a living from the garbage bag of cans he was carrying when this happened, and all these people stopped to help him anyway and make sure he was OK.

The EMTs stashed the bag of cans in the shrubbery; I don't suppose taking it with them would have been practical.