Busking Impressions

Morning comes with a splintering of light and I am suddenly awake. My skin is prickling and there is a faint ringing in the air, as if the sun had just broken into the sky with a snap and the sound was still reverberating through my bedroom.
I slip out of bed in an instant, pull my curtains aside and slide my window all the way up.
Then I am still. I stand there, at the window, and watch. The sky is a wash of grey cloud ships, their bows dipped in gold. Colour is spreading across the whole valley, shining on shingles, lighting up white walls and casting pools of shadow behind them. I stand there for some time, listening to the sound of my breathing, the infrequent hum of early vehicles. In this moment I am calm, I am balanced, but I know this feeling will not last long.

My breakfast is rushed. I have a lot to do.

The day is full. The soles of my shoes are hot from rushing about so.

Now it is five o'clock and I take a shower. I take out my brown jeans, a blue jumper and a red scarf for the cold. Then I pick up my guitar.

The bus is 11 minutes late. The bus driver is a grey, thin faced lady who asks loudly for my ticket.
I explain that I have no ticket. I fish in my wallet and tell her I brought change for a ticket, and then discover I have none. I begin to apologise. I tell her I have no change, only a fifty dollar note.
'No shit,' she says, 'can't you read?' she says, and bangs her elbow on a sign by her seat:
PLEASE HAVE CORRECT FARE READY.
I find a seat quickly.



Now it is six o'clock, and I'm sitting on the corner. Waiting is making me nervous. All I can think of is how funny I must look perched here on the rim of a garden, all wrapped up in my red scarf.
The air is fresh and the street is alive, humming with dinner conversation and pedestrian chatter. The guitar feels cold in my hands.
I plunk out a few notes. Across the road, an old man with a black moustache looks up from his table, scowls, and looks back down at his takeaway. My fingers wont move. Ironic, I think dully, all that practice and now I’ll screw it up in front of an old fart who's not even interested.
I adjust my scarf and flex my fingers across the strings, plucking softly so I can hear what I sound like before Mr. Moustache gets a chance to yell abuse.
Slowly, I begin; forcing soft notes out of the reluctant nylon. I begin to sing, but my voice is thin and reedy, its like singing through a long tube stuffed with tissues.
I grit my teeth and brace my shoulder against the wood, curling my fingers and pulling them back and forth, back and forth, building a light thrumming sound. The strings begin to warm in my hands, and I start to play louder, faster; thick throbbing chords of sound. And now I am singing, and I don't care who's listening. I am singing and my voice is floating in the air as my fingers are flying back and forth, back and forth, like spiders legs dancing on nylon strands of sound. Colour is filling the courtyard, shining on shingles, lighting up faces. In the midst of music I am calm, I am balanced.