I am keeping street musicians poor

I used to live in Cambridge, MA. Cambridge, Harvard Square, the T stops -- these things are to buskers as honey is to flies with tip jars.

One day I took the escalator down to the Downtown Crossing platform. There was a busker sitting on the ground, singing and playing a battered old guitar held together with duct tape. He was probably in his late thirties, black hair spiced with gray held back in a long ponytail, bestickered black guitar case open for tips. I'd seen this guy all over town as I went on my way around Harvard Square, as I mingled with the tourists at Faneuil Hall, and as I ran the "No crazies, please!" prayer loop in my head while waiting at T-stops along the red line.

I recognized him, but there's no reason he would've recognized me. I rarely gave buskers money because I rarely had money, though there was that time I heard a country singer on the corner outside the Harvard Coop that turned me into such sentimental mush that I gave her whatever was in my pocket. It was the first and last time I ever saw her.

In contrast, I saw the regulars with a regularity. I saw Guster before they had a radio hit; in between songs they said they were going to NYC for a show, and they asked if anyone knew someone there with a spare floor they could crash on. After the next song they said, No, seriously, we need someplace free to stay there.

Aging Ponytail Duct-Taped Guitar Man rarely engaged with the audience. Sometimes I liked to stop and listen to him and other street musicians as a balm to the soul; plus I didn't have a choice. Move aside to a quiet spot and you've just moved into another busker's zone.

That day in Downtown Crossing the crowd placed me near Ponytail's guitar case. While waiting for the train, I watched him sing and play and smiled my encouragement.

He stopped playing abruptly and looked up at me and said bitterly, "Why don't I stare at you for a while?" He threw his guitar in his case and stood up and turned away.

What did I do?

There was a tall skinny guy with long hair who played guitar and sang rock songs in Harvard Square, mostly, and along the T. He had some measure of local fame, which I know because I saw him team up with other busking regulars sometimes, and because I saw him interviewed on the local cable access station once. He was practically famous!

One day in Harvard Square I was sitting on a wall outside the Discovery Store eating my lunch when Tall Skinny stopped playing and started lecturing the crowd. We were basically stealing entertainment, he told us. We were getting his work for free, and that's wrong. That's thievery. We owed it to him to drop a few bucks in his bucket.

Can I tell you what I wanted to drop in his bucket?

I get it. I understand the frustration of putting your talent out there and getting blank stares or simpering smiles (from me) in return. I understand the weight of failure that that puts on you. Believe me, I get it.

I understand the confusion you feel when you hear Courtney Love on the radio and here you'd gone and allegedly given Kurt Cobain, um, let's say "personal favors" on his tour bus and you've got all kinds of positive local press for your music and yet here you're the one out on the street in front of fucking smug-ass Harvard and there's Courtney being exactly the same except rich. ( I heard that story about a locally well-known Boston street musician from Courtney herself at a Hole concert at the Orpheum, and no, I didn't want to know, and yes, Ms. Love's a great musician but maybe not that reliable a storyteller.)

But standing in front of people and forcing them to listen to you is not the same as getting them to hear you, and no amount of whining about it is going to change that.

I wanted to tell this story to remind myself not to be Ponytail or Tall Skinny, no matter how frustrated I become, because DUDE, I DIDN'T FORCE YOU TO PERFORM AT ME WHILE I'M WAITING FOR THE T, AND NO, YOU CAN'T HAVE MY MONEY.

Take that, bloggers!