[Didjeridu] busking stories -was:RE: appreciation

[Jerry]

Hi Tim, You almost outdid yourself with that story. It seems to me that
there is an undercurrent of talent waiting to burst out in the form of
writing in addition to your awesome didge and tuba skills.  :-) :-) Jerry



Talk about feeling like an old-timer. When I started busking, yeah there
would be an occassional picture taken here or there, maybe a little video
camera footage captured. Each year, a few more pics taken. Then cameras got
smaller and became common in cell phones. Now, pocket phones take my
picture, video capture a few moments of my playing, or replace ringtones
with my didjing upwards of a dozen times a night. Technology marches on.
Nonetheless, I still feel special with my prepaid cell phone that has a
calculator function on it.

I did a youtube search of Ocean City and various words to see if anyone
posted me, but I found little more than clips of a self-proclaimed preacher
spouting disjointed rantings of salvation and sin.

OK, here's a busking story more for the sublime than the comical:

Generally, when I busk, I just play and play. I mostly stop only if someone
asks a question that cannot be answered by either charades or the flip book
I have displayed. One night, as 2 young ladies were sitting and listening,
my eyes kept wandering to my side where another much smaller visitor was
doing a very, very slow dance, like a Tai Chi master reaching the extreme
possible edge between steady concentrated deceleration of action and
complete cessation of motion. It was hard to focus fully on this little guy
as his dance was happening at the very edge of my visual panorama. I could
only turn my head so far, as my face was attached to the didj in front of
me. The 2 young ladies sitting in front of me were giving increasing
attention to the tiny dancer at my side. As his mesmerizing movements
drifted almost imperceptably closer to me, he increasingly became the focus
of the young girls' attention. An interesting display from my perspective,
as I watched the girls' attention to my side become mixed with a twinge of
concern. That seemed a bit curious to me, but I kept exploring the rhythm I
was riding. A few moments later, the young ladies failed to hold back the
look of surprise on their faces as our dancing friend leaped onto my leg.
This caught me off guard to be sure, but I didn't break the drone. He wasn't
hurting me. He weighed next to nothing. He was barely more than a stick
figure.

As the unease in the young ladies' faces subsided, the fascination in this
interaction between dancer and musician grew anew. But now there was an
increased intensity in the air as fascination mixed with caution. Would
there be any more sudden unrestrained actions erupting from this captivating
small-bodied dancer? He certainly had his audience enthralled with alert
focus on his every move, including me. The sense of caution affected my
playing. Once our dancer abruptly decided to use my leg as a stage, it
didn't take long for me to transition from a fast rhythm to a slowly
undulating drone, my eyes straining in my head to reach the best viewing
angle while not breaking my face's connection to the didj's mouthpiece.

The caution proved reasonable as, without warning, and with the same abrupt
explosion of movement exerted to land on my leg, he jumped off my lower
limb, landing quietly in front of my tip contraption. The sudden movement
did cause me to wince mildly, creating a strange aural bump in the
meditative drone. Immediately following that reaction, my eyes strained even
harder to keep the visual connection to our unusual and unpredictable
dancer, as he was now at the far extreme right edge of my visual field.

Now I was completely enthralled. What will he do now? Is there meaning to
his movements? Can I keep him in my sight without interrupting the music?
Can I move the didj while playing without knocking the young ladies in the
head with the bell of my didj? I decided to stay in place and keep playing,
putting the burden on my eyeballs to do acrobatic feats in the quest for
uninterrupted viewing of this sometimes fluid and sometimes erratic dancer.

I don't have a tip jar or hat. Instead, I have 2 four-inch PVC tubes that
stand a little over 3 feet high. This tip contraption eliminates the burden
of protecting any received tips from theft or wind. It allows me to really
got lost in my playing. I never really look at it while playing. Now,
however, our little dancer was actually climbing up it's PVC walls! My
playing was set on auto-pilot as all my energy was focused on watching this
spectacle at my side. I did build the tip contraption to be fairly sturdy,
but I didn't design it to be be a climbing wall. It is PVC pipe after all-
round, slick, no real place to grab hold and climb. That didn't seem to
matter. This little guy was doing it. Not only that, he did so while
maintaining the same slow fluid majestic kinetics he demonstrated prior to
his jumping outbursts. Once he reached the top of the tube, he did an almost
ritualistic dance, extending one arm in the most excrutiatingly slow
fashion. Then the other arm would reach out just as slowly, as if embracing
the space just above the entrance to my tip contraption. This dance was so
slow, focused and entrancing, it seemed hard to believe it did not have
meaning and purpose. He seemed to be somehow stirring some unknown or yet to
be understood metaphysical energy, focusing it at the very entrance to my
tip tubes.

This strange little fellow had me so captivated by his hypnotic performance,
that I lost my sense of caution. When he suddenly jumped onto my shoulder, I
abruptly stopped playing. After a few moments, the young ladies picked him
up from my shoulder and held him for some time before he flew away.

Question, does anyone know of any meaning attributed to visits by a praying
mantis?

Tim Whittemore
Didjiridu and Tuba
to hear some clips:
http://www.cdbaby.com/bigblow




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heh....I worried about that in the beginning, but not any longer......I
think parents are thrilled by the thought of their kid appearing on a dvd or
even youtube.....after all, they aren't gonna be identified except by those
who know them, and we do ask if they mind being video'd....no one has
objected...yet...;-)

If you have many of the same experiences that we do, you no doubt have pics
& videos taken by folks from all over the world....just gotta ask if they
will share (most say they will, but ya never hear from them
again).......once in awhile someone posts video of a busker, but mostly from
other countries. I wish we had a nickel for every photo & video that was
taken of us, but I would say that a majority of those taking pics will leave
a tip.

Nice short (funny stories) Tim....I'll bet we could write a book eh? I'll
pass on some more later, but most of mine are of the longer variety. Hey,
anything to get things stirred up on this list again;-)

Per


In a message dated 1/4/2009 1:43:33 P.M. Mountain Standard Time,
mj at rounddoor.com writes:
I have virtually no video of me busking. I busk solo. It might seem
> creepy to see me videotaping people passing by while I play.



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