Tales From the Road

Sometimes I turn around and realize it’s been three months since I last posted on my blog. I have a very active social media presence between Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, each of which has its strengths, but I’ve missed the luxury of being able to more fully explore my thoughts.

As a traveling performer, I often repeat my schedule from year to year and therefore have a large number of friends I see only when I come to their area. We do keep up with each other via social media, which means that each of us has a grip on the key events of the other’s life, but it does drive home what I’m not posting online when I find myself repeating the same conversation to catch people up.

I pushed myself this year. It was a deliberate choice, and one where I weighed the risks fairly accurately, but I was definitely getting crispy in the fall. I didn’t burn out, thankfully, which happened in 2011, but I got closer than I’m comfortable with.

At the end of 2011 (which I still call “Black ‘11”) I was tired and questioning a lot about my life. I questioned my career choices, life choices, and even my continued existence in my first suicidal ideation since my twenties. In response, I made a few ground rules for myself that have served me very well in the meantime.

Some of them were creative choices that I’ve described elsewhere, a decision to prize artistic vision over potential commercial success, but some were very practical. My European tours that year had been overwhelming, and I decided to cap my busking tours at eight weeks. The intervening years have shown this to be a good rule, but this year I got ambitious. I was turning forty, after all.

I figured I had something to prove, and so I booked a three-month tour of Europe. It was fantastic, and I was very careful with my spoons, but it was still very tiring. Around week ten I realized that eight weeks was a good tour limit, but I wrapped up the tour on a high note and was looking forward to returning to Italy even as I left.

This is where I got careless. I landed Thursday night and I was at Pennsic Friday morning. Pennsic is a two-week immersively-medieval event in southwestern Pennsylvania, which I’ve been attending for over fifteen years. The quick turnaround hadn’t been my original plan, since I had intended to take a few days off, but someone in our group couldn’t fulfill their commitment to deal with the bureaucracy and I was the only person physically capable of stepping in (for SCAdians: we lost our Land Agent and I was only two hours away).

From there things started to cascade. As is my usual habit, I played music at Pennsic for the week before leaving to open the New York Renaissance Faire, returning to play again Monday through Friday and then back to New York for the second weekend. I’ve been doing this for years with little difficulty, but coming immediately on the heels of an already-overlong summer tour was a bit much. Looking at pictures taken of me that second weekend, I’m pretty confident I know what I’ll look like in ten years having seen such ravages of fatigue on my face.

I don’t regret any of my choices, and taking long breaks from music during the weeks between New York Faire weekends was deeply restorative, but it’s not a lesson I’m eager to repeat. I’ll try to keep that in mind as future birthday milestones parade toward me.

Honestly, I'm kind of boring. I wake up around 6:30, spend a while puttering around online and reading a lot of news analysis, and hop into the shower around eight. I putter some more, head out, have breakfast at a cafe, and play for a few hours. I grab groceries on my way home, eat a lunch of bread, fruit, and lunch meat and/or cheese. I take a nap, and have an afternoon walk. I play another few hours in the evening before eating the remainder of my bread, fruit, lunch meat and/or cheese for supper, and take an evening stroll before curling up with a book.

On my day off, when I'm neither playing nor traveling, replace the music with more walks and museums. I don't do much that's really interesting, but I'm deeply thankful that I get to enjoy my routine in some really, really cool places.

Well, technically the halfway point was a few days ago, but I haven't really had the motivation to write recently. The trip is a real whirlwind, and I'm a little dizzy for it. I'm having a pretty great experience, though, and I'm quite pleased with how things are going. I'm already tentatively writing itineraries for future Chile tours, and I would like to make them a recurring part of my schedule.

There have been setbacks, of course. The PVC couplings I use for joints on my portable dulcimer stand weren't up to snuff, but I figured out a way to use tape on their insides to create a subtle fix. I'm rather pleased with that bit of ingenuity even as I'm a little miffed I hadn't thought to test the new setup before flying ten thousand miles with it.

I'm stressed, of course. Bus travel here is quite comfortable but a bit haphazardly organized. I haven't missed one yet, but I'm never confident until I'm on board and I've been confirmed that I'm in the right place. My language proficiency is stepping back for every step forward, and every day that I feel confident is matched by another day when I feel continually bewildered and lost. There's a race at my temples between my greying hair and receding hairline, and I always come back from overseas tours feeling like I've aged at an accelerated pace while I'm gone. But while I'm here, living on the balls of my feet and adapting to surprises, I feel very much alive. And if past is prelude, when I come home to familiar surroundings I'll feel incredibly powerful for having been away.

I'm torn between disbelief that it's only been two weeks and that it's already been two weeks. I'm covering ground like I've never done before, changing cities every 3-4 days. It was a good choice based on my previous South American experience, where I was several times tripped up by local anti-busking regulations but then stuck for a week because the economics of a long bus ride and losing a room deposit were greater than potential busking profits. Still, it's starting to get tiring.

I think I may take the weekend off. I've had a remarkably successful time so far, and I've sold more than half my CDs less than a third into the tour. Valparaiso, Concepcion, Temuco, and Valdivia were all very good to me, and today I rolled into Villarica.

That trip is itself a bit of a tale, with a bus breaking down part way and an hourlong wait before another bus came along with standing room only. I'm rather pleased at how that came out, honestly, because it shows a lot of personal growth on my part. Earlier in my travel experiences I might have meekly accepted the word of my driver and waited for further instruction, but I was a little more insistent this time and it worked in my favour. As a bonus, after twenty minutes the guy seated beside me got off the bus, opening up the seat and leading to a delightful conversation with Marlena, a Chilean-American who was traveling to meet distant relatives.

So into Villarica I rolled, and it was an interesting experience. The city is lovely, though much smaller and more touristic than anyplace I've yet been. Most interestingly, from a professional point of view, the buskers I've grown accustomed to are entirely absent. After several cities where amplified bands are not uncommon street corner ornamentation, it seems a little odd not to have encountered a single one. This makes me a little hesitant to try my hand and, while in years past I've brazened my way into things with a philosophy of "ask forgiveness, not permission" I don't really want to push my luck. An interesting counterpoint to my experience on the bus.

And I do rather want a break. I'm ahead of my projections, and while I embrace an attitude of "make hay when the sun is shining", I'm about to spend ten of the next fourteen days in now-familiar territory that has been good to me. It may be time to catch my breath for a bit.

I'm booked through July, here's where you can find me!

January 10 - March 7
Busking tour of South America (Santiago de Chile, Valparaiso, Concepcion, Temuco, Valdivia, Villarrica, Vina del Mar, Antofagasta, Calama, Arica, Cusco, and Lima)

March 12 - 16
Gulf Wars (SCA)
Hattiesburg, MS

March 17 - April 9
Weekends
Sherwood Forest Faire
Bastrop, TX

May 2 - July 27
Busking tour of Europe (Genoa, Vicenza, Cremona, Modena, Orvieto, Gubbio, Foligno, Pisa, Dubrovnik, Mostar, Sarajevo, Split, Rijeka, Ljubljana)

July 30 - August 4
Pennsic War (SCA)
Slippery Rock, PA

I've written about my first trip to South America when I went to Buenos Aires on vacation and missed my dulcimer the whole time. In 2014 I went back as a busker, and had an amazing experience.

I hit Buenos Aires, Montevideo (Uruguay), Rosario, San Luís, Córdoba, and Mendoza, plus I dashed across the Andes to briefly visit Santiago de Chile before hitting that country's cultural capital, Valparaiso. I fell in love with Valparaiso and had a really fulfilling experience, but I lost my shirt.

My biggest issue was that South America is really big. Most of my busking has been done in Europe, which is remarkably compact. In Italy, if one city doesn't work I'm within a reasonable train ride of another city I can try, even as repeated day trips if I've prepaid my lodging. In South America that doesn't fly, and it was a better financial decision to eat the loss than to wrack up bigger bills to roll the dice again.

So, when a cop would tell me I was not allowed to busk, I was basically up the creek until I was scheduled to move on. This lead to some really great experiences, but as I said I lost a lot of money on the trip. I'm taking those lessons into account as I plan another South America expedition.

I'm booking a lot more cities, so instead of a week in each place I will spend 3-4 days. It will be a much more hectic travel schedule, but lessens my risk from individual cities not working out (even if I'm busted everywhere I go I'll still get 2-3 days of playing a week). I've done my homework and none of these cities have regulations regarding buskers, but that means nothing when an individual cop decides he doesn't like what you're doing.

I'm also looking to bring some CDs with me. Lacking CDs would have been manageable if more cities had worked out for tips, but they significantly improve profitability and could have helped me with my limited playing time. Also, Argentina has serious trade barriers but Chile has a free-trade agreement with the US, so that will be a huge help as well.

Finally, I'm budgeting with the idea in mind that I'll lose my shirt. Rather than projected grosses, I'm planning on minimal income so that anything above that will be a bonus. Losing money wasn't my problem in 2014, losing money I couldn't afford was my problem.

I'm excited and nervous and can't believe how quickly the dates are approaching!

It wasn't a great day, but it was far from a bad one. I'm busking the ByWard market in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and today's highlight was a large group of middle-school kids, early in the day, who clustered around and listened to both to the music and my explanations of it. Not only were they intent and asking good questions, but they were surprisingly generous tippers. A definite win!

Change terrifies me, until it thrills me. This is frequently my pattern, a sharp panic attack followed by an invigorating hunt for opportunity.

Recently two of my favourite busking cities, Padua and Bologna, passed harsh regulations that take them off my circuit. This continues a recent trend, as Rome, Ravenna, and several other cities have also recently cracked down. I started thinking about limiting my exposure to Italy (I've been yearning to go back to Croatia), or even cutting back on my European travel.

Then Wednesday I had a run in with a Perugia polizia who acknowledged that I was right on the regulations but said my playing could potentially disrupt nearby government offices (although he cited no complaints). I wasn't completely unprepared: as a contingency plan I had originally booked lodging equally (in)convenient to both Perugia's historic center and to the train station, so I'm well-placed for local commuting. Still, it was a further blow to my confidence.

The combined setbacks, however, have unleashed a flurry of creative energy as I research and plan future trips. Rather than cutting back on Italy, I may even expand. Every step back holds the potential for a leap forward, and I am relentless when it comes to seizing opportunities.

I'm glad I'm on a little weekend* break; I had an anxiety attack of all the things that could go wrong, which lasted about a day, even after so many tours doing exactly this. It could all go pear-shaped at any minute, and now that the panic has worn off I'm finding a headspace open to possibility rather than terror.

It's never not a leap of faith.

*performers get "weekends" Monday-Tuesday, which does interesting things to our social lives.

That's all there are, in the moment, to choose a course of action. It's not a hard and fast rule and I made the number up, but the length of one deep breath is what I had to work with. I saw the boy pull money out of my hat, I saw him hide it, and I made eye contact.

I chose to do nothing.

It wasn't worth my time to raise a fuss over €2, though I took careful note of his hand to keep my accounting accurate. I'm ashamed to say I was curt with his age cohort for a short while afterwards, but performing for and winning over young people is one of my great joys and I recovered fairly quickly. I refuse to let one bad apple spoil my evening, and looking back I made the right call.

But I memorized his face and I'll take care not to give him a second opportunity.