Büsker Dü, or: The Most Uncomfortable of Discomforts

So I have this friend who is fairly unclear on the meaning of the word "awkward." I think she just happens to be the unfortunate victim of people online who have abused the word by applying it to every photo of a family that just happens to be less than conventionally attractive. Ugly doesn't equal awkward. They're just ugly. Granted, the site's use of the word was put to much more appropriate use at the beginning, when the visitor really was made horribly uncomfortable by viewing photos of father-daughter subjects who looked like they were about to get it on. But a family of pasty redheads in hideous matching sweaters does not necessarily awkwardness make.

At any rate, I've recently witnessed with regularity a situation which proves to be, unquestionably, awkward: The obliging busker watcher.

The Obliging Busker Watcher

Okay, just so you know, a busker is a street performer. Here in Austin, the only kind of busking you typically see is musical in nature, but if you ever hit up Boulder, or San Francisco, or Amsterdam, you'll see juggler buskers (I call them juggskers... no one else does, so don't go around Portland using this term unless you want to get your head stove in with a bowling pin by a dude in Zoombas), robot buskers (robuskers, a nomenclature the use of which might result in your being painted silver and driven to suicidal madness by the incessant whine of a toy mouth siren—wheeeEEEEEEEEEEEZZHHHHhhh!!!!), puppet buskers (the word busketeer once got me in trouble in Chicago... I ended up fighting a felt crocodile, two sock monkeys, and a zany Italian chef with a bushy mustache), or even the death-defying flaming hula-hoop buskers (even I will admit I deserved the beat-down I received in Venice Beach when I called one of them a fireybuttholesker).

One Crazy SOB

But like I said, here in Austin, the buskers are, for the most part, musicians. It's not like Dublin, where there is someone or some group of record-contract-on-the-spot quality on every corner (the greatest buskers I've ever seen were a string quartet of teenagers on Grafton Street playing Mozart as if he showed them how), but I have seen some pretty good stuff. Well, to be honest, I've seen ONE good street act here, and again, it was a quartet of teenagers, this time playing some pretty killer bluegrass. What we do seem to have plenty of are the crazy, in-your-face, no-talent, crappy-ass-sounding mandolin/guitar/banjo-playing creep beggars (I call them crazyinyourfacenotalentcrappyasssoundingmandolinguitarbanjoplayingcreepbeggarskers, or bums for short).

These creeps have one and only one game plan: make people believe that they will get hurt if they don't stand there listening to their trite, on-the-spot songs about the listener's pretty hair and her hapless boyfriend or about how weird and wacky Austin is, replete with dropped names of long-gone local heroes and a litany of all the old lunch counters and saloons that have also gone the way of the longhorned buffalo.

Hey! I'm a person, too!

The obliging busker watcher is easily ensnared. He or she somehow feels bad for this person who has spent the last fifteen years playing guitar and singing all day on the street but who has miraculously never stopped sucking at both. They don't want to hurt the bum's feelings. Now, lest anyone form a malopinion of me (new word), I have a very soft spot in my heart for those people who are down on their luck, can't catch a break, and are truly hurting for money. I really do. But there's no excuse for being a crappy guitarist when that's essentially what you do for a living. Of course, Carlos Santana has certainly gotten away with it. But I digress.

The obliging busker watcher is, of course, just trying to be nice, and I ain't mad at them for that. In fact, I hurt for them. Because, as I said before, it's the most awkward situation a person can find themselves in on a busy street. The watcher stands, arms folded until they remember their junior college sociology prof told them that folded arms is negative body language, then they drop their arms to their sides, which becomes so uncomfortable their arms feel as if they are four feet long and flailing about like ninth-graders at a school dance. So, of course, the hands go into the pockets, unless the watcher happens to be wearing a dress, and it's back to folded arms. The watcher tries really hard to look engaged, but all they can think is, "Oh god, everyone walking by me thinks I'm a total moron for listening to this guy. Oh god, oh god!!!" It's true, the watcher is a total moron, but what I'm thinking when I pass by is, "Thank god that imbecile took one for the team. Team Mankind. We all thank you for running interference long enough for me to walk by on my way to get coffee without either: (A) lying about having no money, (B) giving him money I need for coffee, or (C) giving him no money because I really don't have any and then feeling bad about it, even though I have absolutely no reason to."

And yes, that's what my thought processes look like, right down to the serial parentheses. 

Of course, the obliging busker watcher is not a villain. They are, for the most part, innocents caught in a web of deceit that leads them to believe that in order to fully experience the city they are visiting, they must take in all the spices that city has to offer (lord have mercy even more so on the visitor to Austin, who thinks he or she will be damned for not partaking in every last morsel of the "Live Music Capital of the World." Trust me, Mr. and Mrs. Tourista, you're way better off giving your ten bucks to the door guy at the Mohawk who just looks homeless and seeing some truly good music). The true villain is the college douchebag beat-poet wannabe who sits next to the busker bum all day, snapping his fingers and rattling off the names of blues musicians he looked up online the night before, all in the hopes that those who see him will be struck dumb by his realness, his depth, his soul.

You'll know him when you see him. He'll be wearing a fedora.

 Cool, cat, cool! Play me the Street-Singer Blues! I'm in college!