Busking-Hustling

I spent the morning in the hospital with eye-physicians poking around my right eye. The news was mostly reassuring, but I was exhausted not the least from the eye drops they used to relax my eye muscles. Not being able to see clearly for a few hours was as fatiguing as the examinations and measurements. The good news is that whatever is growing inside my right eye is probably not malignant. But the specialists will keep an (ahh) watchful eye over it and expect me back in a few months.

While I was waiting between exams the algorithm sent me down a fun rabbit-hole of clips by street-artists performing modern evergreens and classical standards upon requests in various French train stations, cafes, and supermarkets as well as other European public locations. (Somewhat oddly the musicians and their audience generally speak English.) Not infrequently, ‘audience’ members join in the performance. Somewhat less frequently the ‘accidental’ passersby are famous musicians—and by ‘famous,’ I mean grammy award winning performers or prodigies from Britain Got Talent (etc.)

The clips are quite formulaic with English captions (‘OMG!!’ ‘EPIC’' ‘WTF’ ‘SURPRISED’ ‘VIBING’ and, crucially ‘CONNECTION’ etc.) that may as well be AI generated accompanying the music. An audience member requests a song; the busker plays a few notes from the tune (or is quickly instructed in it), and then before long somebody joins in, etc. The cleverly edited clip usually remains under about 100 seconds. In addition, there are frequent arrows pointing at the surprise audience guest ‘watch this guy’ (etc.). While the clips sell the illusion of authenticity and connection through harmonies and duets, they keep our attention because their virtuosity is joy inducing.

They are joy inducing in the same way a slow, unfolding philosophical conversation is joy inducing by generating flashes of understanding and joint clarification (and edification); when one of us helps the other see a concept anew and, thereby, create a sense of a fresh, blooming universe.

The street artists-buskers have (stage-)names like Anton Violinist, Van Toan, Jostein, Allie Sherlock, Aurelien Froissart, Karolina Protsenko, Emilio Piano, and Julien Cohen (amongst many others). (To what degree these are street artists or digital content creators I leave to you.) Several of these stage spectacular flash mobs. Many include clips with very appreciative, large crowds. They have huge numbers of online followers, and pushy parents eager for a shot of fame nudge their children into the recording frame with them.

We have come a long way from that infamous Joshua Bell busking experiment playing his Stradivarius anonymously outside the metro back in 2007. While Bell’s repertoire may have hurt him a bit with some passerby, an important change since that time is our willingness to record just about anything with our handheld devices. Back in 2007 about half of us — among the cosmopolitan elites who owned mobile phones — still mostly owned Nokias and not some fancy smart phone. That Nokia (running on a Symbian OS) was barely connected to a multi-media universe. Now, each and every one of us is aware that we can record and participate in an event, and this is marked in each clip by the record of many mobile phones recording what we re-live in front of us on our mobile screen in an otherwise quiet waiting room.