Busking

There used to be this busker on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Wearing a microphone and a beatbox, he'd stand on a street corner (usually Broadway and 72nd) rapping the day away.

What made him special was his facility for improvising, for working people into his raps as they walked by. Always rhyming, never missing the beat, he'd describe your clothes, your expression, your hair or your dog in his rap, grabbing your attention just long enough for you to reach in your pocket and toss him some change. Then he'd spot someone else and work them into his spiel.

He often drew a crowd, especially at night. His raps were catchy but they certainly weren't vinyl-worthy. What attracted us was the immediacy of his performance, the freshness of his rhymes, the anticipation of expecting the unexpected, the tension of watching him work without a net, wondering how he'd manage to keep it all going.

For someone known as the Analyst, I've had a frustratingly difficult time figuring out why I blog. I like to tell myself that blogging fulfills some inner expressive need, that the act of creation is what it's all about, that it doesn't matter how it's received so long as it does what it needs to do for me, whatever that is.

Or sometimes I think this is just an electronic party, in which my posts mingle with your posts and your comments to form an extended conversation. If so, it's an odd conversation: most of the time, I'm talking to myself, ignoring what's being said around me, all the while concealing myself behind a mask.

I expect for some blogging is another way of standing on a soap box in Hyde Park, preaching to the air, hoping to convert the odd passerby while dodging the rotten tomatoes. Not being infused with a missionary zeal, at least for the moment, that explanation doesn't explain why I'm doing this. Or so I'd like to think.

Most of the time I think I'm just a busker, standing on a street corner, spinning out posts in exchange for hits, for comments, for links, for correspondence, for the pocket change of your appreciation, secretly ashamed of my begging, hoping no one I know walks by and sees me reduced to this needy state.