Living – and how it sounds from the too loud stereos of street buskers

There is a type of people that puzzles me. The lady with a bob, a full of head of white hair, singing in her breathy voice to some old song teenagers of her time probably jammed to, waiting for money and patronage to clatter into her plastic basket on her Personal Mobility Device. These people are never begging, not with how they throw themselves into artistic endeavour so different from the way beggars flash their stumps for hands and mumble for money. Music and the pursuit of art is always associated with passion and enrichment of the inner world, for it ranks much higher on the pyramid of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Perhaps it is thus a little disorientating for such pursuits of self actualisation to be lowered to meet base level survival needs, exchanged for few meagre donations. 

To the housewife-looking lady sitting by the connector to the bus interchange, playing nonsense on the electric keyboard before her, but playing nonsense with all her soul, does she do it out of passion? Between begging or selling tissues and busking, does she enjoy this path a little more? Is there salvation to be found in singing and performing? I think back to all the talent shows on TV about someone from a tragic backstory who sings to give themselves/their families a new life, and wonder if what differentiates these street-buskers from those idols are their lack of a musical touch, or an apathetic hard-to-please audience of office workers rushing to and from work.

Do they imagine that they are only singing to themselves and count their earnings each day not just by the rattle of spare change but by the warm glow within them knowing that they enjoyed the performance? Or am I romanticising other’s hardships because I am insensitive to their worries? Still, we live in a country where elderly street-buskers outnumber the cool hippie artists busking on orchard road, and I can’t help but wonder why turn to music as a way to live? 

As I walked home briskly and listened to the metallic too loud quality of the synthetic pianos and voices, I wonder why we choose to live the way we do. These old men and ladies belt an off-key song for a few dollars. We sit before a desk typing away at a pitch-less keyboard for few hundreds. How different are we when it comes down to selling something of ourselves? I watched the housewife-looking lady throw her head back in imitation of some famed pianist she’s seen before, no doubt, and can’t help but stare at her legs folded against the cold tiles behind her, and her pink socks, wet with the rain falling into the shelter of the walkway.