Busker

"What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or is it a little of each, colored by the immediate state of mind of the observer (Immanuel Kant)?" -- such was the question posed by writer Gene Weingarten in his Pulitzer Prize winning story "Pearls Before Breakfast," documenting a stunt in which violin virtuoso Joshua Bell -- who regularly sells out concert halls at more than $100 a ticket -- dressed as a street musician and performed some of the world's most beautiful and complex violin concertos for 45 minutes, on a 300-year-old Stradivarius, and was virtually ignored, as a busker in a Washington, D.C., Metro station. You can listen to it here.  

L.A. Times reporter Steve Lopez found the Julliard-trained cellist Nathaniel Ayers playing a battered violin, for real, on Skid Row, and documented the brilliant musician's descent into schizophrenia in another award-winning series that became the basis for the movie "The Soloist."

Dick Van Dyke did a comic turn as a one-man band in Mary Poppins.

And then, there's this guy . . . click here.

Buskers play anything from buckets to, well, see for yourself . . .

The guy in the picture above was tucked back in a courtyard at the Cathedral of Barcelona.

If life has a soundtrack, buskers are a big part of it -- along with crickets, coquis, June bugs, and bull gators. I've been blessed to have seen some of the world's great cities, and heard some of the world's great street musicians firsthand. And, a good street musician is always worth a good tip - you've tipped for much less. So the next time you hear a busker knocking themselves out - particularly if they're really good at it. Break off a buck, or two, or ten. And consider yourself that much richer.

Oh ... and I've been listening to the Joshua Bell link as I wrote this ... OMG! Grab a cup of coffee and give yourself a treat.

The good stuff:

Crystal perfect moments
Sudden love
arboretums
The hanging gardens in the Land Pavilion at Epcot
Park Guell
Airboat Rides
eagle nests
Nutella crepes
curling up with a good book
playing a musical instrument

Instant Karma

If this looks like Elsie the Borden Cow tripping at a Grateful Dead concert, then the 60s were good to you. (and yes, I know Instant Karma is a Beatles song, and not by the Dead) It's actually a mash-up of the detail on a donkey cart outside the Italian pavilion at Epcot. Hee Haw! In this blog, I try to celebrate the exceptional in the commonplace -- the magic in the mundane, particularly the simple pleasures of "The Good Stuff." My search for simple beauty often sends my thoughts racing backward down the neural backroads to the funky tin-roofed shack where I keep my childhood. Not that I ever lived in a tin-roofed shack -- I grew up in a suburb of Los Angeles -- I just keep my memories there, because when I visit, I like the sound of the rain on the roof. This journey is fraught with magical thinking. To the point that a simple picture of a Sicilian donkey cart, sparks a memory of a simple children's story, that turned out to be not so simple and I am reminded afresh how so much of what we believe is not based on fact, but on faith, fear, greed, assumption, position, privilege and ignorance. These thoughts have been front and center for me, as we, as a nation, struggle to understand the causes and cures of this prolonged recession, and cast stones at the faith of other people's fathers, because the splinter in our brother's eye is so much easier to see than the plank in our own. If we were to turn the mirror on ourselves for a moment, strip away the magical thinking that allows us to alchemize our own fear and greed into righteous indignation, I think we'd see that religious atrocities cross all faiths, racism knows no color, and greed no political affiliation. Go ahead, you think about that. I'm going to sit here in my shack, listening to the rain on the roof, strumming my dusty guitar and singing songs from my childhood: "Take a look at yourself and you can look at others differently . . ."

And for those of you who came here because of the Grateful Dead reference, I don't want you to go away empty-handed: http://artsites.ucsc.edu/GDead/agdl/

The good stuff:

Paying for a soldier's breakfast

talking to family

glimpses of the person your teenager will become

The Bill of Rights

a walk in the park

the silence of snow

noodlehead stories

Wikipedia

seeing the original

potable water

Mark of the gecko

By day, he's a mild-mannered Cuban anole, sunning himself on a rock, pooching his dewlap, trying not to get squished or eaten by an osprey. But, like the alligator in yesterday's blog, he has dreams. A little fisheye, some radial blur, and some vignetting, reveals this alter ego: Z-Gecko, the avenger. Perhaps not. But that's how I saw it.





The good stuff:
xydeco

Day of the Dead dioramas

flight dreams

watermelon

concertinas

windmills

waterfalls

triple word scores

finding a dollar in the wash

Um, Darlyn . . . Step away from the shrubbery

Hadn't intended to start a trend, but after yesterday's success at spiderweb photography I managed to get another elusive shot - extreme close-up of a snake sticking its tongue out. This black racer isn't poisonous -- good snakes make good neighbors -- but it gave Darlyn a bit of a shock as I was taking her picture under an arbor in the U.K. pavillion at Epcot and broke all paparazzi on this little guy sunning himself on the boxwood behind. Now that I've done spiders and snakes, I think I may cycle through a few criters over the next few days. I got a shot of an 8-foot alligator last week I've been itching to share. 

The good stuff:

whistlestops

zithers

terra cotta warriors

lotus flowers

hot air balloons

sky writers

coy

mariachis

popcorn

secret entrances