Saturday Afternoon, Pape Station

This afternoon I returned to Pape, my comfortable little neighborhood station. Today is Saturday, and a beautiful fall day at that, so lots of people were going somewhere.

As always, I ran into people I knew. I’m already getting much better at responding to acquaintances who are concerned that I’m busking. I immediately try to put them at ease. ("My music career is going really well...I'm doing this as an interesting side project." Yeah, that's the ticket.)

But here's an interesting thing. A surprising number of friends who’ve encountered me here by accident have left without contributing any money. The vast majority in fact.

Why is that? It must be socially awkward, somehow. They must think it’s condescending to give me some change. They must not know what to say. (How about "here’s a quarter"?) Like the people at Sheppard pretending not to see me, people who know me seem to prefer to stop and chat about my music career—-but will do almost anything to avoid acknowledging that money is changing hands. ("Eew!")

Meanwhile, people who seem all but unable to contribute anything continue to do just that. Today a very downtrodden looking fellow laboriously emptied out his own pockets of pennies. Pennies!

I also had my first repeat customer: a man who said he’d seen me at Woodbine a few days ago but hadn’t stopped because he was in a hurry. When he donated (a toonie!) he did it with a flourish and a well-placed overhead lob.

+++

The other night I went to one of my favourite open mics and played three songs.

Two experienced subway musicians were there that night as well and they were full of helpful advice. One of them, it turns out, does well at Sheppard. ("Were you on the upper level or the lower level ?" he asked. I had no idea.) They suggested staking out a regular location and time. ("After a few months, people get to know you." A few months at Sheppard?!)

The other subway musician at the open mic admitted that when he learned I’d gotten my license, he considered trying to talk me out of it.

When I got up to play, I told the audience that I’ve been playing in the subways for a couple of weeks now and I’m getting pretty used to it.

"So," I said, "Would you mind standing up, walking back and forth and throwing change at the stage?"

It got a big laugh.

But when I got home, having not earned anything, I felt a bit deflated.

Where’s my dollar a song?

Then I recalled that, in fact, one of my subwaying friends had left the venue early, to head downtown and make some money.