Better Not Pout

As I travelled to Bay Station by subway, Santa Claus and his elves got on at Yonge.

Bill, the man from the TTC who had approved my amp, was one of the elves. Santa Claus said hello to me as if he knew me. I said a familiar "hi" back even though I immediately realized I had no idea who he was (other than Santa, of course). They were travelling the system today, doling out candy canes.

In their honour, I played "Santa Claus is Coming To Town" as my first song.

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Today was my third day at Bay Station and one of my best performance days yet. I stayed for an hour and a half and earned more than $55.00. One woman bought a CD right at the beginning of my set, which put me in a good frame of mind for the duration. But even before she did, I knew things were going better.

On Sunday, the donations had been up because of the Christmas shopping crowd. On Monday though, the mood had changed (probably due to the fact that everyone was gloomily back at work) and donations were down. Not coincidentally, my mood was down a bit too on Monday and I'm sure my performance suffered for it.

The big difference on Tuesday was that I decided to focus entirely on my performance and put as much feeling and emotion into my singing and playing as I could, and to not focus as much on the people around me. I generally like to make eye contact with some people as I play, but today I did that a little less, and more importantly I didn’t think much about whether or not they were making a donation.

At Bay Station, you can watch people approach from one hundred feet away, so it’s easy to slip into the habit of identifying them as a prospect before they get to you. "Ahah, he looks like my target market" sort of thing. A bad idea. And, thinking about my experience on Sunday, I had started to judge many of the passers-by because of their evident income level. Obviously, one of the quickest ways to distance yourself from your audience is to judge them.

So today I left that attitude at home...and felt immediately more at home in the Bay Station corridor. My voice sounded better, I was in a better mood, and lo and behold, along came the smiles and nods and change.