I Can See Osgoode Clearly

It's a brilliant spring day today and the temperature is about ten degrees above zero. The sky is blue. Underground, though, it's still chilly. Also, Osgoode Station is damp, and after a song or two I notice that my guitar strings actually feel sticky.

Donations are slow, perhaps because everyone lived it up on the long weekend, or perhaps because it's the end of the month. Perhaps it's because I'm wearing my new coat and I don't look as if I need the money. Perhaps I'm not singing with the right amount of energy, or without energy of the right sort. Perhaps the construction at the station (a new elevator going in) has adversely affected the feng shui. Perhaps...well, perhaps nothing. Perhaps it's just coincidence that some days everybody's donating and other days nobody is.

When I'm in the subway, I'm always looking for connections. I'm always trying to discern some sort of pattern, some sort of unifying principle that governs the behavour of people passing by.

Perhaps there's no such principle.

But I'm always looking for it.

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I tried something new today. I sang an bona fide Familiar Cover Song: Johnny Nash's "I Can See Clearly Now" (1972). I figured it would suit the weather.

I do a pretty good job of it too. My version is somewhat like Holly Cole's: sort of jazzy-bluesy. Before going out to the subway today, I made sure I knew the tricky chord combination in the bridge.

So far, since I've been busking, I haven't been playing familiar popular songs. I have enough songs of my own to sing, and many musicians perform the old songs better than I do. On the other hand, I wondered if passers-by would appreciate hearing songs they know...and if that would lead to higher donations. Today seemed a good day to take that trusty old Nash out for a test drive.

"I Could See Clearly Now" sounded great in Osgoode Station. Better than I thought it would, in fact.

I played it twice.

It attracted no donations.

A friendly maintenance worker, who had listened to about seven songs while eating his lunch, told me he liked my songs just as much.

"The songs you write, they come from the heart," he told me.