busk one!

I have busked on udderbot for the very first time.

I had several qualms about just going out and doing it.  For starters, I don't yet have a solid solo repertoire. Also, I could use some more pointers on busking, especially how to choose a location, though the essentials I presume most people learn by just trying it.  The biggest thing preventing me was a new sort of "stage fright" which I have felt present ever since last year, when co-inventor Matt Gray and I thought about doing it together.  I have a voice that says "All these people around here, look how they're enjoying the environment without you as part of it?  How could you possibly be so cheeky as to presume that the place and the mood could be improved by you planting yourself in that particular spot and crooning on that bottle?"  This voice I attribute both to past self-esteem and paralysis issues and to seeing the seething mass of people that is New York -- so much variety taken altogether, how can lonely little I approach that?  (Ah, but the key to busking is in meeting eyes with individuals, with winning over individual brains...)

When you have an ensemble, you manifest a social bubble that can shield you (and the spectator) from the most direct and terrifyingly raw rays of human-to-human contact.

Anyway, I've been here for a week, enough is enough dillydallying.  Down to South Central Park I go, next to a tourist bus station.  I open my backpack, lean it against my legs.  Some test notes.  What to play?  Somewhere over the rainbow, for starters.  Oop, how does the B section go again?  Some fiddle tunes, some classical classics -- getting pretty hammy with William Tell Overture, but I guess there's some appeal in it.  Some improvising in a somewhere-over-the-rainbow mood?  Pretty fun.  A Klezmer tune? Why did the Jewish man & kid walk by at that exact moment?!

Thirty minutes pass with no notable interactions or transactions.  Someone takes my photo.  Several curious gazes.  I'm pleased that the udderbot is getting this much exposure, even if it's mostly inattentive.  (I guess equivalent to having a YouTube video.) One guy smoking and listening comes over, with some that's pretty good, I haven't seen that before, etc.  Drops in a dollar!  Hints that it has to be just right -- he's right, I'm pretty sloppy.  Later a lady sees how poorly I'm doing and says something to the effect of, at least you're out there trying it.  She's right, that is my most major accomplishment, but gosh, am I obviously that bad?  Or did she just judge my worth on the mereness of my booty?  Anyway, enough.

• I need a better hat than my bookbag, which doesn't stay open.
• I need a sign saying "THIS IS AN UDDERBOT.  OPEN SOURCE INSTRUMENT."
• I need some friggin tunes!  Suggestions?
• I need (optional) some schtick.
• I need a better spot.  One with an echo to biggen the sound.  I'll hit the subway next.