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Making Music

On the first day, it was a man with a rather tired-looking accordian, squeezing out arpeggios under the arch near the bus station, where the acoustics were good.

A few days later, a trumpeter had joined him. Together they wheezed through the standards as commuters hurried past.

Nearly a week later, while the rain dripped across the archway entrance, the accordianist and the trumpet-player were accompanied by a dishevelled man hitting a plastic fishcrate with sticks. He wasn’t exactly in time, but then the rhythm lolloped and lurched about anyway, and it amused the people sheltering in the archway from the rain.

A few days afterwards, they’d acquired another trumpeter – a man with fast fingers and an ear for a jazz version.

A week later, in the darkness of a cold winter morning, the man with the plastic fishcrates was gone, replaced by a drummer with a djembe, tapping out urgent dancing rhythms while the trumpeters tooted a lively version of jingle bells, and the accordianist filled out the song with great heaving, huffing chords.

Commuters tapped their feet while they waited for their buses, dropped the odd shiny coin into an upturned hat as they passed by, and smiled.

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Category: London, fmp

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3 Responses

  1. Caspar says:

    I saw some guys who sound just like this, twice in one day. First under a bridge on the south of the river (one of the tunnels you pass through walking between London Bridge and Waterloo) and then later on the footbridge between Waterloo & Embankment. They were very enthusiastic and people were dancing along, but I had no money to give so felt too guilty to stand and listen.

  2. Ignorminious says:

    How very lovely sounding. I do enjoy hearing buskers. Not hearing them is one of the few downsides of driving to work.

By way of explanation…

This is an individual post, which may not be very recent. For the latest stuff on meish dot org, please visit the main page.

By the way, I'm female. It doesn't have much impact on what I write about, or how I write, but I thought I'd point it out because so many people who link to this site seem to assume I'm male.

The clue's in the name: Meg. Like all those other female Megs.

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What’s all this, then?

This is a personal site, created and curated continuously since early 2000 by Meg Pickard, a creative geek, passionate photographer, anthropologist and web experience /community /social media specialist, who works for The Guardian & lives in London, UK.
 
The site includes a blog - a personal and evolving collection of links, opinions, thoughts, ideas, anecdotes and musings - as well as a variety of other projects. It is also a place to aggregate some of the author's distributed web activity, like photos, links and music.
 
More info about this site and its author.

Important note #1

This is a personal site. The contents and opinions contained within don't necessarily reflect those of my employer, family, or cat. They think for themselves (though mostly about tuna, in at least one case), and so do I.

Important note #2

Since the overwhelming majority of content on this site is historical, it should be regarded in light of the context in which it was originally published, and not as indicative or revealing of current perspectives, preferences or experience.

Important note #3

While I work and spend a lot of time thinking and talking about social media, participatory technologies and community development strategies, the vast majority of content on this site is not about that.

This personal site isn't about anything, except the perpetual unfolding of one person's experience, and the perspectives, observations and opinions that involves and inspires.

You still here?

Oh.