The Accordion Player.

Yeah, I sold out to the man. Suit, tie, 9-6, and a spot on the rat race. But when I give a few coins to a mustachioed old man playing the accordion (side note: never underestimate the brilliance of accordion players- See Edith Piaf’s l'accordeoniste for an example) by Sloane Square station on the second day of the job, he pulls me to one side. My suit means nothing, he knows I was a busker - am a busker still. He knows that buskers give to other buskers. We start chatting about location, places he’s played, and past performances. I play some harp, he picks up the key by ear and plays a rhythm accompaniment. A few more coins start dropping into the worn instrument case at his feet. Then he launches into I did it my way. Sure, it’s a bit cheesy, but I know a few lines of old Frank. Between my harp and my baritone there’s now a small crowd of people angling to drop silver in the box. Commuters not interested in our attraction are blocked off the path by the bustle and have to walk on the main road around the bus stop in order to get past. The song crescendos and a small cheer goes up. We laugh it off and shake hands. Time to get back to the rat race. ‘This one’s for you my friend’ my fellow musician shouts in a harsh polish accent, launching into a jazzy polka as I strut down the road with arms outstretched and fingers curled. Perhaps the only thing a suit is good for is dancing jazz. Sell out, I may be; I still have my busker’s cough.

*

Weeks of passing the accordionist by each morning took its toll. At first we continued to hi-5, shake hands and, occasionally, play a tune. But the longer I worked, the more I became a suit passing him by; the more I became a phantom instead of a man. He can still see the glimmer in my eye from before: the glimmer of someone who knows what it is to set an audience alight, the spark of someone who once burned everything for what they loved. Wearing a suit has a similar quality to that of being a busker: it makes one invisible. No - that is not quite right. Invisibility is not so transparent as to be the essence of suits and buskers alone. The fear and fatigue that have come from working twelve hours a day, seven days a week, is as much a motivator to write and to play music in what time remains, as love of those passions ever was before I wore a suit. Ideally, it is a mix of fear, fatigue, and love that call the muses to action. And if you don’t work for what you love, and burn for it, then life will have that quality of wearing a suit. Then you will become invisible.