BUSKING REALISATIONS

Today is an absolutely glorious day and I'm back on a good busking wave after a day off from playing yesterday and way too much mental deliberation. After just a few days back busking I realised I was in danger of becoming attached to the income of things rather than just letting the music do its thing, and as well as this, I'd been playing what I thought other people wanted to hear rather than what came naturally to me. As a result I've decided to stop noting down how much I make every day - it's just enough to know that I'm making enough to survive, isn't it? So now that I've reconnected to this idea of letting the music speak for itself, I realise again how it's going to be an amazing journey...

I play at various places today on the Mile and feel myself getting tired after just a few songs. I realise it's because I'm going through the motions; singing LOUDER to complete with all the surrounding traffic and street noise and the like. As soon as I stop doing this and begin to play only songs that I want to play, people seem to respond more, AND I'm no longer fatigued. Hoorah...

One of my favourite songs to play lately is 'Feeling Oblivion' by Turin Brakes - it's not well known, but it's so darn pretty and I can feel the effect its music has on passers by. It's good not to add more NOISE to the street, but rather to just sing at my own volume and observe how certain quiet, beautiful songs can almost work as an undercurrent, contributing towards a change in atmosphere in the market place or wherever a busker happens to be.

I get moved on, as I am playing outside a council office, so I soon flee to...

THE NATIONAL GALLERIES OF SCOTLAND
(just off Princes Street and next to the beautiful Princes Street Gardens)

There's a piper and some Scottish drummers already playing here so I choose a quiet spot, away from the main square where people are sitting eating their lunch. Instead I play on a busy but peaceful walkway, where I imagine my melodies wafting their way into peoples' worlds, them on their lunchbreaks full of dreams about busting out of their moulds perhaps... I try to play inspirational, thought-provoking songs in the hope that maybe a line or two will stay with them, back at work in the coming afternoon. 'Civil War' by Guns 'n' Roses is one, as is 'I am the Highway' by Audioslave.

It's not the most ideal place to play if you want to make money, as not too many people stop - and so often it's just that people are too SHY to stop! - but I enjoy it simply for the chance to practise certain songs I don't know so well. I also run into Ross and Davina from 'Mars Patrol' - a fantastic band I met ages ago. It's great to catch up with them, and I kind of sell my first CD to them (I say 'kind of' as they insist on making a donation when I offer to give it to them).

It's beautiful to be back in Edinburgh, to stop and have lunch in the Princes Street Gardens. Life is good. The sky is cornflower blue with perfectly fluffy white clouds, the weeping willows wave in the breeze by Scots Monument - a wonderfully Gothic building in this medieval city.... Edinburgh, I'm certainly lovin' your ways today...