Old School

I am so Old School.  I play acoustic guitar, unplugged.  I sing, no mic, no amp.  I play harmonica.  Au natural.
I sing in the train station and on city streets.  No stage.  No light show.  No smoke or back-up singers or dancers.
I know in this day and age it's not very interesting.  Imagine, a song, just a poem set to music.  Hmmm.  No commercial value whatsoever.
My biggest competition is technology.  Cell phones, the iPod, any hand-held device where the user has earplugs or headphones and is tuning out the environment around him.  Disconnected from his surroundings.
People are choosing more and more to disconnect from their surroundings.  I can hardly blame them.  But I find it sad.
Imagine, not wanting to take in the world around you.
So, I sing my songs.  I offer poems and music.  Half the people who walk by are listening intently to something else...music, perhaps, or the spoken word.  They walk past me, not seeing me at all.  "Nobody sees me, nobody cares, I'm like an empty box on a cellar shelf" are the words in one of my original songs.
It's not very zen to not be in the moment.  To be disconnected like that.
And then I look up.  A solitary woman is listening to my song "Summertime," the old standard from Porgy and Bess.  She applauds.  She has been listening to the whole song.  She has made my day.
She places a dollar in my guitar case, smiles and thanks me.  As she walks away, I start my next song, and original called "Starting Over."
I sing.  I start over.  Waiting for my next listener in a sea of technology.