No hounding of the buskervilles. We have a word for it: busking. It’s the practice of a musician (maybe a duet or trio) performing on a street corner, with a hat or open instrument case right there, for tips. Towns trying to encourage tourism often encourage busking, until shopkeepers get annoyed. Above my standup desk in the Poet’s Corner here at Shady Hill is a souvenir metal “No Busking” sign from the London Underground museum gift shop. Parts of some subway stations are off-limits to the artists, you see.
Brick is a busk. It could be similar to the rant of a bloke at the famous Speakers Corner of London’s Hyde Park. Most people see blogs in this way: A fervent fellow standing on a box explaining his view on things for any who stop by, while he is stationed simultaneously obscurely but in the middle of a metropolis.
I see many blogs this way, and I skirt around them when poking around the ether. But a number of these online journals are explorations of the medium, and experments in effectiveness of expression. So is the shabbily dressed saxophonist standing near a row of bars, blowing a lonely improvisation howling through the night air.
Brick is a busk. No tip jar is set up at this point. These posts are not orations, but riffs. -30-
